Some people say it’s expensive, others that a coach doesn’t really help them because “they could have done it for themselves.”

To answer the first point a coaching organisation has issued a coaching press release where they noted the massive ROI with coaching:

International consulting firm of Booz Allen & Hamilton undertook a coaching program for some of its senior members. Separately, they engaged another consulting firm to study the effectiveness of their internal coaching program. The independent results showed an astonishing 689% return on the coaching investment. This study indicates that a coaching program is not a cost to the business, but in fact, a rather lucrative investment.

Secondly, if as claimed a business could have done what the coach has got them to do themselves…

Why didn’t they!?

And as I’ve said before coaching more than pays for itself. I have coaching and I really believe it’s the one factor that can turn any business round from a loss or make a profitable one more money.

We were discussing a combined project with another business I’ve dealt with before.

Both the MD and the managing partner were amazed at how incredibly cheap the other company was offering to provide a product to them. Their concern was that the company must only be dealing with small organisations and therefore didn’t charge “big company” prices.

What’s more their obvious concern was that the company might not be able to deliver or support a big company. Yet they decided to go with them because the price was almost loose change to them and if things went wrong it was only a “test.”

After the meeting I realised that the company in question hadn’t increased their prices in all the time I’d dealt with them – about 5 years.

Suddenly I realised that my prices hadn’t gone up in that time either. 

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I was doing my clients a disservice.

How would they know that I could deal with their issues if I didn’t charge the right price to ensure they felt it was real value for money and not just some cheap tat?

After all I’ve been coaching businesses all over the world for over 5 years full-time now. I’d written for several prestigious magazines, I’ve maintained this blog, in one form or another, for nearly 5 years and I’ve done it all for the same rate.

So as from the 4th July my prices are going up.

What about you? Do you think maybe your market sees you as too cheap? Would your clients actually be ok with you putting your prices up?

The Strategy of Preeminence

Jay Abraham often speaks about the strategy of preeminence.

In a nutshell it’s all about the following traits:

1. Ignoring the Emperor’s new clothes. Tell it like it is, and not ever letting clients do what they want, when it’s not in their best interests
2. Taking care of your client and protecting them and their business and personal well-being from others who don’t have their best interests at heart
3. Showing your expertise so they have confidence that you are the one who can articulate and solve their problem
4. Loving your client more than your own business, so that you deliver exactly what they need, no more and no less
5. Having a constant hopefulness for your client.  And because of your advice, your guidance your client will improve their life in some way
6. Understanding that you have a duty to your client to provide other services if they will benefit from them

And this strategy means every ad, every web sales page, every email or direct mail  letter is integrated with preeminence.

You need some empathy to put yourself in your clients shoes so you can think more deeply about what they’re searching for. And then provide it for them.

Preeminence means a client will trust you, stay with you longer and avoid going to your competition because they know you are on their side. Having a client stay a year longer than they do with your competitors immediately improves your bottom line compared to your competitor.

Marketing Is The Ultimate Leverage

Jay Abraham is also fond of saying that marketing is the ultimate leverage tool for your business.

For example.

It costs you the same cost or opportunity cost to do an ad, email or web page whether it pulls 1, 10 or 100 leads. And it still costs the same if they buy once only, 10 times or 100 times over their time with you. And yet people don’t always understand that improving the way you get leads which has no cost to change can make a massive difference. Similarly the way you market to customers over their lifetime with you.

Say you give an ad a different headline? You’re running the ad anyway, so the cost is no different to running it with the old headline. Now instead of getting one new client the previous ad always pulled you get two clients. That’s a massive 100% improvement in the ad’s pulling power. and the cost of client acquisition drops too. Think how that would immediately improve your bottom line.

Finding New Marketing Approaches

In your industry pretty much everyone is using the same marketing approaches. You may wonder whether that matters as all the clients are obviously finding the suppliers they want. That means whatever you do you pretty much get the same slice of the prospect pie every year.

What about using a different marketing approach that has proved its success in another industry? If it works in your industry you set yourself apart from your competitors and it may turn out that your prospects actually prefer your new approach. In which case that slice of prospect pie suddenly becomes bigger and leaves your competitors scratching their heads as to their next step.

Again this approach is firmly endorsed by Jay Abraham. Using it means thata s your market share increases you gain further profits from it.

When Is Marketing Important?

Marketing sets you apart from your competitors and if you’re in business that means you’re already marketing. However, think about what’ve we’ve just discussed. Have you looked critically at your marketing to make sure you’re leveraging it, to ensure you’re looking for new approaches and to love the clients you have?

So if you want to stay in business marketing is crucial both in a credit crunch and in the more prosperous times we had just recently!

However, the carpers, the doubters and the envious we can do without.

Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt said it best,

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

And that is exactly what business is about. To succeed in business, life or anything you need to “DO.” For without action there’s no forward momentum that powers through the obstacles that life occasionally throws in our paths.

In all the time I’ve been in business there’s no doubt that I meet people in one of two mindsets:

• Those who know they know everything about business
• Those who remain open minded and are willing to try new things

And often the ones who think they know all about business, or have friends who can point them in the right direction don’t understand the value of learning things they don’t know yet. Or of having a coach who holds their feet to the fire when they don’t deliver on agreements.

The other thing they fail to realise is that if you pay for advice you pay attention to it! That means you improve your business. If you don’t pay you put what’s said to the back of your mind and nothing changes.

The open-minded try lots of new things, some work, some don’t. However, if you’ve implemented a new sales strategy that gets in an extra 10% of new sales isn’t that better than just staying as you were?

So when people criticise you for taking positive action refer them to the quote from Teddy Roosevelt.

I’ve been a subscriber to his email newsletter for a number of years because I like what he writes and of course I also like to keep tabs on what others in the copywriting, marketing and coaching areas are doing.

Dan offers 1 on 1 mentoring and claims that many gurus offer it and then palm it off onto a fulfillment house where the chances of talking to anyone with any knowledge of Internet business is slim.

So to help decide whether a mentor is the right one Dan suggests you ask yourself 7 questions before handing over great wedges of cash.

The 7 Questions

1. Is it you who teaches me or somebody else?
2. What is your response speed to emails and phone calls?
3. What are the results you’ve achieved with other people?
4. Do you currently DO marketing?
5. Can my business partner or wife listen in with me for free?
6. Do you work one on one?
7. Is this the whole program or do you upsell to something else?

I’d also add 4 points to ponder before taking coaching:

The 4 Points To Ponder

1. Why do you want coaching? Because without that understanding you wont know whether it helps you or not
2. Are you willing to implement? Because without implementation you’re throwing your money away
3. Can you make fast decisions? Because a plan without a start date remains a pipe dream
4. Can you afford it?  Paying money out that should be paying your mortgage does not lead to successful outcomes because of the added pressure you’ll feel. So if you’ve no money forget it.

What About My Coaching?

Having given you those points I just know some wag will ask whether my money is where my mouth is!

So here are my answers to the 7 questions…

1. Only I teach/mentor/coach the people I work with – this may change but only once I’ve trained people up to the point where they could answer the 7 questions the way I’m doing.
2. I’m usually available for phone calls during the UK working day and I usually respond to voice mail messages the same day and the same for emails.
3. Would a 50% profit growth or a  20% profit growth be useful? I have mentored companies that have done that.
4. I currently DO marketing, I run a blog and attract coaching clients through a number of different routes
5. Anyone in your business can take part in the coaching with you
6. I do work one on one
7. My mentoring is purely about delivering value through my personal coaching

If you can answer the 4 points to ponder then ring me on 0161 278 1919 to get started with your mentoring.