How to Become a Business Coach (6 Steps)

Is Business Coaching The Right Path For You?

As a business owner, you'll likely want to become or at least hire a business coach during your time in business. These individuals assist managers (or yourself) with high-potential decisions to maximise a desired outcome. 

Business coaching itself has brilliant ROI. According to the ICF (International Coach Federation), 86% of businesses recoup their investment, with at least 19% of companies getting an ROI of 50 (5,000%) times on their initial investment - this is why so many business owners are hiring business coaches. 

Clearly, it's a great investment, especially if you learn business coaching yourself to improve your business (or for a career change). Therefore, here's how to become a business coach in 7 steps. 

Step 1: Determine if Business Coaching is for You 

First, you'll want to understand whether business coaching is even for you. 

This is something you must decide for yourself. However, think about whether you have the time, commitment, and passion to grow your business coaching abilities.  

You may even want to weigh the costs of learning and outsourcing the skill if you're a business owner. Depending on how much you're worth, let's say on an hourly basis, hiring someone who already has business coaching skills and experience may be more affordable. 

Business coaches, business mentors, executive coaches, or whatever you want to call them come in all different price ranges. You can learn more about coach prices in your area here. 

Step 2: Develop Your Coaching Skills 

Next, you'll want to gain some certifications. With business coaching or mentorship, you actually have a non-profit organisation called ICF (or International Coaching Federation), which is an accrediting and credentialing body for coaches. 

Typically speaking, these are the "Go-to" for coaching certification. They have 3 "levels" of training: 

• Associate Certified Coach (ACC)
• Professional Certified Coach (PCC)
• Master Certified Coach (MCC)

For business coaching, it's good to know that 85% of coaching clients say certification is a deciding factor. 

You also have other training programmes for different organisations. Some important organisations include: 

• British School of Coaching
• The Association for Coaching (AC)
• The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)

These are some ways of gaining coaching skills. However, we also recommend becoming certified with the help of an experienced company, like ActionCOACH, so you get the support you need throughout your coaching journey.

Step 3: Gain Experience 

Once you have some knowledge in business coaching, you need to put this knowledge into action. How you'd do this will vary depending on your current situation. However, we can recommend the following: 

• Volunteering 
• Internship 
• Networking 
• Pro Bono Coaching (Coaching for free in exchange for experience)
• Joining a business coaching company

If you're upskilling as a business owner, you can gain experience from your team by implementing business coaching best practices. 

Step 4: Create Your Business Structure 

If you're not a business owner and want to sell business coaching services, you need to create a business structure that is one, profitable, two, scalable, and three, useful to the end consumer. 

For profitability, you want to have rates that allow you to be profitable. These rates should also reflect your experience and qualifications. 

Regarding scalability, it is somewhat optional but worth the consideration. If you want to be a business coach freelancer, that's great; some people do. However, if you want to grow an agency, you need to consider this. 

Whichever route you choose is entirely up to you. Both are worthwhile. However, with an agency, you could sell your business later on, especially if the brand is a separate entity to you. 

Lastly, it should be useful to the end consumer. By this, we mean that you should be offering services and packages that serve the purpose of delivering results and satisfaction to your customers. 

Step 5: Market your Business 

Once you have the skills, the experience, and the business structure, you can market your business. The best way to do this is to go back to step 2, which helps you understand your ideal client. 

With this ideal client (otherwise called customer persona), you should know who you want to target your services towards. With this, you can do further research to find out where they are online, how they like to be approached, what problems they have, and how your services can resolve their problems. 

Once you have this information, you can create a marketing plan that targets this persona. During this time, focus on a funnel-based model, so you're marketing to different stages of your persona depending on where they are in their purchasing journey. 

One of the advantages of partnering with a business coaching company is that they have made all of the marketing mistakes for you. This means they will have all of the strategies you need to market your coaching business successfully.

Step 6: Continuously Improve 

Lastly, never stop and continuously improve. The best way to do this is by getting feedback and keeping up-to-date on any industry or skill-related changes. 

You may even want to learn new skills that you think will enhance your business coaching abilities. For instance, if you're coaching a construction business and lack experience in a certain subject, let's say, environment control, then getting a certification in this area could be beneficial.

And without question, if you keep learning and improving over time, you'll be at the top of your industry in business coaching. 

If you're learning how to become a business coach either for somebody else or for yourself, it's important to note that it'll take time. You need the skills and experience to generate results, which is what will keep you and your clients satisfied. 

However, don't get discouraged. Learning to be a business coach is a superb way of generating high-yield results for all types of business, and if you master it, it'll be a fruitful experience. 

If you think business coaching is the right decision for you, speak with one of our advisors today to learn more about coaching with ActionCOACH. Alternatively, our learning center has free business resources to help grow your business.