**YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING BUSINESS WILL INCREASE WHEN MORE PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT COACHING.**

I spoke on 3 cruises leaving from Galveston last year (around 1,500 passengers on each cruise), and only two people in my audiences had heard of coaching. Want clients from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma? Start educating public. It precedes buying.

WHEN YOU PROMOTE COACHING EVERYONE WINS Many an advertising campaign has begun with educating public. The more public knows what coaching is, what coaches do, and who goes to coaches and for what, greater chances of any single coach getting clients.

ANALOGY If you drive a nail through your finger, what do you do? You go to a doctor. How do you know this? Someone told you (or took you). It may have been a long time ago, but there was a time when you first learned ‘when I have this problem, this person can help me’.

CONNECT THE DOTS Madame C. J. Walker invented a shampoo and scalp treatment for Black women at turn of century when many Americans didn’t have indoor plumbing and only washed their hair once a month. After developing her products, she had to convince Black women to wash their hair regularly. Then they would use her products and get results they desired. (Madam Walker died a millionaire in 1919.)

RESULTS? The person you talk to may not come to you for coaching, but someone I talk to may come to you. As long as person gets coaching. The more people who’ve been helped by coaching, more they’ll talk about it.

HERE ARE SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR YOU:

1.Put your business card in every bill, note and letter you mail, as a matter of course.

Make sure your card tells enough. Work with a marketing coach if need be.

2.Drop one of your business cards in bank canister when you return it, leave one on concierge’s desk, in restaurant’s fish bowl.

Lay a few discretely on counter in ladies’ room at country club. Leave some around in airport.

3.Carry tacks with you to tack your business card on bulletin boards.

4.Strike up a conversation with one stranger a week and find a way to explain what coaching is.

Grocery line, waiting for a prescription, waiting for school to let out, at a sports event, at a museum, in airport. Get creative. “Hmm, that Monet reminds me of coaching.”

5.When a coaching client expresses satisfaction with your service, ask them to refer their friends, colleagues and relatives to you.

6.Alert press in your area that you are available to be interviewed on coaching, and in your areas of expertise. The editor of “my” business journal had never heard of coaching.