Business coaching is becoming more and more mainstream, with recent studies showing that one in six entrepreneurs has turned to a business coach to help them achieve better results.[1]
If you’re a coach interested in business coaching software, apps, or tools that can bolster your coaching practice, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to learn more.
What Is Online Business Coaching?
First things first – what is business coaching?
Online business coaching is a type of coaching like any other: an expert provides the knowledge, wisdom, and guidance to their client to help them grow and thrive.
In this case, the coach is an entrepreneur or business expert, and the client is a business or business owner(s). The coach’s job is to help the business learn how to be more profitable, how to create manageable growth, or how to solve a problem or overcome a challenge they are facing.
A business coach’s job is to help the business learn how to be more profitable, how to create manageable growth, or how to solve a problem or overcome a challenge they are facing.
Taking the business coaching model and moving it partially or wholly online maintains the benefits of business coaching but adds some distinct advantages: instead of being constrained by geography, coaches and clients can connect from anywhere around the globe.
It’s much easier to be a coach in the right niche of business coaching or to reach out to potential clients in your particular industry when you have the capacity to work with anyone, anywhere in the world—anywhere that has a working internet connection, at least.
The following list gives just a few examples of business coaching niches that you might specialize in:
- Leadership team coaching – designed to help larger organizations improve their management team performance, manage strategic issues, or tackle specific challenges.[2]
- Entrepreneurial coaching – for new or growing business owners to develop managerial skills, among other things.[3]
- Business performance coaching – often more generalized, business coaching services can frequently be tailored to a unique coachee’s desired goals, learning specific management techniques and concepts for overcoming challenges.
4 Benefits of Business Coaching Software
So your business coaching services can help clients achieve a range of goals, but how can you run a successful, increasingly profitable practice?
While your skills, expertise, and track record are key to finding coaching clients, you need a platform that allows you to interact with them while running your practice efficiently.
This is where a business coaching app comes in handy. Below are a few critical benefits of specialized software for business coaches:
- Centralized, organized coaching resources – A business coaching platform can act as your online “library” of coaching exercises, worksheets, and other resources. Instead of emailing PDFs to clients manually, you can quickly customize your digital templates and share them with a few clicks. A good platform will also provide you with customizable templates that you can personalize efficiently and send to clients, as shown below.
- A seamless, end-to-end client experience – An app allows you to offer a professional and client-friendly experience by digitalizing your whole client journey. Specialized software like Quenza makes it easy for you to intake clients online, gather results virtually, and offer your clients a personal library of all your coaching resources in one handy app.
- Engage clients on autopilot – Building readiness, buy-in, and commitment takes a lot of work, and it’s easy for tasks like following up to slip between the cracks. Coaching apps come with tools for all the non-core client engagement tasks that you can’t afford to forget, such as live chat (shown above), automatic reminders for unfinished exercises, and content personalization tools.
- Maximum scalability – One of the best things about using an app like Quenza is that you have an efficient, effective way to move beyond one-to-one coaching solutions and grow your business coaching revenue. With the ability to coach groups, offer online courses, and create packages, you can diversify your income streams in ways that simply aren’t possible without technology.
Realizing these benefits is simply a matter of choosing the right app for your business. That means finding the right features and tools for your practice, your clients, and your solutions.
Let’s take a look.
Essential Coaching Management App Features
Business coaching software comes with a number of different features.
We’ve listed the most valuable of those in the table below, so you can decide which may or may not be useful to you.
| Feature | Details |
| Content Design | Creating great business coaching tools for your clients can take hours, especially when you manually format, personalize, and share those resources with coachees. The following features can streamline those processes considerably:
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| Session Planning | Coaching planner tools make it simple for you to start each session fully prepared, with a purpose, and with clarity about of how you’ll help your clients. Look for an app that will help you:
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| Client Engagement | Engaging clients is easy when you automate specific routine tasks. Specific features to look for include:
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| Group Coaching | As we’ve seen, scaling up is easier when your chosen app allows you to:
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| Booking & Scheduling | If you have multiple clients, booking and scheduling features can help you optimize your coaching management by taking care of your:
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| Billing & Invoicing | Invoicing systems can help you streamline many back-office and admin processes, enhancing efficiency and giving you more time to find and coach clients. Billing and invoicing features can often help with:
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3 Best Business Coaching Software Reviews
There are plenty of apps that can help you run your coaching practice. We’ve reviewed three of the best examples.
Best Overall: Quenza
The best business coaching app for you will depend on the area of business coaching you choose to specialize in, the type of clients you work with, and your own personal coaching process. It’s more about figuring out which specific app meets all of your unique needs rather than determining which app is the “best” overall.
However, there is one app that is flexible enough to meet the needs of most online coaches, no matter their structure or style: Quenza.
Quenza is the best all-around platform for business coaches who want to help clients and run their online practice. As well as simplifying the way you design and share custom resources, the platform comes with a suite of tools for running group programs, e-courses, and other one-to-many business coaching solutions.
Here are just a few of the things you can do with Quenza:
- Create personalized worksheets, assessments, meditations, and other coaching resources
- Manage your client relationships
- Brand all your solutions with your custom logo and colors, and share tools using your professional email address
- Learn from a community of fellow coaches and practitioners
- Chat in real-time with your clients on a HIPAA-compliant platform
- Schedule your coaching resources in advance, to be delivered to your clients on autopilot
Try out Quenza with a $1, 30-day trial.
Best For Calendar Management: 10 to 8
Instead of forgetting appointments or wasting time on manual scheduling, an app like 10 to 8 gives you an easy way to book appointments and process check-ins instantly.
Pros | Cons |
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10 to 8 makes scheduling incredibly simple, plus a few additional features such as client notifications, reminders, and your own booking webpage.
Clients can also make payments, self-schedule, reschedule, cancel, and receive SMS or email communications reminding them of their appointment.
Best For Billing & Invoicing: Vcita
Looking for an app that will make billing and invoicing simple?
Vcita offers digital payment processing, invoicing clients, and even appointment requests to save you time.
Pros | Cons |
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Vcita is an automated practice management software system that helps you schedule appointments and accept payments from one convenient dashboard.
While it doesn’t offer specialized coaching features such as customizable exercise templates or file-sharing, the app makes it incredibly easy for your clients to book and pay for appointments, so you can waste less time on back-end admin. Features include customizable marketing forms, note-taking and documentation tools, and billing and invoicing functions.
Vcita can be used by teams of up to 20 members and pricing starts at $19 a month.
Session Planning With Coaching Software
The biggest way that software makes a difference to the way you coach is by freeing up your time.
It’s simple: the more clients you work with, the more planning and prep work you need to do. An app that empowers you to plan your sessions in advance (and drip-feed content to clients) can save you considerable time.
Quenza gives you the tools you need to create customized resources efficiently and organize them into business coaching programs or “Pathways,” which you can then deliver to your coachees on a schedule.
Take a look at the video below:
When all is said and done, the important thing to keep in mind is that whichever business coaching software you choose, its purpose is to help you do your job better whether that’s freeing up your time, consolidating your operations, or streamlining processes.
To stay ahead of the curve, the right business coaching software solution can go a long way.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking to deliver higher-caliber professional services to a growing number of clients, a business coaching app is exactly what you need. Whether you’re a solopreneur, running a private practice, or looking for a large organizational solution, your business requirements are going to drive your search for the ideal features.
Why not take Quenza for a test drive today with our $1, 30-day trial, and start centralizing, organizing, and streamlining your business coaching practice!
References
- ^ Prince, R.A. (2018). Why Business Coaching Is Booming. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/russalanprince/2018/10/08/why-business-coaching-is-booming/
- ^ Ely, K., Boyce, L. A., Nelson, J. K., Zaccaro, S. J., Hernez-Broome, G., & Whyman, W. (2010). Evaluating leadership coaching: A review and integrated framework. The Leadership Quarterly, 21(4), 585.
- ^ Matlay, H., Rae, D., Audet, J., & Couteret, P. (2012). Coaching the entrepreneur: features and success factors. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 19(3), 515.
