Coaching Quote of the Day 4th April 2011
“Don’t ask what the world needs – ask what makes you come alive and then go an do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
(Howard Martin)
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Who Is Your Ideal Client and Why Do You Need One?
As a coach do you already know who is your ideal client? In this week’s guest post Cindy Hillsey shares her thoughts and expertise about how to identify your ideal client and why that’s important.
Who Is Your Ideal Client and Why Do You Need One?
By Cindy Hillsey
The topic of the Ideal Client is being discussed more and more frequently these days. Look around you. How many times have you read an article, attended a teleseminar, and/or had a conversation with someone where the topic turned to, “Who Is Your Ideal Client?” Why do you suppose this is? In fact, you may have gotten to a point where you’ve heard this question posed so often that you dismiss it with a wave of the hand and think, “of course I know who my Ideal Client is, who doesn’t?!” A truism in business is that if it’s a recurring theme it means that it’s not only important, but that it’s not being done by the majority. If everybody was doing it, there would be no need to discuss it.
If I were to ask you right now, “Who is your Ideal Client and why?” what would you tell me? Would you be able to do it without hesitation and in a crystal clear and concise manner? Would you have to pause before you answered the question? Very few people can answer this question without hesitation and pause. If you can answer without hesitation and pause, I want to congratulate you. Keep doing what you’re doing! For the rest of us, the ability to answer this question could mean the difference between having clients and not having clients.
While this seems like a very simple question, it really is not. It is a question you should spend a significant amount of time thinking about and getting very clear around. Let’s take a moment and review some essential elements of the Ideal Client:
- It’s counter-intuitive in the sense that it is most effective when your Ideal Client is highly specific and narrow.
- When you try to be everything to everybody, you end being nothing to anybody.
- There is a common center of interest and/or lifestyle of your Ideal Client.
- Your Ideal Client exists in a sufficient quantity.
- Your Ideal Client has the ability to pay you.
What does having an Ideal Client do for you and your business?
- An Ideal Client provides you with a clear vision and an obvious focus.
- It enhances your credibility and your reputation.
- It increases the demand for your services because of the specialized market.
- It greatly simplifies marketing and increases your return on investment (ROI).
- It provides a firm base from which you can expand your business.
I do want to take a moment to make certain you understand we are not talking about a Target Market or a Niche Market. Your Ideal Client is different from your Target or Niche market. People get stuck in the Target Market/Niche Market terminology. As a matter of fact, many times you will hear someone use Ideal Client, Target Market, and Niche Market all in the same sentence. Talk about confusing! Discovering your Ideal Client goes far beyond the Target Market/Niche Market terminology. Knowing who your Ideal Client is at a deep core level is one of the foundational pieces of your business.
It is important to remember that a Target Market/Niche Market is not your WHO. It’s a classification system. Just because you identify someone as an Ideal Client who is in a particular Target Market/Niche Market, it does NOT mean that ALL members of said Target Market/Niche Market are YOUR Ideal Client! It’s more foundational to identify the qualities and characteristics that you want to work with in a person than it is to identify some broad classification, because ultimately no matter what business you are in you end up dealing with individuals, right?
In fact, Target Markets/Niche Markets are actually derived from the more fundamental Ideal Client piece. For example, here are some of the characteristics I look for in my Ideal Client: Female, age 35-45, Service-Based Entrepreneur, who is positive, energetic, and honest. They respect my knowledge. They are do’ers. (This is not a comprehensive list, but will give you a feel for what I’m talking about.) From my clients who fit this criteria, I can clearly identify two Target Markets: Virtual Assistants and Coaches.
Note that I started with the Ideal Client and their characteristics NOT the Target Market/Niche Market. Conversely, let’s suppose for a moment that I insisted that I wanted to pick a Target Market/Niche Market, and I chose Coaches. It stands to reason that because I’m choosing a classification many of the coaches that come to me would not be my Ideal Client, because my Ideal Client is based on attributes and characteristics.
So, how do you go about determining who your Ideal Client is? I would suggest you write a story about your Ideal Client. Give him/her a name, an education, a family life (single or not), a social life, a business, and a problem they have in their business that you can help them with. Get very detailed. Let me repeat that…get very detailed. I want you to know this person like you know your family!
These questions should help you begin to craft your Ideal Client:
- What are the basic characteristics of your Ideal Client? (demographics, age, gender, salary, education, location, etc.)
- Who are your clients? Are they business executives, artists, small business owners, micro business owners?
- What kind of values does your ideal client have? Do these values match yours?
- What exactly do your Ideal Clients do? How do they need your help? (Be very specific in your answers to these two questions.)
- How do your Ideal Clients treat you? Do they pay on time? Do they understand you are a business owner and treat you as such?
Whether you know exactly who your Ideal Client is or not, please take the time to answer the above questions so that the next time you are asked, “Who is your Ideal Client? you can answer them without hesitation!
About the Author/Further Resources
As a Business Coach, I work with Service-Based Entrepreneurs, and I specialize in working with Virtual Assistants. Visit http://virtualpartnering.com for my FREE mini e-course on, The Six Basic Keys Every Business Should Have, along with other free resources.
Connect with me:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/VirtualPartnering
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cindyhillsey
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cindyhillsey
One String to the Bow: Five Lessons for the Two-Dimensional Coach 4
In this week’s guest post David Lurie shares five lessons for coaches:
One String to the Bow: Five Lessons for the Two-Dimensional Coach
By David Lurie
I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of coaches over the last couple of years, and it has been striking about the differences between them. While many coaches are truly excellent, some seem to suffer under the belief that by coaching others they can paper over their own cracks. It seems clear that coaches should be working under the same philosophy as professional therapists. If a therapist has to continue to receive therapy while providing it, why shouldn’t a coach receive coaching?
Lesson 1: Coaching others doesn’t mean you don’t need coaching yourself, although it is true that teaching leads to great amounts of learning.
A second problem that some coaches seem to face is that they don’t know what kind of coach they are. While a good coach may be able to focus on a wide number of areas, a good businessperson has a niche. I would imagine that we’re all capable to some degree of coaching on a number of different subjects, but that doesn’t mean we should. At Setsights Ltd, I officially provide Career Coaching and Interpersonal Skills training. That’s two simple services that more often than not are exactly the same: most clients need interpersonal skills training to aid their careers, and although I do my fair share of training on CV-writing and occasion relationship coaching, my bread and butter work is targeted.
Lesson 2: As a coach, ensure you not only have a niche, but that you’re selling that niche.
Training is another interesting area. I realise that I’m setting myself up for a lot of abuse here, but I thoroughly disagree with the high number of NLP Practitioners out there. While I have found some NLP principles are very worthwhile, I’m of the same thought as Derren Brown that only Bandler’s original work is valid, unlike more recent developments. There is no shortage of psychology research that proves NLP wrong.
I personally find it better to offer certain lessons from NLP, from CBT, from TA, from business (I have a background as a management consultant) and Lacanian Analysis, not to mention a whole host of other areas where I have picked out the best information
Lesson 3: The best coaches understand the valuable parts of what they offer and stop offering the rest. They seek to learn from a variety of approaches and not a single one.
Blog. Write. Contribute. I would hope to see the average coach taking part in #hashtag chats on Twitter (if they use Twitter), submitting research to magazines like The Psychologist and writing for publications like the national newspapers (I personally try to contribute to The Guardian as it has my favourite careers section). You should be blogging about your thoughts, getting guests to write on your blog, and writing on other people’s blogs. This doesn’t just raise your profile, it lets you learn – and for that matter, you need to be open to learning
Lesson 4: Contribute new thoughts, and through this process be open to learning.
The final lesson is that you should always leave lessons to be easily learnt, without having to tread new ground. In that spirit, find below the five lessons in one place:
Lesson 1: Coaching others doesn’t mean you don’t need coaching yourself, although it is true that teaching leads to great amounts of learning.
Lesson 2: As a coach, ensure you not only have a niche, but that you’re selling that niche.
Lesson 3: The best coaches understand the valuable parts of what they offer and stop offering the rest. They seek to learn from a variety of approaches and not a single one.
Lesson 4: Contribute new thoughts, and through this process be open to learning.
Lesson 5: Ensure clients can learn easily without repeatedly re-treading the same ground.
About the Author/Further Resources
David Lurie is the Managing Director of Setsights Ltd, through which he provides four services: he provides career coaching one-to-one to people looking for their first job or to change job; he runs training courses on career skills in top universities including Kings College London and the Queen’s University of Belfast; he teaches people to build stronger interpersonal skills, including helping them with their confidence and relationships (yes, even dating); he gives talks on mental health and careers in secondary schools. He juggles all of this thanks to a combination of caffeine, insomnia and a small army of interns (not to mention his three associate staff) who do all the difficult stuff while he gets to have fun with clients.
When he isn’t coaching, he enjoys reading, writing and arithmetic, and his hobbies include performing stand-up comedy and writing biographies about himself in the third person, which he struggles to take as seriously as he probably should.