Posted on August 5, 2009 - by Jus

Six Steps to a GREAT Trial Session

Last week I had a completely inspiring trial session with my new peer coach.  Ruba very politely asked if I could articulate why it was so great and I think that’s a great thing to reflect on in a post… Every new coach would love to be able to nail their trial sessions and turn the coachee that enjoyed their trial session into a paying client, so here is a list of six things that Lauren did (or didn’t do) that won me over…

1. | Pre-Qualification
When Lauren approached me for the trial session, she offered me her two websites to view.  These gave me a really good insight into her as a person and as a coach.  Captivating Life told me that she was a compassionate woman, with a worthy cause.  While her other site told me that she was a woman with sophistication in her approach to business.  I also really loved the fact that she included a profile picture of herself on her sites, which to me expressed an element of approachability and allowed me to visualise her while I was on the phone with her for our trial session.

2. | Efficiency in Appointment Setup
Making a time for our trial session was done within moments, even though we are in completely different timezones.  I had just come off the back of a stream of emails attempting to set a time for a trial session with another peer coach that ended up being placed in the “too hard” basket, so in contrast, this ease of doing business with Lauren was welcomed and noted.

3. | Getting to Know You
At the commencement of the call, Lauren took the time to get to know me a little by asking a few basic questions about Australia and Melbourne, and allowed me to ask her a couple of similarly basic questions which really helped to break the ice and create some rapport between us.  From this 5 minute dialogue to begin with, I established that we shared a similar kind of energy in our voices when we talked, laughed at a couple of the same things and ‘connected’ in a way that felt like a peer to peer relationship, which took some of the formality out of it without losing any professionalism (which for me, can make me feel uncomfortable).

4. | Power Listening
There should be no surprise here for ICA students, but this is a crucial element!  Once we got stuck into it, Lauren asked me what my goals were for the coming year and then opened the floor for me to just talk.  I had just that week discovered a few things about my niche and made some decisions about the business I hope to build over the next year, but I had not discussed it with anyone yet.  Lauren had made me feel so comfortable in that first 5 minutes of rapport building that I literally spilled over with telling her everything that had been going on in my brain that week and what that meant for my short, medium and long term goals for my business.  She made all the right noises as I unloaded my brain into the phone and when I finally paused for breath, she took a few seconds (pause) and then reconfirmed everything she had heard from me in a few short, sharp and succinct sentences.  She then asked some very poignant questions – “how would you describe the target audience for that”, “what kind of person do you want to attract to this business”, “what kind of person don’t you want to attract”, always allowing me ample time to consider my response and always summarising and clarifying what I was saying as I continued to talk.

5. | Down to Business
I am not sure if this is standard practice for Lauren in her trial sessions, or whether she sensed in me that I was an action-oriented person who is always more motivated when I am getting “stuck into the task at hand” rather than just talking about it… if it’s the latter, then even more kudos to her because she read me very well!  The point being that it wasn’t long into the call that Lauren suggested that we spend 15 minutes identifying my ‘elevator pitch’ to help cement some of what I had been saying into a really concise framework of explanation.  She took me straight into action - asking me three ‘formula’ questions for me that allowed her to help me to come up with this elevator pitch… it was so simple and effective that I really could not believe that after such a short period of time, she had helped me to clearly express the goals/purpose of my business idea.  I literally walked away from my trial session with tangible value that I didn’t have before I started the call.

6. | Immediate Follow Up
Interestingly, my trial session was actually interrupted by technical difficulties (thanks Skype), so again I am not sure if this is Lauren’s standard practice or whether it was a function of us not being able to complete our call… but I immediately received an email from Lauren after our session with the notes/options to allow me to construct the elevator pitch of my choice, a direct request to be afforded the opportunity to continue working with me in building my business and three things to think about between now and our next session (again, driving that action that motivates me so much!)

I’m looking forward to my next session and will be sure to keep adding to the list of reflections and learnings…

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1. Totally Inspired
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