People get all tied up in knots about how to price and design their engagements with clients. This is especially true when moving beyond a 1-1 coaching format. I often get questions about what to do if a company wants you to coach their entire leadership team, two co-founders, or some other type of engagement. So I’ve created a simple outline for the process that I use.
9 Steps for building a powerful coaching engagement
- Consider what would serve the client, no price tag or considerations for time.
- Consider what options might exist in that realm of service. What’s the most invested client engagement and what’s the minimum?
- Once you’ve created the package, consider your own time, the value of the engagement, the context of affordability and possibility for the client(s).
- Craft a package focused on benefits and resting firmly on the thing that would serve the client most.
- (If needed) compare those options to previous investments, the market rate (which is incredibly variable), and how it feels energetically for you. You might then ask a few other coaches to look over your proposal to uncover what exactly you may be missing.
- Create the conversation with the client inside a context of what they want to create and the commitment required from them. This is centered around what they want to create, the impact of taking no action, and what’s in the way of them creating what they want.
- Be with them fully as their resistance and challenge to commitment arise.
- Support them to make an empowered yes or no around that commitment, while standing for the structure and commitment required to make the change they want to make.
- Throughout keep your attention on two things
- A willingness to say no to your client if what they want won’t really serve them or be enough to create the change they are seeking to make.
- Trust yourself and your instincts as a coach because that’s all you got.
