4 Mistakes When Choosing Business Coaching and Consulting Services

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Business coaching and consulting services are an essential need for any business that wants to scale. Experience, knowledge and acumen that come from experienced coaches and consultants can help you become more successful, but you must ensure you’re hiring the right coach or consultant before you begin.

When choosing a business coach or consultant, it would be best to consider several things. You want to ensure that they have experience working with businesses like yours, know how to navigate challenges, and can offer valuable insights into what needs to improve your business. When you are able to establish a strong working relationship, you can bet that the coach or consultant will work hard for you and deliver on their promises.

Here are four mistakes people make when choosing a business coach or consultant:

1. Looking For Fast Results

Many people think they will immediately see results if they hire a coach or consultant. Although seeking quick results is normal, you don’t necessarily want to get it so quickly.

The good ones will give you insights into your business that you might not have thought about before. This might mean you need to plan more effectively in order to execute it for eventual success. Business coaching takes time and commitment from both parties, which can take months or even years to see significant results. For instance, it is not possible for succession plans to take place within a few months. Strong leadership succession might even take years.

2. Using Price As the Only Basis for Selection

Most people think that the cheapest or most expensive option is always the best, and they often consider price the only factor when making their selection decision. This isn’t always true because some coaches may offer better value than others even though they charge more money.

But quality service is more important than pricing in this situation. Is your coach able to help you make intelligent decisions about your company and scale your business? Has your coach seen far more and is your coach able to provide you with predictive insights into your business?

3. Expecting the coach to do your work

It’s a myth that hiring business consultants makes your life easier when you procure their services. In fact, I could safely say that when you onboard us as consultants, you might end up seeing that your business might require quite a few changes. However, if you are agreeable to those changes, the person who has to act on those changes must be you, the founder.

When you expect your coaches to do your work for you, it’s like having a fitness coach do your pushups on your behalf. Not only does that not benefit you, it could harm you in the long run. When you need to do your pushups for yourself, you end up in a situation where you can’t muster one.

Have good conversations with your business coach or consultant and build a solid working relationship with them, allowing you to utilize the right services for the right purpose. Eventually, they will give you hints about how to cut short the amount of time to get from point A to point B. And if you are willing to put in the hard work, mobilize your team and demonstrate leadership, you will find that this partnership with your coach or consultant can go a long way in avoiding pitfalls and helping with your efforts to scale your business.

4. Being Skeptical

If you are constantly second guessing the intent of your business coach or consultant, you are likely to fan the flames of fear and anxiety far more than you need. Just like in a relationship, don’t start off by drawing the boundaries. Open up the conversation and discuss issues so that you can understand what is at stake.

In prior business coaching engagements, I’ve seen how skeptical and even blameful clients end up creating bad blood with their own coach simply because of the lack of trust. And this leads to a terrible time because now you have to deal with one more bad situation in your already fragile company.

If you’ve done your homework and clarified the objectives of your coaching or consulting relationship and found a fit between yourself and your coach, your key focus should be to build a strong relationship so that your coach or consultant can understand you and your business deeply. This way, when opportunities arise, you can tap on their knowledge and expertise to rise to the occasion.

Conclusion

No matter what business coaching and consulting services you choose, it is essential to remember that there will always be some uncertainty. No matter how good the package sounds, there is no sure thing when it comes time to evaluate your results. But as a business founder, you should ensure that you get the best from the consulting services you hire. This is only possible by identifying and avoiding mistakes like those discussed in the article.

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