7 Reasons Why You Need to Offer Your Own Coaching Program

You need to offer your own coaching program. Setting up your Own Group Coaching Program is EASY.

The demand for interactive, step-by-step products is growing at an alarming rate across the web in every market.

The truth is, your customers and clients are growing weary of learning the old way. They don’t want to be told how to do something by reading about it in an eBook.

No, they want you to show them what to do and how to do it.

Your Own Coaching Program – The Growing Demand

A recent article published in USAToday.com says that “10,000 coaches of various types are working in the USA alone according to a review in the current Psychotherapy Networker, a magazine for professionals.”

There are many theories on why coaching has grown to become such a popular tool for millions around the globe. The self-help field has always been a booming business.

Combine the popularity of self-help with the Internet, which provides easy access to experts in every industry, and it’s easy to see why coaching is such a popular and growing field.

And coaching touches almost every industry imaginable.

Here are just a few of the common coaching approaches:

• Life coaching
• Business coaching
• Executive coaching
• Personal coaching
• Health coaching
• Time management coaching
• Organization coaching
• Sports/fitness coaching
• Dating coaching
• Career coaching

Here are a few more fun statistics:

• “Personal coaching in the US was the second fastest growth industry, after IT. Apparently, there are 50,000 searches per month on Google alone from people looking for a coach.” (Sydney Morning Herald)

• There are an estimated 40,000 coaches practicing in 70 countries worldwide.

• The coaching industry continues to grow at a rate of approximately 20% per year.

• Coaching is currently a $1 billion a year industry.

• There are over 50 coach training schools worldwide.

What Does This Mean to You As An Entrepreneur?

As a business owner, the increasing demand for coaches provides you with an opportunity to offer your own coaching program. As you’ll see over the next paragraphs, coaching offers you tremendous potential to grow your business. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in.

The coaching business model can be adapted to fit almost any business model and niche. In fact, the more specialized your niche and services are, the more opportunities you may have with your own coaching program.

What This Blog Post Is Designed to Accomplish

This post operates under the assumption that you already have an online business and are looking for opportunities to grow and increase your bottom line. Coaching offers this potential and much more.

If you’re not familiar with coaching or the coaching concept, take a few minutes to learn about the industry. You can check out any number of the coaching associations and organizations.

For example, there are the:

• International Association of Coaching –
  http://www.certifiedcoach.org
• International Coach Federation –
  http://www.coachfederation.org
• Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching –
  http://www.ipeccoaching.com

just to name a few!

If you’re familiar with the coaching concept, then you’re ready to go. Perhaps you’ve even worked with a coach yourself. If so, then you likely already know the amazing value you can provide your clients.

As the title of this post indicates, we’re going to take a look at Seven Reasons Why You Need to Offer Your Own Coaching Program.

We’ll take a look at:

1. How Coaching Builds Credibility and Authority for Your Business
2. How Coaching Helps You Brand Your Business
3. How Coaching Enables You to Add a High End Product to Your Sales Funnel (Profits)
4. Why Coaching is Such an Easy Fit for Your Existing Business
5. Why You Can Offer Coaching In Any Number of Formats – Whatever Best Fits Your Needs
6. How Coaching Fits Just About Every Niche and Business Model
7. How Coaching Provides Added Value to Your Customers

If you’ve ever thought about becoming a coach or are looking for a way to expand and grow your business, then this report is for you!

So let’s get started!

Reason One – Coaching Builds Credibility and Authority

Credibility is defined as: capable of being believed, believable or worthy of belief or confidence. In business, credibility can be achieved through a number of experiences or actions.

For example, if you provide a fantastic customer experience then you earn credibility with your customer. Also, longevity enhances credibility. A customer may be more likely to buy from a company that’s been in business for twenty years than one that has only been around for two.

Credibility can also be improved by establishing yourself as an expert in your field. Publishing is one way that many business owners seek to establish and boost their credibility. Coaching also helps establish credibility. When you position yourself to coach others, you’re essentially telling the world you’re an expert in your niche.

Authority is a bit different than credibility. Authority is achieved when you’re considered to be an expert in your field. For example, Donald Trump is an authority on commercial real estate. Authority and credibility often go hand in hand.

Why Does It Matter?

Both authority and credibility are buying triggers. They motivate people to become customers. Robert Cialdini discusses them at length in his book The Psychology of Persuasion. Essentially, people are more likely to buy from someone who they trust or they consider to be an expert in their field.

How Coaching Fits Into This Equation

Imagine you’re looking to train your dog. Perhaps your dog has begun to misbehave. You’ve hopped online to search for information about dog training. You find two websites that have information that’s helpful.

One site offers an information product, a video series, on training your dog. The other site offers a similar product and they also offer coaching. Everything else being equal, you’re more likely to buy from the website that offers coaching.

Why? Because coaching implies they have expert knowledge. And if the website has testimonials supporting their coaching program, they’ve amplified their authority and credibility. They’ve set themselves apart from their competition and you can do the same by offering your own coaching program.

You too can add a your own coaching program to your business and set yourself way above your competition. You’ll give your prospects and customers an impression that you have more authority and credibility simply because you coach.

And you’ll have more credibility and authority with your coaching customers, which results in loyalty and repeat purchases.

Finally, the media often consults businesses with a credible and authorative presence as well. You may find that coaching opens up a whole new world of possibilities and marketing opportunities.

Reason Two – Coaching Helps Brand Your Business

Branding is often perceived of as the simple act of creating a logo and an “image” for your company. However, branding is about much more than that. Your image isn’t just a visual experience. Branding is about creating a personality, too. For small online business owners, your personality is your brand.

Coaching, and the type of coaching service you provide, can feed right into strengthening your brand. Your personality and coaching policies and procedures will come through each coaching moment – thus strengthening your brand.

For example, if you’re known as a hard hitting and controversial business owner, your coaching is going to follow a similar tone. Each person that experiences your coaching program will experience your brand. It’ll be strengthened in their minds.

Why Does Branding Matter?

In short, branding:

• Makes your business more recognizable – Imagine being instantly recognized online and off.
• Enhances word of mouth marketing – It motivates people to talk about you. You may find more opportunities coming your way.
• Increases front of mind awareness – Customers think of you first when they have a need.
• Makes your business more profitable – A strong brand helps you sell more products.

A strong brand is a strong business. Adding your own coaching program to your business can help you strengthen and establish your brand.

Reason Three – Coaching Enables You to Add a High End Product to Your Sales Funnel. (More Profits)

When people buy a product or service from you, they enter your sales funnel. Often they enter at the lowest priced product or service available. Through marketing messages and communications the goal is to move your customers up the sales funnel so they’re buying more expensive products.

When you add your own coaching program to your sales funnel, it’s often your highest priced product or service. It’s your highest end product.

There are a number of reasons why coaching is such a beneficial addition to your sales funnel:

#1 The broader your sales funnel, the more sales you can make from each customer.

You will have some customers who will start at the very lowest priced product and then proceed to purchase every other product along the way. Adding a high priced item like coaching helps you make more money from these wonderful and loyal customers.

#2 The broader your sales funnel, the more value you offer to your customer.

Adding a high end product to your sales funnel ultimately offers more value to your customers. They’re able to gain the maximum amount of benefit from your business.

#3 The broader or more diverse your sales funnel, the more entrance points your customer has to choose from.

Not everyone will choose to buy your least expensive product. Some people will jump in and buy a mid-level product first. Others will buy your highest priced product. When you offer a variety of price points and products/services, you provide more options for your customers.

It should be noted that a coaching program doesn’t have to be an expensive product or service. And you can offer various levels of coaching. For example, group coaching versus one-on–one coaching. The group coaching option could be less expensive than the one-on-one coaching option.

In a nutshell, your own coaching program enables you to expand your sales funnel and to add more choices and value for your prospects and customers.

Additionally, as we’ll discuss in Reason Number Five, you can add information products to your coaching program. This adds a lot more profit potential to your business.

Reason Four – It’s Easy to Offer Coaching

You might think you have to pass a rigorous program to become a coach. It’s not true. Almost anyone can hang up a coaching sign on his or her door without any training or certification.

Your path to coaching depends on your audience and goals. If you’re aspiring to add ‘life coaching’ or ‘executive coaching’ to your business model, then you may want to explore certification options. Competition is a bit more extensive in these two fields and certification will help establish credibility.

However, if you’re in a niche field, like organization, parenting, or the dog training field mentioned earlier, certification is certainly not a necessity. You can simply design your your own coaching program to fit your audience’s needs and your business goals and then launch the program.

A little planning and preparation is all you need.

Technology Makes It Easy

Web based technology makes launching and running your own coaching program a straightforward endeavour.

Depending on your audience and the coaching program you create you can use:

• Audio and video technology to coach
• Membership site technology
• Autoresponders
• Social networking mediums like forums or chat rooms to coach
• Instant messaging, email, Skype and other instant media to connect with coaching clients
• And of course eBooks and digital downloads

In fact, according to the Spencer Institute, a life coaching business, “70% of coaches work mostly by telephone and email with a nationwide practice.”

In short, there are few barriers to entry. You’re likely already using all of the technology you’d need to launch a coaching business. And unless you’re in a highly competitive field like “life coaching” certification and training isn’t necessary.

Reason Five – You Can Offer Coaching In Any Number of Formats – Whatever Best Fits Your Needs

You may be hesitant to add coaching to your existing business model because you’re afraid of the time commitment. Let’s face it, if you’re running a full time online business, you probably don’t want to add hours of one-on-one coaching to your workweek.

Good news! You can create a coaching program that fits your needs and goals. There’s no “right” way to create a coaching program and there are infinite options. You can create a:

• One on one coaching program – this works best when you limit the number of clients you work with and make it your most expensive product
• Membership site coaching – a great way to offer a variety of coaching levels
• Group coaching
• Information product coaching combined with feedback opportunities via email or forum
• Online seminars and workshops
• Teleclasses
• Digital downloads including ebooks, reports and course material delivered by autoresponders, downloadable mp3s, videos, and home study courses

The one thing all coaching programs have in common is their purpose and/or duration. Coaching programs have an overall aim, a specific duration of time, and specific content that is taught during the program.

Your coaching program can last six weeks or six months. It all depends on you.

Reason Six – Coaching Fits Just About Every Niche and Business Model

The beauty of a coaching program is that it fits just about every niche and business model. To demonstrate just how adaptable coaching is, let’s take a look at a few examples.

Service Business Model – A freelance writer can offer a coaching program to help other aspiring writers grow their own freelance businesses.

eCommerce – A person selling dog-training tools can coach others on how to train their dogs.

Information Marketing – An information marketer in the health and fitness niche can offer personal fitness coaching or diet coaching.

Affiliate Marketing – An affiliate marketer that represents home organization products can offer a coaching program to help others become more organized.

As you can see, coaching is quite adaptable to fit both your needs and the needs of your audience. The key to a successful coaching program is to identify a need within your audience and to solve it through coaching. Offer valuable information over a specific period of time.

Reason Seven – Your Own Coaching Program Provides Added Value to Your Customers

Ultimately, you likely own an online business for two primary reasons.

#1 You want to make money.

#2 You enjoy your niche topic and enjoy providing value to your audience.

Coaching enables you to do both. It gives you one more powerful way to connect with and interact with your customers. Providing this level of value and interaction can be immensely rewarding for both you and your customers.

There’s something quite satisfying about helping people solve their problems and coaching makes this possible. You get to become an active participate and watch your customers’ lives change.

You’re able to provide unprecedented value.

Your Own Coaching Program Made Simple

At this point, the idea of offering a coaching program may seem a bit overwhelming. Group coaching vs. private coaching, deciding whether to create a curriculum or go freestyle. Yikes.

The coaching business model has been around since the mid 1990’s and it shows no signs of stopping. Customers are turning to it as a solution more and more. And as technology improves online business owners are better equipped to provide valuable coaching to their niche clients.

Whether you’re looking to grow your brand, improve credibility, increase profits or simply provide more value to your customers, coaching can make it happen.