Marketing for coaches, and for everyone else, involves identifying the needs of a group of prospects and then communicating to them that you are the ideal person to help satisfy their needs. Now if your job is to identify customer needs, what could be better and simpler than listening for their complaints? That’s Complaint Marketing. Simple? Yes, but…

The secret to Hearing Needs Is Listening for Complaints

Listening for complaints, that sounds simple. Sure. But if it is, why do so many of those cries for help go unanswered? Again, simple. Yes. You simply not be sincerely interested in understanding your prospects’ calls for help, or you can be too busy speaking to do any listening. Either way is a formula for disaster.

Marketing for Coaching Is All about Caring

Examine your very soul, and ask “Do I really care enough to stop and really listen?” That is the key question, not just for marketing for coaching but for coaching, itself. Do you care? Do you? And if you don’t, then please slowdown and accept that coaching is not for you. Now if you are still here – meaning that you do care – what is it that you hear when you really listen? It should be clear, but not if you are too taken up with speaking. So while many uncaring people have left the coaching profession, many people who are called to coaching, are more taken up with talking than listening, and yet refuse to leave the profession. Now because they don’t come to grips with the need to simply button it up, they are destined to a life of frustration dealing with what might have been.

These Are Good Days for Bad Nights’ Sleeps

If marketing for coaching comes down to really listening and then using our skills to help our clients move forward, what could be better days than these? Simply put these are days whose nights are marked by waking up in cold sweets and aching needs that coaches can address. These needs are requests which are sent off wrapped in the tears of grown men and grown women. They are reaching out for help, your help. If you only listen, you can make a difference – or not.

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach