I’ve found my voice – this is what Coaching Revolution coaches say as they reach the point where they have a coherent marketing message that works. The reason for this is that the moment we stop sounding like coaches and start describing what we do in a way that non-coaches can assimilate, everything changes. We move from invisible to findable, from hoping someone will understand our value to knowing they will. This shift – from coaching language (coach-speak) to plain language (client-speak) – is the biggest single lever we have to build a sustainable business.
Translation Matters
When we become coaches, we can articulate the coaching process beautifully. We describe the space we hold, the questions we ask, the thinking we draw out. We sound credible, skilled, professional to each other. Yet when we say these things to someone outside the coaching profession, we watch their eyes glaze over. They don’t know when they need a coach, what problems coaching can resolve, or whether they could afford one. This is a demonstration of the failure of the vocabulary use.
Even though coaching is a credentialed profession, unlike therapy or consulting or training, most people have no reference point for our kind of coaching. Worse still, they do have a reference point for ‘coach’ and it isn’t what we do. Potential clients simply don’t know what the benefits of working with us are, and when we describe our work in coaching terms, we’re asking the listener to do all the translation work – which they can’t.
(Yes, I know that there’s a tiny segment of society who absolutely does know what we do – the upper echelons of organisations – but that is a vanishingly small number compared to the general population.)
When We Find Our Voice
When we learn to describe our work in the language of our potential clients instead, the listener stops trying to translate and starts recognising themselves in our words. Instead of “I facilitate powerful questions that unlock insight and enable transformation,” we hear “I work with HR professionals to help them separate work problems from their personal life so that they can leave work at work.” Instead of “I create a safe container for you to explore limiting beliefs,” we hear “I work with founders to help them make good decisions quickly so that they can grow with minimum friction”
The difference isn’t semantic. The second description tells you exactly who the coach works with, what problem they solve, and what changes as a result. Someone sitting at a dinner party hears that and thinks: “Oh, you’re talking about my friend Sue! I should mention it to her.”
This is what Coaching Revolution coaches mean when they say, “I’ve found my voice.” We don’t mean we sound different. We mean we finally sound like ourselves – clear, specific, and useful to someone who doesn’t know what our kind of coaching is. The shift unlocks how people perceive us. Suddenly we’re not the ambiguous coach who does unspecified things, we’re the professional service provider who solves a specific problem.
Why This Matters for Growth
Those of us who can translate our knowledge and expertise into client-speak become findable to our market. The people we help know we help them, and – just as importantly – they can explain that clearly to others.
This is really important because most coaches simply don’t realise how much of our revenue depends on having good client acquisition skills. We train extensively in coaching, we don’t train in how to describe what we do in a way that makes sense to someone who isn’t a coach. That gap – between the skills that make us good coaches and the skills that make us visible to the people who need us – is where most coaches get stuck and then fail. That gap explains the 82% attrition rate entirely.
When we learn this translation, our entire experience of our coaching practice changes. We stop feeling invisible, we stop wondering if we’re any good or if people aren’t interested in working with us because we know exactly what we do and why it matters.
The Catch
This only works if we speak the language of the audience we’ve chosen. We can’t fake client speak any more than we can fake coaching presence. The articulation has to come from real understanding of what our clients need, what happens in the coaching, and what changes as a result. Coaches who try to manufacture a neat elevator pitch without doing this thinking often end up sounding less understandable, not more.
Those of us who find our voice are the ones who’ve done the work of understanding our client’s world, not just our coaching world. We know what keeps our clients awake, we know what success looks like for them and we can describe the journey from problem to outcome in terms that mean something to them. It’s not a different voice, it’s simply a clearer one.
What You Can Do
If you’re a coach and you sound like a coach when you talk about what you do, start here – choose your niche (or target audience, same thing). Let go of the belief that it’s different for you, and that you don’t need to choose a niche. It’s not different for any of us and hanging on to that belief is expensive – it can cost us our practice.
A niche is the intersection between a WHAT (a specific problem that working with you can resolve) and a WHO (a specific group of people from a specific profession, industry or sector). Choose one that you understand completely, learn how to articulate the value of what you do to that particular group and you too can find your voice. Of course if you’d like some help with learning professional client acquisition skills, because either what you’re doing isn’t working, or that I’ve described your experience exactly in this article, you can always book a call with one of my team.
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