I used to provide confidence coaching in London and used to provide free sessions, and I couldn’t start making money from coaching. Looking back, I can say that all I lacked was self-confidence and awareness of the value of my coaching. As if you could imagine a self-confidence scale and a scale for the value of your coaching to clients, where would you rank yourself on those scales?
On these scales, at the beginning of my coaching journey, I was at best a “3”. Based on my experience, I can offer you some life hacks on how to increase your self-confidence and increase the value of your coaching work in your own eyes. After all, in order for champions to buy your coaching, you must first make it valuable to the closest and most important person in your life – yourself.
So here are three things you can do to become a more confident coach.
1. Realize the value of your coaching.
Each, even free, coaching session creates value for the client. Despite the fact that we remember the inevitability of change and the fact that any of our questions contributes to change, we often devalue our own work. Devaluation of oneself as a coach leads to self-doubt and the fact that coaching is really needed and useful to people. In turn, you unwittingly broadcast such thoughts at subsequent meetings with clients; sensing this, they don’t buy long-term contracts from you.
To prevent this from happening, make it a rule: even if you have had a coaching session for the champion only once, agree with him that you will write off in a month or call him to find out how he is doing. You can strengthen this arrangement if, with the client’s consent, you offer him some long-term homework related to regular daily activities or rituals: for example, to increase awareness and a more positive outlook on life, the client may benefit from a healthy habit of journaling, or a habit every night before sleep thank yourself for any 3 things or actions.
By contacting a client in a month, you:
• show sincere interest in the client;
• create the effect of your presence in the client’s life: he remembers that you will contact him, and feels responsible for doing homework;
• create long-term relationships with the client;
• get the opportunity to remind the client about yourself and discuss the possibilities of your long-term cooperation in the coaching format;
• find out what results your champion has achieved and thereby increase your value in the eyes of yourself and in the eyes of the client.
Write down all the results of your clients on a separate sheet. It is convenient to do this in a mindmap format, when in the center you write “the results of my champions”, and under the rays you indicate the results with the name of the client, the date of the result, and the period of your cooperation, for example: “I quit my job I didn’t like and opened my own business (Inna, May 2018, result after 8 coaching sessions)”, or “Stopped procrastinating and started running regularly in the morning (Vadim, February 2018, result after 1 coaching session)”.
This is your personal walk of fame that will help you:
• Realize the value of your work as a coach;
• increase self-confidence;
• Decide on the type of clients that contact you, your niche and the requests that you work with. In order to do this, you can supplement the picture with information about the client’s age, average income, profession, etc. This will help you highlight the common features between your clients and understand what requests they come to you with, and then focus on this in your self-presentation and when looking for new champions;
• Do not fall into a stupor when potential clients ask about the results of your other clients when working with you. Keep this list handy at all times and you can, without naming clients, describe the main results that your coaching work has already led to.
2. Set the cost of the coaching session based on your internal feeling of a comfortable price.
It’s okay not to know how much to charge for a coaching session. It is especially difficult to understand this when you spend long free coaching sessions, for which it is difficult to find applicants. The thought comes to mind: if it’s so difficult for me to find clients for free coaching, then how can I find them for paid coaching?
The “put a price on a coaching session and end up with no clients” gremlin should be done away with, and the main argument for a different approach is that most people only value what they pay for. In this way, they invest in creating value, and then become more conscious of the coaching process and work more towards the outcome they desire. In which case do you train better and harder on fitness – when the training is free or when you paid for it?
I guess when they paid. And here comes the question: how much should your coaching session cost?
To understand what the cost of a coaching session is for you, you can do a few (or one of) simple exercises.
1. Imagine a scale for the cost of a coaching session, where the starting point is 1 ruble, and the maximum is the amount that you consider quite high, but you know that coaching can cost so much. For example, for me, the maximum amount will be 60,000 rubles – one of my friends conducted a coaching session for just that much. Put a piece of paper on the floor in the place where the beginning and maximum of your scale will be. Try to “step” on your scale. Set an interval between steps that is comfortable for you: let’s say 500 rubles, 1000, 1500 … Becoming on each “amount”, mentally say: “My coaching session costs … rubles” – and notice – how do you feel? What happens to your breathing, posture, how confident are you? Explore your comfortable place on the scale – this is the cost of your coaching session. Of course, the exercise is best done with a coach.
2. Imagine that you have come to coach a coach. How much are you willing to pay for one coaching session so that the coaching session is valuable for you and motivates you to change? Since our clients are somewhat similar to us, they will react to the cost of your coaching in much the same way as you do to the cost of a coaching session with other coaches.
3. Take a look at your champion walk of fame and ask yourself: How much would I be willing to pay for the kind of change my clients are experiencing? Pay attention to how many sessions clients achieve such results. Dividing the amount by the number of coaching sessions will give you the cost of your coaching session.
When setting the price for a coaching session, it is important to understand that you can always change it if you see fit. This understanding allows you to reduce the degree of procrastination when announcing the new value of your coaching.
3. Hold the first meetings with clients where you feel confident, calm and secure.
Each of us has “places of power”. For me, the place of power is my home. It makes me feel most confident in myself. Therefore, I try to conduct the first meetings with clients via Skype from home, and from a certain room where I feel most comfortable. For me, meetings in a cafe or on a client’s territory are quite energy-intensive, and I may feel uncomfortable at them, which can affect my resource state necessary for productive work.
Where is your place of power? What do you wear when you are confident? As if you could “anchor” your confidence when communicating with a client, what would be the best anchors for you? If your place of power is not where it is possible to conduct coaching sessions, in what ways can you expand your comfort and security zone?
I’m sure knowing the value of your coaching, your comfort price and your place of power will move you up the scale of your confidence!
