What is Business Coaching?

Business coaching is the act of helping a business owner, operator, or high-level executive improve the quality and consistency of their results. Given all the moving parts involved in running a successful business, business coaching covers a broad range of skillsets. Executive business coaching addresses creating systems and tracking the health of those systems by monitoring the right KPIs. The focus is on the decisions high-level executives at the enterprise level have to make daily.

Startup business coaching addresses the challenges a new business owner faces when first getting their business off the ground. The business coach helps the client with creating a way to test their product or service and teaches them how to focus on generating sales above all else.

Business coaching can also focus on developing a particular skillset. One of the most common skillset business coaches help their clients develop is leadership. Other skillsets include systems management, keynote speaking, and product development. Let’s look at what a business coach does in more detail.

What Do Business Coaches Do?

Business coaches do a variety of things for their clients. What a business coach does for you completely depends upon your unique needs. The first thing a good business coach does is ask questions to learn more about who you are as both a person and business owner. The answers you give determine their next course of action. Below are a few things a business coach can help with.

They Help Clearly Define Your Vision

Some people who aspire to start a business only have a vague sense of wanting to own a business. They don’t have a clear vision of success, and they also don’t have a clear sense of the realities of entrepreneurship.

A good business coach explains to their clients up front how much work it takes to build a profitable business. They explain how at the beginning, they’ll have to work more hours for less money they made at their traditional job. Once a client understands this reality, they are able to clearly define their vision and exactly how much effort they’ll have to put in to make it happen.

They Analyze The Current Health of Your Business

When owners experience a downturn in sales, they often don’t understand why. A business coach helps owners diagnose the health of their business. They look at each area and analyze how each area is performing.

The client and coach work together to determine key performance indicators (KPIs) to track each area. The coach then sets up a KPI dashboard that allows the client to monitor the health of the business from a single location.

They Help Create A Concrete Plan to Achieve Your Vision

One of the biggest reasons business owners and entrepreneurs fail is they don’t have a documented business plan. Not having a business plan could cost you up to 50 percent of your revenue.

Good coaches understand that the success of a plan hinges upon the data used to create it. The coach first teaches the client a system for analyzing their business on an annual, quarterly, and monthly basis. The data from the annual business analysis is then used to create an annual business plan. The plan is then broken down into quarterly and monthly milestones to create a clear path from start to finish.

They Teach You How To Create Efficient Systems

Whether it’s a small business, online business, or fortune 100 company, the success of a business depends on the efficiency of its systems. An effective coach starts by analyzing whether building and managing systems is a strength or weakness for their client. Only a certain type of CEO has a knack for systems.

The goal is to create a business that is systems-dependant rather than people-dependant. Each system needs to be so good that someone could follow 70 percent of the standard operating procedures and still get results. Building, testing, and tweaking systems to peak efficiency is another area where a business coach comes in handy. Now that you know what a business coach does, let’s look at a few of the benefits of a business coach.

3 Key Benefits of a Business Coach

Some of the benefits of a business coach have already been highlighted above, but here are a few more to consider if you’re still on the fence as to whether a business coach can help you achieve your goals.

They Increase Your Profit

Those who hire a business coach see up to a 50 percent increase in profit within the first year. A big reason why business owners avoid business coaching is the cost per session. They see it as too expensive, yet they often waste 10 times that amount in useless marketing materials that don’t generate results.

Look at hiring a business coach as an investment into your business. If you do your due diligence during the hiring process, the positive ROI from hiring a business coach is all but guaranteed.

They Enrich Your Professional Network

A coaching relationship done right goes beyond a business transaction. Working with a business coach long-term usually exposes you to people who are much more successful than the people you currently associate with.

One of the benefits of a business coach is the potential doors they open when it comes to professional networking. This helps you utilize the technique of modeling, which is watching and listening to people more successful than yourself and mimic what they do.

They Bring New Perspective

In many cases, a business owner is too emotionally involved with their business and it clouds their judgment. They often feel too overwhelmed to make decisions just at the time when strong decision-making is required.

Perhaps the biggest, yet most underappreciated, benefits of a business coach is that they bring an outside perspective to your business. They have no emotional ties to the business, and this allows them to perform objective analysis. Are you ready to find a business coach? Make sure to check out the following tips.

How to Find a Business Coach

Some people have a negative perception of business coaching because of the number of scammers out there. It’s why you need to do your due diligence when selecting a business coach.

Search for a Business Coach Online

All respectable business coaches have a strong online presence. Do a Google search of business coaches near me to find some business coaches who operate in your area. Don’t just go with the company that appears at the top of the page. Make sure to look at the companies who appear in the organic search results.

Look for Proven Experience

Check to see if the business coaches that pique your interest have testimonials from satisfied clients. If they have gotten results for others, there is a good chance they can get similar results for you.

Check out Their Free Content to See if You Like Their Strategies

Once you have a few in mind, do a deep-dive into the content on their website. Read a bunch of their blog posts. Listen to their podcast episodes. Check out their social media posts. If you enjoy their content, then you know you’ll mesh well if you hire them.

Hiring a business coach is a big decision. Understanding what a business coach does and the benefits of a business coach gives you the information you need to decide if a business coach is what you need to achieve your goals. Contact us for a free consultation if you want to learn more about anything mentioned in this article.