Be polite. When working as a business coach, you must first analyze a business. You examine their profits to see how short they are falling short. Look at their marketing practices to see what they are doing wrong, and so forth. Your job is to take the bad, educate a business owner or operating manager, and transform it into good. Unfortunately, that means criticizing. Yes, it is your job, but remember that we are all naturally offended. Insult a business owner and they will get upset. It is all about delivery, be polite.

Be positive. As previously stated, your job is to take the bad and transform it into good. You do so by providing suggestions, showing by example, and by offering feedback. No business owner is so bad that they never do anything wrong. Their doors would have closed by this point if that were the case. You need to focus on the bad, but also focus on the good. For example, if a retail manager has a well-organized office, but a poor organized sales floor, commend them for their effort. Let them know they did a good job in their office, but that they should have extended the organization to the sales floor. You let them know there is a problem, but still provided positive feedback. Your client will be more receptive.

Offer praise and encouragement. As a business coach, it is your responsibility to teach business owners and operating managers how to run a successful business. The keyword is teach. You do not do the work. You can display a few examples, but let your clients do the brunt of the work. Like a sports coach, sit back and watch. Analyze the situation and provide feedback. Throughout the task, offer praise and encouragement. It sounds silly, but some people just need a positive push in the right direction. In addition, since you are treating your client like a human being, you score extra points.

Offer to work with the entire staff. When providing business coaching services, business coaches usually work directly with the company owner or manager. There are others on site though. These staff members, their actions, their results, and their productivity are important to the company’s success. You can educate your client and they can retrain their staff members, or you can offer to do it. You should charge extra for this service, but offer a low rate or discount and you should get some takers.

Offer to come back and help. As a business coach, you can spend one day working one-on-one with a client or one week. No matter what steps you take to educate them on the importance of all business components, your advice may be ignored. So, always offer to comeback for a review or to answer a few simple questions. Let them know that advice is free, but retraining will cost extra.

It’s these basic people handling principals that should both surround and be engrained in how you deal with all of your clients. As long as you take the approach of treating people the way you would want to be treated you will be OK. Like all humans we are vulnerable to mistakes and should a situation arrive where you say the wrong thing, remember the customer is always right, assess the situation, apologize if needed, and think of some alternative methods you could have used. As you gain experience you should be able to easily recognize ways on handling clients. Have at it!

As nice as it is to hear that you can make money working as a business coach, you need more information.  Most importantly, you need to know what is expected of you.  What job responsibilities do business coaches have?

Education. As a business coach, you are the expert.  You have schooling or experience that makes you qualified to run a business.  You know what works and what doesn’t.  Unfortunately, many home based business and small business owners did not think their plans through.  They realized they could make money and jumped in with both feet.  Action is good, but having knowledge and experience is even better.

It is your job as a business coach to educate them on how to properly run a successful and profitable business.  To do this, dissect the key components of running a business.  These include leadership development, proper communication, teamwork, organization, resolving workplace conflict, sales, and marketing.  Those who started a business on a whim may not see the connection between these important components and profits.  You need to show them.

Setting examples.  As a business coach, your job is to educate and teach a business owner how to run a successful and profitable business.  You are just like a sports coach, you teach the team plays to run.  Do not do the work yourself.  You can however, set examples and give continued instructions.

For example, organization is key to business.  In the retail industry, an unorganized sales floor turns off customers.  They want to shop where it is easy to find what they need, easy to walk through the aisles, and so forth.  If your client’s retail store is unorganized and unclean, give team members a shopping cart and a list of items to pickup.  Let them see for themselves how hard it was to shop.  Then, give them a few suggestions, such as removing bulky displays from the middle of the aisle.  Run through one play yourself, but let the team do the rest of the work.

Reviewing. You can educate your clients and show them ways to improve productivity, organization, marketing, and sales, but there are no guarantees.  As soon as you leave or end a training session, your client and their employees can revert to their old habits.  Include a review in with your fees.  Return a week or two after your training sessions.  Have things changed?  Did the company utilize your tips or did they return to normal habits?

If you return to a client’s place of business and do not see improvements, don’t start the process again, especially for free.  Verbally repeat the important components of running a business and restate some of the tips you shared.  Before leaving, warn your former client about the dangerous path they are headed on.  Unless they offer to pay for your services again, your hands are tied, but at least you made an attempt.

Summary As you can see, you will be wearing many hats.  If you ad some of the work that your clients many not have the expertise to do, you can do some of that yourself, or even potentially outsource it.  Keep in mind that you will need to package your services and explicitly spell out what your rates are for each specific request.  You will find business coaching lucrative, challenging, and rewarding.

What Is a Business Coach? A business coach is an individual who provides business owners support and encouragement. This support and encouragement gives them that extra push they need to see success. The most common users of business coaches are new small to medium sized business owners. These individuals usually have a passion and they want to profit from it. For example, a stay-at-home mother may enjoy making handmade quilts for her children. One day, it dawns on her that she can make custom order quilts to sell both locally and online for a profit. She has a good idea and a good product, but does not know where to start. This is where a business coach, which could be you, would provide assistance.

A Business Coach’s Responsibility What do business coaches teach their clients? Anything and everything related to business. If the above mentioned mom wants to open a local quilt shop, you can show her the importance of location. A high-trafficked and easily seen storefront will automatically translate into more customers and sales. If she has yet to pick a location, help her make the right choice. As for an online shop, if she has yet to set that up, help her choose an affordable web hosting package, a good domain name, and encourage her to hire the services of a professional web designer.

Some clients seek the advice and expertise of a business coach right from the start, but others wait until their new business shows signs of trouble. In these instances, business coaches educate their clients on marketing and sales. A stay-at-home mom selling her handmade quilts online is nice, but handmade products are widely available online. Just because she has a well-designed website, it does not mean that people will find it. Business coaches need to stress the importance of online and local marketing, as well as highlight a few examples for their clients.

Is Business Coaching for You? In keeping with the example of a stay-at-home mom who wants to profit from her talent, most of these individuals want to be self-employed. They want to work for themselves and have no hired help. This does lower costs and increase profits, but many new small business owners make costly mistakes. One of those mistakes is taking on too much, too quick. Business coaches should also stress the importance of time management and show proper techniques. For example, the above mentioned quilt selling mom should have a waiting list and inform customers of a long wait, not stay up all night making quilts.

One question that those interested in running a coaching business ask is about profits. Most clients are new business owners or business owners who aren’t seeing profits. How can these individuals pay for a business coach? Honestly, some cannot, but many can.

Summary Business owners need to look at it from the standpoint of a wise investment and you must do the same. For a small to medium sized business that is barely staying afloat, a professional business coach may be its last hope. For that reason, you will always find clients willing to pay for your service. With that said, fair rates and flexible payment plans cannot hurt.

Coaching certainly involves more than just teaching an athlete to beat the competition; it encompasses many things. If you have a business management degree or prior experience running a small to medium sized business, take your degree and experience and turn it into a profitable career. Become a business coach.