Yesterday, a member of The Coaching Jungle posted about a dilemma he’s having.
He has a potential coaching client who seems to be a bit of a handful (that’s an understatement) and he was wondering if he should take this guy on.
Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the potential client, according to the coach:
– he immediately fought the coach about his cancellation policy for appointments.
– he wants to be able to get a refund if the coaching “isn’t working for him”
– he’s very opinionated and tends to talk a lot. He gets offended when someone else tries to speak.
– He’s the head of a big corporation and the coach is aware of his “dominant and argumentative behaviour”
– He has a history of cancelling agreements with coaches in the past.
I hope your first reaction to this little story is that the coach shouldn’t touch this guy with a ten foot pole.
My suggestion to the coach was “don’t walk, run away from him” …
I see these people from time to time. Earlier this year, I had someone from Australia reach out about doing a joint venture with me. He’s connected with a great coach who I know well and name-dropped her, so I told him I’d be happy to chat.
A few minutes after I gave him the link for my online calendar, I got a message back from him which said (paraphrasing here):
“Marc, these times don’t work for me since I’m in Australia. You’ll have to work around my schedule, but I’m a big deal so it’s worth it for you to talk with me at 3 am. Don’t you know who I am???”
When someone says the phrase “Don’t you know who I am?” the alarms instantly start going off in my head, and I have the same reaction that I had when I heard about the lovely gentleman that the Jungle member was dealing with.
As a coach, you can’t get so needy that you deal with idiots like this.
You have to be able to say “No”, and move on to the next prospect, without shedding a tear or losing a wink of sleep.
It’s your business, and you get to choose who you let into your world.
It’s stories like these that gets me fired up about Secret Coach Club. SCC is all about getting you a bunch of coaching prospects, so you don’t have to ever deal with the “Client From Hell”.
If you’d like to obtain that kind of power, the next issue goes to print tomorrow at midnight.
To get it, go here:
