What Do Business Coaches Do? Part 1: Business Effectiveness

Business coaches help business owners (or business leaders) in business effectiveness and personal effectiveness.

Business coaches work with business owners and business executives in two distinct areas.  First, they help business owners who don’t know what to do in a particular area of his or her business.  We call this “business effectiveness.”  All areas of business effectiveness fall into the broader categories of Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Leadership Development, Human Resources, Systems Implementation, Strategic Planning, Financial Management, and Exit Planning / Succession Planning.

Business coaches work with successful people who are “stuck” in certain areas of their business.  These areas can be related to low profits, sluggish sales, cash flow challenges, people problems, or working too many hours, which can result in an unhealthy work-life balance.  Other common challenges include service failures,  quality issues, lack of leadership depth, a poor company culture and limited company value.

Some of these problems make a business owner feel paralyzed.  They are filled with concern, stress, frustration, anger, grief and doubt.  These negative emotions compound the challenges business owners face and can create new problems of their own - some at work, others at home.

A professional business coach helps get the client out of the proverbial trees so the owner can work strategically on business development and systematically solve these problems.  Over time, this results in better cash flow, higher profits, and a happier workplace, which in turn leads to a healthy, productive, and joyful life.

Be sure to read upcoming posts on Personal Effectiveness, A Safe Place and The Difference Between Coaching and Consulting.