If your direct sales business is still small, do you need a business coach? Wouldn't that just be another expense?
Pause for a moment and think of a great athlete. How do they become great? They work with a coach.
If you stop and analyze your goals and what you need to reach those goals, you'll see what value comes from hiring a business coach.
Unfortunately, most first-time small business owners or direct sellers don't have an operating manual sitting somewhere handy. Regardless, being a business of one isn't easy and comes with few resources. One of the fastest and best ways to reach the desired business outcomes is to hire a business coach to guide you to make the right decisions for your business from the start.
And while upline leaders are knowledgeable about your business, brand, and products, they may not be subject matter experts in the areas you specifically wish to grow.
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7 Reasons You Need a Business Coach
A Business Coach Sees the Big Picture
A business coach is going to help you visualize the future of your business. Sometimes we are so personally and emotionally “in the weeds” that it's hard to see the horizon of where we are or could be going and how to get there. Ideally a business coach has walked down this path and has experience from their own business or other clients, and can help you navigate the path forward.
Helps You Define Goals, Action Plan, and Timeline
A coach will help you put your scattered thoughts into goals, actions, timelines, and milestones. This includes both quantitative (“I want to grow my Facebook engagement by X% this quarter”) or qualitative (“I want to be on stage for recognition at my next National Convention”) goals. A coach will guide you to resources to track your plan, timeline, and progress.
Provides Experienced Guidance and Support
The business coach you choose should be someone with more business experience than you, specifically in the areas you wish to grow. In fact, they should have done the work and achieved the success you are seeking to learn. Not only that, but they should be able to help other clients replicate those results. Any coach should be able to articulate their successes and how that qualifies them to provide coaching guidance.
Asks the Hard Questions
A coach will ask the hard questions to help you address obstacles or blocks, and guide you back toward your goal, action plan, and timeline. What is holding you back – fear? Lack of resources? Lack of training? Past failures? A good business coach will help you identify these obstacles and build a plan to overcome them.
Remains Semi-Objective
We are all too emotionally close to our own businesses to be rationally objective. A business coach is attached more to your success than they are to your business. And because of that, they can look at your business to see the strengths and development opportunities and guide the discussion toward outcomes. A good coach will identify your blind spots and ask the hard questions to address what needs to happen. A good coach will also help pull you out of your own emotional mire to take action.
Has High Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence (EI) is the innate ability to read peoples' emotional states and non-verbal behaviors and to pick up cues that will provide insight into how a person is thinking. A coach who has high EI can use those cues to guide the discussion to outcomes that will best suit your emotional needs. This is the reason I prefer to do all my coaching in person or via video. I need to look you in the eye, laugh with you, and connect personally. This is how I can get in tune with you. Not in a “new-agey psychic medium” way, but in a “I want to understand how you think, how you react, how you respond, and what makes you tick” kind of way.
Holds You Accountable to Outcomes
As a small business owner, you can't always control when you get a new idea. Believe me, I've tried. A good business coach will help you evaluate your idea and how it fits into your overall goals and plan so that it doesn't completely derail your progress while you go chasing it.
And what if you're still small? Aren't business coaches for larger businesses?
Small businesses often need a business coach even more than the larger businesses do precisely because they are small. They are swimming with bigger fish, hoping to catch the eye of their clients, and it is all upstream. A business coach can get a small business started off right, and get a new business growing faster.
And as far as the expense goes, a business coach is like any other coach…if they are good at what they do and understand your goals and strategy, then they will help you save and make money in other areas of your business. An investment in a coach should yield a return far greater than your investment.
Win-win.
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