By Michael Deane
Even though many inexperienced entrepreneurs believe that business coaches are there for companies that struggle, the truth is that their role in making plans for the further growth of your business is indispensable.
Here are some of the most important ways in which a business coach can make a difference when it comes to the growth of your business.
Challenge Your Thinking
When considering the growth of your own business, it’s easy for your emotions, opinions, and assumptions to muddy the waters and complicate your decision-making or throw you off the track.
An optimistic point of view might be a beneficial trait in an entrepreneur, but only when it’s balanced with reality. Unfortunately, business owners often don’t have anyone to be their counterweight and keep them grounded.
A skilled and seasoned business coach can be just the kind of counterbalance you need to keep your business on the path to success.
A business coach will be there to challenge your thinking, as they can help you evaluate the viability of your business ideas and plans, offering a realistic view that is crucial when planning your business for growth.
They will point out any mistakes or flaws in your scheme, as well as offer you a fresh perspective or present you with opportunities for growth that you haven’t even been aware of.
Help Your Focus
Running your own business often feels daunting, especially when you feel that you’re spending your time mostly dealing with different issues that come your way.
Instead of sweating over the small and not particularly important stuff, a good business coach will help you focus on things that are essential for the further growth of your business.
They will help you declutter your mind and put the things in the right perspective by helping you arrange your goals and expectations, as well as all your resources.
The evolving nature of work can easily overwhelm you and with the right focus, you’ll be sure that all your resources are contributing to your main goal – your business growth.
Identify Core Issues
Still, your growth doesn’t depend only on how you plan and use your resources.
It also depends on your ability to identify potential flaws and inefficiencies in your organizations, as well as the major issues lying beneath them and find ways to resolve them.
Still, an internal position in the company limits your chances for objective insight into its affairs, keeping you focused on managing only the visible challenges, instead of discovering their underlying causes.
On the other hand, a good business coach can give you an impartial opinion on the core issues in your company, and help you push through them.
Apart from their professional expertise and experience, they will gather relevant data on your business. They will approach it holistically and assess it thoroughly, identifying inefficiencies or unoptimized processes, and coach you on how to best solve them.
Set Your Growth Goals
You can hardly expect your business to grow unless you’ve put enough effort into planning and growing it strategically.
Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs act on their impulses even when they’re making some crucial decisions, skipping the entire planning phase, and not really understanding how their decisions might influence their bottom line.
A business coach will help you set realistic goals for your business growth and define the actions needed to achieve them.
With a growth plan ahead of you, you will make smarter financial decisions, as it will be easier for you to see their implications – be it when hiring a new employee or purchasing a new piece of equipment.
Make Priorities
Business owners often have problems prioritizing tasks that are ahead of them, which can sometimes prevent them from achieving their goals efficiently.
When it comes to the growth of your business, you need to know your priorities well and focus only on what’s truly important and urgent.
A business coach can help you distinguish which tasks are worthy of your time and energy, and which are the tasks you should choose to delegate or outsource.
Only high-value, creative tasks deserve your full attention.
Accountability
Another problem that some entrepreneurs face is that they don’t really have anyone who holds them accountable for their actions.
Having a business coach by your side will offer you a much stronger sense of accountability.
They will be there for you when setting your goals and prioritizing your actions, but they will also check with you whether you’re following them through, holding you responsible for the outcomes.
Together, it will be easier to determine what managerial practices have delivered the expected results, and which are the ones that should be improved.
Help With Decision-Making
When running your own business and planning for growth, you are faced with hundreds of decisions, each and every day.
The majority of these decisions are the ones with no long-term impact on the growth of your business, while only some can have serious consequences.
Nonetheless, if your decision-making skills are not stellar, making this many choices every day can become a significant burden and lead to decision-fatigue.
A business coach can help you improve this soft skill, so you can differentiate decisions you need to take and set the time frame accordingly.
When it comes to making crucial decisions, a business coach can also help you calculate the risks and minimize the odds of loss and failure.
Advance Your Soft-Skills
Apart from decision-making, your business coach can help you advance your other soft skills that can contribute to the growth of your business.
Time management is one of such skills, and if you master it, you’ll do better at work, avoid stress and be more efficient.
A well-versed business coach will help you identify your weak points and your most common time snatchers, and show you helpful strategies and techniques to put your time to good use.
A business coach can also help you advance your networking skills, as they both recognize the value of these skills and can advocate for your business in relevant circles.
Back in the day, working hard was a crucial ingredient for success, and now it’s working smart. A business coach can help you understand this difference and effectively use your potential.
Michael has been working in marketing for almost a decade and has worked with a huge range of clients, which has made him knowledgeable on many different subjects. He has recently rediscovered a passion for writing and hopes to make it a daily habit. You can read more of Michael’s work at Qeedle.