In this 3 minute blog you will learn why entrepreneurs need a business coach and what you should tell your new coach clients.
As a business coach, communication is your most important tool. In combination with your expertise, you know when and how to ask the right coaching questions. But what about entrepreneurs? Are they asking themselves the right questions?
Are entrepreneurs asking the right questions?
There are so many ways to develop a business. Sometimes entrepreneurs feel quite isolated. No one to talk to or spar with, who understands their business dynamics and challenges. They can easily go the wrong way. It can therefore be nerve-wracking for entrepreneurs. They should try to come up with the best option, make the right decision, save time, save money or other business matters that require attention and a decision. Or even worse: feeling compelled to risk the next step, when they don’t have enough information.
It makes a huge difference whether an experienced listener asks the right questions or when an entrepreneur, who finds himself in a problematic situation, asks himself questions. That is why entrepreneurs need coaching and mentoring. In addition, successful entrepreneurs have an entrepreneurial coach. That’s what you need to tell your prospects.
Coach customers to sell the unknown
For entrepreneurs, one of the best ways to move forward is to be coached by those who have already been through it. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t have a collection of mentors or a business coach available to them. Trusted people around them, who ask the right questions. To make matters worse, they often have never experienced coaching. The entrepreneurs do not know what entrepreneurial coaching can do for them. That makes it a lot harder to sell coaching to them.
How do you get the right answers?
Even if entrepreneurs already have mentors or business coaches, they still need to learn how to ask the right questions. Especially for their prospects. Asking open questions is much better than asking closed questions. For example, questions that always start with Why, What, Who, For What, When and last but not least: How!
For this example, let’s assume that entrepreneurs have mastered the art of asking powerful questions. Will they also get the real answers if they are part of the problem at the same time? No, highly unlikely. Simply because even when asking open-ended questions, they will not identify themselves as the source of the problem.
There are many experienced business coaches who have the right expertise and answers. However, to get the right answer, entrepreneurs need someone who can offer something different, which was not in their mind at first. Someone who can help take a new direction, tap into a different way of thinking, give a different perspective that leads to different behaviour. And, different behavior results in business growth.
Books that make you think
Some books also ask and answer the right questions. Lara Morgan’s book ‘More Balls Than Most:’, answers some essential questions (aspiring) entrepreneurs should ask themselves before starting. Lara answers questions with a video response and shows a quick response directly from her own experiences. Her number one piece of advice: “To grow your business, spend most of your week just selling and do your paperwork on Saturdays and Sundays.”
The book is a fun and educational addition to coaching, but certainly not a replacement for entrepreneurial coaching. In that respect, the book by Miloe van Beek is also a good source to get you thinking: ‘ Yes! I screwed up, 13 mistakes that make your business better .’
Despite the good advice in books, the problem – as with reviews – is that the answers are not tailored to the situation of individual entrepreneurs. So you get the best support from those who know how to translate it to your practice. People who know exactly what it takes to achieve this goal and don’t hesitate to share it with you.
What to tell your new coach clients
What does it take to convince the entrepreneur of the usefulness and necessity of entrepreneurial coaching? Research in Harvard Business Review found that entrepreneurs’ biggest fear is that the coach wouldn’t understand their business.
So the lesson here for you is not to advise business owners what to do or how you would solve their problems, but to ask the right questions. Because, as you may know, for most good questions, people don’t have the answer yet. In the end they say: ‘That’s a good question!’ That’s why they need you as a business coach.
