One of the main challenges of marketing your business training services is, how exactly do you stand out? With other eager and qualified business coaches who can work from anywhere, why would potential clients choose you over them? Fortunately, there are several things a new business coach can do to make them more memorable and unique to their industry:
Choose a Specialization
The easiest way to stand out is to choose a very specific niche to serve or to choose a very specific problem to solve. For example, he may categorize himself as the coach who focuses only on increasing profits. Alternatively, you could be the business coach helping small businesses that are developing software products. By being specific about either who you serve or what you do, you become the go-to for that particular need rather than “just another small business expert” likes most of your competitors.
Business Coach Lara Galloway focuses on helping mom entrepreneurs – stay-at-home moms who own or want to own their own businesses. Her coaching business, Mom Biz Coach, is unequivocal in expressing who she serves, allowing mom-entrepreneurs to quickly identify that she is the right choice for them. By focusing on her target market, she is able to help her clients with issues and challenges that are specific to her situation, that other business coaches might not know how to address.
Can he be as specific as Galloway when he specializes? Not only will this type of approach help you stand out, it will make your messaging, marketing, and service development much simpler.
Build a great network
Since 85 percent of business owners report that referrals are the most reliable method of finding business coaches, it makes sense to build a strong and extensive network of contacts to increase your chances of meeting potential clients.
Networking may seem more difficult than promoting yourself on LinkedIn, but it will be more effective if word of mouth is how coaches tend to get hired. If you find networking too intimidating, either because you’re typically an introvert or find it difficult to make small talk at events, the guides below can help you through the process:
Have Strong Case Studies
If there’s one thing that can win over target customers, it’s your case studies, testimonials, and reviews. According to the TAB survey mentioned above, 53% of entrepreneurs are more confident about a business coach’s reviews and testimonials from previous clients.
Because of this, be sure to spend time developing strong case studies and collecting testimonials from your customers. The survey results above tell us that spending time on social media articles instead might not have the same impact on employers looking for a coach. There are definitely tons of professionally designed case study templates that you can choose from to make the job easier.
Quantify your contribution
A business coach who doesn’t track his impact through numbers is only guessing at his impact. The good news is that you have many options to quantify the results you work for. You can track a company’s sales, profits, savings, efficiency, productivity, and other valuable metrics that are relevant to the specific problems you’re working on. With these metrics, you can clearly see if you are really helping your customers and can defend your role in the business.
A good example of this is Bill Silverman’s Springboard Business Training. His home page lists testimonials with quantified results, with clients saying they reaped “6-figure profits” and “business growth of over 20%.” His “About Us” page also has a list of specific numbers that he can help clients achieve. Having this kind of numerical information about your impact on your client’s business can help you easily justify your recurring services and help win over new clients as well.
