The Problem with Best Practices - Why They Don't Work (Part I) September 2010

Capitalizing on Credibility - What's the Biggest Payoff? August 2010

The Myth of Client-Focus July 2010

Marketing Therapy - Just lie back and relax... June 2010

The Producer's Guide to Asking Questions May 2010

Questions - The Shortest Path from Prospect to Client April 2010

How to Build Your Credibility March 2010

Credibility's Impact on YOUR Bottom Line February 2010

How to Use Social Media in Your Business December 2009

Psychological Analysis of Your Marketing September 2009

How Contrarian Logic Makes Sales for You August 2009

Words that Sell - How to Use Psychology in Your Marketing and Selling July 2009

The Secrets of Marketing Psychology (Part I) June 2009

You've been replaced by a cartoon! May 2009

8 Ways to Distinguish Yourself in a Challenging Market (Part II) April 2009

8 Ways to Distinguish Yourself in a Challenging Market (Part I) March 2009

The Worst Mistake in Selling Financial Services January 2009

Fighting for Success! The “Special Forces” Approach December 2008

Yours - Free! November 2008

First-Impressions of Credibility - Part One October 2008

Article Index

This article was written in response to the many people who ask me about coaching. The situation is bleak: so many financial professionals look for coaching help, yet so many of the coaches are ill-equipped to help them.

Today we're talking about coaches, looking at how and why so many of them fail their clients. The partners in my firm have been studying coaches for about ten years. We've been looking at who they are, where they came from and what value they represent. We scour their biographies, websites and articles. I've even interviewed some of them on my online radio show. What we consistently find is that too many of them are people who found themselves out of work, decided that coaching would give them a new career and allow them to work from home. And, as for the value, we don't see very much there. Bottom line, most coaches operating today give the coaching industry a bad name.

Here's what it looks like (these are real people)

• Jim was a mediocre salesman with a mediocre book of business. Instead of improving his skills and building his book, he started coaching other sales people. What did he teach them to do? Make the same mistakes he had made. What else could he teach?
• Suzy was a marketing writer who took a self-development class. She thought that if she became a coach, it would do two things for her: 1) take the focus off her own life's mistakes, and 2) she would get to tell other people what to do. What value did she represent?
• Scott was a really good client-service representative. He spent his days on the phone, and was very effective with people. But, he tried to generalize that success into coaching. He took some classes from one of the online Coaching Universities and went into the coaching business. Because he didn't have a background in psychology or personal improvement, the best he could do was follow a scripted guideline and ultimately underserve his clients.
• Carol was a school counselor who got tired of the political bureaucracy. She thought she could translate her work with children into a career as a coach for professionals. She couldn't. Her main mode of communication was telling, not asking. Her main demeanor was authoritarian. As a result, she was ill-prepared to help adults.

What's missing in those scenarios? Options and flexibility. People who don't study behavioral psychology simply don't have the depth of knowledge necessary to 1) offer you options or 2) the flexibility to deal with different types of problems. People who tell instead of ask can only give you what's already in their minds. That's in-the-box thinking at its worst.

Here are a few common situations. You've been working with a coach for six month and your income has not gone up (but the coach's income has). Or, you just spent a fortune on a training program and it has failed to bring you the rewards you expected. Or, you're working with a coach and you've begun to think of him as a baby-sitter with a check list.

What's happening in those situations? The coaching is failing you. Most coaches drop the ball because they don't have the proper training or background. Their short-comings fall into one or more of the following areas:

1. They think inside the box. Your personal strengths and talents will never neatly fit into the model established by someone else. Your needs will never neatly fit into the model established for other people. Coaching must be customized for you.
2. They follow a set program and use a checklist to keep you on their schedule.
3. They can't teach you to improvise. The failure in that is that neither life nor business happens in an orderly fashion.
4. They are not trained to recognize the psychological patterns in your language and behavior. This means they can't see when you need change, and they can't determine your natural style. Without knowing those things, no coach can succeed for you.
5. They talk more than they listen. You will never gain the skills, knowledge or the results you want from a coach whose role is to tell you how things are.
6. They are not emotionally strong enough to be tough with you. You will never improve when you're working with someone who is not prepared to "hold your feet to the fire." Many bad coaches are afraid to upset you or not seem like your best friend.
7. They think in small pictures and fail to see the bigger perspective. This is a mental filter that is common inside corporations, but not in a coach. A coach who loves details will fail to see the bigger picture.
8. They come from a captive or corporate environment and know only one way to do business. We call that a sameness pattern. It's another mental filter.

How can you spot the wrong coach? Easy, ask questions. "What is the psychological basis for that…Have you ever done this before…What's your experience with this…How does this work with your other clients…How long have you been doing this…Can you send me copies of your published articles…How many books have you published…Where have you delivered keynotes or seminars…Have you been interviewed on radio or TV?"

Let's break out of this mind set and look at what a really good "performance coach" should be able to do for you:

1. Provide ideas, processes and inspiration for the achievement of the desired result.
2. Help you get better results with marketing as well as sales.
3. Build a system of marketing and/or selling that is based on how you naturally communicate.
4. Teach you how to read and connect with people.
5. Give you real-life situations in which to practice your new skills.
6. Help you integrate and expand your new skills.
7. Help you hire the right people, and gracefully fire the wrong ones.
8. Guarantee that you can flex, improvise and use the new skills on command, no matter what the situation.
9. Ask questions in your communication style, so you will come up with the answers for yourself.
10. Anticipate the "results dip". That's the common reduction in results that typically occurs when you first try to implement a new skill.
11. Give you a broader perspective.

Why Even Hire a Coach?

Now, let's start over and look at why you would want to hire a coach in the first place. There are two main reasons; first is performance improvement. In other words, income. When you hire the right coach, your income goes up. Second is avoidance, or problem reduction. The right coach will help you reduce or eliminate problems. Let's look at a common situation.

You go to a conference — let's say it's the annual MDRT meeting - and you attend an amazing session that promises to double your new business. You go home and simply cannot make the new skills work. What you're bumping into is normal fall off from training. Simply, training without coaching is nothing more than expensive entertainment. Even worse, research proves over and over that in a short time, more than 80% of the information from the training will be gone from your memory — unless it's supported by coaching.

Without Coaching, Your Training Value is Lost

Regardless of how good the classroom training is — most of the effectiveness is soon lost unless it is followed up with reinforcement and coaching.

According to a study conducted by the Xerox Corporation, 87 percent of the desired skills change was lost without follow-up coaching. The implication is staggering — no matter how good the classroom training is, the effectiveness is lost without coaching. So, coaching is vital to your improvement. But, it's also difficult to find the right coach.

Look at the facts. If you have no training or coaching, results are minimal at best, period. With training alone, you get better results initially, but they always drop off. When you get both training and coaching, you achieve maximum results. It's a no-brainer, but don't take only my word for it — look at what Neil Rackham said. Oh, by the way, if you're wondering who Neil is, he is a world-class researcher who wrote the foremost book on consultative selling for the technology industry:

"Without coaching, very few people can maintain a newly acquired skill."
— Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling

For Managers. If you're a manager, you might think of it like this. Your producers are race horses calmly chewing grass in the field. They're not worth much to you like that are they? You need to teach them how to go into the gate, shoot out of it, run under control on the turn, accelerate on the straight away, and finish strong. Do you think you show them those things one time and it's set for life? No. Training isn't a one-time event. It is an on-going process. The results you expect are to train the mechanics of the race so the horses will consistently run faster. The results you want are race winners. And, you know that unless the training is consistent, you'll have very expensive pasture horses — not winners.

Your producers can prove themselves to be the driving forces behind increased profitability, or they can become dead weight. It depends entirely on how effective you are at teaching them to be winners. And, teaching it requires two steps. First, you make sure they learn the new skills. Then, you hire the right coach who will make sure they learn to use those new skills in different situations. In today's financial industry, those new skills might easily be consultative selling skills, relationship-building skills, conflict-resolution skills.

In order to get sustainable results from your producers, you have to follow-up. You have to help team members integrate new skills and know-how so they can do it on their own under fire. That's how performance improves. What people should get the coaching? The top 20% because they are more interested in it and they can do more with it.

The perfect example. Let's say you want your producers to start using a consultative approach in their selling. That is going to require them to ask questions, rather than spew information. Most of the veteran producers I've met have a lot of trouble asking questions. You can teach them the questions, but that doesn't mean they'll ask them, or that they'll be able to ask insightful follow-up questions. As you probably know, with consultative selling, it's all about relevance, and the questions show your credibility and how you are relevant to the prospect. People don't learn those skills from reading a book. That's the job of a great coach.

For Producers. Learning and integrating new skills can be difficult and frustrating. Improvements typically are not immediate, and often decline while the new skills are being practiced. This lack of improvement causes many people to give up on the new skills and revert to their old ways. It is this exact point where the coaching becomes the life-saver (or career saver).

Actually, when performance dips, what's happening is that the new skills are working their way from conscious incompetence to unconscious competence. Specific coaching is the only way to make sure the skills complete that journey.

The Best Performers Trust Coaches

If you take a look at the world's top performers across all professions, you'll find a common denominator — the best ones trust coaches.

Sports stars like Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong both use coaches. Every Olympic athlete has a coach. One of my oldest friends is an acting coach. His clients are some of the most famous people in Hollywood and New York. The point is this — even when you've reached the top, the best way to stay there is to hire the right coach.

I think the most interesting reason we need coaches is that we simply can't see ourselves. We can't recognize our target market's preconceived notions of us or their immediate impressions of us. But a good coach can see those things. If you learned that your prospects thought you were weak, based on a limp handshake, wouldn't you want to know that? If you were unaware that you diverted your eyes when you contemplated a question, and your prospects thought that meant you were untruthful, wouldn't you want to know?

We also can't hear ourselves, so we don't know what message our voice, inflections or tonality are sending. If you learned that your prospects thought you were a wimp, based on your vocal inflections, wouldn't you want to know that? I host an interview show and do the production work on the recordings. Many of my guests stutter and stammer when they think out loud. The impression many of them give is that they're unsure of their answers or that they're being less than truthful. If you were one of them, wouldn't you want to know?

As business performers, we need another person to scrutinize our strengths with a critical eye and help us build on them. We need the assistance of a world-class communicator who can recognize our weaknesses and can then inform us about them in a way that encourages us, rather than deflates us. We need a trusted eye and ear outside ourselves to help us understand who we are today and who we can be tomorrow — then make sure we get there.

With that in mind, there is one thing that could derail and ruin your efforts and good intentions. That thing is the wrong coach.

Your Reward. Since I've made such bold statements about finding the right coach, your reward is a free coaching session. This way you can determine if my partners and I are the right coaches for you. Send me an email with "Free Coaching Session" in the subject. Be sure to include your name and contact information! One of my partners or I will set up a coaching session for you.
* This offer ends on February 1, 2007.

MICHAEL LOVAS is the author of ten books, three columns, and a thousand articles on Professional Credibility and the Psychology of Communication in the financial industry. He's the co-founder of AboutPeople and the founder of Credibility Marketing.

Michael speaks at conferences and seminars in Canada and the US. He is an inspiring trainer and coach who helps advisors improve their businesses. He holds three prestigious certifications: Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), Licensed Trainer of NLP; and Clinical Hypnotherapist. They make Michael an expert at helping financial professionals succeed at a higher level by building more meaningful business relationships.

AboutPeople Books:

1. (NEW) Questions Are the Answer! - A guide for using questions effectively in sales conversations
2. (NEW) Axis of Influence! - How credibility & likeability intersect to drive success!
3. (NEW) Words that Sell - The language of psychological marketing & selling
4. Face Values - How to read people and connect with them in less than 3 minutes!
5. The Boomer Report - The financial advisor's guide to understanding the boomer mind
6. Presentation Magic - How to gain a psychological advantage in your seminars and sales presentations
7. The 5 Levels of Rapport - How to create a meaningful connection with people who are important to you
8. Magnetic Connections - Consultative selling for financial professionals
9. IDENTITY - How to create and deliver the most important statement of your business life
10. Inside the Mind of the Senior Market
11. Beyond Wave Marketing - How to add credibility to your relationship marketing

Find AboutPeople books at: www.aboutpeople.com

Michael Lovas, C.Ht.
AboutPeople
(509) 465-5599
1503 E. Riverview Dr.
Colbert, WA 99005
www.aboutpeople.com

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