Award winning coach

In many ways the most important awards are the ones that my clients win. My first award for a client for was for ‘Most Improved Profit’ because I think that year, working with that client, we achieved over 800% increase in net profit. We all know that ActionCOACH awards are fiercely contested but I thought this result must be good enough for my client to take first place and fortunately for both of us I was right.

So, what caused an 800% increase in net profit? The first decision we made with this client was about the target market. They were operating in a very cutthroat business when margins were extremely tight if not non-existent. So, the first thing we did was to find a related sector where my client could still offer the same service but just be much better paid.

Fortunately, my client was very sensitive to paying attention to customers and the opportunity presented itself one day when a customer, despairing having to manage a ragtag bunch of suppliers, asked if anyone would care to manage the situation and my client put his hand up and said that he would. In the follow-up meeting to that decision, together with his customer, he increased the value of his contract from £12,000 to over £80,000.

By changing his focus and by adding value he was able to ramp up his revenue and profit massively. His teams doing the work are doing the same thing that they’ve always done. That didn’t change, but the type of contract and the type of customer did change. This was a very important lesson.

If you had been working in the industry you could’ve been forgiven for thinking that there was no way out: late payments; low margins; getting knocked, were just part and parcel of doing business and yet with my client’s learning, fast forward one year and nothing could be further from the truth.

Just goes to show the need to evaluate your situation objectively and open your mind to possibilities before you write off your chances.

Another great award clients have won, was ‘Most Innovative Business’. Now to win most innovative business they didn’t just have to have a great business idea they also had to have an almost insane level of growth because the competition for the award was so intense.

From memory this client achieved, over a five-year period, I think the compound annual growth rate was something like 96%. On that journey we took the business from start up, where the owners really had nothing, to creating three net asset millionaires which is pretty cool when you think about it.

In their business we focused on what we call the sausage machine. How do you systemise the approach to the business so you literally just turn the handle and the sausages come out. Despite the client’s best attempts to distract themselves numerous times we kept bringing them back to the sausage machine. Ultimately, they did have a system that worked for them.

What’s really great about these guys is that the journey isn’t over. They’ve moved from a business completing six-figure projects to a business completing seven-figure projects so in reality the journey has only just begun. The difference is, with a system and a set of processes behind them, they’re able to take on bigger projects with a lower workload.

Best retailer was perhaps the most challenging award a client has won. This client came to me as a referral from the bank and only after about a year did the bank actually tell me they had expected the imminent demise of this particular client. In fact they said they couldn’t believe that after 12 months with me the business was actually still afloat. The problem that the bank knew that I didn’t, at least not to start with, was the level of debt the business was carrying.

First thing we got around to fixing was the businesses terms and conditions. It was really clear that there were two arms to the business, commercial and retail. On the commercial side they were quite literally getting taken to the cleaners and we decided to leave the commercial side of the business and focus on retail.

It was also obvious that they were being way too generous with the credit terms and this was at the heart of the cash flow problems so by tightening up the terms and conditions and by polishing up the sale scripts they were able to increase their conversion rates and get customers to pay at the time they ordered the product rather than maybe a month afterwards.

We also had some fun when I decided to mystery shop one of their branches only to prove that the branch manager, who had been in place for 10 years, had never had any sales training or any product training at all in his tenure with the company. Fortunately both business owners put their hands up and said as much but they also realised they didn’t have the right branch manager. It was pretty clear at this point they needed to consolidate because they were haemorrhaging money out of unprofitable branches whereas if they just focused on one branch they would have been able to generate a lot more sales with a much lower overhead cost.

They closed the two unprofitable branches, defined their own roles very clearly in their flagship branch and found to their great surprise, costs came down hugely and sales started to go up hugely. Because, they’re both focused on the business rather than running around between the branches like proverbial plate jugglers!

They worked intensively on their sales scripts so they were able to offer a better service to the customer. They were able to increase their conversion rates and their margins and at the same time increase customer satisfaction.

I think the situation was a huge learning experience for the two young lads concerned but at the end of it they had not only secured the business but they had secured the livelihoods for their families. At the end of the day that’s what makes it all worthwhile.

Sometimes you do get the odd funny story and this particular client had done spectacularly well, as during the year he trebled his profits in a really large mature business. it was a stellar result and yet I had a sneaking suspicion that his award submission wasn’t quite as good as it could’ve been because this client was only a finalist rather than a winner. It came out later that the last thing on earth the client wanted to do was get on stage and accept an award! We always wondered whether there was a little bit of self-sabotage going on which meant they only made finalist, not winner. That, though, was an excellent result from the client’s perspective.

As you might imagine ActionCOACH fosters competition between coaches. It’s the way that year after year we raise standards.

From joining ActionCOACH in December 2007, returning from training in Vegas on the 16th of December it took me until 2010 before I started winning any kind of serious awards with ActionCOACH. Locally, I won the fastest start award for my first year performance in 2008, but people are doing much better than that now.

Over the past several years the awards have evolved, but it’s always good when you win the one that’s been voted for by your peers and that’s happened to me quite a few times. Another great award that I like to win is ‘Best Client Results’. I’ve won that at the UK level but the competition is so intense I’ve only won it once!

Think in 2010 and 2011 I won most improved coach at the EMEA level, rather than regional or UK level. That was quite a good one to win.

After that I think I have won ‘Executive Coach of the Year every year it’s been awarded in the EMEA region. This continues to be my main focus.