Add Value For Your Clients

Are you a management consultant or trainer?
Are you looking for ways to add value for your clients?
Do you want better and more sustainable results?

An increasing number of consultants and trainers are adding coaching to their business solutions for clients. There are many reasons for this trend, not least of which is the fact that coaching can produce better and more sustainable results thereby demonstrating increased ROI.

Coaching is a powerful methodology that combines learning with action to produce a stated result. It can be used with individuals, groups or whole companies.

Talk to us about your business

Contact us to find out how you can use our coach training to get better results with your clients

What is the difference between Coaching, Consulting and Training?

The following descriptions seeks to make a distinction between the well-used terms above. However, in doing so, we acknowledge that the reality is often not quite so clear cut. It is for example entirely possible to be in the realm of all three activities within one individual session. The important thing is that the person providing the coaching, consulting or training service is aware of the benefit they are providing for the client and is ethical in their delivery of that benefit.

Coaching

Coaches use a specialized conversation to work with clients to identify goals, changes or shifts and then ask powerful questions to move the client closer to their target. Although many coaches are specialists in their chosen niche and can sometimes provide information and direction, they prefer the client to identify and find solutions themselves.

Coaching normally takes place over an extended period of time, anywhere from 3 months to 2 years. Many coaches conduct their sessions over the phone, a common structure is a call a week between coach and client. This structure does two things:

1. it allows the client to integrate the coaching into their (often busy) schedules with no need for a drive in traffic
2. it provides a structure for accountability.

Accountability is a prominent feature of coaching. For some reason as human beings we are more likely to complete a task if we are accountable to someone else. A coach will keep their clients accountable for what they say they want to do.

Consulting

Consultants are experts in their chosen area of specialty and are called upon because of that expertise. Consultants are often used to solve problems or find solutions for their clients. In many cases consultants perform core functions of a company or organization as outsourced subcontractors.

Consulting can be very short term, as little as a day or a couple of hours, or in the case of a subcontractor, it can be very long term - up to 5 years.

Training

Trainers aim to pass on some knowledge or skill to their students. Trainers work with a set of desired learning outcomes, and although in some cases these can be designed by the learner, most often it is industry who design the learning outcomes. So for example the retail industry training body will identify the competencies required to work in retail. Together with training bodies they will design learning outcomes. Training providers will then design curriculum.