How do we build credibility with potential clients? It’s not in the way we think we do.
We think we need more qualifications. That another certification, another credential, another set of letters after our name is the answer. We invest thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours pursuing Masters degrees, ICF accreditation, ILM Level 7 diplomas, positive psychology certificates, NLP training, personality profiling tools, somatic coaching qualifications. I could go on.
We’re convinced that once we have enough qualifications, potential clients will see us as credible and want to work with us. We’re that’s what we’re doing with all our study – we’re building our credibility with our clients, aren’t we?
Actually, we’re not. We are building credibility of a sort, but it’s not the kind of credibility that attracts paying clients.
Two Kinds of Credibility
There are two types of credibility in a coaching business, and most of us are building the one that doesn’t attract clients.
Qualifications build our credibility with our peers. They demonstrate that we know how to coach, that we’ve invested in our professional development, that we take our practice seriously. Other coaches look at our credentials and think “this person knows what they’re doing.” That matters for our professional standing, for associate work opportunities, for being taken seriously in coaching circles.
The brutal truth is that qualifications sit on the delivery side of our coaching business. They build credibility for doing the work, not for getting the work in the first place.
The credibility that attracts paying clients sits on the other side of our business entirely. It sits on the ‘creating the opportunities to do the delivery’ side and it’s built in a completely different way.
What Clients Actually Need
For someone to buy coaching from us, they need to know, like, and trust us. Remember, the vast majority of potential clients – private clients in particular – have no idea what coaching is, but they think they do and they’re wrong. They assume we’re going to teach them something. Rather than spend our time trying to explain that we don’t teach and describe what we actually do (which is what most coaches do), we need instead to build know, like, and trust.
Trust and credibility with our clients is built by clearly demonstrating our knowledge and understanding of, as well as our empathy for, the situation in which they find themselves, the one that our coaching can help them resolve. To do this, we must be able to describe their situation in a way that makes them think “this person gets it! They know what I’m going through!”
To do this, we need to use their language, not ours. Not coaching jargon about holding space and thinking partnerships and limiting beliefs. In order to make a connection with them, we need to use their language – literally the words they use to describe what’s happening in their lives.
The ‘know and like’ part comes from how we do this. We need to become visible to the kind of people we want to work with and talk about their challenges using our personality, our sense of humour (even if that needs to be dark at times), and our compassion.
To be clear, some clients do care about qualifications, but they are in the minority. That doesn’t mean qualifications aren’t important – I consider a coaching qualification essential – it means they are not the ‘paying client’ ticket that many coaches believe them to be.
Be Specific!
We can’t talk credibly to every single person about every single issue they might have that coaching might help with, because we simply don’t know what they might be.
We are taught that we can coach anyone – which is true. However, to coach them, they need to engage with us in the first place, and this is where the ‘creating the opportunities to do the delivery‘ skills are essential.
We grow so used to coaching and being coached on absolutely anything and everything when we’re training that it’s easy to lose perspective on what ‘normal people’ (non-coaches) want.
What they want is a clear understanding of WHY they should be spending a professional fee with you to access your coaching services. What’s in it for them – specifically.
If our answer to ‘what’s in it for them?’ starts with the words ‘it depends…’ then we are not able to articulate our value. Until we can articulate value, we’ll struggle with both credibility and trust.
We Resist…
I recently spoke with a very experienced coach with hundreds of hours of associate coaching under her belt. She wanted to build a practice of private clients and in particular, to work with people struggling with overwhelm and anxiety, but would not be persuaded that she needed a focus on a particular type of person.
The thing is that finding people struggling with overwhelm and anxiety is very difficult. They rarely talk about it publicly, and key to finding coaching clients is being where those potential clients are, on and offline. This is hard when you don’t know who they are. Knowing WHO they are means you know where they are.
When I met resistance repeatedly over the idea of having a focus, I asked “if you don’t want to choose a focus, where are you going to find these client?” The coach looked at me blankly and said “that’s why I’m talking to you!”
That conversation happens more often than you might think. Coaches with impressive qualifications, extensive coaching experience, genuine skill in the coaching room – but no idea how to demonstrate credibility to the people who might actually pay them have a massive resistance to how client acquisition works.
The 180-Degree Shift
Understanding how credibility actually works in client acquisition isn’t a quick one-liner of an education piece. It’s a 180-degree shift in thinking. That’s why I run challenges, webinars, and ICF Special Interest Groups – to get the opportunity to spend an hour or so with coaches explaining how client acquisition actually works.
Once I have that conversation, coaches get it. They ask me why no one has explained it like this to them before. The answer is that most of the people advising them don’t understand it themselves, because they built their practices using monetisable credibility – existing networks and senior contacts who already understood what coaching was.
My life’s work is to get people coached, because I believe coaching is a superpower. Coaching transformed my life completely and I want others to have that same opportunity. That won’t happen until coaches are able to articulate the value of what they do in a way that ordinary people can understand – and that very thing is my ‘Why’. It’s what started and continues to power The Coaching Revolution.
What Real Credibility Looks Like
Real credibility – the kind that attracts paying clients – comes from demonstrating that you deeply understand a specific situation or challenge. It doesn’t come from listing your qualifications, or from explaining your coaching methodology, and especially not from describing your journey or sharing your additional credentials.
It comes from being able to say, in clear language that your potential clients use themselves, “I understand what you’re going through. I know why this is so hard, I know what it’s costing you, and I can help.”
When someone reads what you’ve written or hears you speak and thinks “they’re talking about me, they understand exactly what I’m dealing with” – that’s credibility. That’s what makes them want to work with you.
Your qualifications might reassure them once they’re already interested, but they don’t create that interest in the first place. They sit on the wrong side of your business for that.
Building Credibility With Clients
Stop collecting qualifications hoping they’ll bring clients, because they won’t. They’re building credibility with your peers, not with the people who might pay you. I know this is hard to hear, because it goes against everything we believe, but it’s true.
Start building the credibility that actually matters – the credibility that comes from demonstrating deep understanding of a specific group of people and the challenges they face. This is the credibility that makes potential clients think “this person gets it.” The credibility that lives on the client acquisition side of your business, not the delivery side.
Your coaching qualification made you qualified to coach, butt didn’t make you credible to potential clients. That’s a different skill set entirely, and it’s one you need to learn if you want clients to find you, trust you, and pay you.
The coaches who succeed aren’t the ones with the most letters after their names. They’re the ones who can articulate exactly who they help and how, in language those people actually understand.
That’s the credibility that builds a coaching business – everything else is window dressing.
Want to build credibility for your coaching business? Let’s talk.
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