Can a Life Coach Offer Sales Training?

Sales training is an important component of employee training for many businesses. Companies often hire trainers to work with their sales staff to get them motivated, inspired, and ready to get their sales message out to potential customers.

Who Needs Sales Training?

Everyone needs some type of sales training. It’s not just for large corporation or those involved with direct sales. It’s for everyone!

Sole proprietors and individuals who work for themselves also need to know how to sell.

Not only that, most people must use some sort of sales techniques to get the things they want in life. For example, most people have a job interview at some point in their lives – even this is a form of selling as you are promoting your skills and personality.

Can a Life Coach Help You Sell?

Life coaches offer a wide variety of services and help with most aspects of life. They tend to be generalists and they touch on many areas of life, including:

 

• Goal creation and achievement
• Stress management
• Life balance between work and leisure
• Finances and budgeting
• Personal growth
• Behavior modification
• Health and lifestyle changes
• Relationships and intimacy
• Parenting and family
• Career development
• Creativity pursuits for writers, artists, musicians

 

Can you add sales training to that list?

It depends on your definition of sales training. If it is strictly limited to techniques about how to sell and promote products, life coach are probably not the best choice for this type of training. However, if the concept is broadly defined, then life coaches are a great choice to help you with your ability to sell. Life is selling, and coaches know life!

Succeeding in Life is all About Sales

Here are three examples of how a life coach is really a sales coach in disguise:

 

1. To get anywhere in life, you must first make a sale. You must sell yourself on the idea and the goal. No matter what you want to achieve, it will usually take work, and sometime money, to reach the goal. To make the effort, time, and money worthwhile, you must sell yourself on the benefit of the goal – just like a salesperson must sell a potential customer on the benefit of a product or service.
2. Let’s say you are just entering a new career or thinking about switching gears and jumping to a new career. You will need to interview for jobs. The interview process is like any other sales job, except you are selling yourself – your skills, your personality, your experience, and your work ethic. A life coach can help you identify and clarify your goals, help you organize your skill set so you can easily promote what you have to offer, and help you work on ways to clearly and concisely relay this information to the interviewer.
3. Let’s say that one part of your life is a mess – your finances, your health, you organizational skills – some area of your life that actually negatively influences other areas. However, you truly don’t see how this one area makes a difference in other areas. A good life coach must help you sell yourself on the idea that all areas are interconnected and one disruptive area many keep you from achieving goals.

 

So… can a life coach offer sales training?

No one should hire a life coach to get specialized sales and marketing training – they are just not trained to do that. However, since life can be thought of as one continual sales job and everyone needs to be a sales-trained individual to make the most out of life, life coaches must also be sales coaches

From jobs to relationships to creative endeavors to enjoying the life you dream of – you must sell to yourself and to others. If coaches are worth the money they charge, then they are also sales coaches.

To answer the question in the title: Yes – life coaches offer sales training, whether they know it or not!

Jeffrey T. Sooey is the CEO of JTS Advisors and the founder of Coaches Training Blog community.

Helps new and developing coaches with coaching skills and client acquisition by training and mentoring them in good coaching, sales, and marketing best practices.

Works with employers on eliminating hiring mistakes and implementing best practices in hiring employees commensurate with the job attributes.

Partners with executives on growing business and working with employees by combining forces, clarifying goals and articulating strategic plans.