5 Ways to Leverage a Business or Marketing Coach
Hiring a business or marketing coach could be the smartest decision you’ve ever made. A coach can make you work harder and progress faster than you ever would on your own. With all their experience, a business or marketing coach will push you outside your comfort zone where you’ll find yourself moving forward by leaps and bounds instead of baby steps.
Sound good? You’ll need to check your ego and take these 5 critical actions to make the progress you want, progress that you hired the business coach to help you make.
1. Be honest
You hired your new business or marketing coach because you believe they can help you. Perfect reason! But, guess what? They aren’t clairvoyant.
You are going to have to take a deep breath and tell them the truth about everything in your business. Yep, E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
They need to know what’s working, what isn’t, what you’ve tried and succeeded at, what you’ve tried and failed at. If they need financials, share your profit and loss report and balance sheet. Get a non-disclosure agreement if you want, but don’t hide anything.
2. Listen up
Pay attention. They know what they are talking about. You came to them for their expertise and it’s time to shut up and listen.
Think outside the box. Be open to new ways of thinking about your business, and new perspectives on future possibilities.
Ask thoughtful questions. Questions are how we learn the information we really need. So listen, and then when it’s your turn to speak, pause, think, then ask another question.
Listen carefully. Because you’re practicing your listening skills, you’ll be able to really hear what your coach is saying. If your brain is even a little focused on composing your next comment or question, you’ll miss out on something important.
Take notes. Very few people have perfect memories. I surely don’t. That’s why I take detailed notes whenever I’m in an important business conversation. I want to get all the salient points written down so that I’ll have them to refer to later.
3. Do what you’re told
I repeat — you hired the coach for a reason. Take advantage of their vast and focused expertise and experience and do what they recommend.
If you were a pro football player, you would only ignore your head football coach if you didn’t care about succeeding. The same thing applies to you as a business owner listening to your business or marketing coach.
Just like a good football coach, your business coach won’t be afraid to correct you so check your ego at the door and do it what you’re told.
This doesn’t negate the reasons for discussion and even debate, however. You have to be invested in what you’re doing or you won’t give it your all. If you don’t give it your all, you’ll get lousy results. And that’s a big fat waste of time.
But in the end, remember — you hired your coach for a reason.
4. Track results
“Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.” [W. Clement Stone]
You and your coach will make faster progress on the plan you’ve devised together if you ardently track the results of everything.
You’re not just tracking dollars here, you’re tracking all results. If you’re working on internal organization or productivity or process changes, track those metrics. If you’re working on marketing a product, track results at every step along the way — response to an email, even to a click in an email, to the number of leads, conversions, sales, returns, chargebacks customer support calls, etc.
If you don’t know your results, you won’t know what to do next. And that’s another big fat waste of time.
5. Repeat
Yep, you got it. Rinse and repeat.
Working with a coach is a cycle like any other successful process.
Got your results? Share them honestly and completely.
Then listen up to what your coach says about the process and results.
Ask questions and listen again.
Then go out and do what you’re told.
Now track results again.
Then… repeat.
As the weeks and months go by, you and your business or marketing coach will find a rhythm and a chemistry so that working together becomes more and more creative and productive. That’s what sets the really successful people apart from the rest of the pack. They know when it’s time to hire a coach and get a creative, fresh outlook on their business.
Now, go get results!