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Are you ready to start talking with your clients again?

If you’re a first class coach or consultant AND great at pitching for work, you really do have it all – congratulations! Read no further. For those of us who need a little support with marketing and BD, here are a few tips for contacting clients as we emerge, blinking into the ‘next normal’.

1. Don’t sell, help. As a coach or consultant, you will already have bundles of empathy and now is the time to use it. Think carefully about the clients you want to work with and put yourself in their shoes. Given the circumstances, what are the exact challenges they are facing right now and how do they feel about them? What is it that you offer that can help them with this situation? Use this information too…

2. Get the message right. Remember, clarity is key. Keep your message simple, crisp and focussed. ‘This is the problem you are currently facing and this is how I can help you solve it’. 

3. Be generous. We’re all reeling from an unprecedented few months and coming from a place of genuine care and helpfulness will go a long way to building relationships with clients. This isn’t about giving your time for free, but it is about adding value. Is there something that you can offer clients that will help them transition back to the ‘new normal’? A slide deck of useful team coaching tips, an article that they might find useful? Get creative!

4. Create a roadmap. Clients are looking for answers and solid ground. We’ve noticed a trend for mentoring over coaching at the moment. If you’re clear on the challenges your client is facing (see point 1), create a roadmap of how you’ll help them get to a solution. E.g. ‘we’ll benchmark team performance when the team transition back to the office, put in a 6 week coaching/mentoring intervention to achieve X objective, we’ll re-measure to make sure we’re on track’.

5. Be confident in your value. It’s human nature to look for guidance at times of transition or change. Arguably, never was there a time when coaching and mentoring was more needed! Yes, budgets are tight and in some cases non-existent, but that doesn’t mean your unique gifts aren’t needed. Be confident in your pitch, the value that you can add to organisations and go for it! If the right case is made to the right person at the right time, budgets can be found.

In the coming months, we’ll be running online workshops for our PCS Practitioners on how to pitch PCS tools to clients.

If this is something you’d find useful, let us know by emailing Chris.Milliner@performanceclimatesystem.com and we’ll keep you in the loop.

Rebecca Scarrott, June 2020

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Zac's Challenges:

Zac’s tech business is growing rapidly. He’s gone from being a developer with a good idea to now overseeing an ever-expanding team. Zac knows that in order for the business to grow successfully, it needs to stay true to its founding values and his staff need to feel valued and engaged. Zac wants to understand if he and his team are on the same page and he needs to do it quickly and cost effectively.

Zac's PCS Solution

Zac decides to use PCS Lite to get a quick temperature check of how his team are performing and what they think about the business. The PCS Lite report quickly surfaces the fact that his team have lost sight of the organisation’s purpose and goals. Zac realises that he needs to improve his on-boarding processes and help orientate the new team members better in the company culture and vision. 6 months later, Zac uses PCS Lite to check his new onboarding process is working; concludes that the growing team are much better aligned to his vision and are generally operating in a more positive working environment.

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Annabel's Challenges:

It’s Annabel’s job to help the Partners in the firm manage their clients and ensure they’re consistently adding value. Recently, Annabel has been asked by one of the Partners to find a tool or framework that the consultants can use to benchmark new clients looking for team and leadership improvement programmes. It needs to be cost-effective, established and reputable and able to be branded with the firm’s own logo.

Annabel's PCS Solution

Annabel recommends PCS Pro to the Senior Partners as it provides an objective measurement of team and leadership climate against which the consultants can build performance improvement programmes. PCS has a good track record, academic validation, excellent training and customer service, so she’s confident that it’s the right tool for the firm’s consultants to use.

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Sarah's Challenges:

Sarah has to keep across the multiple training and development needs in the organisation and do it within a tight budget. Recently, Sarah’s been asked to design a L&D programme that improves the staff retention rate and helps staff feel more engaged with the changes happening in the organisation, not least the shift to more flexible working.

Sarah's PCS Solution

Sarah uses PCS to measure how different teams across the organisation are performing and look at any patterns which suggest the need for organisation-wide, leader or team training. Sarah notices that all teams and leaders have a low climate score in the Processes segment. Sarah knows that allocating budget in this area will improve performance. She works with the Senior Management Team to review the organisation’s processes as they transition to more flexible working and designs a training programme to support staff in the transition. She’s helped staff to feel supported, acknowledged and engaged which ultimately drives performance. 

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Jim's Challenges:

Jim’s client has a team that’s not performing as well other teams in the organisation. The team has a high staff turnover, sickness and the lack of cohesion is impacting the team’s wellbeing and performance. Jim needs to get to the bottom of why this is happening and design effective coaching interventions which can generate tangible results for his client.

Jim's PCS Solution

Jim uses PCS Pro to measure / benchmark how the team and leader are performing across the 6 segments critical to team performance – Goals, Roles, Processes, Adaptability, Connection and Resilience. He can immediately see the disparity in Goals, Processes and Connection between the leader’s perception and those of her team. He uses this information to build a coaching programme designed align team and leader. After 6 months, the team seems to be more settled and productive. Jim remeasures using PCS Pro – the results show the client the effectiveness of his coaching intervention.

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