What you need to know about Business Coaching

The Business Coaching industry has grown significantly over the last 15 year. According to IBIS world in the US it is estimated the Business coaching industry generates about $10b per annum in revenue, employing approximately 79,000 people.

Over that time the business coach has slowly crept into the standard pool of advisers a business owner considers to engage to help grow their business.

How is a business coach different? Not so long ago the only source of advice was a Tax and compliance firm that offered “Business Consulting” as an add on service, a Sales Consultant that advised on your sales pitch and marketing or a Human Resources consultant that advised on legal requirements of managing staff. However none of the above focused on what mattered most to the business owner. How do I get the best out of myself and my business? As ultimately it is the business owner who makes the final decisions, it is imperative the business owner has the tools techniques and mindset to get the best out of themselves and their team.

Just like a good athlete gets regular advice on technique, physical and mental conditioning to perform at their best. A business owner also benefits from challenging at their marketing, selling, staff motivation, service delivery practices and financial management techniques. There is only one constant rule in business, nothing stays the same forever.

Challenges with Business Coaching:

Putney Breeze focuses on Business Performance. As a result many of our clients made similar comments, “we use to have a business coach, you are like them with one main difference, you can actually tell me what is going on in my business”. After receiving this feedback I met with a number of Business Coaching firms to learn more about what they do.

What I discovered was in the short rise of the business coaching industry, the majority of business coaches tend to have sales as their professional trade, although there seems to be no prerequisite for work background. I discovered that in a large business coaching group, their business coaches had backgrounds as varied as school teachers, to photographers to former IT consultants. I asked the Head of this business coaching group, so how do these new business coaches with varied backgrounds get their head around best practice, strategic planning, business modelling, trend analysis, performance measures and staff development? His answer was, “We send them on a 10 day training course”!!

I can tell you there are plenty of Tax accountants who know a lot about Tax legislation, but ask them to give advice on business performance best practice their knowledge is limited to ad-hoc, anecdotal one liners’ and improvised calculations based on a text book they once read at university many moons ago. But at least there is some formal training that had occurred once upon a time. Yet the Business coaching group was going to let loose a ‘business coach’ on your business after a 10 day training course. The head of the business coaching group was a great salesman and I admire his powers of persuasion. However there were a couple of things I wasn’t comfortable with;

1) The business coaches in this group were disparate, had inconsistent experience and skills.

 

2) The Business Coaching Group was happy for their coaches to operate under different business names. Again this left questions about the history of their brand and the broader group of people. Would McDonald’s let you open a store and use all their knowhow and practices but operate under another name? Short answer no, so why would a business coaching group allow this to occur? It didn’t pass the sniff test.

 

3) I pressed on the question of the revenue split of the group. What was the percentage of revenue from joining fees of new business coach’s verses business coaching revenue? I didn’t get a straight answer, so I had to assume they made just as much or more money from selling business coaching ‘partnerships’ than from business coaching, i.e. it was possible their core business was selling Business coaching partnerships and not actually business coaching.

The benefits they provided any new business coach was the access to workflows, templates, methods, infrastructure and coaching advice for business coaches. I could see the value of their infrastructure for new Business Coaches. There were some very good operators in the group, they were being let down by head office who accepted new business coaching partners who should never have been allowed for the sake of new partnership revenue.

Business Coaches for Business Advisors!

Then there is the growing niche industry of business coaching for Business Advisors. Yes, if you are receiving business coaching from a Tax firm, there is a good chance they themselves are being coached to coach you! There are a couple of business coaching groups who focus on Tax accounting firms and do reasonably well. They then suggest to the Tax firm that the business model they advocate can be applied to their clients. However, if you aren’t a professional services business like a Tax firm. You have a completely different business model, for example, your business sells products people may “want to have” rather than “compulsory to have” (Tax returns). How effective might their advice be? In this circumstance there is a high potential for ineffective advice as your market dynamics are completely different to theirs.

Tax Advisors are great at what they are trained to do. They are a key player in your advisory team. The paradox for the tax advisor stretching across to business performance is when you try to be everything for everyone you can end up doing nothing well for anyone. Some Tax advisors have managed the challenge successfully however many don’t to the detriment of the client.

Our Philosophy

A central philosophy of Putney Breeze is to create a Living Asset. That is creating a business that is capable of providing you with income without having to work in the business. If you create a Living Asset you are then in a position to sell the business and cash out with your capital rather than simply close the business on retirement. The philosophy of creating a Living Asset was not considered a key long term outcome of another business coaching group. They were quite happy to leave you languishing in self-employment with no other option than to walk away from the business you may have spent 10, 15 or 20 years building. An opportunity wasted I’d suggest.

Questions to consider when appointing a business coach or business performance advisor.

1) What is the work background of the business coach or business advisor, what are the core skills they bring to the table? Not just the templates, one liner, book lists and feel good pats on the back. Is it Sales, Tax advice, IT consulting or HR, how relevant are their skills in providing holistic business performance advice?

 

2) Can you communicate with your business coach? Can they explain what is happening in your business in terms that you can absorb and action?

 

3) Do they have a process or method for improving your business, or do they just bring a hose for the daily fire fight?

 

4) What are their beliefs? What is their central philosophy on business improvement and business destination? Does that reconcile with yours?

 

5) Do they themselves bring a body of knowledge and experience or is that knowledge borrowed from elsewhere? Can they prove they have their own body of knowledge and experience, for example have they published a book?

 

6) What is their history of business performance improvement can they provide examples of their own work not just work of others in their company?

 

7) Have they ever fully owned and operated an independent company successfully and have been responsible for the outcomes of the business?

 

8) How do they update their skills and where do they source their new knowledge? Do they make sure their advice is at the cutting edge and not yesterday’s noise?

 

Beyond Business Coaching

Putney Breeze is a business performance advisor who goes beyond business coaching. We can;

i) Facilitate your business destination,

ii) Provide genuine insights on product profitability

iii) Provide clarity of focus for your marketing resources

iv) Enhance the collaboration and effectiveness of your sales force

v) Redesign your KPI reporting to create business value

vi) Analyse and construct your business model and provide insights on business trends,

vii) Redesign your accounting systems, forecast your cash flow requirements

viii) Ingrain a positive business culture.

ix) Improve the effectiveness of your staff

All of the above are core skills of a business performance advisor focused on Maximising Profit for Growth. A business owner benefits from challenging their marketing, selling, staff motivation, service delivery practices and financial management techniques. Leverage the one constant rule in business, ‘nothing stays the same forever’ for your benefit. Consider speaking to a business performance advisor today.