The time between coaching appointments is dead time, and to make that dead time more profitable, a few helpful telephone coaching tips can make that dead time turn into profit time!

Face-to-face coaching is the preferred type of coaching for most clients, but a coach who can use his or her skills effectively on the telephone can create an additional stream of income for their coaching practice. Some good telephone coaching tips will boost your income and increase your business.

Coaching on the Phone is the Same as Coaching In Person…Almost

The coaching process is the same, whether you are working in person or talking to a client on the telephone. But, there can be subtle differences when working with only someone’s voice.

3 Important Telephone Coaching Tips

The first, and perhaps most important telephone coaching tip is to understand that communication is different when you are using the telephone. Communication between coach and client can basically be broken down into four parts: the words, the context of the words, the tome of the words, and the body language.

On the phone, you can hear the words, you get the context (as long as the phone isn’t going in and out), you capture most of the tome (though tonality is sometimes lost on a phone), but you get none of the body language. Some studies suggest that body language comprises the majority of communication in many situations. Making sure you know that plenty of communication will be missing is crucial to creating a good coaching sessions.

The next on this list of 3 telephone coaching tips works with the first one. A telephone coaching session will work better if you already know the client. It’s best if you have met the client face-to-face, but if that has never been possible, it can still work. Before you begin the coaching sessions, it works well to gather as much information as possible about the client. You can do this through email or have a free information-gathering phone session. Having a wealth of information about the client at your fingertips will help you create a beneficial telephone coaching session.

The final suggestion on this list of tips is to have pre-planned coaching sessions for the telephone. Using set exercises or having a list of questions will help the session progress. This works great during the first session or two as it helps with information gathering. You can analyze the answers between sessions and then create a new list of questions for the next session.

5 More Telephone Coaching Tips For Great Telephone Coaching Sessions

• Make a not of the session coaching objective and keep it in front of you during the entire session to help stay on point.
• Record your calls if possible so you can review them later – both to assess your performance and to analyze your client’s answers.
• Take a few moments to relax and regroup before each call. Clear your heard, take a few deep breaths and you will be ready to be a great telephone coach!
• Ask your client to write specific things down during the session. These can be reviewed at the end of each session or at the beginning of the next one.
• Make sure to keep your own notes – both during the session and immediately after each session.

These 8 great telephone coaching tips will help you create super phone sessions for your clients. You can turn that dead time between in-person sessions into profit time!

Fred Philips
Business Coach
Writing Team, Coaches Training Blog Community