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Back to Articles Page For Coaches: Getting Past the Marketing Hump by Lyn Allen If marketing feels like a major speedbump on your road to coaching success, perhaps the following list of fifteen points can give you forward momentum to get over the hump. Accept the reality that at some point in building your practice, you will need to market. Address any challenges you have around this, using a mentor coach who models success for you AND who really gets you and your style. Substitute the word “connect” for “marketing.” Notice how this may shift your relationship or perspective on what marketing is. Find out what your market wants and how they articulate this. Conduct 20 interviews with people who represent your ideal client. When meeting with a prospect, be more interested in them than concerned about proving yourself. With your mentor coach, create a list of questions to ask them and practice responses to questions they may ask you. List three benefits people have received when working with you, or if you are new, when working with a coach. Write these benefits in the language of your market (which you now know, having done your interviews) and integrate them so that you “keep them in your hip pocket.” Working with your mentor coach, discover the marketing approach/techniques that work for you. Build on your strengths and market from your own voice vs. trying to fit yourself into someone else’s mold. Develop your self confidence as a coach. Coach anything that moves and some things that don’t – while fully honoring others’ boundaries – so that you experience yourself as a coach. Develop your skills as a coach. Practice – and integrate - the Core Coaching Competencies, as defined by the ICF, to be the most powerful coach you can be. Be a coach instead of a marketer, especially when you’re marketing. Connect with your prospects by using the same competencies that help you connect with your clients: Establishing Trust and Intimacy, Coaching Presence, Powerful Questions, Creating Awareness – and more! Substitute the words invite and engage for “closing the sale.” With your coach, craft variations on your invitation to coach, and practice this until you feel comfortable with it. Let go of any need to perform, prove or justify. Show up and dance, listen and engage fully, and – having done your homework – have your responses, questions and invitation in your hip pocket. Be so present with yourself that you expand your capacity to be present with others. To get out and stay out of performing/justifying, explore with your coach when and how you “check out” and are no longer in present moment. Stay out of ego by remembering the true role of a coach. A coach is a catalyst, the spark to support someone else’s development – when the person is ready for the spark. Use any non-movement as a learning opportunity. As soon as you realize you aren’t in movement the way you desire, work with your coach to discover the underlying truth and use this as a catalyst for your own growth. Explore vs. risking, and take yourself out of fear of failure. See your marketing as a treasure hunt in which you experiment and try on different marketing approaches with your different projects or markets. A coach is a weaver, pulling threads together for clients to see and understand the patterns in their lives. Instead of a “dump and run” approach to delivering information, engage your prospect, listen fully and weave in your key points through your acknowledgments, questions and responses. Use your marketing encounters as an opportunity to practice being a coach and to learn more about what does and does not work for you. Copyright, 2004, Lyn Allen. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or reproduced in any form without prior specific written consent from the author. Grace-Lyn Allen is a Master Certified Coach and a Professional Mentor Coach who has been training and mentoring coaches since 1994. She synthesizes her corporate experience with a strong spiritual perspective to support people who are ready for life on their own terms.   Back to Articles Page