Setup guide: coaches and consultants

Who you are reaching

The people with the problem you solve, described by the seat they sit in. Coaches and consultants are the second-loudest group on LinkedIn after marketers, so the skip list matters as much as the titles.

Prospects settings

• Their Job Titles, by specialty:
• Executive or leadership coaching: CEO, Founder, Managing Director, VP, Chief Operating Officer, Head of People.
• Sales coaching: VP of Sales, Head of Sales, Sales Manager, Founder.
• Operations or fractional work: CEO, Founder, COO, Managing Partner.
• Career coaching: Director, Senior Manager, VP, plus "open to work" in keywords.
• Words to Watch For: the three problems you solve, in the client's words. Burnout, first-time manager, delegation, team conflict, scaling, succession, pricing, saying no. Three to six, not ten.
• People to Skip: Coach, Consultant, Facilitator, Speaker, Trainer, Author, Thought Leader.
• Words to Skip: coaching, masterclass, webinar, my new program.
• Target Country: set it if you work in one, since coaching posts come from everywhere.

Train Allen

Your bio is doing a lot of work here. Two sentences on who you help and how, one on what you have actually done (ran a team of forty, sold a company, twenty years in ops). Rules: "never claim certifications or frameworks I did not name", "never offer a call in a comment", "no inspirational quotes". Goal: ask a question or add insight, not show expertise. Length: short.

Sample comments

On a founder posting that they cannot step away from the business for a week:

• Ask a question: "What breaks first when you are gone: decisions, or information? Those need different fixes. If it is decisions, the team does not know what you would say. If it is information, you are the only one who knows where things are."
• Share an example: "A client of mine kept a 'decisions I made this week' doc for a month. Turned out eighty percent were the same four calls. Writing those four down as rules bought her the week off."
• Agree and build: "Agree, and the hard part is that the business works this way because you are good at it. Nobody built the dependency on purpose. The first week away always feels worse than the business actually does."

Autopilot

Start at three a day if your audience is narrow, five if it is broad. Weekdays. Read the first week's emails and remove anything that sounds like a lecture; set the tone mix under Train Allen toward questions.

Watchlist

Past clients, people who have referred clients, podcast hosts in your niche, and the twenty leaders you would most like to work with.

The first DM

"Thanks for replying on the step-away post. The four-decisions idea is the whole thing in miniature. If you ever want the one-page version of the doc my client used, say the word and I will send it, no pitch." Give something, ask nothing.