Coaching in essence means ‘bringing thinking forwards’ and, as many of us know, is a great way to develop new ideas and find solutions to thorny problems.
Level 5 is what the ILM (Institute of Leadership and Management) think of as being their undergraduate level of learning. Whether it is as rigorous as actually being an undergraduate is open to debate, but it does require people to write 3 meaty assignments, so it is comparable in style. The good news though is that it doesn’t require students to attend all-night drinking parties…
The ILM is Europe’s largest provider of distance qualifications and the L5 Certificate in Coaching and Mentoring in Organisations does seem to be the goto qualification for aspiring coaches.
I teach this certificated course (great fun) and Primary People Ltd (my business) has been an accredited training centre for over 5 years now.
Oh and the difference between coaching and mentoring is simple:
A coach asks questions and does not ever tell a client what to do. Clients are free to choose their own course of action.
A mentor may show their client a way to do something and share best practice. Think of an engineer showing an apprentice the way to set up a tool in a machine. The apprentice benefits from their colleague’s experience.
Now, you might be asking why mention all of this? Clearly there is a cheeky sales prospect embedded in this blog post and if you know someone who would like to earn money as a coach then feel free to point them in my direction. I work over Skype too, so location matters not.
Well, the point is to encourage us all to think about up-selling.
I work as a business coach and sometimes my clients love the environment so much they want to train as a coach too. My L5 course allows me to up-sell to them. Easy.
And I love sharing coaching tools and TA (Transactional Analysis) techniques. There is work enough for everyone, so no reason not to support people to achieve their ambition.
In business it can be useful to think about what, or how, we can up-sell to clients. Perhaps we can add something interesting to our existing product to create a greater sense of added value.
Perhaps we will offer half-price mugs of tea with every bacon roll sold? Although it appears we have lost some of the profit on the tea, we have gained more cash than we would have done if the customer had just bought the roll and gone.
Cash in our pocket is a lovely thing!
More is better!
Business can be very simple.
So, this week take a moment to look again at your products and services and think of 3 ways you could up-sell to an existing client.
And if you’ve been ‘affected’ (ho ho ho) by this post and need coaching then please feel free to get in touch …sometimes a cheeky up-sell works. Maybe I should offer half price chocolate muffins with each coaching session?!
Next week: Cakey Coaching!