Questions & Answers – all you need to know.
You probably have heard, or read, perhaps even had your own experience. I wish to provide you with insights, tools, and paths you could scout to improve within your company. I especially love to accelerate and help businesses achieve the top of their game. I believe everyone can achieve that. And we often use the help of suppliers and consultants to reach those goals.
I don’t mean to say anything new, my goal is to simply simplify, and enable you to choose the right path. What do you, or what does your business, really need?
What would be most effective for your business and/or the CEO? What’s right for you?
So I could help you make a decision, we’ll kick off learning a few definitions.You’re probably familiar with these definitions, but I’d like to point them out and transform it into something easy, doable and simple. Replacing theory with action. What is the next step?
Practice – I think practice comes in two forms. It first means to optimize one’s performance, even when they’re given with very challenging situations. Secondly, it means improving your results by reaching your full potential. One can only guarantee improvement. No one can guarantee results nor predict them.
Let me explain: as you know, practice in the sports world is what differentiates between good athletes and champions. Many athletes have skills and a good set of capabilities. But the champs are the ones that dive into a competition with confidence, keep calm, no matter what comes their way, noisy or quiet. They can cope with pain. The athlete would be able to soak all they’ve learned and perform at their very best, even under immense pressure or at fault. To make this possible in the middle of a competition, the athlete has to practice a lot, they must confront, be determined, and step out of their “comfort zone”. You cannot reach your full potential, or make any breakthroughs within your comfort zone. If you could, well, everybody would do that.
So, what’s the news?
The reason most people don’t stick to practice is since it means stepping out of their comfort zone. Motivation often drops when you don’t see results on the horizon, and you feel you reached a bar you can’t break. To overcome mental blocks you need to strongly believe in yourself and have confidence in your abilities.
What is the role of the coach?
A good coach acknowledges two main things:
1. Mentally – they would know to inspire, arouse energy, when to push and when to let go.
2. Professionally – they would know to train the trainee on how to practice, identify mistakes, including fixing them.
So, what is “Business Training”, then?
Business Training is the same thing, but it addresses both the business and the business owner or manager.
What should one mind in a business?
We have to separate between a business analysis (SWOT analysis – strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), and a business model analysis (Planning, strategy, and more). We will discuss consulting around strategy later on.
The second thing is, seeing business managers as individuals.
What do I need a coach for?
You can find everything online!
Well, frankly, there’s TOO MUCH information online. You can’t know what’s right or wrong since there’s too much content. When I say ”right” I’m referring to YOUR business, your personal situation, and, of course, your vision and goals.
Secondly, everything goes by theory. I bet you wouldn’t go to a dentist who only read books and didn’t have any actual practice.
A good coach would know to identify which tools and paths are right for the business and the trainee, based on their strength.
The more tools you have, the more knowledge you have to make yourself flexible as a coach.
Having a wide toolset is essential, but the most important thing is to understand how to guide the trainee. Simplify. Adjust the learning process to every trainee. I believe the ability to adjust and guide is an act of art. There’s a good chance that an experienced coach would be able to identify traps and situations since they have been in similar situations before. We might choose a beginner, who could offer other advantages, still, however, it’s essential that they would have an extensive experience in business.
Simply put, you don’t let a just graduated Doctor teach other new Doctors.
To summarize, a good coach would know to take complex information and simplify it, so it’s easy to implement. As soon as the trainee feels it’s simple and easy, the sense of ability will increase. The difference between an OK coach to an extraordinary one is the coach’s ability to boost their trainees’ confidence and faith, even when it seems like a mission impossible.
Hint: the extraordinary coach would know how to build a simple and easy work plan with the trainee.
How do you choose a coach for Business Training?
Most would look for a professional coach.
Who is the professional Business Training coach?
Professionalism: The ability to repeat success. The coach’s knowledge and toolkit should increase the chance for its trainees to succeed. Therefore, first things first, the coach should have a wide knowledge around business. Marketing, sales, management, and more.
Skill-based Professionalism – a coach’s ability to “Deliver” on the basis of standards and methods. All the coach’s capabilities go into their Action-based Professionalism assets – planning, providing feedback, and implementation of the trainee.
Skill-based Professionalism demonstrates the coach’s ability to identify the trainee’s needs. The ability to listen, cater, and above all – constantly provide self-feedback, acknowledge mistakes and remediate them. A good coach would know to put the ego aside and do its best to improve the trainee’s results.
The top coaches secret sauce
Most of the best coaches have miles of experience. Many know how to direct and guide their trainees. A good coach knows how to make their trainees act, and work on their attitude. Build their confidence and sharpen their drive for success. Mentally, the coach has to set an example, as well as drive motivation.
The combination of the two would build up a super-coach.
Many coaches are great on the professionalism aspect, but not as much on the mental aspect, or vice versa. Going to two coaches isn’t “bad” for you, as long as they’re synced. However, an optimal practice would probably be to get the tools of both of these approaches, as they support each other.
If so, who is the Mentor?
In my opinion, Mentoring isn’t something you learn, it’s something you must earn. A mentor is one that has achieved great successes and earned their social proof. Meaning, the mentor has to be a great business trainer, based on all stated above, plus the fact that within their industry there’s already a consensus that they’re someone worth listening to, and they have already helped so many people be successful. Therefore, knowing how to Mentor is often a matter of experience and proven previous successes. To summarize – a matter of success of trainees and being recognized in their field.
Is a consultant enough?
The consultant’s job is to enrich and open up the options.
I believe that anyone needs a coach, a mentor, or a consultant. It’s called “the knowledge circle”, what we know, and what we think we still have to learn. To get different results you have to do something differently.
The job description of whoever is going to guide us includes to get us out of our comfort zone, challenge us, enrich us. In order to reach different results, you need to do something different. Different could be in quantity, quality, or even strategy.
Should we run more marketing campaigns?
Perhaps it’s our sales calls that need a boost? Should it be a more assertive, or perhaps softer approach to objections?
The direction, in general, is – our business strategy.
Who is a good consultant?
Most of the time the good consultant is an educated person, one that could look straight into the data. They would probably have a high IQ.
By the way, a strong IQ reflects strong problem-solving capabilities. The more intelligent you are, the more you could cope with problems and simplify complex issues. If you ask me, I believe that it’s beyond genetics, and every person can potentially improve their IQ.
The consultant can come up with possible alternatives, to a given situation, be it personal, financial, or business-related.
The risk – consulting is easy. Everyone can consult you to take new directions. However, one bad advice could be destructive. If you’re consulting without understanding the risks, or without getting the full picture, or evaluate something without taking responsibility, it could lead to bankruptcy.
Every advice should be heavily controlled in practice, identify faults, and fix them.
This is why we would want a consultant that has some social proof. Meaning, one that has plenty of business successes in their portfolio, and would also be willing to commit to be present throughout the process.
So why is it important to practice through the implementation?
In the moment of truth, something goes wrong in the implementation stage, since implementation requires stepping out of our comfort zone, and a lot of self-discipline. Many
break their own vows to themselves due to lack of confidence, insufficient results, and the need to stay within the comfort zone space.
Everyone knows that sports and healthy nutrition are important but so many fail to keep going, and drop out just because of those reasons. A good trainee knows how to take the advice as is, boost its confidence, and move forward towards action.
So what is it then – a strategy or a marketing plan?
Choosing a strategy is selecting one of many strategies, all are looking great when it’s written on a piece of paper. Every strategy has pros and cons, and they cannot work simultaneously.
You can sell a product that costs $100 and $1000 at the same time. How do you decide what’s right? How do you price? Should you add a service or should you turn in a different direction?
Making a decision is forever a challenge. When you’re debating between two good things the risk is obviously low, and the decision should be quick. When you’re debating between good or bad, there’s no dilemma.
Choosing a strategy may come with a risk, since every direction has pros and cons.
For example:
If you’re targeting a niche, there’s a good chance you could position yourself as a leading expert, since the audience isn’t that big. But on the other hand, trying to reach a huge audience is risky since you’re one out of many, but there’s still a chance to succeed since there’s high demand.
Whoever is going to walk you through would need to map the advantages, risks, plan, and adjust to your vision, your advantages, and simplify implementation.
Looking into the business options available requires education, focus, and pungency, as well as analysis capabilities to finally build a suitable plan. We would want here proved abilities and tracked implementation.
Should I change my business strategy or marketing strategy?
The decision with regard to any business or marketing-related strategy should only be made after a comprehensive analysis of the business, its resources, and overall employee evaluation, management included. A good marketing advice is dependent on the business current state and the team associated with it, anything else might end up badly.
If the strategy conflicts with the business’ or the owner’s vision and values, implementation wouldn’t work.
There’s a high significance to the business values. One should realize, what does the business owner wants to achieve? What are the motives? What’s more important?
The “What” question.
A vision is how we imagine our business and our lives in our minds.
It’s the motive that gets people and managers to overcome challenges.
It’s a lifestyle, and not necessarily the result we’re chasing for.
For example, I have made it a mission to start a business that aspires to excellence, and encourages ideas such as reaching your full potential, building collaborations, and achieving freedom.
I do that through helping businesses, companies, and startups, as well as in different volunteering opportunities.
I work in every single one of the channels stated above, and I have many collaborations. My success is not dependent on getting to all of those. In my opinion, every business owner a CEO, or a company I have helped to improve, means fulfilling my vision. To fulfill that vision I never stop learning, searching for advice, ask for feedback, and more.
Setting goals, planning, executing, and fixing – every action I do is measured in light of that vision.
Making this a lifestyle means I will never stop, and the more I upgrade myself, the more I get to help others and fulfill my vision.
Stating your vision is not trivial. It’s a deep and critical process for every person and every business. It’s our core, our source of energy, that would push us forward.
To conclude, what should I choose?
Finding one that could sync all the parts above is rare. And if you’re unsure what is more important to you, then, it doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you’re looking into one layer at a time. It is imperative that you choose someone you can connect to and have a personal bond with, someone you can trust, someone that could own up to mistakes, and has social proof, knowledge, or the right experience.
Businesses of many years would probably get guidance in all the above aspects.
Major breakthroughs would only result from combining everything all together.
To know what’s right and what one should do, the first question one should ask isn’t “Do I want a consultant/coach”, etc?
Here are some questions you should ask yourselves:
What is the current state of my business?
What are my advantages?
What are my disadvantages?
Do I know what stalls my business growth?
Do I know how to solve it?
Do I trust myself? How self-disciplined am I? Am I able to solve it by myself?
What do I want to achieve?
What is my vision? If there is one, it’s critical.
Do I have a work plan and a marketing plan, and how well do those plans serve me?
And then,
If you had to rate between 1 to 5 (1-don’t exist, 5-ideal) your candidate’s abilities: business experience, communication (chemistry, personal bond), excitement, personal example (WALK THE TALK), pungence, focus, winner approach (would never give up), intelligence, emotional intelligence, general knowledge, especially in the business (what do they know about it?).
And, as always, a simple conversation about all the above questions would probably give you a strong sense of how to move forward.
מוזמנים לקרוא עוד על ייעוץ עסקי אני כאן לכל שאלה, ניר מקובסקי – ליווי עסקי