What are the most important coaching certification criteria?  Here are the coaching certification criteria you should be looking for (in order from most to least important) during your search for the national coaching certification:

1.  Coaching Skills

2.  Coaching Communication / Leadership Skills

3.  Coach Personal Development

4.  Coaching Sales Skills

5.  Coach Marketing Skills

6.  Coach Time management skills

7.  Coaching Business management skills

Here’s the logic behind the Coaching Certification Criteria priority order:

The top three coaching certification criteria are the basis of everything.  Don’t even bother to pursue national coaching certification without working through a coaching certification that teaches coaching skills (I covered this in another article I wrote on professional coaching certification criteria).  Communication and Leadership skills are the bridge between your ability to coach and your ability to run your business, sell, market, and make key alliances in order to maintain your business.  Personal development is key for a coach.  If you don’t continue to develop yourself, you may loose your confidence. People may see you as a hypocrite.  Any coaching certification worth its’ salt will included at least these three areas (at a minimum).

Next, you need coaching sales skills.  Why?  because if you are going to work for yourself, you’re going to have to be able to sell.  I don’t care if you call it leadership, coaching, or a ham sandwich, but you’ve got to get your prospects to make a decision and you’ve got to ‘get the money’ (i.e. get paid) for your coaching.  Coach marketing skills are going to be important in the future if you are to expand past having only a few clients.  Marketing is sales on paper or over the Internet.  Marketing your coaching practice is a great way to find new customers and more leads to get into your coaching.  Coach time management skills will help you go from working hard as a coach to running a coaching business.  Time management skills are the way to change from one focus to another when you really need to do it.  There are times that you’ll need to change direction completely in order to expand your coaching practice.  Coaching certifications that are really great will include at least some of the things I mentioned in this paragraph.

Finally, the hope is that you build a certified ‘coaching business empire’, and for that, you need to learn some amazing coaching business management skills.  A coaching certification that teaches you this as well for your coaching practice is truly an awesome offering.

The biggest misconception in searching for the Professional Coaching Certification of your dreams is thinking that the best life coaching training courses are the most prestigious coaching certification.  Just because a coaching training has a prestigious coaching certification doesn’t mean that it is any good (i.e. a coaching training that will truly help you get more coaching clients and become a highly skilled life coach). Some coaches have a coaching certification criteria that says, ‘I’m going to get more clients because I got certified’.  You will get clients as a result of getting certified, but don’t get your certification because of that, or it won’t help you.  Coaching Certification will get you skills, but then you have to USE those skills to get coaching clients.

So as you look for the right coaching certification criteria, look for the coaching skills, then the leadership, sales, and marketing skills.  Then if you get anything else, that’ll be the icing on the cake.

Jeffrey T. Sooey

CEO JTS Advisors,

Founder, Coaches Training Blog Community