First of all, I would like to thank all our partners, and our customers and their clients for this past year. We have experienced another year with the COVID-19 pandemic and all its challenges, but in spite of that, we were able to serve our customers and grow.

The City of Vantaa had just finished their health promotion program last October, and I am glad to announce that the results were quite positive. The program, a collaboration with Coach4Pro, shows and confirms that a well-organised lifestyle coaching can improve participants’ quality of life as well as bring significant savings for the city. Taking into account that the health program was carried out during COVID-19 when meetings face-to-face were not possible makes the results even more impressive. This case proves the value of well-designed programs and mentors in a remote coaching setting. Let’s face it, we need human-to-human contact, and remote coaching enables this.

The challenge of not having physical meetings had affected many corporate wellness programs. As the pandemic restrictions prompted limitations on a number of new projects, our coaching platform helped to continue to deliver on-going projects remotely and successfully. Remote coaching became the normal way to work and was warmly welcomed and appreciated by the participants.

From a personal training perspective, year 2021 has shown the true value of online coaching. I am very happy for our customers who were able to continue their high quality coaching, and in most cases were able to grow their businesses.

We have also expanded our ecosystem by collaborating with the Lapland University Of Applied Sciences and the University of Turku. We look forward to building a healthier, sustainable future together with these organisations.

Our development team has once again delivered significant improvements to the platform. The development of our platform, with the new Business Manager-tool at the front, enables our customers to manage their services and clients better than before.

We are eagerly looking forward to year 2022. We’re already working to bring an updated reporting tool, and subsequently provide support for more platform languages. Another highly interesting project scheduled is a new interface for algorithms (AI). These algorithms can provide assistance for instructors and coaches to better serve their clients. On top of these, a number of new minor functions are also planned. Our team is committed to continuously developing a platform that will greatly please our customers and their clients.

Once again, thank you for this year!

Wishing you a successful and exciting new year,

Mikko Koskela
CEO, Coach4Pro
mikko.koskela(at)coach4pro.com
+358 40 060 3209

You can read more about Vantaa health program from our blogs From goals to action – mentors make a difference and How one of the biggest cities in Finland pilots wellbeing coaching as an online service

A Health Promotion Project, started at the spring of 2019, was carried out by the City of Vantaa. 

One important segment of the project is the promotion and development of lifestyle coaching. This coaching program, started at the spring of 2020, is individual coaching with long-term guidance designed to achieve lasting results and learn new habits for better health. 

From the group of project participants, fifty (50) health-risk individuals joined the lifestyle coaching program and successfully completed a full year coaching. Their health issues and concerns were primarily related to high blood pressure, being overweight, increased risk of diabetes, lowered mood, and/or plain lack of exercise.

During a three-hour closing seminar of the Health Promotion Project held 6th of October 2021, program data, important feedback and testimonials from the participants were discussed and presented.

Evidently, the program was deemed successful in several aspects. Majority of the participants have lost weight significantly within the one-year training period (average of 2.5%). Exercise and physical activities also increased by an average of five hours per month, or more than one hour per week. However, the high point of the seminar was the journey and experiences of the participants, and the general awareness and appreciation of the program itself. Based on the participant testimonials, the following points were emphasised:

The role of the mentor

The encouragement, support, and ability of the mentors to understand people’s diverse lifestyle and life situations proved most important to the participants. The clients appreciate the consistent feedback, particularly the individual coaching whenever needed.

When asked what they think “the best thing about the mentoring” was, the participants stated the following:

“ I have every day the possibility to contact a skilled mentor. Keeping in touch with the mentor keeps me motivated.”

“Continuous feedback from the mentor.”

“A mentor can also be challenged, and you don’t have to do everything at once.”

The program itself

All participants were aware that real change starts with themselves, and that change takes time. They appreciate the idea of a long-term program and they fully understand that it is essential when aiming for a lasting change and result. Some comments further describe the sentiments:

“It is a privilege to be involved in this kind of process, especially when it is free.”

“The biggest thing here is that this program has been long enough.”

“There will be set-backs, but life goes on.”

Remote coaching

The participants appreciated face-to face meetings with the instructor, but they also realised that this puts a lot of strain on the instructor and goes to the city’s wallet. A one-time face-to-face meeting with the instructor was offered at the beginning of the program which helped establish trust and create a basis for natural and easy interaction during remote coaching.

Moreover, the participants appreciated the remote coaching’s flexibility — where the given tasks could be performed at their own time. It allows them to choose when and where to do their tasks.

“I can do the tasks whenever I have time, since instructions are available. I don’t need anything else. My motivation has improved, I am very pleased with that.”

The clients emphasised that they could always trust that feedback is given every time and messages are answered promptly — perhaps at times with short delays but always with certainty. Time flexibility was perceived as highly positive, with both the instructor and the client being able to work at their own pace.

Participants’ advice for future clients

There are also advice from the participants for those who are new to the program and for those who wish to participate in the future:

“Come along. But don’t join with the attitude that everything changes at once, it’s one step at a time. If there is this kind of opportunity, learn from and challenge the mentors, take advantage of their support, encouragement and criticism as well. Yes, they will support you in every way possible, if you have courage to give them a chance.”

“The mentoring is done in a positive way. If you haven’t done anything in the app for two weeks, then there won’t be a message saying you should start moving, but instead, only a kind question asking, ‘Is everything OK?’.”

In conclusion

A functional remote coaching platform enables personal lifestyle guidance. It enables constant communication, frees up from time and place, and allows one to progress at their own pace. It streamlines the work of instructors, enabling them to work with and help more clients. Instead of a “self-help” service, it was an active personal service. And that was highly appreciated by all the client interviewees.

For more information:

Coach4Pro
Mikko Koskela, CEO
mikko.koskela(at)coach4pro.com
+358 40 060 3209

The number of coaches who offer their services online has grown steadily during the last few years. When Covid-19 hit the world, this trend accelerated like never before. Online coaching is here to stay, no question about that.

We have in a previous article gone through the basics on how to coach online, and in this article we try to take it one step further. For a coaching company looking to make a living on coaching clients online, the growing amount of competitors makes it harder, but more important to stick out from the masses.

First of all, you need to have the basics covered. Like we wrote in the how to coach online article, you need a business plan and a client path. You need a place to sell your services and an online platform where you actually offer the coaching. It would help if you also had visibility, and in the long run, make more money than you spend.

Let’s assume that you have the previously mentioned pieces somehow covered, or at least a plan for them.

Define your unique selling point, USP.

Try to describe your target customers, and pin-point their most common problems. Then write down how you solve these challenges. Highlight the benefits of your service that can assists your customers to reach their goals.

Also, make sure to get to know your main competitors. It can be a good idea to do a basic analysis by writing down the things your competitors do well, but don’t spend too much time on this. The focus should always be on you and your development.

One of your unique selling points could be a competitive price. The price will always be a factor when buying pretty much anything. But that doesn’t automatically mean you should discount your prices. The pricing model and terms are just as important as the price itself.

Consider what kind of solution would fit your customers best. Is it a single purchase? Or is it subscription-based? What exactly do they get for the money? Should you have low price strategy and earn additional income from other sources, like co-operations? Or should you charge a high price to differentiate yourself through signifying quality and exclusivity?

However, it’s the value for money that defines your price strategy. And that’s what you should focus on the most, the coaching service itself.

In a narrow market, it might feel that what you are doing is the same as 10 other coaches. But remember, one single thing can make all the difference. It doesn’t need to be something magical and ground breaking, and sometimes the most simple thing is what makes you and your company successful.

When you’re happy with your USP, make it your number one communication and marketing message, and spread it to your potential customers. Remember, you can’t buy something you don’t know exists.

It might sound that it’s all about marketing. And in one sense yes, it is. But let us all remember that the most powerful marketing is word of mouth. Focus on really making your customers satisfied, and they will, without a doubt, share the word. Plus, they will probably stay as a customer for a long time to come, which is essential for making a living as an online coach. Make sure to check out our article on this subject, 10 ideas on how to retain your clients.

Are you interested in knowing more about this topic?
Why don’t you send us a mail!

Explore your new online coaching platform today.

On what grounds are customers selecting coaching- or wellbeing services? There is often public information available, advertisement material, blog texts, service description and so on.

On top of this, friends might have told about their experiences and recommendations about the service. The reputation and credibility of the personnel providing the service is also influencing the expectations of the customers. Exactly for above mentioned reasons the expectations tend to vary significantly.

Let’s next look the things from a service provider point of view. How does the service provider know what kind of service he or she should provide?

Often the service provider has a long experience and knowledge on what are the customer needs and what kind of services they are demanding. This is a good starting point, but is this kind of approach based on experience adequate?

Could we find out the expectations of the Customers?

Ask

One way to improve the quality of the service, is to prepare a questionary in the beginning of the program where the situation and needs of the customer are found out. Using this method one can tailor the program according the findings. However, the expectations of the customers can vary even if they are executing the same program.

Best way to get rid of guessing, is simply to ask the expectations from the customer. Here we however encounter another problem, what and how to ask? Questions we use in finding out the expectations should not be too specific nor too generic. Let’s think about the dilemma.

We can narrow down the questions to cover remote coaching. We can ask about the quality and quantity of the feedback, is there enough interaction, does the coach give support and encouragement and the quality of material and instructions.

One has to formulate the questions properly, so that the expectations can be found out. An example: “ I want to get regular feedback from the coach” or “I want to get weekly feedback from the coach”

The formulation of the questions  depend on many things (contents of the program, duration of the program, number of coaches etc.), but with a small effort questions can be found out.

Questions should, however, be such that we can use them in all similar programs. This enables us to compare different programs and develop them based on feedback.

If the expectations are asked already at the start of the program, answers can be analysed immediately and if needed, program and interaction can be adjusted accordingly. For example, if we find out that there is a group of customers that require a lot of feedback, we know it and we can give them more feedback than the rest of the group.

Ask again

Now we have clarified how knowing the expectations can improve the quality of the implementation of the program. At the end of program we are essentially using the same questions, but formulated so that we are asking the perception of the customer. An example for this kind of expectation-perception question pair:  “ I am expecting to get lot of feedback” – “I got lots of feedback”.

Combining answers to these questions we find out whether customer expectations were met or even exceeded. We can call this as ‘subjective quality perceived by the customer’.  From the answers we can calculate the needed indicators (average, median,…) and even investigate the distribution of the answers.

The moral of this story is, that the expectations of the customers should be found out. It opens up a totally new scenery, when discussing about the service quality. It also enables the continuous development of the service. We can compare this approach to the question by Dilbert: “Customer evaluated our quality to be 3.7. Do we have quality or not?”

Are you interested in knowing more about this topic?
Why don’t you send us a mail!

Explore your new online coaching platform today.