The Business Coaching Handbook

Everything You Need to Be Your Own Business Coach

Curly Martin

• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781845900601
• eBook ISBN: 9781845903121
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The Business Coaching Handbook reveals what business coaching IS, how to assess the shape of your business and what steps you need to put in place to grow a successful business. This book has been compiled for business entrepreneurs who have recently achieved the first goal of getting the enterprise up and running or, have been operating their own professional practice or business for a few years and now want to take it to the next level.

Chapter One

Now Review Now

Where you are now in relation to when you started? Are you where you want to be?

Synopsis

This chapter is about soul-searching. If you have been doing your own thing for a year or more, it is important that you read this chapter now. The principles apply to every manufacturing, service or retail business. They apply to every professional practice. In short, unless you work for someone else or unless you are unemployed, they apply to you and your business. We begin with a brief but true story.

Although the shop was in a secondary shopping area, Julian felt that the savings on rent, compared with a prime site, would allow him to generate traffic by extensive local advertising.

He was in the insurance business. He had learned his trade as an employee within a big company and had built up an impressive list of contacts. Now he was ready to broker insurance on just about anything from cars to cats, from houses to horses and from freezers to floods.

His business boomed. So much so, that he became a victim of his own success. Within a year he had a staff of six. By reducing his commission he was able to offer extremely competitive rates, and word soon spread that this was the place to go for great deals.

However, Julian was not a well-organised man. The back office, where all the essential paperwork was done, was in a state of chaos. Files littered the desks and every available surface. Inevitably, mistakes were made. The staff became more and more stressed and, as a result, took increasingly frequent sick days. This added to the pressure, and mistakes occurred more often.

Soon his key man, Tom, could not take the situation any longer. He had been well rewarded for his work but felt that he just had to get off the treadmill. Using his recent experience and business network, Tom sought premises in the next town. He decided to start his own business, modelled on all that was good about Julian’s company and with an added focus on avoiding that which Tom considered was bad.

Within a year Tom was drawing customers away from his former boss. One evening, he strolled past the shop where he had previously worked and immediately noticed that the fascia sign had two missing letters. The door, which always had a tendency to stick, had still not been repaired. Instead it bore a handwritten notice asking clients to ‘push hard’. There was graffiti on the side of the building.

Peering through the dirty windows he noticed the display had not been changed since he left. Many of the ‘special offer’ posters were outdated, faded and peeling away from the walls. There was a collection of dead insects on the floor of the window, and one of the spotlights had failed and not been replaced. He noted that the toppling piles of paperwork had overflowed from the back office and now littered the counter.

Tom returned to his own spotless premises which reflected his own neat and orderly lifestyle. Instead of following the industry standard practice of rewarding his growing staff with ever greater percentages of commission, he offered them bonuses for every month in which they had no mistakes and generated no complaints.

Julian went out of business soon afterwards and told his friends and family that the fast growth of internet insurance was the cause of his company’s failure. After a decent interval Tom acquired the premises. He now owns eight branches and the ninth is about to open.

The point of this story is that your business is a reflection of you. Its ethos, culture and public persona will be indelibly marked with your own sense of values, ethics and approaches to life.

If you are untidy, inefficient and disorganised then your business will soon be the same. If you are in a creative business where clients or customers do not visit your premises, you may think this is unimportant. Perhaps you always work at your clients’ homes or businesses? In this case, you are very much the face of your business. They will pick up on your characteristics and will form a split-second decision about whether to hire you or not.

Here is a simple and revealing exercise called PACE, which stands for Personality, Attitude, Commitment and Excellence.

The PACE Exercise

Decide right now on a time and place where you can be alone and quiet for as long as it takes, allowing at least half an hour. Focusing on yourself, rather than on your business, award yourself marks out of 10 for each statement. If you disagree absolutely, your mark should be 1. If you agree totally, give yourself 10. If you are unsure, then make an educated estimate between those two extremes.

Personality	Total
I am enthusiastic	__________
I have a positive attitude	__________
I make friends easily	__________
I lead a well-ordered life	__________
I am good at setting priorities	__________
I usually see the best in others	__________
I am honest	__________
I am ethical	__________
I admit my m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Acclaim for The Business Coaching Handbook
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction : A very personal letter from the author
• Chapter One : Now Review Now
• Chapter Two : The Secrets of Setting Goal
• Chapter Three : Time Is Money
• Chapter Four : Typical Customer Profile
• Chapter Five : From Lead to Sale
• Chapter Six : Marketing Magic
• Chapter Seven : Your Press Releases
• Chapter Eight : The Art of Advertising
• Chapter Nine : Website Marketing
• Chapter Ten : Tactical Socialising
• Chapter Eleven : Staff Strategies
• Chapter Twelve : Challenge Resolution
• Chapter Thirteen : Money Matters
• Chapter Fourteen : Money from Waste
• Chapter Fifteen : Intellectual Money
• Chapter Sixteen : Outsourcing
• Chapter Seventeen : Succession Planning
• Bibliography
• Author Resource Guide
• Index
• Copyright