One of the best ways for coaches to draw potential clients to them is through credibility marketing.

Why? Because this type of marketing positions you as an expert and can show people the potential power of working with you. It really can be a game-changer, because when people see you as an expert, they start to seek you out.

Today, I’d like to share with you a bit about my Diamond Mastermind client, Gisele Garcia Shelley. Gisele has been in business for 25+ years; she’s highly successful, highly regarded, and before she was working with me, most people would look at her business and think she had it all. But Gisele was hungry for more.

When we started working together, Gisele focused broadly on developing high-performance teams and leaders, and executive coaching. In our work together, I encouraged her to find a more specific sweet spot  within her niche by pursuing and focusing on the work she loved the most and where she felt she had the greatest impact.

From Gisele’s work, she knew that when companies focus on elevating women, the whole organization benefits: teams become more effective and everyone thrives when the environment is more inclusive and women’s voices are not only heard but valued greatly. This led her to decide to explore the challenges that women leaders face and how those challenges affect the women themselves and the organizations within which they work.

With my encouragement, Gisele took on a research project and decided to interview Centers of Influence within the executive leadership space. She talked to over forty people – women leaders, male leaders and HR executives – about the biggest challenges that women leaders face and the impact these challenges have on these women and their organizations.
From the data she gathered, she discovered some distinct trends as to the biggest challenges, the cost it was having on them and the extent to which they were not operating at their highest potential. She also covered approaches companies are taking and provided the insights to what women want and need most (read her findings in the white paper she published here.)

Her interviews and whitepaper fueled a lot of interest in her work. As a result of her interviews, she was invited to be the Keynote Speaker at the first women’s symposium for a Fortune 500 company, with the top 120 women leaders in attendance. She had the opportunity to talk about the research on The Biggest Challenges that Women Leaders Face and how to shift the tide. She got rave reviews from the event planners and participants, but what’s more she is now on faculty at Columbia Business School and other prestigious institutions! In other words, she became a sought after speaker in her space, immediately. And the requests continue to come in. She continues to be asked to be a speaker on a regular basis and gets more requests each time she gives her talk. Her research also has fueled her article and blog strategy for the year.

All of this has also led her to do more of the work she is most passionate about with companies that care about creating high performing, inclusive executive teams. This invited her to go deep into the problems her ideal clients are facing, which inspired her to create the Bold Leadhership Program to address these challenges and help bridge the gap for these leaders.

Gisele’s story is just one example of how claiming your sweet spot, doing credibility marketing within that sweet spot, and sharing your solutions generously with the world, can work wonders for your business: People will come to you and they’ll ask, “Can we sit down and have a conversation? Would you speak at our event?”

So, if you’re like many coaches and you hate marketing yourself and knocking on people’s doors to get business, maybe it’s time to turn the conversation on its head and put yourself in a position where your divine ideal clients are seeking you out as the expert, and not the other way around.

What do you want to do in your business to claim your sweet spot and become a sought-after expert in your field?

With appreciation,

Tara Butler Floch