How a Business Coach can help you grow your Small Business
by GetCoached
A Business often springs from a passion or a brilliant idea. The odds are, you’re absolutely amazing at what you do! But being a business owner doesn’t come with a handy guidebook or instant insights into how to manage and grow a successful small business. If you’re a small business owner in New Zealand right now, you’re probably acting CEO, CFO, Head of HR, Business Development and Sales.
The responsibility of managing all aspects of a business can be totally overwhelming, and many business owners become overworked and over stressed… and crucially, many owners become bogged down in the day to day running of the business so deeply that they have no energy, time, or perspective to spend on the big picture strategy of growing and refining the business.
Enter the Business Coach!
Why you should invest in a good Business Coach
1. A great Business Coach is Strategic
Your Business Coach should work intensively with you to define a business strategy with tangible, well defined goals. Your business vision should be clearly stated, and your goals should work together to deliver seriously impressive business results. Every initiative in your business should be implemented with a view to reaching goals that contribute to your strategy.
Business Coaches will help you identify, and work towards your personal goals as well as your business goals. This is because knowing what you want to achieve in your life will inform them on what motivates you, and what your ideal lifestyle is in regard to your business.
With their business experience as a reference, a Business Coach can look at your goals in context and know if they are too small, or unrealistically large. Goals should be audacious, and achievable.
2. A Business Coach understands your business
Your best fit Business Coach may not have personal experience in your industry, but they will have applicable personal knowledge. They should spend time understanding the implications of business in your field, and the state of play including how competitors work. Most importantly, they should use a discovery session to fully understand your business and identify the current and potential strengths and threats you face.
A really good Business Coach will understand the operation of your business within the big picture and be able to identify how best to succeed in your business environment.
3. Streamlining is a Business Coach super-power
From financials to employees, from processes to sales channels – the best Business Coaches look at what to take out of a business, as well as what needs to be added. Implementing smart reporting and analytics are key to this process, providing better insights so you can make decisions based on fact instead of going with gut feel.
So often processes can be streamlined, staff roles can be redefined and sales can be increased through streamlining your business. The 360 view available to your Business Coach, combined with their real-world experience, means that they can swiftly identify areas where your business can be more efficient and more effective.
4. Big picture, real world perspective
Great Business Coaches have great experience. They may have run their own businesses or worked in serious corporate roles. They understand what it is to lead a business and what pitfalls you may face. A Business Coach understands how to interpret financials in different ways to identify profitability opportunities – as well as finding areas where your business is leaking cash.
They can bring fresh perspective, examples of what they know works, and insights on everything from risk management and legal tactics to distribution channels, incentivising staff and handling promotion or demotion, networking tactics and working with relevant Industry Bodies. Their know-how should be a huge boost to your business success, and help you become a more savvy business owner.
5. Your Business Coach will work on you as well as your business
The ideal Business Coach will be truly excited about coaching YOU. They will be both trainer and mentor, and help you examine your beliefs, your personality, your habits and how these are limiting your business growth, and how these can be altered to increase your success – as well as identifying your personal talents.
They will encourage your creativity, listen to your ideas and give honest feedback, challenge your thinking, help you get perspective on how you operate, work with you to identify your personal goals – in both business and your personal life – and help you achieve these.
Regular contact gives you a point of accountability and helps hold you to agreed timeframes. A Business Coach will push you as well as supporting you.
The Benefit of working with a Business Coach
You will feel more confident, less stressed, have more time, waste less resources, enjoy more insights and have all the tools you need to increase your business success by working toward clear goals.
Your Business Coach will hold you accountable, while providing insight and expertise on the challenges you work on. You will have someone ‘behind you’ instead of feeling like you’re out front, alone, with no back up.
Your business will be more profitable and you will be investigating more opportunity. You will be less vulnerable to changing economic circumstances, and able to be more agile.
This study showed that businesses who employed a business coach saw an average return on their investment of 5.45 times the amount that they paid for the business coaching services, and 86% Eight-six percent of participants said they were “very satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with the coaching process.
What can you expect from a Business Coach?
Each coach has a personal style, and finding the best Business Coach for your personality and your business is important. That’s where we can help! However most Business Coaches will: