Professional
Business Coach
The Value of Hiring a Professional Business Coach
Many people place the value of hiring a Business Coach by something, we can all relate to, money. If I charge you $1,000.00 for a service that saves you $5,000.00 would that represent good value? What if it saved you $5,000.00 each year for the next 10 years? Is that good value? What if I charge you $20,000.00 for my services and save you $60,000.00 each year for the rest of your life? What if I charge you $50,000.00 but show you how to sell your business for $400,000.00 more than you thought possible? Would that be good value? The job of a Business Coach is to add value to what you want value added to.
Value is a perception held by every individual and it is not a finite amount. Value comes in many forms, not just dollars and cents, or pounds, shillings, and pence. It may come in the form of education. It may come in the form of stress relief. It may come in the form of business efficiency. There are many ways an individual can derive benefit from hiring a Professional Business coach. It is all based on the person’s individual value perceptions, needs and wants.
Value is what we all want, so the question you want to ask yourself when hiring a Business Coach is not what will they cost me, but rather how much value will they deliver to me?
How and Where Will I Benefit from Hiring a Professional Business Coach?
Is it financially, is it reducing stress levels that affect my health, is it giving me back precious time that I have lost due to my current methods of operating my business? The answer could be one or more of these things. The question is do you know how to identify what that value means to you? Do you have the skills to identify where the true value lies? You may be able to quantify the dollar amount of savings or earnings, but what about the non-financial benefits? How do you measure them?
Here is an example of a simple value structure that can occur between a Professional Business Coach and a client. We will call my client Sally for convenience sake. Sally wanted to acquire a small online business that she saw advertised. Sally has some small business skills and is more than capable of managing the proposed acquisition, but Sally knows from past experience that hiring me as a Business Coach meant she could get more value from this transaction. How? Because she understood that I can negotiate better than her.
I would negotiate with no emotional charge. In other words, I would be dispassionate about the negotiations because all I care about are fiscal results in terms of price paid and terms of settlement. This should lead to a better financial outcome for her. Sally also knew that I would ask different questions than she might because I have a more in depth understanding of business due to my experiences and education. Sally also knew that I would be representing her best interests and would protect her interests using my network of professionals where necessary.
The negotiations proceeded and a sale was concluded. Sally had hired me on a retainer and a performance fee. This meant that we agreed that value is a two-way street. The more value I delivered the more she valued my services. She was happy to pay for my services based on both of us getting the maximum value for each other that this deal represented.
In short, the dollar amount Sally paid for the business was less than the price she was happy to pay, after paying my fee! I saved her more than I cost her and more. But there is more. What other value did Sally get? Sally spent less than 10% of the time communicating with me than it would have taken her to negotiate this business by herself. That time she got to spend doing what she loves to do. How much is your precious time worth?
Sally also had a second opinion as to the viability of the business. As a professional business consultant, I was able to share with Sally some ideas on how to grow the business moving forward and what to investigate during the due diligence period prior to parting with her money to buy the business. I also produced the draft letter of offer adding clauses and conditions that she may not have added. This saved her costs when the documents went to her solicitor for preparation because issues that needed to be addressed had been addressed correctly. Sally also had less stress in this transaction because she did not have to deal directly with the vendor, I did it for her.
As you can see from Sally’s example. The benefits to her were not just financial. Even though we are trained to think in financial terms to measure success and costs. The non-financial benefits were possibly more valuable to her than the financial considerations. She saved more in the purchase price than my consultation cost her. However, the value equation we worked on meant she had a fuller understanding of why I could and would add value to her endeavours.
There should be no doubt in your mind that hiring a Professional Coach in a business environment should save you money is some form or another. The challenge for many is to see just where those savings are.
The only way I know how to do that effectively is for you to consult with us first. We may see things that you cannot see that will save or make you money. If we do not, you do not need to hire us. Not consulting with us to discover how and where we can add value may be costing you lots of money. Remember, ‘we don’t know what we don’t know.”
Here are a few other things that I may be able to help you with:
- A Coach may teach you new skills.
- A Coach may help protect you from making expensive mistakes.
- A Coach may help you make better business decisions.
- A Coach may help you stay focussed.
- A Coach may introduce you to new ways of thinking.
- A Coach should always add more value than they cost to hire.
Not hiring a business Coach may cost you more than hiring one.
There are a lot of maybes in this list. The question is may I help you?
To do so, you must help yourself first and accept my offer of help and understand that you are always in control, perhaps you just need a helping hand.