By "time lag" I mean: you need to determine the time lag between when a potential client first contacts you for more information and when they call you to schedule an appointment; and you need to determine the time lag between when you have your first appointment with a client and when their payment appears in your bank account.

Now, we all have different situations but for me it was two weeks from first contact to first appointment and another two weeks from first appointment to payment. (In my circumstance, I offered an initial consultation for free – the first appointment – and then required up-front payment for a set of future appointments).

What’s the value of knowing these time lags? There are a couple benefits:

First, I can schedule my time. I may not know the exact number of people who will be scheduling an appointment, but I can estimate it based on the number of people contacting me for more information. Chances are, if that "first contact" number doubles, then the first appointment number may double, too… and it fairly consistently happened two weeks down the road which would allow me to work my schedule appropriately.

Second, I know when I’m getting paid! Coaches may love what they do but they still need to be paid. And if someone contacted me for more information, I knew that if they became a client, I’d see the money in about a month.

Third, I can "ramp up" and "ramp down" my marketing based on what I know my schedule will be like two weeks from now.

Of course it’s not a perfect system. Sometimes a few more or a few less people will contact me for more information which will have a trickle-down effect two weeks later for appointments. And sometimes those people take slightly longer or slightly shorter to schedule. And sometimes they take slightly longer or slightly shorter to pay. But we’re talking averages and generalities here and that’s all you need.

Now, I’ve been using the two weeks from first contact to first appointment and two weeks from first appointment to first payment as my time lag numbers. You might have a different business model (i.e. you need to measure the time lag in a slightly different way) and/or a different time period (i.e. it may not be two weeks for you).

When you know these numbers, your coaching practice will thrive!

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

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To do this, we need to move past the surface issues and get to the real root causes of the issues. Here are some questions to help you do that. (Note, since there are many different kinds of coaches, we’ve tried to include fairly generic questions that can be switched from one coaching topic to another, but not all of these questions will be easily "transferable" and you might need to do some customization to make them work.

Question 1: "Tell me about the result that occurs when you perform that activity… and tell me about how you would prefer it to be."

This question is good for a number of different coaching topics and industries. This question helps to explore the gap between intention and result. Your job, then, is to identify the elements in the gap and help your client to solve them. An example of use might be when someone asks you to help them improve their sales because they can’t convert their prospects.

Question 2: "Talk me through a typical process with particular emphasis on what you’re thinking about during that time."

This question might seem a little more like a psychologist’s question but the purpose here is to help you identify incorrect thinking (or distraction or procrastination) during various activities. You might need to work with the person to actually perform the activity. An example of use might be someone who comes to you because they have procrastination issues or are pulled in many different directions.

Question 3: (Part A) "In a perfect world, what would your business look like?" (Part b) "How would this activity impact it?"

The "part A" of this question prompts your client to think revisit their long term vision for the company (or begin to articulate it if they have not done so in a while). The "part B" of this question is much more specific to the project or situation you are coaching them through. It ties your client’s current coached activity to their long-term vision (or highlights if there is not a fit).

Question 4: "Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment and describe how they perceive this aspect of your business."

This question, which is for business-related coaches, obviously, prompts a client to get out of their own narrow mindset that has probably shaped their thinking for too long and to start thinking about their customers. This is also a good question to ask about vendors and employees, too, if that is the area you are coaching them on.

Question 5: "If you were to suddenly receive unlimited funds and time but could ONLY apply it to this situation, what would you do?"

This question helps you to prompt your clients to think about where they should be really investing their resources in a given situation. For example, business owners on a budget might not always invest in the right things or the best things because they focus on the cheapest option. This question helps to draw out what they feel the better investment is.

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"… I used to be a procrastinator. I admit it. As someone who is connected to the web all day long, it was easy to surf. I had friends who sent me links to funny news stories, hilarious videos, humorous pictures, etc. And I shared back with plenty of things. I had a list of blogs that I read faithfully every day. I browsed social networking sites incessantly. If Twitter was around then (this was a couple of years ago now) I would have been on it constantly, too. Email was always open in front of me. And I had bookmarked a number of magazines whose online editions I read diligently.

In short, I would end a busy day with the realization that I had done very little. My busy day was just a façade. It was busy, but not with anything truly productive. I had little to show for each day. I still earned pretty good money and I did run a successful practice, so it was hard to notice.

But slowly, that procrastination eroded my effectiveness. It’s hard to believe now but I slowly and imperceptibly marketed less; I slowly lost clients; I slowly started to erode my business. It never got to the point where I was in dire straits, but in retrospect, my practice diminished.

I’d like to point to a time when I woke up and said "enough is enough" but it didn’t happen overnight. It was over the course of a few months when I realized that I had let things go and I needed to get back on track. I can’t point to a single catalyst but I can point to a few months in which I came back from the brink.

That was about 3 years ago. Since then, I’ve made dramatic changes: I limit my time on sites like Facebook and Twitter. I culled my blog reading to just a few minutes a day and only AFTER I’ve accomplished a pre-set list of tasks. I picked 3 favorite magazines and I read them when I’m not at work. While those were helpful strategies, the most effective thing I did was to make a covenant with myself that I would not become distracted during my work hours.

And it worked. I haven’t been this productive in a long, long time. It’s a good feeling to be focused again.

It seems to me to be a lot like a garden I once kept. It was a beautiful flower garden at the side of my house. But then I went away on vacation and when I returned I had a family emergency that took my attention away for a couple of weeks. When I finally returned to my garden it was a bed of weeds and it took a long time to work through those weeds and take control of the garden again."

Contemporary VA

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Moments later, the individual who was outside of the store walked in, pointed a gun at my friend and demanded the money in the cash register. Not interested in letting things get worse, he handed the money over and the thief ran away.

He says: "I can’t tell you what was wrong in the situation but I knew something was wrong. It was my instincts telling me from clues that were not visible. I trusted my instincts to a point and locked the staff entrance, and I often wonder what more I could have done to follow my instincts further. Obviously, locking the front door or calling the police was out of the question because there was no evidence to suggest that I was in danger. And yet, my instincts knew it."

Fast forward nearly two decades later: He is a business coach who helps small businesses and start-ups. And this time, he has learned a lesson from his instincts.

He says: "I follow my instincts all the time. If something’s not right, I know it and I obey what my gut tells me".

He goes on to tell other (thankfully less dramatic) stories in which he trusted his instincts: "I have plenty of colleagues who give me advice about how to run my business. While I appreciate that they care, and I do sometimes take their advice, I always run it through the filter of my instincts and ask myself, ‘does this feel right?’. One colleague keeps recommending that I offer a newsletter. It might be good for business, and it might even be good for my business, but my instincts are telling me that I’m not ready to do it yet. I have it on a backburner and I’m thinking about it, but it’s not the right time."

And, you may recall that we recently wrote about firing customers and strongly recommended that you follow your instincts about which customers to keep and which ones to let go.

But this has an impact for your clients, too. If you’re a coach and you’re working a client who seems strongly compelled to do something or not to do something, explore why they feel that way and ask yourself: Are they following habits or trends or pressure that are prompting them (in which case, you might have to work with them to resolve the situation) or are they following their instincts (in which case, you might have to work with them to obey their gut).

Unfortunately, clearly identifying the difference is NOT easy. In fact, one of the only ways that you’ll be able to draw out from your clients whether or not it’s their instincts that they are hearing is to be like eccentric doctor in the TV show House (except maybe less cantankerous). Each episode, Dr. House is given a challenging medical dilemma and he spends the entire episode eliminating the possibilities until he is left with the one and only problem that it could be.

In a similar way, you’ll want to talk to your clients and try to narrow down if they are listening to outside peer pressure or following old habits or responding to market trends… or, if they are in fact following their instincts.

Contemporary VA

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When I say that clients cost you money, I’m referring to how much time, effort, and money you had to put in to get them into that seat. Take a look at your marketing and your networking and your sales activities and figure out your overall costs and divide that by the number of customers you have. That is what it is costing you to put a client in the seat across from you. (Okay, it’s just a rough estimate and some MBA somewhere in the world will point out that there are other considerations as well, but let’s just stick with this number as a rough guideline).

Let’s use some really approximate numbers to give you an example of what we’re talking about. [LOUD AND CLEAR DISCLAIMER: Of course I know the following numbers don't represent real prices or rates, they're just an example to show you how I've calculated the cost per client].

Let’s say that you advertise in the phonebook for $1000/year and you advertise in a newspaper for $6000/year and you spend 48 hours of billable time (at $100/hour) in networking events every year. So: $1000 + $6000 + $4800 = $11800. Now, if you have 10 clients because of that effort, it cost you ($11800 divided by 10) $1180 per client to attract them to your business and turn them into clients.

So, if a coach wants to get 2 more clients, they could expect to pay an additional $2360 ($1180 x 2). But you don’t run a charity, you run a business, so profitability is a consideration. To that end, you need to think about ways of getting more clients into the chair across from you without spending that amount.

Here are some ideas:

• Revisit your marketing expenses. Is that phonebook ad really working for you? Do you think it would impact your business by getting a smaller ad?
• Ask your clients how they heard of you. What they tell you will give you a hint as to what marketing works for you and what doesn’t. (Note: they may have heard about you in several different ways and only mention one, so don’t act rashly. Ask everyone.)
• Spend more on targeted marketing. Yes, spending more seems to run counter to the above tip but the right message to the right market in the right media will cost more but deliver more customers.
• Ask for referrals. Referrals are an amazing way to generate more business because they cost nothing but a moment of your time to ask. Really really successful and profitable coaches who never need to advertise get their business this way. The more you ask for referrals, the less it will cost you per client.
   

Contemporary VA

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