You love what you do: you’ve grown your business from day one and want to see it thrive. That’s why you’re willing to invest time and money in your business and your people to make sure that it continues to develop. You’ve read books and watched webinars and might have an inkling of what the next step is… But is hiring a business coach really worth the investment?
You enjoy going your own way – that’s why you’re an entrepreneur. But we could all use a helping hand every now and again, and an extra pair of eyes with years of experience working with other small and medium-sized businesses can be the thing that really elevates your business above the competition.
A business coach can make a huge difference in your business. To help you figure out whether hiring a business coach is right for you, read on for some ways how a business coach can help you generate more profit and improve you and your team’s performance.
What even is a business coach?
Running your own business can be extremely difficult, and even with hundreds of books out there about the best ways to run your company, none of them provide the perfect toolkit for your business. Why? Because each and every company is unique and every business owner has a subtly different idea of what success looks like.
Enter the business coach. They’re like the sports coach who’ll make you run laps even when you don’t feel like it because it’s good for you. They help you see the bigger picture and tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. They also listen and offer encouragement when you need it most – again, like a great sports coach.
In short, your business coach is a helpful mentor, your personal Mr Miyagi, who can help take your business to the next level with an action plan that’s tailored just for you.
How a business coach can help you generate more profit
1. Help you set your prices competitively
Us Scots don’t like to make a big fuss about ourselves. That means that often we as business owners are unsure about how to set our prices competitively. Your business coach will have extensive experience in working with businesses of all kinds and can help you make sure you’re pricing your products and services competitively.
2. Make your business run more efficiently
Your business coach can help you shed light on hidden opportunities for more profit, be it offering a new service or product that addresses a common pain point for your clients or ways to keep the running costs of your business down. This can also mean assessing who among your staff are the superstars and who are holding others back – this can help you make those difficult decisions on who to keep or promote and whose talents could be better used elsewhere.
3. Optimise your sales process
This is the big one. Your business coach can help you focus on each stage of your sales process one by one and make sure you’re addressing the wants and needs of your potential clients at each stage, from leads to conversions to fans who’ll rave about you to all of their friends. And more clients means more revenue – now there’s something you don’t need to hire a business coach to tell you!
4. Help you manage your cash flow
Issues with cash flow can be extremely stressful for business owners and keep you from growing your company at the rate that you’d like. Your business coach will work together with you to deal with bad debtors, optimise your working capital and bring cash into your business faster.
Other ways a business coach can help your business
1. Find new motivation and inspiration
When you’ve been building your business for years, day in and day out, it’s perfectly natural to get stuck in a bit of a rut every now and again. Your business coach will help you get unstuck and offer new perspectives to look at your business from. They’ll challenge you to try new things and encourage you to think outside the box.
2. Improve your team communication
A business coach is an objective outsider who is experienced in noticing both helpful and unhelpful patterns in a team’s internal communications. That’s why they’re so good at honing in on potential pitfalls that could be holding your team back. They might use tools like the DISC evaluation to highlight how different people in your team prefer to communicate, helping you build a more constructive company culture.
Unsure about whether you have the time and money to work with a business coach?
I get it. You’re busy – running your own business will do that to you! However, when we keep our heads down and keep working on our to-do lists that seem to grow longer every day, it can be hard to notice where you’re working harder than you really need to be and where our attention really needs to go. In our fast-paced world, we need to move quickly and be constantly evolving. A business coach will help you create time for your growth so that you can stay on top of your game and maintain control over the precious resource that is your time.
You also want to make sure that the money you invest in your business is well-spent. I hope the points I’ve outlined above have helped you see how a business coach is worth the investment, but if you’re interested in reading more, why not have a look at how I personally price my coaching? And, if you’d like to find out more about how business coaching could benefit your business, feel free to get in touch with me by completing the form below.
