Coaching helps businesses achieve goals

Every world champion has had a coach. Here's why the coaching industry is growing so fast and how it can make you a champion, too. I make a presentation and watch as the audience takes careful notes, nods in agreement with what I say, then rises to its feet with applause. But deep in my heart, I know that only five per cent of the people in the audience will actually take action based upon what they have learned.

These are bright people, motivated people, but the vast majority of them are just too busy or too overwhelmed by day-to-day business matters to implement the changes they know they must make. They have everything it takes to succeed except for one thing – follow-up. It's that lack of follow-up that has led to the explosive growth of the coaching industry. And "explosive" might be an understatement. Fortune magazine agrees: "The hottest thing in management today is the executive coach." Newsweek magazine chimes in with its take on coaching: "They're part therapist, part consultant – and they sure know how to succeed in business." The Harvard Business Review tells us, "The goal of coaching is the goal of good management: to make the most of an organisation's valuable resources." And The New York Times expands on this by saying, "...other companies offer coaching as a prerequisite... in the understanding that everyone has blind spots and can benefit from a detached observer." Industry Week obviously goes along: "The benefits of coaching appear to win over even the most cynical clients within just a few weeks." Executive Female is even more specific: "Coaching is having a dedicated mentor; it's getting knowledgeable support and encouragement and a new way of looking at things when you need it."

Imagine closing the door to your office for 30 minutes and having your own private success coach right there. Or perhaps the perfect time is on your cellular phone during that tedious commute to and from work. In fact you can call from any state in the country.

It is clear that these days business coaching has been booming. It succeeds because it works. Consider this quote from DA Benton in Secrets of A CEO Coach. "If high achievers such as Tiger Woods and Donald Trump have one [or more] for their jobs, why shouldn't you have one for yours? ...In today's competitive business market, having a personal coach is not a luxury, but a necessity."

To put my time and money where my mouth is, we're now offering coaching through guerrilla marketing. Your guerrilla marketing coach will help you create better, more effective goals and then support you to reach those goals in a timely manner. He will encourage and help you to stay on track by helping you understand roadblocks to change and creating a solid support structure for you to stay motivated and proactive.

He will help you maintain a sharp focus, by focusing upon your goals and helping you overcome your problems. The line at the bottom has "follow-up" written all over it. We've learned that guerrillas need follow-up and now we're offering it.

Success at marketing means you're part of a process and not merely engaging in an event. Have you ever attended an excellent training programme, perhaps a full day or weekend seminar? The speaker is great, the information is valuable and you take eight pads full notes. You come back to your business and you're lucky if you implement even one idea. Why?

Consider this analogy from the world of sports. Let's say you decide you want to become a tennis player. You take a tennis lesson. No matter how great that tennis lesson is, you do not become an overnight tennis champion. It takes a process to create a tennis champion, and it takes a process to create a profitable company.

Coaching is a process training experience designed to have a dramatic impact on your business.

When I write a book, I know it has only two parts: starting it and completing it. When you opened your business, you had the same two parts. Coaching exists to help you with that second part. Coaching exists to provide the objectivity and extra energy that champions possess.

If you're interested in learning more, just check out the explosive growth of the coaching industry as a whole, and if you're interested in participating, now you can do it as a guerrilla and gear up to be a champion yourself.

- The writer is the Father of Guerrilla Marketing and author of Guerrilla Marketing series of books (www.gmarketing.com)

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