One of the challenges of being a coach is that you aren't selling results you are selling development or transformation. This makes coaching a unique service business. In a typical service business, like dry cleaning, customers pay for a well-known result - clean and pressed clothes. What's the equivalent "result" in coaching that every client knows, loves, needs, and values? In other words, how can you talk about what you offer as a coach in a way that clients want and highly value what you offer?
I believe the language of transformation, true as it may be, isn't that helpful. Transformation is a change that is so fundamental that no one - not even the coach - knows what the end result will be. In this way, transformation is mysterious. That makes it hard to sell because no one knows the relevancy, meaning, or value of transformation including the coach. Selling transformation can only occur when there is lots and lots of trust. The same is true for selling development.
Here's an alternative.
What you offer, as an entrepreneurial coach, is simple: rejuvenation and renewal in an domain where your client feels burdened and/or stuck.
Rejuvenation and renewal opens new possibilities, brings new resources, finds new avenues to pursue, opens new ways forward, gathers new sources of support, enlivens and expands choices, nourishes and replenishes vital nutrients, and feeds the soul. It is easier to connect with this language than the dry and nearly meaningless language of transformation and development.
Who doesn't want rejuvenation and renewal?
Give it a try. What kinds of people are you passionate about rejuvenating? What kinds of renewal do you offer them?
Take care,
-Steve
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