Mathias MaulMarketing at the Interface

Two months ago, one of my customers invited me to a very upscale steakhouse in Frankfurt, Germany, to celebrate the completion of a project. The menu contained numerous errors and was more like an insult to my eyes. The so–called mousse au chocolat tasted like pure butter with a minute hint of artificial cocoa aroma. Waiters excelled in waiting for us to order while standing impatiently behind us. Flashy bloat everywhere, with very little relevant content.

Yesterday, a couple of friends and I visited a simple, small café in the Portuguese district of Hamburg, Germany. Old chairs, a glaringly loud TV in one corner of the small guest room, all slightly filthy. We ordered some galaos and drank them. When we got ready to leave and said “Thank you” to the young waiter, he smiled, replying “Oh, that’s okay. It’s my job here to make you happy.”

I could’ve had more than 160 galaos at this wonderful place with my customer for the money he had spent at the luxuriously disappointing steakhouse. If you ever come to Hamburg, be sure to visit the Café Praia de Vagueira in No. 10, Ditmar-Koel-Straße, Hamburg.

I am a big fan of short, sweet company “mantras” as suggested by Guy Kawasaki and frequently work with my clients in such a way that they know their mantra before they set out on any marketing mission.

This being said, whenever I stumble upon an old-school “mission statement”, I usually recoil in mild disgust, being reminded of the dotcom bloat in the nineties and the suits filled with no more than evenly bloated mission statements.

Recently, however, I found a company with a most charming mission statement (and a most charming owner) …

ConnectingDotz develops products that link people with ideas with people with ideas … We do this by highlighting words, images and values that unite us across boundaries of all kinds.

I know that if I hadn’t known the owner of the company before I had found the web site, I’d have clicked away quickly, and I know a great deal of people who’d have done exactly the same. It does sound cheesy, doesn’t it?

Yes. And no. Yes, because its form corresponds to many other filled-with-hot-air mission statements. No because its content is true to what they really do. Just because a mission statement sounds cheesy, by no means is it cheesy. And even though it could be replaced by a shorter, Kawasaki-style mantra, I’d rather leave it as it is.

Oh, here’s the site: www.connectingdotz.com (Nice christmas gifts, by the way!)

What makes a truly great customer? No, not that he pays your bills in time, or that he recommends your services to prospects.

If you are a web developer, you know what it’s like to spend hours on hours cursing and battling the dreaded MSIE to make it display your customer’s website correctly. A truly great customer doesn’t just e-mail you a thank you note if you succeed.

No, the mark of a Truly Great Customer is that she mails you a custom-printed t-shirt.

Thanks, Petra!

It’s done! After weeks of painstaking research and many writing sessions (not to mention all those grande cappuccinos) at my local Starbucks, the first episode of the first ever mental golf coaching podcast went live today. It is available for subscription at the iTunes Music Store.

Read the press release here: Bridging the Mental Barrier to Success in Golf. Free audiobook reveals the secrets to the perfect game.

This project is just one example of what is possible when a cleanly defined niche market is addressed with targeted online marketing. What is online now is just the beginning of a funnel marketing approach, so stay tuned and watch out for what’s to come!

Recently, Jennifer Kahn of Wired Magazine posted a great article on mental sports coaching: Wayne Gretzky-Style ‘Field Sense’ May Be Teachable

“In any sport, you come across these players,” Vint says. “They’re not always the most physically talented, but they’re by far the best. The way they see things that nobody else sees — it can seem almost supernatural. But I’m a scientist, so I want to know how the magic works.”

While much of the article is not much news to seasoned mental sport coaches, it is an interesting read for those new to the field and for potential clients as a showcase of possibilities.

With so many people talking about Timothy Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Workweek (aff), I discovered that this book was exactly the right thing to enter my life at the exactly right time. I’ve been thinking about leading a more mobile life for about half a year, but with this book I gained massive momentum and increased my actions to actually do most of what Tim is writing about.

As I’m doing marketing consulting for coaches, I’ve been asking myself: How can someone who does life coaching (or personal coaching or whatever you might call it) combine his profession with an ultra-mobile lifestyle? So here’s my 0.02 euros on the Top Five Market Niches for Vagabonding Life Coaches

No. 5: Specialize in internationally universal issues

This is not as easy as it might sound. Unbelievable as it is for my stereotypically angst-ridden fellow German countrymen, there are countries or cultures where issues such as depression are nearly unheard of. But how about, for example, the catch-all of life coaches, “work-life balance”? In any given country that suffers from a 9-to-5-culture there are thousands of potential clients just waiting for an “expert from Germany” (or the U.S., or Japan, etc.) to arrive and assist them in escaping the rat race, especially when this expert (you!) has already collected experience about this universal issue in other countries.

No. 4: Specialize in issues specific to countries or cultures

If you’re planning to spend a couple of months in another country find out about culture specific issues that you can address with personal coaching or seminars. If you’re into crisis intervention, read the news about current events that might make people scared or frightened, and offer coaching specific to these events.

Keep in mind that while it is beneficial to speak the language of your destination country, it is not as important as you might think. Instead, invest your time learning the manners of your destination country. I once coached a gentleman from Saudi Arabia using only very basic English, and it worked out great. You can also hire a professional translator for your sessions or let your client bring one of his multilingual friends. This works even in intimate personal coaching and therapeutic contexts. Don’t underestimate the increased expert status you’ll have as “foreign expert!”

No. 3: Specialize in Sports Coaching

Mental sports coaching is a huge field. I’ve been doing Mental Golf coaching for a couple of years now, but there are dozens of other sports that benefit greatly from mental coaching. Just imagine: How much does the mental state of, say, a baseball pitcher, influence the quality of his throws? How about complementing Indian cricketers’ indigenous meditation methods with some left-hemispheric mental strategy coaching á la NLP? Or working with the coach of a soccer team and introducing modern hypnosis in the pre-game process? The possibilities are endless.

No. 2: Specialize in Coaching for Musicians

Often called an “international language,” music is very closely tied to a country and its culture(s). However, the issues musicians and vocalists are faced with are universal: Stage fright before performances is omnipresent, even with well-known (and well-paid) professionals. This is true especially in the field of classical performances, but I’ve also worked with jazz pianists who wanted to “get into the flow” faster. If you successfully specialize in mental coaching for musicians, you’ll never run out of clients and all-access backstage passes.

No. 1: The Power of Self-Referential Coaching and Training

Probably the easiest and most rewarding issue to specialize if you’re inclined to be a vagabonding coach or trainer: Teach others to do what you’re doing right now. Coach them to escape 9-to-5, coach them to build their own businesses, hold seminars on lifestyle design, and so on. If you’re travelling the world and want to coach or train people, teach others how to travel the world and coach and train people. Heck, you might even want to teach others how to teach others how to train. (Which is, incidentally, what I do most of the time.) Whatever self-referential topic you choose: You can be sure that it automatically comes with the added bonus of authenticity.

Go on and choose your preferred niche, or e-mail me with more suggestions. Now please excuse me, I’m off to Fiji finding new business opportunities …

While I’m still writing and refining my upcoming article “Selling Snake Oil to Skeptics,” allow me a quick plug for my latest venture: HeadProCoaching Golf Mental Performance Coaching.

If you’re inclined, have a look at www.headprocoaching.com (available in English, German, Japanese and Spanish) and count the niches. We are addressing a very narrow segment (golfers with hcp ≤ 12) of a market that is narrow in itself: ambitious amateur golfers rather than people who play “just” for fun.

The golfing community is full of niches, and this is just one of them. It’s all about finding out about the needs a very small and very specific segment of a market, and satisfy them.

Today, Ryan Carson published a brilliant post on his blog Carsonified! on “How to Deal with Abusive Customers”. He talks about the story of one customer who turned abusive and concludes:

once-in-awhile, you get a customer who is just cruel and really doesn’t want to be helped. In those cases it seems best (to me) to state the facts to them in a professional manner, and move on.

Indeed, the old adage “the customer is always right” has its limits. There are customers who cannot be argued with reasonably. Customers can and do get abusive. And such extreme cases are a pain to deal with. Ryan’s suggestions are to the point: Stay professional and don’t let yourself get drawn into it.

This is quite easy when you’re selling a product or service that does not per se require an intimate relationship between you and your customer. However, there is a very ironic twist for anyone working in the personal coaching or therapy business. I’ll try to explain:

Working with a coaching client (“coachee”) requires a special kind of relationship: A mixture of genuine empathy and professional distance. For an experienced coach, this is daily routine, but it can be daunting for newcomers to the field. This basic issue aside, what to do when a coachee turns uncooperative, demands a refund, or even gets irate and abusive like the person in Ryan’s story?

Of all the coachees I’ve worked with over the years, only two fell into this category. We had built up a working relationship and had a couple of coaching sessions. Then, suddenly, those clients became abusive, left irate voice messages and e-mails, demanded a refund, even threatened and tried to blackmail me.

In both cases, a “diagnosis” was easy, and I understood why they reacted like this: It was part of their underlying issue on which we had worked on during the coaching sessions. Ironically, as a result of the sessions, they regained their self-confidence (both were management type business people who had sought my assistance because of assertiveness issues) and tried immediately if it worked.

As ironic as it is, simply understanding why they reacted like this did not help with the abusiveness issue. Imagine that, within the working relationship between you and your coachee, she turns irate for whatever reason and refuses to cooperate. As coach, you are supposed to support the coachee, right? After all, it’s written down in the contract and (hopefully) your work ethics. Now in a normal coach/coachee setting, you would tackle whatever issue the coachee has, but this requires her intent to cooperate.

The abusiveness, however, cannot be tackled within the setting, and as soon as you break the setting, you inevitably lose the coachee. It seems impossible to break out of this double-bind without letting go at least one of the two basic personality traits: genuine empathy and professional distance. Let go of empathy and lose your ethics, let go of the distance and get caught up in an abusive mud-wrestling.

Solutions, anyone?

In one of my two cases of abusive clients, I did not refund any money; in the other, I did. Both clients had similar basic issues and both reacted similarly (abusive language, threats, blackmail). However, considerations on the prognosis of their issues led me to the conclusion that client A was already stable enough to handle my “turning down,” while client B would probably have suffered an even more severe bout of her issue. I sort of invested a couple of hundred Euros on client B (by refunding her fees) in order to support her even though she did not cooperate overtly.

Thus, I kept my professional distance to both of them, and I kept my genuine empathy. Of course, I was p—-ed off at first, because I had thought that they were accusing me of something that I had (or hadn’t) done, but this anger faded when I looked behind the issues that had brought them to react like they did.

So here is to all coaches: Forget about keeping or breaking the setting and keep your focus on the client. Sounds easy, can be painful. (Seek supervision if it is.) At any rate, you will learn lots from your abusive clients. I’ve had my fair share of those and hope that you’ll have at least one as well. There’s enough for all of us.

If you want to get into the personal coaching business but don’t want to (or cannot) hire someone who assists you in marketing, here is a bunch of books that I warmly recommend to anyone starting, or optimizing his business. (Assuming you’ve already read the authoritative works of your preferred coaching/therapy methodologies.)

• Seth Godin: Purple Cow. Transform your Business by Being Remarkable. (aff) A modern classic, and probably the only book on marketing you’ll ever need. Except for Seth Godin’s other books, of course.

• Guy Kawasaki: The Art of the Start. (aff) The other only book on marketing (and starting a business) you’ll ever need.

• Richard Dawkins: Unweaving the Rainbow. (aff) Like any book by Richard Dawkins, this is a perfect companion for anyone preferring healthy skepticism to blind superstition. Chapters six and seven read like a survival guide for the often dogma-burdened field of personal coaching, therapy and training and helps to keep a clear mind when confronted with outrageous claims.

• William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White: The Elements of Style. (aff) All you need to know about writing short and long copy in style. A wake-up call for native and non-native speakers of English (like myself).

Note that none of those books is really specific to the field of personal coaching, training or therapy. That is because, frankly, I haven’t yet found one that amazed me as those listed did. E-Mail me if you have a suggestion.

You have just finished a personal coaching education and want to leave your mark in a crowded market? It’s easy if you adhere to a couple of rules that I have learned to be massively helpful in my own career.

1. Make your own mental health the number one priority in your professional life. Work with clients, in both coaching and therapy, can be a strain on your personal mental hygiene. Look after yourself, and when in trouble, ask colleagues for professional supervision. Nuff said.

2. With your mental health the number one priority, the number two priority is continuing and smart self-education. While this holds true for all professions, the coaching business demands special treatment. Ask a seasoned coach, and he will agree that roughly 90 percent of “new” methods in coaching or therapy are old ones in disguise. Don’t get caught up in me-too-seminars. Be smart, look behind the scenes and filter out what you already know from the never-ending supply of “new” methods. How? Just call the trainer and ask some pointed questions. (Speaking as a trainer, I know how important those questions are to me in order to improve my seminars!) Also, remember that every client is an opportunity for you to learn and improve.

3. Don’t try to enter the market as “personal coach.” Those are a dime a dozen. Typically, educational programs in personal coaching are quite comprehensive, so if you graduate successfully, you can work with a very, very wide range of clients’ issues. Rather, work on your specific positioning, find your niche and stick to it. If you had strong, constant pain in your wrist, would you go to your GP or a hand specialist?

These are just three points from the top of my head. This list will be continued in future posts. I appreciate your feed-back!