When is the right time to get a business coach?

This is a big question & I think before we explore the times you might need a Business Coach, let’s take a look at what a Business Coach can do for you & your business, as this will help to answer the question.

A business coach generally helps you to identify issues & opportunities within your business and helps you to create a plan to take advantage of the opportunities & deal with the issues. They then act as a sounding board as you implement the plan & hold you accountable for the actions & measures of success that you agreed to. A good business coach may also have successfully run companies & so can act as a Mentor as well as a Coach. The key thing about a Coach is that through years of experience they know the right questions to ask.

There are a number of ‘business events’ or times in a business’ lifespan that might cause you to review the business & review or put together a new plan & this is where a Business Coach can be really helpful.

Below are just a few examples of when you might consider engaging with a Business Coach.

Expansion into a New Market

First of all, congratulations! You must be doing well to think about expanding your brand and business into a new territory.

But wait a minute, are you truly prepared to dive into the new market and promote your brand there? Have you thought about the potential costs and risks? Will this expansion actually hurt you in the long run?

If you have these questions but are unsure of what the answers really are, then you may need a business coach, especially one that specialises in the markets you are looking to expand into or can you connect you with the right people.

Launch a new product

In today's world, new products are coming to the market every day, and inevitably, a lot of these do fail. What seemed like a good idea, may fail to make the grade in terms of the size of the available market, the price people are willing to pay or just not really meeting a true need.

A Business Coach that specialises in Market Validation will help you to understand the answers to the 3 key questions:

• Is there really a need for the product or service? (Either new or line expansion / new feature set)
• Is there a large enough addressable market?
• Will customer be prepared to change their behaviour & pay you what is required to make a profitable & sustainable business?

A coach can help you to not spend your life savings, countless hours & stress working on a new product or service or idea that friends & family told you was great but that was never going to cut the mustard.

Growth

We’re all told that growth is the aim of the game in business however there is good growth & poor growth. And some growth creates massive headaches & stress for Business Owners. How you define this is very much dependant on what you want out of your business.

The key thing is that as a business grows (and all businesses go through several stages of growth) you need to adopt different strategies around people, cashflow & execution than you would have had when you started up.

A recent report from KPMG showed that as a business grows the role of the owner changes significantly, as well as the structure & roles & responsibilities of people in the organisation. If you don’t get this right then it can cause more headaches & heartache than is necessary.

A Business Coach will help you to understand what good growth looks like for you & your business & will work with you to help you develop the right structure & strategies, including managing cash flow through these growth periods.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Fantastic job - M&A means that you’ve either been recognised by another business, or you’ve just been hugely successful. Either way, it looks like your company is set for an exciting ride ahead.

But wait, what is the best way for you to go about this to get the best result for yourself and your new business acquisitions, and is this really the best way forward for you and your company? Is this a marriage made in heaven?

It’s ideal to engage with a Business Coach well before you go down the path of M&A, to ensure that you have all of your bases covered. They can often pick up on things that you miss - a bit like not seeing the forest for the trees!

More often than not, your coach will be highly experienced with mergers and acquisitions having gone through the exact same process themselves, and will be able to create a strategy plan for the business after the merge, where goals and objectives will be listed out for you as well as ways to achieve these goals. This will be vital in order to make sure that business in the future runs smoothly, and will not create any roadblocks for you in the future.

New family members joining the business

Another form of expansion! You may have extra capital, skills and labor coming into your business as a result of this. But how should you structure your business now with an extra family member in the mix, whether this is a parent, a sibling or a partner. If there were to be an argument in the future, what will that mean for your business (& your family) in the future? All too often I have seen families who are in business together completely fall apart because they didn’t set things up right in the beginning.

A coach will work both individually with the family members & then with the family as whole to ensure that you are all on the same page & you have clearly defined roles & responsibilities & expectations.

From here they will help you develop a business plan, an operational plan & the supporting materials that you need to ensure that the family business runs to the best of its ability.

Without a coach guiding you and your family member through this, it is not uncommon that things go wrong, either due to miscommunication, or different thoughts on the way that the business should be run.

Before the start of a New Year or Financial Year

Every business needs a long-term strategic plan & an operational plan. These ideally should be a working document that gets reviewed every month, quarter & then each year.

Starting this review process a couple of months before the New Year starts is ideal.

There’s also a phenomenon unique to NZ in that the country closes down from around the 22nd December through until the end of January / beginning of February. What better time then to be looking at next year, without out all the business, stress & overwhelm that can come with running a business. Ideally you’ll start the process in December & then have the Christmas Period to let those thoughts percolate and then use the quiet time in January to work ON your business & ON yourself. It doesn’t mean that you can’t still go to the Bach & spend time at the beach. After the initial session your coaching can often be done remotely.

So, yes, that means that now is the perfect time to get yourself a Business Coach to start the 2019 year & 2019/20 Financial Year off to a great start.

If you'd like to have a chat about how a Business Coach or Leadership Coach can help you, or you'd like a copy of the KPMG report, then please contact me - [email protected].