Am I good enough to work with corporates?

woman at text with caption "what qualifies you to work with corporates as a mindset coach"

When people ask me if they are qualified to work with corporate clients, I never check their education, technical qualifications or formal training. Instead, I can usually tell if they can add a 5 or 6 figure corporate client income stream to their business by how they answer this one question:

“What specific, tangible results do your 1:1 clients get from working with you?”

Let’s unpack exactly how the answer tells me if you have the potential for a steady and reliable stream of corporate clients.

There are actually 3 elements to this question and the first is why results for 1:1 clients are a good indication:

Your 1:1 results mean you’re qualified to land corporate clients

  • It’s not just that corporations are made up of individuals, most of whom are no different from your current individual clients. This is a given. 
  • But when it comes to working with corporates, aside from executive 1:1 coaching, your high-ticket corporate offer will include elements of team teaching /training /coaching /facilitating. 
  • Therefore, the important reason is that your successes with 1:1 clients show that you have a method or approach that you have tested and refined, probably over time. You have a specific way of how you relate to your clients, how you guide them, challenge them and help them break through any obstacles they come across during their time with you. 

And you should be able to apply this method or approach in principle to teams just like you do with individuals. Let me explain: 

Using your coaching skills with corporates

While there are some differences between coaching individuals and teams, the purpose and much of your role as a coach remain the same. Your role is to support improving your coachees’ performance, learning and development. And you do this by raising their awareness, challenging their assumptions, limited mindsets, and non-helpful behaviors. Then finally getting them to take action so that they can achieve their goals. This is the same whether you coach a team or an individual.*

For example, if you are a wellness coach who helps busy moms reduce stress in their lives, you might have certain exercises you ask your clients to do. Or you encourage them to adopt habits such as journaling or mindfulness meditation. Or you might help them look at their dietary habits or sleep patterns to give them practical tools to strengthen their resilience. 

All of those things are as applicable to a team inside of an organization as they are to individuals – and in fact, you might want to focus your corporate work on helping those same busy moms there! 

*When working with teams, you need to use some of your other skills, such as facilitation, building relationships with a number of people and having a basic understanding of team dynamics but as an experienced coach, you will already have much of this in your toolbox (if you wonder, make sure you tag me in the comments and I’ll direct you to some posts on this).

What changes is how you deliver your method or approach – tweaking the format to target a team. What you don’t need is a brand new approach or to take another study course on your topic or gain another qualification for the sake of corporates.

What results are corporates looking for?

Of course, not all results are created equal and a lot of people worry that bigger companies are looking for certain results, such as financial ones. 

This is the wrong thinking though because if you can create results for individuals and these are SPECIFIC and TANGIBLE, you can create the kind of results that corporates are looking for (and getting them to understand that is just a matter of communication and positioning).

The point about specificity and tangibility is one where many less experienced coaches come unstuck because even though they might have a lot to offer, but solely focus on helping their clients gain things like clarity and insights. 

Now, being clear and having insights are wonderful things but by themselves, they are limited because without some form of action, they don’t change much in your clients’ lives. (Don’t we all know people who keep complaining about an issue in their life, who see what they should change yet stay exactly where they are?)

An experienced coach will link insights, clarity, empowerment to specific challenges and results. 

How this works in practice: mindset coaches

Let me give you an example of a female mindset coach who empowers women to lead their best life. This coach will not stop focusing on insights and clarity but for example, will help their clients to set specific boundaries so that they can reduce stress, feel confident to take specific action to progress their career, or follow consistent steps to be more visible online for their business. 

And exactly those types of specific results are what corporates are looking for too!

Many businesses for example want to support their female rising stars so that they are not stressed out, that they take powerful action and that they raise their internal employee brand. 

What’s in it for the company?

Their rising stars are not leaving the business, they are not faced with huge health and recruitment costs and they can achieve better gender balance – all things that enlightened organizations want and pay well for. 

When you drill down to the specific results you deliver, the question around tangibility becomes easy too and in fact, it’s much easier when looking at corporates than individual clients. 

Because in a corporate environment, every action and every change can be traced to some form of financial impact. 

  • Company’s employees less stressed? Reduced healthcare costs and fewer people leaving leads to reduced recruitment costs.
  • Emerging leaders get better at setting boundaries? Increased productivity with associated cost benefits and reduced burn-out (see the point above)
  • Female leaders empowered to rise through the ranks? Research has shown that gender-balanced teams and boards are more productive, innovative and make fewer high-risk decisions. 

(Here is a post that goes into more detail on how to work out the tangible benefits you can bring as a coach to corporations):

http://impactfulnesslab.com/here-is-how-you-can-land-a-5-figure-contract-with-corporate-clients-if-you-are-a-mindset-coach/

If you still have any questions, DM me!

What I can offer you

In my 3 months intensive 1:1 coaching program, I go into more detail about how to design your corporate offer and your delivery program, but you now have a simple and clear yardstick to evaluate if you are qualified to land 5-figure contracts with corporations. No more hiding because you believe you need something else 😉

I also work with you on focusing on the right niche that you are excited about working with, help you with your marketing message so that you attract only those prospects who are right for you and teach you how to have simple but effective sales conversations and create proposals that convert at approximately 80% of the time.

This program works best for those people who have solid experience in their field and are willing to do the work – it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. 

Following this program, you should be able to have 1-2 explorative conversations with ideal corporate prospects per week (if you reach out to sufficient numbers) and book 1-2 new corporate clients per month for your business for $5k-$15k contracts.

If you’re interested in the program, the next step is to DM me and we’ll have a chat to see if it’s a good match for you to get results in your business.

Tatyana

Tatyana

Leave a Reply

Miriam Gilbert, founder of Impactfulness Lab, smiling

About Me

With more than 20years experience as a corporate decision-maker and CFO, 8+years running my own 6-figure consultancy I KNOW exactly what goes on in corporate mindsets – and how to sneak into their brain, charm their mind and get them to throw their budget at you.

Recent Posts