Tipping Point or Tripping Point

Tipping Point or Tripping Point:

The Six Biggest Hurdles Facing Consultants and Coaches

And How to Step over Them with Ease©

“It’s choice, not chance, that determines your destiny.” Jean Nidetch

Here’s the proverbial seesaw or teeter totter that can be very difficult to manage as a coach or consultant. Do you spend time working on the current project or marketing and selling your services to keep the pipeline full? Do you gamble that this current project or client will lead to another with the same company immediately after it’s done, or do you face the reality that you could be ‘back on the street’ again a day after the project ends? And if marketing is a tripping point, you may feel as if you’re eating mushy, slimy, yucky okra every time you go to a networking meeting or pick up the phone to call a prospect or former client. Yuck!

The Next Big Hurdle

That’s the hurdle I call “marketing me or working for you,” and it’s your choice and possible dilemma as a coach or consultant. If you really enjoy the marketing and sales end of the business, you can easily go overboard and spend too much time doing all the varied tasks that lead to keeping the pipeline full. Then, your current project or clients suffer because you’ve neglected them; and that’s not a happy scene for anyone.

Marketing is the introduction to a sales conversation, and selling is the name of the game when it comes to starting and maintaining a prosperous business. Here’s the line I always tell a new coach or consultant that I’m mentoring in my product business: “If you can sell, you can do well. If you can’t sell, you’ll feel like you’re in hell”. Yikes! But the truth is that anyone can learn to sell and do well if they really want to.

The Three Most Important Words

Relationships, relationships, relationships! Those are the three most important words when it comes to keeping your business pipeline full. When you have grown and developed strong, trusting relationships with a variety of prospects and clients, you will be amazed at how easy it appears to keep business coming your direction. That’s the case even when you’re in the midst of a larger, longer project or your coaching list is full. Getting word of mouth advertising from an advocate is the best and most important relationship asset you can ever enjoy.

Here are five more tips to enhance your sales cycle and keep your highs and lows further apart and less dramatic.

Join several of the most relevant and well-networked organizations and associations where you’ll meet either other professionals in your business or potential clients whom you could serve. Attend the meetings regularly, and meet the movers and shakers while looking for a way to give to, not get from, them.
Volunteer in your various associations and give back openly and unselfishly. You will be putting the law of reciprocity to work, and you’ll see powerful results, especially if you participate in a leadership role.
Teach a course at your local community college, university, church or non-profit agency. There are many ways you can showcase and share your talents and knowledge if you have a willingness to give.
Write articles, an e-zine (e. g. http://tinyurl.com/27kep7) or do interviews for your local newspaper, association newsletter or industry magazines. If you have done a good job writing a series, you can use this as the beginning of a book, which will be a very positive credential builder.
While reading local papers, business journals or industry magazines, look for references to people who are involved in work that relates to or complements your niche specialty. Make contact with them, and look for ways to do some type of collaboration.

Swimming or Drowning

In the summer Olympics there is a race called the Steeplechase. During this race the runners must cross several types of barriers, one of which is a water hurdle. Because the water is only a few inches deep, they don’t need to swim; no one drowns, but this next hurdle can make coaches and consultants feel that way. Here’s what I mean:

Client demands on external consultants and coaches usually exceed those that are made of internal employees. Expectations are higher, and you are being hired to get results in a specified period of time. You are also being paid to produce and give them the results they are wanting. You must be an expert and someone they can trust and rely on, or your contract will be cut short if you even get hired. This is the hurdle: Competent to swim or drowning in incompetence.

As a coach and consultant you must be a constant learner and invest your willingness, time and money in ongoing education focused in your specialty or niche. There are always new books to read, courses to become certified in and piles of magazines, tapes or CD’s waiting to be consumed. To earn well, you must learn well and learn continuously.

To stay well informed and keep from drowning you must know and accurately assess your current knowledge and skill level. You can never afford to over-sell your level of competency, or you risk not only losing business, but also building a bad reputation. Your good reputation is worth your weight in gold!

Carefully consider these recommendations for crossing this hurdle with ease:

Know yourself and your strengths, and don’t stray from these as your primary areas of delivery. Keep deepening and expanding them to become the best in your field.
Become an information guru and gatherer of timely, relevant and pertinent information that you can make your own. Industry or trade magazines, e-zines and other learning methodologies will enlarge and engage your thinking.
Start or join a Mastermind group that will give you access to other high level peers and colleagues who will share information with you and stimulate your thinking in new and different ways.
Take the needed courses or certifications that will give you the credentials and the reason to charge a fee that will keep you well fed and happy.

We’ve just traversed two more of the six hurdles that we’ll be crossing together. You’re doing well, and we’re halfway to the finish line. Stay with me next month when we’ll cross two more hurdles that will give you more confidence and an edge to put you on the winner’s track, the Diamond track for winning results.

About the Author: George Hendley works with coaches, consultants and business leaders who are successful but not satisfied. He is an award winning mentor and Diamond level distributor for Inscape Publishing and is in the top 1% of sales leaders in the world. George is a coach, consultant and author and expects to publish his first book in early 08’. Contact George at 972.234.4377 or George@georgehendleypresents.com. Sign up for George’s free e-zine at http://tinyurl.com/27kep7.