Your sector
A Focal Point coach is not limited by geography. You can work with any business in the country, at any size, and every client you win is yours.
Without a boundary to work inside, most coaches go where their career already gives them standing. If you spent your working life in logistics, you start with logistics businesses, because those are the owners who will take your call. Each client adds to what you know about the industry, your references build up in one place, and people start to hear of you, so that by the second year owners are getting in touch with you rather than the other way round.
A Sector Principal makes that formal. After you have met James and paid your deposit, we go through your career and your professional network with you and agree your sector. You do not have to guess where your advantage lies. Your rights are then drawn around it: the sector across the UK, and its Mastermind Group.
Where your clients come from
You start with a business development system that is already built and already working, so your first weeks are spent in conversations rather than setting up technology.
It finds the right businesses and decision makers in your sector, by size, by location and by what is going on in the company, and keeps finding them. It opens the conversation and carries it on until the person is ready to meet you, so by the time you speak they already know who you are. It gets the appointment in your diary. And before each first meeting it gives you a short brief: what their business does, where the problems are likely to be, how they like to be dealt with, and the two or three questions worth opening with. You spend the call listening rather than guessing.
Around that sit the things a coach starting alone would spend their first months building. A website in your name, designed and written for you under the Focal Point brand, so that an owner who looks you up finds a coach rather than a CV. A monthly piece for your prospects, written by Focal Point and sent under your name, so you stay in front of people in the months before they are ready. A branding suite for your profile, your biography and your case studies.
Before you commit, we work out the rate of conversations you can expect in your sector, from your own background, so you know what you are starting with.
Then you do what you are trained to do. Focal Point’s sales process has three steps: a five-minute discovery conversation, a twenty-minute coaching call, and a ninety-minute Strategic Business Review. Every coach in the network uses it because it works, and by the time you finish training it is second nature.
Training
Certification intakes run ten times a year, so once you have decided there is always one coming. Certification itself is mostly live, with preparation in your own time, and it covers the method, the modules and the three conversations that bring a client in. From there you are in a fifteen-month development programme in an international cohort, with the full module library behind you and the network around you. Two international conferences a year bring everyone together in one place.
Part of the training is practice. You rehearse the three conversations over several weeks with a facilitator and the other new coaches, on real scenarios, until they come naturally. You can also rehearse a first call with the AI playing the person you are about to ring, pushing back the way a busy owner would, and get a frank assessment of how it went before you make the real one. Nobody has to learn on a live prospect.
Once you are certified you are paired with a practice mentor, one to one, who works with you on your marketing plan, your habits and your progress. Your first weeks in the business are run as a programme in a small group with one aim, which is clients in the diary, and the network is never far away. A second certification in executive coaching takes the method into leadership teams and the managers of larger companies.
This is not a workshop and a manual. It is a programme built to turn an experienced operator into a coach whose clients stay.
A week in the business
Mostly conversations. Client sessions, usually an hour and usually by video, with owners you have come to know well. Ten minutes before each one with the module you are about to run, so you are prepared. Two or three first conversations with prospects the system has found, which are the easiest part of the week once you have done a few. Perhaps a Strategic Business Review with an owner deciding whether to go ahead, which is where most new clients come from. And time with the other coaches in your sector’s Mastermind Group and on the network calls, which is where the ideas come from. What there is very little of is administration, because the system is doing that, and the monthly piece to your prospects goes out without you writing it.
From enquiry to your first client
The first three steps are handled by Familia Franchise Consultants, who manage our recruitment. From application onwards you are dealing with Focal Point directly.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Request the prospectus | We send it over by email and follow up the same day |
| A short call with Familia Franchise Consultants | A relaxed conversation at a time that suits you, to talk it through and answer your questions |
| The presentation | A video call where we walk you through the business, both routes, the numbers and what happens next |
| Application | A short online form, with the confidentiality agreement |
| First conversation with James | A video call to get to know each other |
| Your profile | A short online profile, which James goes through with you. It helps us understand how you work and where your strengths lie |
| Meeting with James | In person. This is where you decide |
| Deposit | £2,000, credited against your initial fee |
| Your sector | Career and network reviewed, sector agreed, expected conversation rate calculated |
| Talking to coaches | A conversation with working coaches before anybody signs |
| Signature | Training begins at the next certification intake |
It usually takes about six weeks from your first conversation with James to signing, though it moves at your pace.