Business Coaching Methodology

The TAR Approach to Business Coaching

When I work with you as the business owner or your senior management team, my business coaching approach is targeted at three changes:

1. To change the way you THINK about your business as your knowledge, abilities and confidence increases.
    
2. To change the ACTION that you and your business take. For the coaching to work, you will do some activities in new and different ways but there will also be new actrions you take..
    
3. To change the RESULTS your business achieves.

Thinking, Action and Results - TAR – these are the key ingredients to our business coaching.

Business Coaching Changes The Way You Think About Your Business

Just as people prefer to buy rather than to be sold, I believe that people love to learn but don't like to be lectured.

I will encourage you to learn new skills and to increase your abilities using whatever method works best for you and help you to apply your new skills to your business.

The more you know and understand, the more your confidence will grow in making the right decisions. 

The business library on this website is packed with free articles and recommended books and audios that will provide you with the techniques, theories, tactics and tools for improving your business.

Different people have different learning styles.

Some people prefer to read or listen on their own while others prefer to be coached and have these exciting, proven business techniques taught to them in a way that encourages them to ask questions and to go deeper into areas of particular interest.

As a business coach, my goal is to extend beyond providing information to helping you to use your knowledge to transform the success of your business - more sales, bigger profits and stronger cash flow. 

My business coaching will help you to move from general, good practice to specific actions by helping you to understand the concepts and to focus them on the targeted objective of making your business bigger and better. 

I can only do that by helping you think about your business in different ways.

By encouraging you to think about

• what you want to achieve,
  
• what you want your business to achieve, and
  
• how by working together we can make it happen.

For example a common marketing concept is the 4 Ps of marketing - Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Some people have extended it to 7 Ps for service marketing, by adding People, Processes and Physical Evidence. 

I  can tell you about the 4 Ps (or 7 Ps) but so can any good marketing textbook for a fraction of the price. 

My added value comes from helping you to understand the ideas individually and how they fit together to form the complete picture. Then my business coaching goes further by helping you to apply the concepts and improvement ideas to your business effectively.

So how do I help you to think differently about your business? Let’s go through and have a look.

Insight – a dictionary will define this as “a deeper understanding of circumstances” and there has been a lot of analysis and investigation done to develop strategic business models to help you to systematically look at

• The way that the external business environment affects your firm.
  
• The way you and your competitors interact with each other.
  
• The way customers think and make their purchasing decisions.

It’s insight that allows you to spot opportunities before anyone else does.

Ideas – the more you understand the way things work, the more you get ideas for change so that you can make the system work for you, and not against you.

Initiative – the more ideas you have the more you can take the initiative in your dealings with customers, staff and work processes. You are no longer reacting to the people’s actions but instead you’re setting the agenda yourself.

Innovation – taking the lead in a new product or a new way of making products or servicing customers means that you are innovating and innovation is the primary source of wealth creation.

The aim is to think of ideas that are new and exciting and give customers a compelling reason to buy.

Incentive – some times, just clarifying your personal goals can give new meaning to your business and a new incentive to your activities because you realise just what you want your business to achieve.

At the moment your business may just be a source of income but for many, their business is about making a real difference and people get tremendous satisfaction from a job well done. I know I do.

Imagine how much better you would feel about your work if you could find a higher purpose than just "making more money."

Interest – it’s common that the more you know, the more you want to know.

For example if we talk about lead generation in your business, you will start looking at other people’s lead generation techniques and methods with renewed interest.

What attracts your attention? What makes you want to buy? How do you feel emotionally in different buying situations? Relaxed? Excited? Nervous? Wary? Eager to buy? Repelled?

How can these lessons be applied to your situation?

Inspiration – as you learn more you will be inspired to put this new learning into action to make your business bigger, more successful and much more profitable.

“If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right” is an old quote from Henry Ford but isn’t that still so true today.

Sometimes our negative self talk convinces us not to take action when the logical decision is to go ahead.

Opportunity or guaranteed failure - The tale of two shoe salesmen

This is a story of two shoe salesmen sent to an under-developed country to see whether there was any potential in the market for their shoes.

The first got there, had a quick look around and immediately booked his flight ticket home. He sent a message to head office "Waste of time - nobody wears shoes here."

The second also had a quick look around and also sent a message straight back to head office. "Incredible opportunity. Send two container loads of samples. Millions without shoes."
Do you see opportunity or certain failure? It's just a matter of how you think.

Business Coaching Changes The Way You And Your Business Acts

There’s a big difference between having a great idea and putting it into action.

There's an old saying "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you’ve always got".

We don't think it's quite true in a business setting.

It's worse than that because competitors move forward by making improvements, so any business that's standing still is really taking one step backwards competitively. Even worse, customer needs and expectations can change and business can fall away quickly.

If you are thinking about your business in different ways because you have new skills and abilities and because you have renewed enthusiasm for building your business, you will be seeing new profitable opportunities.

Then the next stage is to take action.

I use a saying “Can do, will do, have done – WOW”.

“Can do” – is the confidence in your skills and abilities that helps you to defeat any negative self talk that often stops so many people taking action.

I’m sure you know what I mean.

“Perhaps it’s not such a good idea…?” Or “What if it doesn’t work…?” Or "Perhaps I'll get a better idea if I wait a few months...?"

These doubts just spring into your mind and dent your confidence so wouldn’t it be good if you could chat your great idea over with a business coach who’s got plenty of business experience.

Wouldn’t it feel better to have some external encouragement or if the idea really isn’t one of your best, a few friendly words of caution that confirm your own doubts.

“Will do” – is a commitment to action for those steps that are consistent with your business vision, your passion and your values.

It’s one thing to know you can do something, it’s another to make a public commitment to say that you will do it. It’s a big leap from “can do” for a great idea to “will do” and it's a gap that many ideas fail to cross.

“A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.” (Harvey Mackay). The key difference is the commitment to action.

“Have done - WOW” – most people get a tremendous satisfaction from achieving something and seeing the results.

Too often tasks are started but not finished.

Perhaps it doesn’t seem so important any more, perhaps it’s lack of time, perhaps people just give up when they hit an unexpected difficulty.

Again your business coach is there to make sure you move from the “will do” to the “have done” stage.

As Peter Thomson says “Action is the key” but it’s got to be purposeful action that moves you towards your goals.

Or to quote Alexander Graham Bell "The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action".

Using the same 4 Ps of marketing that we used in the example in the Thinking section, the intention would be to identify:

• how you will change your products,
  
• how you will change your prices,
  
• how you will change the way you promote your business and
  
• how you will change where you offer your products.

Of course everything doesn't have to change. We don’t want change for the sake of change.

You keep the great and the good until you can think of something better. And you don’t take unnecessary risks as you test any new ideas in a small way, learning as you go. What works? Can it be extended elsewhere? What doesn't work? Why? What can you change?

Unfortunately without coaching people often don’t take action, even when they’ve got a great idea.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to stay with the status quo. To do nothing - but what a waste of a profitable opportunity!

How often have you been on a training course, given the speaker full marks on the satisfaction survey and left the room determined to put those four great ideas you’ve learned into action, only to find that two weeks later nothing has happened?

And probably like most people it hasn’t happened after two months either and after six months you’ve forgotten all about those great ideas.

This is the big problem with the standard training.

The experience at the time is great but nothing happens and that’s why business coaching is so successful. It’s a natural link that takes you through from learning new skills to having ideas on how to apply it to your business, to putting those ideas into action and then to seeing the results.

Business coaching works because you’ve got somebody checking up to see how things are going. Providing advice when needed, encouragement when necessary but support all the time.

You see when people are left on their own, the old business still has an iron grip. It demands your attention and without strong self-discipline you just won’t find the time to work on the new business which is the improved version of the old one.

This is a shame because the new business is the business of your dreams and vision. It will be designed so that it won’t demand every minute of your time, it will work without you, it will deliver great service to your customers and it will makes a great profit for you.

Business Coaching Changes The Results Of Your Business

We’ll never lose sight of the fact that we are doing all this business coaching, all the new thinking, all the new actions to deliver a measurable improvement in the results of your business - more sales, more profit and better cash flow.

Our ultimate focus as your business coach is on your results and quantifying the improvements being made.

Measurement is essential, at the start to establish a baseline but also throughout the business coaching assignment and afterwards.

How else can you see what is working and what isn't? How else do you know if you are releasing the hidden potential in your business? How else can you celebrate your well earned success?

The more you learn and think differently, then the more you and your business will act differently and the more your results will improve. More, more, more. What a wonderful virtuous circle it is that business coaching creates.

It's Your Business - You Remain In Control

As your business coach I will be demanding because I want you to succeed. It's my commitment to you. 

I will take you out of your comfort zone and ask you to think about things that you don't want to think about. I will ask you to do things that you don't want to do. I will constructively criticise any parts of your business that I think are holding you back.

"Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear." (John Madden)

But all the time remember that it is your business and you don't have to do what we suggest or recommend.

But also remember that you start business coaching because you want your business to change, because you want to achieve things that you're not doing on your own and because you want more profit.

If you would like to learn more about business coaching then give me, Paul Simister a call on 0121 554 4057.

Take a look at my business coaching blog to learn more about the latest business development ideas and profit building strategies.

I also recommend that you sign up to my Partners for Profit newsletter to keep you updated. 

Last updated 2007-12-11