Monthly Archives: June 2011

What to include in your email newsletter 3

 in Guest Post  tagged building a customer base / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / Djanira Cortesão / email / executive coach / experience / ideal clients / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / marketing / newsletter / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal / personal coach / personal development / topic

In this week’s Friday guest post Djanira Cortesão shares her expertise and gives practical advice to coaches about what to include in your email newsletter.

What to include in your email newsletter

By Djanira Cortesão

I strongly believe a newsletter is one of the best tools coaches can use to build a solid customer base and grow a sense of community around their business.

In my experience working coaches, I’ve seen the positive results that come from sending a quality newsletter filled with useful information and tips.

Once you get the hang of it, sending a newsletter is simple. And the return on investment for the time and effort you put into preparing a newsletter will pay off.

However, many brilliant and talented people just like you have fears and anxieties associated with trying something new. When it comes to marketing, a lot of coaches are apprehensive about what to say. If this is how you feel, you are not alone.

At the most basic level, you might be asking yourself what kind of information to include in your newsletter.

The short truth is your newsletter can be super-simple and straight forward. It doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated. In fact, it’s best if it isn’t fancy or complicated. I suggest writing a simple one-page resource of news, advice and your latest offers each month.

But although it truly is that simple, to get the best results, I recommend that you think strategically about what to include in your newsletter.

Here are some points to think about:

Make it Friendly With a Personal Touch

While you obviously do not want to divulge the sordid details of your personal life (please don’t), share a short personal note that reveals a bit of your personality.

Keep it brief – just long enough for your readers to glimpse a side of you that is not strictly business. Let your subscribers see you are a genuine person they can get to know, like, and trust.

Keep the language fairly casual and personable. Strive to convey that you are a knowledgeable professional who is easily approachable. You want them to approach you, so they can hire you, not revere you from a distance. In other words, avoid sounding stuffy.

Cover Relevant Topics

The information you share should be information your subscribers can actually use. Include a featured article or a list of tips that addresses a common problem for your customer base.

If you write content that gets results for your readers, you will also begin to experience results for your own business.

To determine what is relevant, look around your industry. Look at what other coaches are writing about, participate in social media and message boards, or even survey your clients and subscribers to find out directly what they want you to cover. Your newsletter should speak specifically to their wants and needs.

Make sure the topics are relevant to your business goals as well. If you have an upcoming offering, gear your content toward that offering. Also, list your recent blog posts, articles, or press releases, and announce upcoming appearances and events.

Additional Tips

Simple newsletters often perform very well, but if you have your heart set on a more elaborate publication, there are a number of popular elements you can include.

You may choose to feature a direct offer of one of your services or products, spotlight a client, vendor, or one of your readers, add audio or video clips, recommended products or services that you use, include polls or surveys, or run a contest.

Remember, the idea behind sending a newsletter is to keep people interested in you as a service provider. Your newsletter is a marketing technique that builds your reputation and establishes you within a community of people who can benefit from your services and expertise. Keep this in mind, and the content will practically write itself.

About the Author/Further Resources

DJ8Djanira Cortesão helps extraordinary service providers reach their ideal clients, unlock hidden revenue streams and grow their businesses organically. She offers group marketing workshops and 1-on-1 marketing mentoring, as well as insightful marketing newsletters and articles. Design a life of abundance with Djanira — online at: DjaniraCortesao.com and @djaniracortesao.

 

How do you help a client set a goal for the coaching session? 2

 in Coaching  tagged business coach / business coaching / career coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching model / coaching preparation / coaching prepartaion form / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / confidence / executive coach / expectations / Free resource / goal / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal development / preparation / question / session goal

One of the reoccurring questions that I see and hear from those who are beginning to develop their coaching skills is based on the problem of struggling to pin-point a goal for a coaching session.

A common response from more experience coaches can be a variation of “Yes, that’s something I remember experiencing and it’s something that gets easier with practice”. Whilst I agree, it is something that gets easier when you practice, let me also give some pointers for that practice 🙂

Firstly, what expectations does your client have about what happens in a coaching session? If you want them to set the direction of the coaching how did you explain that when you both agreed to work together?

If you find that it is a common theme that all your clients struggle to pin point a goal for the session, you may want to consider what you can do differently during your initial conversation with a potential client? Is there something you can say or do that will increase the chance of a goal being established quickly?

You may also use questions to establish the expectations that your client has before you start coaching either in your initial conversation or if you include questions in your welcome pack.

The wording of these questions can be tailored to best suit your clients but an example could be “How would they know it’s been a great coaching session?” Presumably they would be happy if each session with you is a great coaching session. Having formed an answer to this question it will aid them to set each session goal in-line with these expectations in the future.

If you know what their answer is, it also allows you to discuss their expectations in more detail with them if appropriate.

Many coaches ask their clients to complete a coaching preparation form prior to the actual session. The format and actual questions on a preparation form can vary from coach to coach.

One aspect that a coaching preparation form can have is to ask a question that allows your client to already come prepared with a session “goal.” Already having this established ahead of the session allows you to spend the time focusing upon that goal.

These are just some thoughts about the things that you can add into your practice to assist you in setting a goal for your coaching session. What other methods and approaches can you suggest?

 

 

Coaching Quote of the Day 21st June 2011

 in quote  tagged annual expenditure / annual income / Charles Dickens / coaches / coaching / David Copperfield / finances / happiness / misery / money / quote

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”

(Charles Dickens, “David Copperfield”)

 

For those not familiar with the currency of Victorian England, Great Britain’s currency pre-decimalisation was pounds, shillings and pence. This was abbreviated to £,s,d.

With this monetary system 12 pence = 1 shilling and 20 shillings = 1 pound.

So in the above quote “nineteen pounds nineteen and six” is £19, 19 shillings and six pence. Which is six pence under 20 pounds.”

Twenty pound ought and six” is £20, 0 shillings and six pence. Which is six pence over 20 pounds

Let it go day

 in General life improvement

“Let it go, let it go, let it go
‘Cos it’s out of my control
Let it go, let it go
Don’t have to have it all
Grips so tight it shatters the only thing that matters
I only got one life
Heaven knows what I’m stressing for
Just let it go”

(Lyrics from Will Young’s “Let it Go”, written by Eg White, Jeremy Gregory and Karen Poole)

I’m told that June 23rd is “Let it go day”. So it seems an appropriate time to write something about letting things go 🙂

I thought I’d share just a couple of the ways that I know to make letting go easier.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as accepting that the meaning that you had given an event is not necessarily true.

Maybe it’s a generalisation that because something happened once it will always happen. What if, there was no bigger meaning then it happened once?

An example of this is:

“because I ‘messed up’ speaking in public before when I forgot a line in a school play, it means I’ll always mess up public speaking.”

There are things you can learn to make speaking in public easy.  What if, there is no other meaning to that past event apart from you once forgot a line?

Sometimes it’s about letting go of mind reading what someone may or may not have thought.

For example, maybe you think a work colleague doesn’t like you based solely upon the fact that they didn’t come and talk to you at a busy social gathering.

While they may not like you, it’s also equally possible that they didn’t speak to you because they didn’t see you, they were stuck in a conversation they couldn’t get out of maybe they thought that you not talking to them meant that you didn’t like them …

What if, you let go of guessing and making up a reason, and let it just be that you didn’t talk to each other at the event?

If you are playing with this particular technique and you notice that you are getting caught up in a story behind an event etc, firstly congratulate yourself for noticing.

Then ask yourself the following: what if you allowed yourself to let go of that story?

You may find that when you let go of the reason behind you are inspired to take some action.

Sometimes it’s about letting go of a feeling.

For example maybe you want to want to let go of the feeling of disapproving of your body.

The following is loosely based upon the work of the abundance technique:

1. Notice where in your body you are feeling that feeling – e.g. in your stomach, chest maybe even your throat.

2. Imagine that you can open a door above that feeling

3. Open that door and let that feeling out

4. Notice the colour of that feeling as it all leaves your body

As today is let it go day, I invite you to let go of anything that is holding you back. It’s just for the day – if you want you can always pick it up whatever you let go off again at the end of the 24 hours!

Use either of the ways I mention above or one of your own. If you are then inspired to take action by all means feel free to do that.

Have a lovely freeing week

Love

Jen

This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com