My head is swollen after 3 hours of a concrete sales pitch from Brad Sugars last night in Thomond Park, Limerick. What a wonderful setting to sell yourself as a business coach, feeding off the recent rugby success which occurred with, conveniently, a new coach on the sidelines.
His goal is to have a business coach for every business, and with just 300 businesses in Ireland availing of his coaches planted in Action Coach offices around the country, there’s a lot of opportunity for ActionCoach in Ireland. Selling his franchises at 100k a pop, it’s wasn’t only us business people that he was selling to.
I don’t doubt that business coaching works. And by god if we could learn how to sell like he did last night, we too would be millionaires. Such techniques, such passion, telling stories and anecdotes with the pure benefits of what coaching can bring you built in. He retired for the first time at age 26, and again when he had young kids, this time for 4 whole years before he got bored.
Can you ring up your people and say “I’m not coming to work for the next 6 months,” and have your business run without you? Have you thought about the fact that there are only 4000 weeks in one life if you live to be 80? “How many of those are you willing to waste?” he asked. I am going to do what he recommended - buy marbles to represent each of the weeks I have left, and put them in a jar, so I can throw one out each week...He made me gag with envy, wanting what he’s got. I think 90% of us would have given anything to know what he knows, in order to have what he has.
In the heat of the moment, it wasn’t just envy making our blood boil with passion to buy whatever it was he was selling. He was so generous, giving massive bundles of value, teaching us how to make a difference in our businesses, for “FREE”. It endeared us to him. He connected with us. He expressed empathy, and he showed higher value, higher status, and all of those things that Adrian mentioned in his own talk at Bizcamp in Limerick. Free was not all free, as he had our undivided attention and put us in a vulnerable emotional state to better hammer home the message that we can all succeed to this magnitude with a coach by our side.
So good a salesman he was, that by the end of the evening I was convinced that meetforeal needed a business coach, and that we could afford one at a measly 3000 euro a month, no problem, because you see – “they earn their fee…”
With the audience members primed for purchase, full of offers of free alignment and the heartfelt request to order now before this offer runs out, his team of action coaches, perched around the sidelines of the 500 strong audience, reeled us in. Standing out in their red ties, they collected their prey, eager, converted leads in a heighty emotional state... easy money.
We stayed until the last of the milling around was done, and caught a glimpse of the Action Coaches going back to their leader for a debriefing session. I could see a sheath of grey tentacles unwrap from underneath his 8000 euro suit, of which he made sure to tell us earlier was one of six that he had purchased in one sitting. As they attached to each Action Coach red tie, their bodies went limp, their faces blank and lifeless. His tall Australian body curled into a ball, his voice dropped to low hum as his true alien form emerged...Perhaps that last bit was not real... but I wouldn’t have been surprised!
