Archive for 'Coaching Skills'

Consults: The #1 Easiest Way to Enroll Coaching Clients

October 19, 2010 | Read 5 comments and join the discussion

Are you offering consults to prospective coaching clients? If not, I hope by the end of this post you will take my 90 day challenge and find out how the habit of giving consults can bring you clients right now. In fact, I double dog dare you to find anything better to enroll new clients into your high value programs!

It’s easy to pour your time into Internet marketing, thinking that social networking and blogging alone will get you all the clients you need. But those methods are best for building a leads list and bringing you future clients. If you want more coaching clients right now — real time connection is still the easiest, most direct and most effective way to engage new clients. And it’s fun!

Enrolling is a simple coaching skill that will do more than any other approach to get you high paying private clients. And you can easily adapt the enrollment process to preview teleclasses and public speaking, to enroll people into your group programs too.

Should I Give a Sample Session or Consult?

Enrolling Clients with Sample Sessions or Consultations

Most coaching schools recommend delivering a full blown coaching session as a sample to enroll clients. There’s nothing better for stretching your coaching skills as you’re first getting started. And, if you are vigilant about keeping your time boundaries, avoiding over-delivery, and acing the close; prospects will become your clients through sample sessions.

But, after a while, you might find that sample sessions are too time consuming. Coaches also tell me that in sample sessions they tend to focus more on their technique than engaging the client. From sample coaching, prospects often slip away from the full session feeling “done” rather than primed for long-term support.

A different approach is to set up a short, themed consult as a simple discovery process to enroll clients. You still get to use your coaching skills – asking powerful questions and listening – to quickly uncover where your prospect wants to go, where they are now, and the gap in between.

Then it’s easy to show them how you can help them bridge that GAP.

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Topics: Client Attraction for Coaches
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The Essence of a Great Coaching Question

August 17, 2010 | Read 2 comments and join the discussion

I’m just back from three extraordinary days at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in beautiful Lyons, Colorado. John Prine closed out the festival with a set worthy of the national treasure he is. A lot of great lines from the old poet, but here’s the one that’s still rolling around in my head:
gathering coaching questions wisdom at Folks Fest

It’s not really a question if you already know the answer.

That’s true about the most powerful coaching questions.

Learning to draw out your client’s wisdom rather than impose your own agenda is one of the foundations of coach training. Is it time to refresh that lesson? It’s so easy to get caught up in the task list and learning curves, and forget to lead with curiosity in a coaching session.

No matter how insightful you are (and you are insightful!) the most impactful moments in coaching are drawn out of your clients themselves. There’s no formula for those moments.

That’s why open-ended questions generally work better than yes-or-no questions in coaching. They leave the field open to the unexpected. The conversation can go in any direction from an open-ended question, and that leaves space for the magic to arrive.

Coaching magic can be courted, but it can’t be forced. No list of “canned” coaching questions holds the key to that transformational shift your client is on the threshold of.

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Topics: Life Coaching Skills
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7 Ways to Ace Your Sample Coaching Sessions

February 2, 2010 | Read 7 comments and join the discussion

If you give free sample coaching sessions, make it worth your while. Use these seven techniques to leverage your time, set yourself up for success, and enroll 100% of your prospects into your coaching business.

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Topics: Client Attraction for Coaches
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5 Ingredients of a Successful Mastermind

January 26, 2010 | Read 8 comments and join the discussion

Facilitating a Mastermind group is easy if you set it up for success from the get go. Before you begin your Mastermind, design in, and then continuously monitor, these five ingredients for a harmonious group:

member commitment,
intentions,
group energy,
connection, and
variety.


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Topics: Coaching Revenue Streams
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Coaching Groups – Ten Favorite Mistakes and How to Fix Them

July 14, 2009 | Read 10 comments and join the discussion

Group coaching, mastermind programs, teleclasses and workshops are natural additions to a well-leveraged marketing funnel for your coaching business. And they help you reduce your time on the “money for time treadmill”. But if you are not used to working with groups, it can be a bit intimidating.

Every group facilitator starts as a beginner and develops mastery by facilitating.  Everyone makes mistakes. While they are rarely fatal to the program, it’s good to know about the pitfalls in advance.

Here are ten favorite facilitation mistakes and how to avoid or correct them.

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Topics: Coaching Revenue Streams
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Coaching Clients – Can We Want Too Much for Them?

March 10, 2009 | Read 3 comments and join the discussion

Many years ago, Thomas Leonard, founder of the first coach training school and the “father of life coaching,” said:

Never want more for your clients than they want for themselves.

That woke me up! I began to examine my motivations and set healthier boundaries for myself with clients.

Have you ever sensed that you might want too much for your clients?

Most coaches fall into this trap on some level, until they let go of their desire to effect change on their clients, and replace it with an understanding that what is best for the client is only what the client is ready to commit to change within themselves right now.

We can never know the path of another person. If we react protectively, anticipating our client’s pitfalls and mistakes, are we keeping them from valuable experiences that may bring success more quickly? If we jump in to solve their problems and salve all their hurts too vigorously, will we somehow take away their power?


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Topics: Life Coaching Skills
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Seven Powerful Coaching Questions

December 22, 2008 | Read 1 comment and join the discussion

I am fresh from a mastermind retreat with established coaches and brimming with excitement and gratitude. You know how it feels to be energized by powerful conversations? The rich relationships and collaborative learning are even more valuable when we harvest the gems and use them to transform our mindsets, habits and results.

The moments with the biggest impact in my retreats are when powerful questions get asked at just the right time. The right question can do more to motivate a coaching client into playing a bigger game than reading a whole bookshelf of inspirational books or attending several ‘how to’ seminars. Why is that? Questions, when phrased and timed well, entice us to go inside and look around the many rooms of our heart-mind. We emerge knowing ourselves better than we did before.

Here are seven great coaching questions to ask your clients, or yourself!
1. What do you want?
2. What’s holding you back?
3. What is it costing you to continue holding back?
4. How do you want to change your mind’s programming on that topic?
5. What new habits will you put in place to fortify your new mindset?
6. What is the most meaningful action you could take now?
7. What new skills or support systems will ensure your success?

These are just simple coaching questions. But even the most successful coaching clients will get continual value out of these kinds of questions. The right question can help anyone zoom past obstacles and into a power zone of action and attraction.

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Topics: Life Coaching Skills
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