Define your ideal and nightmare clients

Not every client is for every executive coach, and vice versa. It is important to overcome any illusions you may have about the clients you say you want compared to the client that are the best fit for you.

For instance, I’ve learned over time who my best client is. Typically I work best, and get the best results for, clients with these characteristics:

- They are really smart and highly educated.

- They have some sort of scholarly or exclusive expertise.

- They are building an organization or commercializing a product and lack management skills or education.

- They are thoughtful, sincere, and open to advice and collaboration.

I always thought I’d be coaching CEOs from top technology companies, but it didn’t work out that way. These people weren’t especially open to coaching in general, and I didn’t have much success building credibility with them.

But it doesn’t matter, as I have a wonderful practice serving university administrators and professors, highly-educated professionals, executive directors of non-profits and foundations, and entrepreneurs leading emerging growth companies.

Who are your ideal clients? Questions to answer include:

- What industry are they in?

- What values do they share?

- What issues do they face?

- What is their leadership style?

- How much revenue will they generate for you in one year’s time, and over a lifetime of service?

Also, think about your nightmare client. The attributes of my nightmare client include:

- They are defensive and generally uncoachable.

- They often cancel or reschedule meetings.

- They are not responsive.

- They constantly question their investment in executive coaching.

- They have questionable ethics.

Now that I know who I enjoy serving (and who likes working with me), I’m much more satisfied in my practice, and also spend less time and money on business development. My ideal clients tend to know each other, and refer business my way — saving me lots of time and effort.

How about you?

New information on what makes a good boss

As executive coaches, we are frequently working with executives who want to improve the response they get from employees. A key question to ask them, per the title of an old management book, i: “Would you work for you?”

David Sirota and two co-authors have a new book out called “The Enthusiastic Employee” that looks through employees’ eyes to determine what makes a good or bad boss.

You can read an interview with him with CNN/Money Magazine by clicking here.

In a nutshell, they have found that good bosses focus on bringing 3 attributes to the workplace:

- Treating people fairly.

- Achievement, and creating a sense of pride in the organization and people’s place in it.

- Comraderie, meaning that working relationships are good and people have a sense of belonging.

Good bosses also help to clear obstacles out of the way for employees so that they can do their job. They don’t micromanage.

Check in with your clients, and with their direct reports, and find out if they are good bosses or not.

A short but wonderful example of how to value price

I am partners with an executive coach who is a master of pricing based on value. He never charges by the hour.

Recently he worked with a serial entrepreneur to raise over $3 million for a venture. He spent perhaps 5 hours of his time with the entrepreneur and his client acknowledges that he could never have raised the money without him.

If my colleague behaved like most executive coaches and consultants, he might have charged $200 per hour, or $1,000 for his services.

But that makes no sense. Why would anyone take only $1,000 for providing $3 million in value?

Who cares how long it takes to get results? In fact, if you can get results in LESS time, isn’t that even more valuable?

My colleague charges based on value, and will earn at least six figures for his five hours of time for this engagement.

If someone asks him whether he deserves an hourly rate into the tens of thousands he will reply, “If you want, I can spend as much time with you as you need. Heck, I’m happy to sit in your office all day taking up your time. But don’t you have better things to do than hang around with me? Isn’t it more valuable that I can work with you to get the results you want — and take as little of your time as possible?”

You should have a clear sense of the specific value you provide your clients. That value should directly relate to increasing cash flow in and decreasing cash flow out (e.g. increase sales, decrease costs, raise capital, increase the overall enterprise value). Even if you offer a “softer” service — like coaching people on public speaking — you should still be able to tie your work to specific, measurable, top or bottom line results.

In my case, I work with a prospective client to set a specific monetary target. Or, if we can’t do that, I ask the client to place a value on the results he or she wants to achieve. Then I charge 10% of that value.

Hopefully you are value pricing. Otherwise, you are trading your time for dollars and will never earn what you deserve.

(And of course this is one skill that Center for Executive Coaching members/students practice over and over, as it takes some reinforcing).

The time and place for executive coaching

There are quite a few times when executive coaching is NOT an appropriate intervention and can actually do damage. This may seem like a strange topic for a blog about executive coaching, but executive coaches need to be clear about these out-of-bounds times. That way, we can feel more confident during the truly appropriate times for coaching.

Executive coaching works only when someone is “coachable,” and specifically only when they are coachable by you.

People are coachable when they have explicitly asked for your advice, or asked for you to work with them to solve a problem.

Here are four examples, from my own past mistakes, of times when you should not “do” executive coaching:

1. Do not provide free executive coaching, whether during the business development cycle or any other time. Executive coaching is valuable. Don’t give it away for free. The business development cycle is a time to understand your prospect’s situation and assess whether the two of you can benefit by working together. You might explicitly provide a brief example of the types of conversations and interventions you will have during an executive coaching relationship. But don’t start solving the person’s problem before you are being paid. If you do, your prospect won’t do what’s necessary to make improvements, as he or she has nothing at stake. Also, you won’t get hired as much, because you give your services away for free.

2. If a client becomes “uncoachable,” stop the process until he or she becomes coachable again. In executive coaching, you are always making sure that your client is open to your coaching process. From time to time, clients become uncoachable. They may be tired, resisting, or perhaps your relationship is not working out. At these times, stop being a coach and go back to square one. Determine if the client is still committed to solving their problem, and see if you can regain permission to coach them. Don’t coach them — or you will only make things worse.

3. If you are in a dispute with somebody, do not start coaching him or her. I am currently in a dispute with a magazine publisher whom I believe misled me and has also provided unprofessional service. It is my instinct to “coach” him about how he needs to be a more effective communicator and to demonstrate more integrity. But this approach will not get my money back, and will only inflame this person more. He has not asked for advice, and certainly will not take it from me in this situation. Instead, I should be asserting with him, negotiating a settlement, and letting him know that he has crossed a legitimate boundary with his way of doing business. Acting like a coach in this situation — while perhaps my “default setting” — will only make things worse.

4. Do not become a coach to your spouse. Ever. My wife runs a business (with her best friend) called Moms on Edge. Because I operate a successful executive coaching practice and institute, I of course feel entitled to provide unsolicited coaching to my wife about how she can be a more effective entrepreneur. This is a mistake, and yet I still manage to blurt out advice or attempt to begin a coaching conversation. (What husband doesn’t fall into this trap from time to time?) When I do make this mistake, my wife lets me know in no uncertain terms that she is not my client, but my wife. Now, she is very open to advice about her business, and sometimes even asks me for my thoughts. But when she is not open to my thoughts, I need to keep quiet. And even then…

Of course, you never provide executive coaching to people who need deeper interventions, like therapy. From time to time, I meet an executive that I can’t help with my expertise. They seem at, or on the verge of, a serious mental health crisis. At those times, the only thing to do is to refer the client to medical attention, and be sure that they get the help they really need.

Can you provide other experiences or examples when you should not go into “executive coaching mode”?

Welcome to the blog for practicing executive coaches

The Center for Executive Coaching is delighted to be launching a blog dedicated to the practicing executive coach.

Our intent is to post insightful information to help executive coaches — whether students of our program or not — succeed. Topics will include business development, the process of executive coaching, challenging client situations, and the content executive coaches need to know.

At any time, please post your questions and comments. That way, we can create a community of executive coaches working together to move the field forward.