Perfect Pitch of Executive Coaching – Establishing the Client Value Proposition
While coaching is not and has never been all about money, the “money is important if only for financial reasons,” as Woody Allen once quipped. Many coaches find executive coaching setting rates for their coaching services to be a challenge. The conversation about money with sponsoring organizations and clients has to be thoughtful and based on a deep sense of value and respect between the coach and the client. Such value is less about benefits or features-and more about results. So, talking about the 10 different services that will come with the coaching package (a 360 assessment, weekly meetings, quarterly reports, periodic evaluations, etc.), is far less compelling to a sponsor-the person or organization hiring the coach, than what he or she views as essential to the organization-solving the perceived or stated problem.
Some sponsors are very strategic and hire coaches to help the organization and its leaders grow toward a vision; however; most a however, are tactical and come to executive coaches when they identify a pain point. Often, it’s an executive with a behavioral challenge rather than a technical issue. In fact, competency issues are usually easier and faster to solve. A sponsor can buy a particular software system or send the employee to school or for training, and that, along with some experience, usually solves the problem. However, behavioral issues are much harder to solve because they’ve often been ingrained for years and might even remain invisible to the client. If a particular client has been a procrastinator, an arrogant know-it-all, or abusive in his work relationships, he’s often not even conscious of what he is doing or the impact of his behaviors. As the saying goes, “Fish are the last ones to discover water.” As we’ve seen time and again, clients are often the last ones to discover their true behavioral challenges, partly due to lack of awareness, and often because nobody will give them direct and honest feedback.
So, when a sponsor, typically the CEO or HR department, contacts an executive coach about an executive, his or her troublesome behavior has likely begun to interfere with corporate progress, morale, or culture. Alternatively, if it’s not about a problem behavior per se, the CEO might want the client to be coached to get to the next level of leadership. But in either case, there’s a perceived issue or behavior that needs to be changed or developed, either a potential career de-railer or a bottom-line enhancer. This perception precipitates the conversation between coach and sponsor. Often the conversation revolves first around th