Analyze client potentialities - coaching sales

In the field of coaching, especially in business coaching, it is essential to perform an analysis of your client's potential. This involves adopting a critical and encompassing stance to become a good business coach.

We will start by using the self-coaching perspective, imagining that you are your own client, and then apply what you learn with real clients.

Client Competencies

To be a good coach, it is essential to know your client's capabilities and dispositions. Therefore, you should ask yourself:

• How capable do you see your client?

• Do you believe that after guiding him/her, he/she will be able to grow and improve?

There are two common perspectives when approaching your work:

• Your client is willing to put in the effort, is passionate about what he/she does and wants to invest time in improving. He has dreams and purposes that add value to his work.

• He sees work as an obligation because he has no other choice. Is driven by the need to generate income and lacks motivation.

These questions are key to determining the training methods you will employ. If the person does not show much motivation, you will need to follow him or her more closely so that he or she can make progress. If, on the other hand, he or she is willing to put in the effort, you will only need to provide a little support so that he or she can learn and grow on his or her own.

Strengths and weaknesses

Another important element to consider is the strengths and weaknesses of your clients. It is crucial to focus more on strengths than weaknesses, although this can be a challenge, as we tend to focus on improving what we don't do so well.

For example, in a soccer team, if you have an excellent defensive player, you should not try to turn him into a fast and powerful striker. Instead, you should enhance his defensive skills.

You must shift your focus from working on weaknesses to focusing on people's strengths. This will allow you to see that your own strengths are more significant than your weaknesses.

It is not possible to be exceptional in everything, but you can excel in some areas. Therefore, it is more effective to focus on enhancing those advantages you already possess.

Imagine if Pablo Picasso's parents had forced him to improve in science or literature instead of supporting him in his artistic talent. It is likely that he would never have become one of the greatest painters in history.

Focus on the solution, not the problem.

In business coaching, it is more effective to focus on solutions rather than problems. If someone comes to you with an inconvenience, your job is to change their mindset.

So that they also come with a solution:

• View these eventualities as opportunities to find better solutions. Think about results first before you go to someone. Train your mind to constantly associate these concepts.

• When supporting a project, focus your attention on future opportunities, not past performance, as many people can lose confidence because of past mistakes.

• For example, if you started four marketing projects a year ago and only two have been successful, focus on the ones that have yielded positive results, not the ones that failed.

• As a coach, you should always highlight the positive aspects that contribute to the growth of companies and entrepreneurs.

Motivation analogy

• There is an old analogy about motivation that compares a donkey to a carrot tied to a stick. The donkey moves toward the carrot, but once you take it away, it stops.

• The other way to motivate the donkey is with a stick behind it, which moves it to escape the blow. But again, when you stop using the stick, the donkey stops.

In coaching, we must move away from this carrot and stick analogy, because if you treat people like donkeys, they will act like donkeys.

If you take away their motivation or incentives, they will stop:

• The strategy to adopt is to view people as seeds ready to germinate. Your task is to water them and weed out the weeds to boost their growth and help them develop their intrinsic potential.