Coaches, What Do You Do? How do You Answer this Question?

I heard the most beautiful words from one of my clients. The words, “I think I understand who I’m marketing to much better.” When she did that my brain did a freeze frame. Yes! She is finally on the right track. She began to articulate who she discovered as her ideal client. But, that’s just the beginning. My next piece of advice to my client is really the most critical. Milana Leshinsky, of Coaching Millions, says it best (or at least I like it best) when she says in part one of her book:

“You can scream on the top of your lungs that you are a coach, but no one will care unless you can solve a problem.”

That line is underlined and highlighted in my copy of her book! This is absolutely THE most critical part of your coaching business. Leshinsky defines coaching with the following statements:

• Coaching is methodology
• A Coach inspires to take action and provides a “back-end” strategy that facilitates success
• Coaching is a tool or approach used to solve a problem

Let me ask you

• whose problem do you solve – this is your niche
• what problem do you solve – this is your message or solution
• how do YOU solve problems – this is your methodology

So, where do you start. First, after identifying your niche or your market, you start by listening, reading, watching the market to discover what they need. Jay Abraham says this well in this video on his “strategy of preeminence” – this is really important – it’s about identifying & articulating the needs, the pain, the anxiety of your market place.

Let me ask you again, Coach, what problem do you solve for your market place. That’s not the same as what is the benefit of coaching with you – tell me what is the “ouch” of your ideal client. Until you discover the problem, the pain, the frustration AND articulate it so well that your ideal prospect can identify with it – only then can you truely have a solution.

It’s like going to your doctor and have him pull out a box of bandaid, or bag of pills without ever taking the time to diagnose your need. Now, I know at coaches we don’t truly “diagnose” but you absolutely need to identify the need, problem, pain, whatever you want to call it – or you’re going to forever struggle as a coach trying to build a practice.

Here’s an example of what I mean by that. Scott Stratton created a movie to do exactly what I am talking about. I knew Scott on one of the early social networks before he was the go to expert that he is today. This movie went on to build his list to a quarter of a million subscribers. Watch this movie and tell me how this ‘moves you’ – we’ll talk more about this in another post – but see if you don’t agree that this movie not only articulated the anxiety that stirs in the soul of human-kind, but Scott never “spoke” a word in how he conveyed that he understood the viewers pain, questions, longing for more in a powerful way. Click here to watch Scott’s Movie – come back and tell me what you learned.

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