Business coaching aims to improve the performance of a business. Those who seek coaching range from businesses struggling to make a profit to those who are simply looking to build on their success.

HR Coach provides business and human resources coaching. Most of its clients have 25 staff or less and want to use business coaching to build internal capabilities.

Louise Broekman, managing director at HR Coach, says the concept of business coaching is still relatively new and has been through a “pioneering” period of educating the market. But as the practice becomes more accepted, “every business will need one”, she says.

Business coaching at HR Coach can include one-off training sessions or can run to a series of sessions.

Strategic

Broekman says research shows businesses typically sign up for a three-month period, but that is changing. Now, the role of the business coach is about being a partner to a business where the coach works with the client over a longer period of time to get a more strategic result.

“The role of the business coach is also evolving; it’s being more formalised into establishing advisory boards where it’s strategically helping that business to grow,” she says.

For those considering a business coaching franchise, Broekman says one of the key traits people need to have is to be a people person. “We focus on the people element. You’ve got to make sure you’re technically proficient at what you do and your motivations are right for doing it,” she says.

Business coaching franchises suit people who can empathise with business owners and the challenges they face, she believes. This means being a good listener, not being judgmental, focusing on understanding the drivers within the business and being able to create trusting relationships.

“Really assess your skills and make sure that whatever system you’re looking at assesses your skills too, because you’re not only technically delivering what you need to for a client, but you also have to operate your own business as well and you need to be able to balance both,” Broekman says.

Although experience in business coaching is not a prerequisite, she insists franchisees need to have solid technical skills. A successful track record in running a business also helps.

A franchisee’s training will depend on the individual’s skillset and may be shorter for franchisees with prior experience of business ownership.

There is also ongoing development for franchisees as the market continually evolves and changes. HR Coach’s initial two-week strategy program for new members of the network is followed by a further three-month business coaching process and an ongoing professional development program.

However, Broekman warns that you can’t take a cookie cutter approach to development and it’s not one-size-fits-all.

The rewards of business coaching can be vast, such as helping a business achieve the results they set out to and supporting them to make it happen.

And, says Broekman, “being able to be in control of your own destiny and making something happen for yourself and for other people [is] liberating.”

In particular, it gives women an opportunity to leave a restricted corporate career for greater flexibility and opportunities. “We’re seeing huge growth in the women’s market. I really suggest to women who are not happy in their corporate environment that these are great alternatives; to be able to build something for yourself and make a difference and have the flexibility that you want,” Broekman says.

Training courses

Business coaching can also include formal training and qualifications which are accredited by the government and sometimes subsidised. For example, government subsidies provide up to $4000 per individual for training course expenses for some retail and business certificates and diplomas.

Louise Targett, managing director at Target Training, believes business coaching is all about working with business owners to identify key issues in the business and develop strategies to help them improve. It has become so important she sees it as a necessary part of any business.

This means franchisees must be adept at working with business owners and managers across small, medium and large organisations and be comfortable in communicating with them.

Franchisees also need to “love communication with businesses É because it’s a key part of their role. [They should also be] passionate about growing a business via people development, because that’s our number one focus,” Targett says.

Of course, franchisees also need self-discipline to work for themselves as a business manager of their own small business.

However, there are differences between business training and business coaching. Training is typically a longer-term process where staff learn about key areas of their job and can include formal assessments.

“Business coaching, on the other hand, is not accredited at all, so it can be one-off or it can be long-term, but at the end of the day, it may or may not get results because it’s not formally accredited,” Targett says.

Companies typically come to Target Training when their sales are down — they could have strong market demand for their product or service, but they don’t know how to maximise sales.

Such companies often want training to improve their business, which can be formalised training through a nationally recognised diploma or certificate or through business coaching, which isn’t a formal qualification.

Targett is quick to point out Target Training is selling a franchise to run a training organisation, not a business coaching franchise. “Training organisation means accredited and non-accredited courses. Accredited means we’re a registered training organisation through the Department of Education and we have access to government subsidies for each qualification,” Targett says.

“Business coaching does not offer that because they’re not accredited as business coaches and they don’t have access to Australian government subsidies. Our model is completely different to the business coaching organisations out there.”

Motivation

Some firms however, such as Brian Tracy International, are purely focused on business coaching and encompass psychological and motivational-based training.

Business coaching at the company is focused on understanding the psychology of a business’s goals and why they have achieved their current level of success. The company then helps organisations to discover habitual patterns — positive and negative — and helps to alter those patterns for greater success.

“People come to coaching primarily to make changes, so they’re already in their groove of wanting to get different results,” says Andrew Phillips, principal at Brian Tracy International, Australia and New Zealand.

“But the worst thing that you can do is not to dig deep and find out why people have got the current results that they’ve got.”

Clients at Brian Tracy International include LJ Hooker, BMW and Wendy’s. At LJ Hooker, the company’s hierarchy needed to engender motivation and goal setting skills “and get their agents to understand that success is 85 percent attitudinal and 15 percent skills and knowledge,” Phillips says.

“The goal there was to make people understand that they’re responsible for their own success, to make them more self aware and to make them more goal oriented.”

The most common reason business coaching fails, according to Phillips, is because coaches don’t understand the psychology of people’s attitudes and feelings, which means they can easily “slip back into the same pattern they tried to get out of the first time”.

On practical terms, coaching is typically carried out in conference rooms, most often at the client’s office. Trainers at Brian Tracy International also have their own premises where clients can conduct their training.

This training is focused around audio, visual and role-playing techniques. However, Phillips says there are different models of business coaching and there are not enough criteria to assess potential business coaches.

“A lot of franchisor business systems will allow you in if you’ve got a pulse and you’ve got some cash. It’s not good enough, and we’ve seen large companies implode because the coaches don’t know how to do the job and they don’t have the resources,” Phillips says.

He says people who make good business coaches are experienced business people who have had successful careers of their own and “climbed a personal mountain. They know what failure can look like”.

They also need to be self-aware, understand the psychology of success, be excellent listeners, have empathy and want to genuinely help people achieve success.

Phillips says dominant personalities are ideal, but they also need to be able to influence people and socialise. “So you do need these characteristics up front. Hopefully [the] franchise provides good training,” Phillips says.

The main difficulty franchisees may experience in the beginning is finding clients. “Payment can also be a challenge, so good systems are needed and a real internal understanding of the value of their own time,” Phillips says.

However, like any business, there can be many rewards and personal satisfaction — Phillips says the greatest reward is seeing the tangible success of its clients.

He says: “Business is about gaining and keeping a client. A profit is a by-product of doing it well.”