Coaches are positive, forward looking folk. We don’t dwell; coaches accept, we brush off and we move on. We take responsibility for our actions and our lives. We also need to be bilingual. Let me explain.
When we work with our clients, we get them to look past the problems, the pitfalls and the issues to a brighter future that they can create and then reach. We don’t encourage our clients to have a pity-party with every little thing that goes wrong, we encourage them to see negatives as bumps in the road.
This is coaching focus, coaching language and heads towards coaching outcomes. It’s ‘coach-speak’.
Coaching Language -v- Marketing Language
Marketing language is different from coaching language. Marketing language has to be language that the client we want to attract can hear.
Let me repeat that. Marketing language has to be the language that the client we want to attract can hear…..
What do I mean?
Well, coaches tend to want to talk in coach-speak, because it’s our language. We want to talk about goals and achieving them; about mental barriers and recognising them; about limiting beliefs and removing them.
The sad truth is that our potential clients don’t care about those things. Let’s face it, no one knows that they have a limiting belief until it’s revealed to them, do they? Before that moment, the limiting belief is simply their truth.
Coaching language is focused on outcomes, marketing language needs to be focused on problems and potential solutions and that, dear reader, is the big stumbling block that coaches face. We need to be bilingual.
In short, coaches need to be bilingual, they need to learn client-speak.
Worzel Gummidge
Do you remember Worzel? He was a character from a children’s story, a scarecrow that could change heads as required in order to deal with different situations (serious head, comedy head, posh head, hardworking head… you get the idea?).
Well, coaches need two heads too. We need our coach head, that talks coach-speak but we also need our marketing head that talks client-speak.
Those two heads mean that we can be bilingual.
Why Do I Need To Be Bilingual?
Client-speak is laser-focused language that cuts through the nonsense and gets right to the heart of the biggest problem that the client you want to work with has.
Client-speak says “I know you have this problem, I know how it affects your whole life, I can show you how your life could look without it and I can clearly demonstrate that I understand the whole thing”.
It also says ‘Why don’t we talk?” in a way that makes a potential client want to engage with you.
Coaches flinch about using client-speak, because it seems to directly conflict with coach-speak. However, if we remember those two heads (and my weighing scale analogy of previous posts) we can see that actually, coaches need both heads and both sets of language to thrive in business.
Mind The Gap
The gap in a coach’s understanding of how to use those two different sorts of language accounts for the global statistic that says that 82% of coaching businesses will fail. That’s how important it is to be bi-lingual in your business.
Client-speak gets the client in front of you in the first place, coach-speak keeps them there. To be clear, your clients are waiting for you to become visible to them. Using client-speak makes you visible.
If you’d like to learn how marketing-speak, perhaps we should talk? My diary is here.