A leadership coach finds her place by reading what other offers leave out: the situation nobody names, the question nobody answers, the career moment everyone forgets. You do not need to be better than everyone. You need to own the need nobody really serves.
Why a leadership coach should study the market before speaking
↪ Read also : Praticienne bien-être : organiser ta prospection en peu de temps
Studying a coaching market is simple work: note what existing offers promise, who they speak to, and what they never say. The goal is not to copy. The goal is to find the empty space.
When you start out, it is tempting to write your page with the words you hear everywhere: confidence, presence, executive voice, impostor syndrome. Those words are not wrong, but your future client has read them ten times elsewhere and sees no reason to choose you.
How do you spot the blind spots in one afternoon?
- List around fifteen offers. Other leadership coaches, but also what your client might buy instead: a book, an online course, a public speaking workshop, a trusted friend.
- Note three things for each. Who it speaks to, what result it promises, which life moment it targets.
- Look for what repeats. Many offers speak to the same person at the same moment. That is the crowded zone.
- Look for what is missing. Returning from maternity leave into a senior role. Managing a first team after years as a technical expert. Leading without becoming someone else. Few offers name these moments.
Listen to your future clients' own words
Read what the people you want to coach write themselves: comments under posts about women in leadership, questions in professional groups, reviews of management books. Keep their exact sentences, such as: I got promoted but nobody taught me how to manage. Those sentences show you real needs and give you the words your client types into a search engine. Where expressed needs meet no offer that names them clearly, you have found your blind spot.
What do you do once you have found it?
Name the situation in your one-line introduction. Turn each sentence you collected into a post or an article. Build your offer around that precise moment, for example the first hundred days after a promotion. And repeat the exercise twice a year, because other coaches will eventually move in.
A leadership coach who owns a blind spot does not need to shout louder than others: she speaks to people nobody else is looking at.
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