As a small or medium business owner, your role in your business can be described as that of a generalist—you manage the majority of your business functions, including administration, marketing, manufacturing, and sometimes even delivery.
In most cases, SMEs are driven by the vision, experience, and intuition of the proprietor, and many of them rely on learnings from past mistakes to power future business decisions, and hopefully growth.
That said, this generalist and go-it-alone approach may not always deliver the best results for your business. You can achieve greater growth and sustainability by enlisting the expertise of someone who has trodden the same path and has succeeded in navigating the challenges to reach business objectives and goals; we are referring to a business coach here.
Today, as businesses are looking to adapt to the digital economy and navigate the contemporary challenges brought on by the business environment, many entrepreneurs are turning to business coaches.
Business coaching has seen a significant boom in popularity among SMEs—according to a recent study, 16% of SME owners are enlisting business coaches to enhance their management capabilities and grow their business.
You may, however, ask the question, why is business coaching important to your business? That’s what we explore in this post.
The difference between business coaching and mentorship
Before we answer ‘’Why is business coaching important?’’ you must understand the difference between business coaching and business mentorship. While both functions are necessary to a business and help entrepreneurs enhance their processes, the approach to achieve is different.
A mentorship, for example, is a long term commitment and helps you reach your business goals and objectives by providing advice and guidance. Most often, a mentor will guide all business functions.
Business coaching, on the other hand, is often a short term commitment and tackles very specific goals. A business coach works with you to set up the right processes to achieve your goal and monitor your progress through multiple paid coaching sessions.
Why is business coaching important for your business?
- Plan and strategiseAs we established earlier, many SMEs rely on the intuitiveness and the business astuteness of the entrepreneur. Sometimes, due to the heavy workload of handling numerous things at once, you may make errors in judgment when planning or miss a strategic opportunity that can drive growth.Business coaches can work with you through the planning process and help you establish the right goals and objectives for your business, identify the best course of action moving forward, formulate strategies to achieve business objectives and monitor the implementation of business workflowWhen you have a clear direction for your business, growing your business becomes less complicated—you can implement the strategies formulated by the business coaches at the right time to accomplish your goals.
- Establish your brandAs an entrepreneur, you may have an innate talent in creating unique and effective solutions for consumer pain points. You may, however, struggle to market your product or service and position yourself as the expert in your business—marketing is the most challenging and expensive business function for many SMEs.That’s where business coaching can help you succeed. You can enlist the expertise of a business coach who excels in marketing to help establish your brand as the most obvious solution for your business area. They can help you supercharge your marketing efforts by integrating marketing automation tools into your workflows.That said, business coaching is not just limited to marketing but spans administration, manufacturing, customer service and more, and you can leverage the expertise of coaches to enhance your operations and augment your ROI.
- Increase accountabilityTo borrow an example from sport, you never see coaches running or playing with their team, but stay on the sidelines and monitor the performance of the athletes, taking notes on how to improve performance in the next match. The same applies to business coaching.Business coaches will give you the necessary training and tools to handle the challenges, and it’s up to you to implement them. Coaches will track KPIs and keep you informed about your progress, increasing business accountability.
Leverage the expertise of business coaches to accelerate business growth
Today, businesses face intense competition across industries, and entrepreneurs need to put their best foot forward to succeed despite the competition. Business coaching can complement your efforts and help you make all the right moves to grow your business.
Leverage business coaching today to enjoy a successful business.
