Questions to ask a business coach

Here’s a list of helpful questions to ask a potential business coach. When talking to coaches, use this list of questions to see who the best person to help you is.

Choosing the right business coach for you is an important decision. It’s a big investment of your money and time. More importantly, the right business coach can have a huge impact on your business.

I’m Julia Chanteray, and I’ve been one of the UK’s top business coaches for more than 20 years. And I know a lot of coaches. You might end up working with me as your business coach or someone else entirely. That’s fine; to be honest, I’m not the right person for everyone.

Here are some objective (well, as much as I can be) thoughts on how to choose the best business coach for you, the person who is going to help you to make the big changes you want to see. Get a downloadable pdf, “What questions to ask a business coach”, so you can have them at your side when talking to a potential coach. Just put your best email address in the form below.

Important questions to ask a business coach

Have they run a business before?

An ex-bank manager, academic, or somebody without substantial business experience who has done a coaching course won’t have the real-world experience to be able to help you with the practical, tactical aspects of developing your business. I recommend that you pick a business coach who has been on the kind of journey you want to go on. You will learn lots from the mistakes they made – hopefully, so that you won’t need to make those mistakes.

They don’t have to have worked in your sector, but if you’re running a small business, you want to work with a coach who has grown a small business before. Someone who has come across exactly the kind of challenges you’re facing right now.

Is this person actually a business coach?

Unfortunately, there are lots of people calling themselves business coaches (or executive coaches) who aren’t really business coaches. They’re life coaches who can help you to get clarity about what you want overall from life but don’t have specific experience in business.

For some people, it can be a good idea to have some life coaching sessions (or counselling) before business coaching so you’re ready to start working on the business with a clear head and a sense of what you want the business to achieve for you. Especially if you’re facing personal challenges, mental health problems and or wondering what your company means in your life. Life coaching or counselling can be invaluable for building personal strength and resilience, which you can use in your business.

Do they run their own businesses well? Do they walk the talk?

If someone has an out-of-date website, doesn’t ever respond to emails, or fails to turn up to appointments, this is a sign that they aren’t managing their own business well. And if they can’t run their own business, are they in a good position to help you?

Are they up to date?

This is a super important question to ask any potential business coach. Business is a fast-evolving field. What worked five years ago might not work today.

Your ideal coach needs to be on top of this. They need to be up to date about online marketing, international business, management theory, team development, and all that stuff. Part of their job is to help you negotiate the tricky paths of business and to reduce your learning curve so you don’t have to learn everything from scratch.

Make sure that the business coach you choose checks all of these boxes. Then you can choose the one that will be right for you.

Ask the business coach questions about marketing and finance

Some people specialise in finance and don’t understand too much about marketing. Some people have lots of expertise in marketing or processes but wouldn’t be able to help you understand your P&L or set gross margin targets. A good business coach will be able to do both.

Do they have experience in your sector?

This won’t always be the case, especially if you’re working on something very unusual. But it’s worth asking because somebody good will have enough experience to have worked in an area that is at least similar to yours. And it’s important that your business coach understands the culture and how things work in your sector.

Ask a business coach questions about the process of coaching

Are you going to get enough help?

You don’t want to spend all day, every day, with your business coach.  After all, you’ve got a business to run, not just talk about it. But you do need to get enough time to talk through what’s going on in sufficient detail. You don’t just want an inspirational chat once a month. You’re paying good money, and you want to be able to ask for help with what’s on your mind right now.

Can you talk to them first?

You definitely need to be able to talk to them first. You need to be able to put these questions directly to a potential business coach, not just email or book online for a free consultation.  And this should be a bit more than a 15-minute chat on the phone; they need to be able to talk in-depth about where you are in your business and explain how they can help. Or not.

Face-to-face or online business coaching?

You might find the right person for you, but they’re 50 miles away. Or 100 miles away.  Or in a different country.

I recommend opening up your choice of business coach by looking further afield than your local area and seriously thinking about working with an online business coach. You’re much more likely to find the right coach for you.

My office is in Brighton (UK), and I see clients internationally – London, Manchester, Brussels and Portugal at the moment. I have clients who are less than 10 miles away in Worthing and Shoreham, and we talk on Zoom because it’s more time-efficient for them than coming to my office and trying to park.

Who’s going to be right for you?

Do you prefer a very structured approach or a more informal one?

Some business coaches, especially those working through franchises like Shirlaws or Action Coach, work in a very structured way, with lots of forms and questionnaires. Some people love this and feel that they benefit from a logical process. It might be right for you if this is the way your brain works.

Others (like me) work in a more informal way, allowing you to get everything that’s worrying you out on the table and asking lots of questions. This can be especially useful if you have been bottling up problems or if you don’t know where to start with what’s going wrong with the business. By getting everything out in the open, a good business coach can dig into the particular nuances of your business.

One word of warning with more informal coaches. Make sure there is a logical process behind all of this, or you can end up just going for a nice chat with no clear action plan. I’ve worked with clients who have previously used less experienced business coaches, and they’ve told me that they enjoyed the first few sessions where they got everything off their chest but didn’t end up with a clear strategy to move forward or take action.

Ask business coaches questions about their values

Entrepreneurs rarely ask questions about values. This can be difficult because one of the trickiest areas I advise my clients about is what’s the right thing to do in a particular situation. This comes up more often than you might think – is it okay to keep sending emails to a prospect if they haven’t come back to you? Should I sack a non-performing member of staff? Is it fair to put my prices up for existing customers?

If your business coach doesn’t have similar values to you, you might not be satisfied with their answers to these kinds of questions. It’s also helpful if they are aware of different cultural values and how to handle them, especially if you’re doing business internationally.

Do you warm to them?

It’s very important to choose a business coach that you can get on with and who you can trust. You’ll be spending some very intensive time with them after all. But don’t just pick the one that you like the most – this is your business adviser, not your best mate for going to the pub with.

The ultimate question to ask a business coach is – are they going to be a good investment?

Business coaching fees vary from £100 to 5k per month, so partly, this is going to be what you can afford. But the important thing is whether your investment is going to make more money for you. If you’re spending 20k on a business coach, you need to see how you’ll get a return on investment on that.

Don’t be afraid to be upfront and ask any business coach questions about how they expect that you will see that investment coming back (and more). A good question to ask a potential coach is

“How do you see my revenue increasing over the next 3 years, and how can you help me increase this faster?”

Once you’ve gone through the important questions to ask a business, use this comprehensive guide to help you find the best business coach.

Ask this business coach some questions

If you’d like to talk about whether I’m the right business coach for you, get an idea of my way of working and if I know my stuff, let’s get together for a coffee and chat.

I love to talk about business, and I’d like to find out about what’s going on with your business and how I can help. I’ll give you an honest assessment of whether I’m the right business coach for you. You’ll be able to make up your own mind as to whether your business will go faster after working with me.

Let’s sit down over Zoom with a cup of coffee (and maybe a cake) and see how we get on.