In spite of its title, this book could also be of value for anyone planning to go into private practice as a training consultant. It's a thorough introduction to marketing for training and development consultants. The fact that the experience drawn on, and examples given, are all from coaching does not, in my view, exclude it from a wider readership.
Hannah McNamara is a professional coach with a background in marketing. At some point in the not too distant past she chose to train as a coach, and then set up a private coaching practice. The book tells us how she adapted her previous expertise in marketing to help build her new career. It's written as a guidebook for anyone in a similar position to her, who trained as a coach and now wants to set up in business. Given the number of people entering the coaching business, the concept of niche marketing is important – important for getting to grips with the market, building the right clientele and for developing a business in a way that is fulfilling for the practitioner, in this case the coach. The book is written as a sequence of tips and hints and how to overcome the difficulties and prejudices people in the coaching world often have with marketing.
Chapter 1 is entitled “Getting your ducks in a row” and starts with the suggestion that coaches can use coaching techniques on themselves in order to discover how best to market themselves:
As a coach you know the client is a resourceful individual and that they already have the answers inside of them. Your job as a coach is to help them bring those answers to the surface (p. 12).
The challenge Hannah McNamara sets herself is to use a coaching style on the reader. She presents her advice as if her readers were working it out for themselves in her presence. She appeals to what they already know about themselves, and about their clients in a skilful way that works.
Chapter 1 provides the introduction to marketing, the 7Ps (People in marketing like words beginning with P). There are exercises to do, and diagrams to fill in.
Chapter 2 is “Choosing your niche”. The danger for a lot of coaches (and trainers and developers in general) is to send a wide range of possible clients a long list of all the things they can do, and hence appeal very broadly to no one. The trick is to work out what your preferred niche is, to select a number of keywords to use in your promotional literature or web site, and to pitch your marketing in such a way that a relatively small group of possible clients are more likely to respond positively.
Chapter 3 is “Positioning” – is about positioning yourself in the market, and comes with questions like “what is your offering?” which many of us may previously never have considered, but which nevertheless is important. It's not just about hour‐long coaching sessions, but could also include listening to your CD, reading your book, downloading materials from the internet. Throughout this chapter Hannah had me stretching my understanding of what might be possible – good coaching!
Chapter 4 is on Pricing (That's two out of 7Ps now revealed). This contains some useful advice on how to work out what to charge, and how to start creating a business plan.
Chapter 5 is “The Marketing Message”, and contains an interesting bit of NLP theory, how to put yourself into the mindset of possible clients, and what there is to learn from the marketing literature about how people respond to advertising
A lot of this is about how to care for potential clients once they have responded to your message.
Chapter 6 is about Networking, and the importance of personal contact as a route to establishing a clientele for a new coaching business. Chapter 7 is on Public Relations, how to get yourself into the press. Chapter 8 takes the idea of networking and public relations one stage further with advice on Public Speaking and how to get yourself invited as a presenter at those professional gatherings where good networking contacts can be made, and where potential clients may hear your message. Take plenty of business cards!
Chapter 9 is on Getting Started on the Internet, advice on how to build a web site that will feel right for the people you are trying to reach. There is also a section on how to ensure that your web site will be selected by search engines. If someone enters their preferred niche coaching term (e.g. relationship coaching), there are ways, apparently, to get your site nearer the top of the list. Again the value of Hannah's approach is that the reader has the opportunity to think through a wide range of possibilities.
Chapters 10 and 11 pick up on Other marketing techniques, and Asking for the Business. The most difficult thing for many people in the personal development business is asking for the money. There are some useful hints here about how to negotiate with clients, how to offer coaching packages, e.g. on a monthly basis, and how to deal with clients who want to move appointments. Don't allow them to cancel. That way you lose money.
The final two chapters are on Creating your Marketing Plan, and Making it Happen. These summarise the points established earlier in the book, and offer the reader the opportunity to firm up their ideas into definite, actionable plans.
In all, this is an easy, enjoyable read, with a good mix of insights, information and techniques to reflect on. It is well laid out with summaries in bullet points at the end of each chapter. There are also Jargon Busters – bits of text explaining marketing or internet terminology, that might otherwise be unfamiliar to coaches. My only regret is that Hannah limited herself to coaching examples, as there is plenty here that would be of interest to anyone in training and development who is tempted or planning to set out into private consultancy.
