Strategic Communications Coaching
Training + Consulting: The best of Both Worlds
Augment your team(s) with the participation of an experienced professional who is dedicated to helping you to deliver your value propositions with clarity to an engaged audience.
Coaching combines the relevant aspects of training and consulting plus direct (but kind) feedback for maximum benefit to you, your team or your community.
Whether I am focused on the goals of a single executive team or working with the founders of 25 semi-finalists in your accelerator, I am all in.
My clients know – many from years of experience – that I am on their side, solving problems and delivering the best solutions that I have available.
Coaching starts with a target goal for you and your team, adds in a winning strategy, then delivers the necessary training for each of the participants.
Whether your management team are preparing for a roadshow or a board meeting, or your accelerator is welcoming a new cohort of entrepreneurs, we will collaborate on a game plan for achieving your goals.
Once we have consensus on our strategy, the amount of time spent on training, executing and consulting will become clear.
- For busy executive teams, most of the communications development may be done offline.
- For accelerator groups, the emphasis may be on training new entrepreneurs on a range of skills.
- My collaborations may be primarily with leaders or with their graphic design pros.
What matters is delivering the tools and feedback that will enable your stakeholders to achieve the communications skills that are essential for success in today’s business environment.
Combine the training your stakeholders need with the consulting support they want to achieve communications super-powers.
You need to engage key audiences with your exciting value proposition. I am here to help you succeed!
StratComm Coaching Options
Use Cases - Clients
Team members often have overwhelming amounts of work, disparate perspectives and ongoing challenges to resolve. Frustration and fighting can come to characterize most of your meetings.
A fresh perspective and structured approach can bring your team together, helping them to feel heard, providing useful tools for communicating, and minimizing frustration.
One-to-Few Coaching provides a regular opportunity to bring your team together, get back on the same page and deliver on the message.
If any of your portfolio or candidate companies needs to improve their pitches dramatically, then a Consulting package will serve them best.
But if there are ongoing challenges with focus, deadlines, and communications, then Coaching can provide the focus and accountability that they need to achieve their milestones.
You may be the best engineer in your department. You may have a list of patents as long as your arm.
And yet, when it comes to getting a budget for your project from management, your requests fall on deaf ears.
I am a scientist by training, and trust me when I say I feel your pain! Fortunately, I know how to communicate your amazing ideas in a way that they can appreciate.
Consider Coaching for yourself or your team when you want to change the dynamic for your communications with management, customers and others.
If you are a manager who is frustrated by your department’s struggle to fund and implement great ideas, then Coaching is your best tool for changing outcomes for the better.
Use Cases - Situations
Coaching Services Descriptions
Coaching Services Descriptions
One-on-One Coaching
Accelerate YOUR SUCCESS
The best ways to earn the resources and investments that you and your ideas deserve is to communicate them clearly, concisely and in a way that is compelling to the audience of your choice.
My “Perfect Pitch” process will help you to win over your audiences to an exceptional degree, regardless of whether you are asking for an investment, a promotion, a donation… or any other commitment of time, trust, money or other resources.
For an individual client, this process always starts with an Initial Communications Consult. I need to understand your goals, your audience and your value proposition in order to provide the essential feedback and message development for your communications needs.
Whether your current goal is a promotion or a job offer, an investment by management or a venture capitalist, winning a grant, building a team, or something else, one-on-one coaching will help you stand out from the competition and engage your audience. We will help you “get the next meeting” that is so critical in earning any type of investment.
In parallel, we will collaborate to develop your support materials, e.g., resume, presentation, or proposal to support your “ask” so that they reflect your story and the interests of your audience.
Your goal may be accomplished in a single coaching session or it may require multiple interactions depending on the complexity of the value proposition, your current skill level and the amount of competition you face.
But regardless of the challenges, the result of our work together will be more confidence, better support materials and a compelling message.
One-to-Few coaching
Accelerate your TEAM's success
Strong teams are able to disagree, then commit. Successful teams are able to communicate that commitment to every audience, ensuring that more revenue, investment and attention comes to their organization.
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You built your team by hiring the people with the skills and talents to contribute to your efforts.
You probably took into consideration whether they seemed to be team players and strong communicators. Chances are, none of them are perfect.
The stronger they are in one critical area, the greater the chance that they struggle in others. So as you face your next challenge – board meeting, customer pitch, all-hands meeting – you know that you need the whole team to be on the same page, delivering a similar message while emphasizing their perspective.
That combination is not easy to develop or deliver, especially when people are under severe time pressures.
For teams with similar goals, e.g., sales teams, the simplest approach is often the best: a targeted seminar followed by a clinic or one-on-one consults for those who are interested.
For diverse teams whose members may have very strong opinions on mission, process or priorities, a more comprehensive approach is often valuable. A purely consulting-oriented approach is outlined in the Consulting page, but for long-term, growing collaboration, Coaching is recommended.
We start with one-on-one interviews of the stakeholders, followed by a team meeting in which we come to consensus on messaging issues and goals (both short- and long-term). From there, work shifts back to one-on-one coaching to create appropriate, consistent and branded materials, delivering a consistent message, and doing so with professionalism and enthusiasm.
Our goal with One-to-Few Coaching is to help your team achieve your organization’s goals more efficiently, by making it faster, simpler and even more fun to communicate strategically.
You can expect your messaging to be more compelling and congruent within the company and to external stakeholders, your branding to be consistent across presentations, one-pagers, and other materials, and even potentially more efficient meetings as clear value propositions are laid out in ways that foster buy-in.
One-to-Many Coaching
Accelerate your GROUP's success
Accelerators and incubators deliver important resources for groups of innovators to increase their chances – and rate – of success. Your organization may differentiate itself from competitors by industry or type of entrepreneurship, but competition for exciting new startups is stiff!
Make sure you deliver more value than your competitors by including Strategic Communications coaching to participants.
Accelerators come in many shapes and sizes, from a handful of innovators in a corporate skunkworks to massive organizations hosting hundreds of startups serving diverse industries.
A common thread among them is the desire to foster the rapid commercialization of great new ideas, often combined with the goals of developing successful entrepreneurs and creating jobs in critical spaces.
Most accelerators culminate in a showcase or a Demo Day featuring the best startups being pitched by their founders by delivering exciting – but brief – pitches. How well they do at this high-profile task reflects strongly on the reputation of the accelerator and, by extension, its sponsors.
But innovators frequently stumble in their communications. They focus too much on technology, or not enough. They analyze only part of their competition, fail to mention data, and highlight numbers that are inconsistent. The intense schedules and demanding deadlines only make it more challenging.
Together, we can create the coaching program that will help you to address your many challenges: from attracting the best startups through pressure-testing their value propositions to polishing their communications skills with investors, crowds, partners, customers – whatever audience they are targeting.
The challenge lies in bringing quality coaching to your participants in a way that maximizes benefit in the limited time available. Our goals are to help them to kill shaky ideas quickly, provide tools to help them identify and rectify weak areas quickly, and help them to connect with others in a meaningful way.
By delivering a combination of training and consulting to your group, we help not only your startups but also your reputation as more alumni raise their profile, obtain funding and go on to success.
We will, of course, fine-tune the coaching process for your program, but here is a comprehensive program as an example:
- 1 month before applications close: Deliver “Perfect Pitch for Accelerator Applications” seminar with content tailored to accelerator judging criteria.
- 3 weeks before close: Deliver “Pitch Clinic for Your Application” office hours to provide direct (but kind) feedback of volunteer’s draft submissions.
- 1 week before close: Deliver “Judging Best Practices” seminar to help judges develop a consistent framework across the likely very diverse set of volunteer judges.
- 1 day after semifinalists are announced: Deliver “Mentoring Best Practices” seminar to program mentors and mentees to enhance interactions
- 1 week before Perfect Pitch Workshop: Deliver “Welcome to the Workshop” seminar and provide access to online resources to all semifinalists.
- Perfect Pitch Workshop: Deliver half-, one- or two-day intensive workshop to help jump start all the entrepreneurs in the development of better pitches delivered with greater professionalism.
- Post-Workshop: Provide one-on-one coaching for each team to help them implement the concepts learned at the workshop into every aspect of their new pitches.
- Optional: Provide full pitch development services, including script and graphics in various media.
- Polish Session: Focused one-on-one session where the final draft of the deck is presented by the pitcher, then we work together to resolve any inconsistencies or create improvements.
- Optional: Produce Pitch Showcase or Demo Day.
- Next stage Office Hours: Provide additional opportunities for follow-up, review and feedback on materials and delivery for continuous refinement.
Peer Coaching
Accelerate your network
Being a CEO is a lonely job: you have to make tough decisions long before you have enough data to make the correct one – and your employees’ livelihood depends on your being right. But others face similar challenges every day. Learn from their experience!
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As CEO, you are expected to have all the answers and to make great decisions. But no one knows everything, especially today when circumstances can change in a matter of days or even minutes.
If you have a great mentor, then useful advice is readily available to you.
If not, then your options are limited. Your board and advisors can provide some of that support, but you need someone who can advise you from your perspective, and that can be very difficult to find.
In Peer Coaching, you will be matched with four to six other CEOs in noncompeting fields but who face (or have faced) similar challenges to yours.
Mutual trust is essential for successful peer mentoring, so you will be expected to attend monthly meetings with your peers to get to know them and build confidence. Everything mentioned in these meetings is to be treated as confidential.
At these meetings, each participant will deliver a short update, including a current challenge they are facing. The group selects one of these challenges and the balance of the meeting goes to brainstorming and troubleshooting to resolve it.
From personal experience, I can tell you that getting advice from your peers – even in totally unrelated fields – is invaluable.
I credit a Peer Coaching group with helping me to withstand the challenges of a disruptive CTO and of helping me to build Plano & Simple into the successful company it has become.
I want to share this experience with other organization leaders, so am looking to form my first new peer group. Please use the link to book an interview with me and be placed on the waiting list.
Long-term Strategic Consulting
Maintain focus to attain your vision
As your vision and your organization grow and change over time, the one constant is your need to bring your stakeholders – from customers to investors – along for the ride! Periodic check-ups keep everyone on message with strong delivery skills and materials.
New employees, strategic pivots, developing technology, additional target markets – change is constant for any healthy organization. It is all too easy to assume that everyone knows how to communicate your vision to other stakeholders, but the fact is that that is rarely true.
Sales professionals, especially those selling technology-based solutions, need to position their pitches such that potential customers quickly understand the benefits your products and services provide.
Internal meetings such as board meetings and all-hands meetings require that the management team are on the same page, delivering a consistent message while providing domain-focused detail.
External communications, including annual reports, pitches to market analysts and even websites, need to reflect the vision and execution you and your team are delivering.
Rapid change combined with very busy professionals means that clear communications are often neglected, resulting in missed opportunities and addressing avoidable problems.
The Long-Term Strategic Consulting is customized to your needs and wants. Whether it is providing sales training, consults on board presentations, or refinement of materials, I am here to help you to achieve your vision by helping to keep your stakeholders engaged and supportive.
Time frames, frequency and specific services are simple to determine based on successful completion of the Initial Strategic Consult and Polish Consult, with or without the Done-For-You Development package.
Organizations have hired me to provide repeat services for the 8 years I have been offering them. New programs tailored to different stakeholders have been developed and delivered.
FAQ
Are your services available in person or online?
I deliver my services either online or in person or in combination, depending on your goals, availability and budget.
Given my international clientele, I have extensive experience in working with people via webinar, in small conference rooms and large auditoriums.
Can you work with my whole team or do you just work one-on-one?
For established organizations, I prefer to work with the team to start as we can then ensure consensus on the final product. Once consensus has been achieved, I am happy to work with individuals or the whole team, as appropriate for the situation.
For startup companies, I can work with one founder or executive, or with the whole team. Whoever is delivering the communications must attend.
What is the time commitment for each service?
The amount of time it takes to deliver each service is highly dependent on the nature of your situation and budgetary constraints.
- The Initial Strategy Consult is usually a half-day program and should be attended by all stakeholders. Preparation time consisting of interviews with representative stakeholders is required.
- The Initial Communications Consult ranges from 2 to 5 hours, depending on complexity and experience. The speaker/ pitcher must attend; other team members are invited at your discretion.
- Done-For-You Development requires a minimum of 2 weeks and can be longer if multiple versions or materials are required. Feedback from stakeholders is needed periodically to refine the final product(s).
- The Polish Consult generally lasts one to two hours and requires participation by the speaker/ pitcher. Other team members are invited at your discretion.
- Long-Term Strategic Consulting is fully customized to your situation so cannot be summarized in terms of time or participation.
What are your fees?
A fixed price is not available for the programs, as each is customized based on the number of sessions, people and products required.
For reference, my hourly rate is 350 USD and my day rate is 2500 USD.
Discounts are available for some nonprofit organizations and academic institutions.
Do you offer group programs?
Certainly! Please visit the Training page for a list of programs.
In addition, I often bundle Consulting services with Training into comprehensive Coaching programs for accelerators.
You can also review the Online Courses for self-paced and managed group programs.