Andy Murray is a Champion and elite professional sportsman, and as such is a rare individual. It is very few people who can make it to the pinnacle of a sport, be ranked among the best in the world and win multiple tournaments. And his achievement is more remarkable still given that he was able to achieve all of this on his own, without support from friends and family, without investment in him as an individual to give him opportunities, without any external advice or coaching.….
If you’ve read the above thinking “you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about” then you’d be right. Of course, Andy Murray has had a huge amount of support along his journey to become the successful tennis player he is today. Parents, his partner, friends, teachers have all made sacrifices to support him and all invested huge amounts in him as part of his journey to success, and of course, he has been helped by plenty of coaches along the way too…
Now, if you’ve got to this point and are thinking “ah, now I know where you’re going with this” and are about to switch off, bare with us, because as we look forward this year, with it’s challenges, it’s triumphs, it’s disasters and all the ups and downs along the way, we wanted to take the opportunity to explain the value that coaching can bring, and how it can help transform your business this year.
You see – elite sports people recognise the value of coaching. The difference between being a top ranked player and a top ten, twenty or even top one hundred player is often a matter of millimetres or milliseconds. Sports people employ coaches to help give them that edge, an outside pair of eyes that can help them identify the area they need to improve, the area of weakness that is letting them down, and can give them the tools, exercises and knowledge to improve on those areas.
Coaches can also hold them to account. How easy is it to revert to what we are comfortable with, to play to our strengths and procrastinate over improving on our weaknesses when we don’t have to answer to anyone.
Usain Bolt said about the importance of his coach Glen Mills
“He has always made the right decisions for me. He is a guiding light in my career and he has shown me the way to improve myself both as a person and as an athlete,”
When it comes to coaching, there are a lot of parallels between sport and business. Very few businesses are totally unique. Very few provide something that no one else does. Therefore businesses operate in a competitive market and business owners need to find the edge that will make them succeed over their competitors. However, where as in the world of elite sport the majority of sportsmen and women have coaches, it is only a small minority of business owners that do.
You might be thinking the analogies are all well and good but what are the tangible benefits, how would you quantify the value of coaching, what impact will it make on my bottom line?
In all honesty, it is hard to know before engaging in some detail with any business exactly what we will add to the businesses profitability, but here are some ideas as to where the value may come from:
How much extra profit do you have when we help you to:
- Identify the niche market where the profit margins are highest
- Improve the level of enquiries
- Improve customer retention by a year?
- Improve the conversion rate of enquiries into spending customers?
- Reduce overheads
- Improve productivity (your own and your teams)
- Improve how much your customers spend?
- Improve the frequency your customers do business with you?
- Improve our margins?
- Position your good clients to introduce you to other people you can serve?
- Understand how profitable our clients are, stop working with the unprofitable ones and focus on the most profitable ones?
There are good processes we can go through to help you achieve all of these things and more, however this only covers a third of the benefit of engaging with a coach.
Another third of the benefit is helping to draw out your potential, develop you as a leader and business practitioner. Your performance has a significant impact on the success or failure of your business. So you need to raise your game but how do you do that when it’s so often frustrating, overwhelming and challenging dealing with the multiple demands. As a leader in a large organisation you would receive development and coaching in the areas in your role needed for you to succeed. Yet as leaders of our own business so often this is the last priority and we are having to work against our strengths in areas we have limited experience. We need to take ownership of this and find ways to develop ourselves, or get some support to help us do so if we are to perform at our best and get the results we want in our business and life.
The final third is accountability- making sure all of the great plans you’ve committed to are put into action and completed.
So as you progress through this year, if you need help with raising your performance, setting goals, creating plans and sticking to them to get the results you want then why not touch base. We’d be delighted to offer you a free 1/2hr coaching session to see if you think we could help you take your business to new heights in this year. Contact info@engineeringbusinessgrowth.com or call 0203 1891287 to schedule your session.
