Conversations about wider value for your client’s business. These conversations, and the relationships that enable them, are the gateway to advanced team coaching business development. This is particularly relevant as AI swallows up intermediate-value coaching and consulting opportunities that can be sold as standard packages.
Selling something standardized has several pre-requisites. Of particular concern to us: customers need to understand the category of item you are selling, there need to be ways you can deliver a cost advantage, and volume tends to be a key factor in your metrics. In my experience, very view potential customers understand or look for team coaching.
If we want to sell something of higher and wider value than a package solution such as a training or leadership development program, then typically we need to find a way to engage with an organization’s more complex needs. And higher value services are often decided upon by more senior people in the client organization.
What business leaders want
There are very few leaders who think or say “we need team coaching.” As team coaches, we are looking for leaders grappling with gnarly business problems, that have a people dimension. I often think my best clients are those who think their problem is insoluble because “people are just so difficult.” I know that I can help their people to work constructively with division and conflict, and find energy and alignment to build the business.
As a team coach looking for high value clients, I need to get into conversation with business leaders about their real problems. My own prior experience as a tech CEO from 1993 to 2007 gives some clues about what is needed from potential service providers.
As a CEO, I had little enthusiasm to engage with service providers who couldn’t meet me in terms of pace and strategic level. And I wouldn’t want to talk to somebody who thought coaching in particular, or HR in general, was the solution to all my problems. As coaches we need to be able to carry on high level business conversations with executives. We don’t need to know everything about their businesses, but we need to
- Take a deep interest in their agenda
- Be aware of the many competing needs in their business ecosystem (in other words coaching is just one of many interventions competing for time and money in the business)
- Be ready to address the people dimension of any business problem, without behaving as if people and relationships are the only issue on executives’ minds
- Be realistic about what’s doable within a live operating business
- Share the executive’s ambition to improve their business. As a CEO, I would prick up my ears when a potential service provider seemed interested in or had ideas towards real game changers for my business.
Even the big consulting firms face challenges
Many team coaches and consultants have done OK with product led offerings, seeking to meet many clients’ desire for quick and tangible results. But a lot of the quick fixes are now being accomplished with the help of AI and automated coaching platforms. Where coaches and consultants can continue to add value is through partnering with clients at a strategic level to address systemic challenges that still require human interaction.
Here’s a selection of recent headlines you might want to explore:
- AI Is Coming for the Consultants. Inside McKinsey, ‘This Is Existential.’ – from the Wall Street Journal, August 2nd
- McKinsey and its peers need a new strategy. And some humility. AI could make consultancy more effective—or redundant. From the Economist, August 7th
- Top consulting firms are being hit by an AI reckoning – The Logic, July 24th
The bottom line: people selling team coaching need to be in conversation about strategic business value for their clients. And we need to differentiate ourselves from the solutions based on data analysis and reproducible logic that can easily be done by machine intelligence.
With a systemic coaching approach we can function higher up the value pyramid
There are many ways that a systemic approach helps team coaches sell higher value interventions. I will just pick three here.
- We can use our systems awareness to support us as we initially talk to a (possibly random) individual who might or might not have the decision making power we wish for. Selling to a large system is like figuring out what is inside a big black box where you only have a few tiny windows of insight. These windows into the black box might be via the person you talk to, the organization’s public postings, their competitors and relevant media articles, for example.
- We can help potential clients make the connection between systemic change initiatives and tangible business results.
- We can open leaders up to the value multipliers of getting their people aligned even across multiple geographies, cultures and opinions.
It’s time to build the skills and techniques for getting into conversations about value, and leveraging these to climb up the ladder within the client organization to the real decision makers. We will be addressing these questions further in a live advanced business development seminar on Tuesday September 16, 2025 at 7:30 am Pacific time | 10:30 am Eastern time | 16h30 CET. Please join me in launching these advanced seminars for a nominal fee. Only experienced team coaches and consultants need apply. Register here