MOST COACHES DON'T HAVE THE MARKETING SKILLS NEEDED TO SURVIVE

Lean Marketing (TM) Consultancy, Cabal Group claims that the growing number of UK coaching practices are suffering because of a lack of able marketing leadership.

Lean Marketing (TM) Consultancy, Cabal Group claims that the growing number of UK coaching practices are suffering because of a lack of able marketing leadership.

Cabal Group also believes that being able to differentiate your coaching skills from the competition will get increasingly more difficult as the number of people launching businesses in the field of life and leadership coaching continues to grow.

Research carried out by TheAnswer at the end of 2002 shows that 40% of small businesses have nobody within their company to handle marketing on a regular basis and the 46% of those questioned who said they have marketing support were actually giving the task to:

22% a Director with no appropriate expertise
15% a PA/Administrator
2% the Finance Director
1% a Salesperson
6% 'other'

Lean Marketing (TM) advocate, Debbie Jenkins comments, "These figures are certainly not surprising to me, but many coaching firms really can't afford or justify spending money on marketing training and so muddle along as best as they can. If you ask any coach, I'm almost certain they'd agree that these figures would be optimistic in their industry sector, where reliance on fee earning days means no time to stop, plan and implement a consistent marketing strategy."

The research also found that around 68% of SME's spend less than 20,000 a year on marketing.

Cabal Group argues that for a small and growing coaching practice this is plenty. Debbie Jenkins says, "In general many coaching businesses are already Lean by design. Doing the right things rather than spending the most money is sensible - the problem is, without the capabilities and tools choosing the right things to do is difficult."

Debbie continues,"We decided that if professional coaches could really just gain a mastery of the skills needed to lead their type of business to profit, then whatever they spend next will be a good investment. With this in mind we've developed the Lean Marketing (TM) Master Class which is low on time and cost commitment but full of focused and relevant tools and techniques that can be used straight away."