8 Skills You Need to Succeed as an Online Coach

The road to becoming an online coach is not an easy one. Apart from education, life experiences and sales skills, great coaches need to have certain abilities to make them stand out from the crowd.

Regardless of what industry or what niche you are focusing on, here is a list of qualities your clients want to see in their online coach.

Without further ado, let's see below what are the skills you need to become a great online coach.

#1. Confidence

We believe being confident is the number one skill needed for coaches, online and offline. By confidence we mean you need to believe in your products, your teachings and the results you are going to provide to your clients.

If in your promotional videos, live streams or calls you appear extremely confident in your methods, it will be much easier to acquire your first clients and positively impact their lives.

#2. Experience

With experience, we do not necessarily mean certifications and diplomas. Although educational experience is surely a plus, it is not the only experience you need.

Depending on the niche you are focusing on, certifications might be more or less important, however, to be successful as a coach, you should be able to showcase some real-life experience.

If you already helped many clients achieve their goals, it should be easy to share your experience and offer it as proof for new prospects. But what if you are just getting started and are looking for your first coaching client?

Try to showcase any other experience you might have: helping out friends, attending a seminar, achieving the results yourself and so on.

#3. Accountability and Discipline

People who are in need of an online coach are in need of guidance, discipline and accountability. So once you gain a new client, they need to know that they can count on you to make them achieve their goals.

There is a fine line between helping your clients respect their plans and pressuring them to take actions against their will. Try pushing your clients to set clear goals for themselves at the beginning of your relationship, and create an action plan to follow together.

Rewarding even the smallest steps with positivity and praise will help your clients feel confident and push them further to overcome bigger challenges. If your clients fail to follow the steps, ask them to explain to you what went wrong and avoid criticism.

#4. Empathy

As an online coach, you need to be sensitive to the particular situation and mental limitations of your clients. You have to ensure that your clients are not feeling discouraged if they are not able to reach a specific goal they have in mind.

Empathy means understanding how the other person is feeling and being sympathetic towards their situation.

Being an online coach means you will likely meet a variety of people from different backgrounds, who experienced different problems in their lives and have different goals. So being empathetic is essential in order to understand your clients' perspectives and work together towards a result.

#5. Communication and Social Skills

As an online coach, having a warm and outgoing personality will help your clients become more open towards you and look forward to their coaching sessions. Try to connect with clients on a human level by encouraging them to talk about themselves and asking open-ended questions to start a conversation.

How you communicate to the client can make the difference between success and failure, especially in the coaching business, where the main part of your job is actually communicating.

So to recap, a great online coach should be able to connect with clients on a human level, have great social skills and a friendly personality and be able to clearly communicate with the client.

#6. Availability

If you are a personal coach, you should be able to be mentally available to your clients during the course of your relationship.

This means helping the clients remain focused on their goal and assist them in completing each step required in order to reach it.

Since you are getting paid in exchange for your time, be ready to assist your clients when they need you.

This doesn’t mean you have to be ready to answer their calls 24 hours a day. At the beginning of your work relationship, set some boundaries that are convenient for both you and your client, and try to meet these deadlines from then forward.

If you are not sure about your availability, it is generally better to under-promise and over-deliver.

#7. Listening Skills

This may sound obvious to you, but listening skills are an essential part of being a successful coach and helping clients.

When we talk about listening skills we do not just mean hearing what the other person is saying. As an online coach, actively listening means interpreting, digesting information in order to draw conclusions and paths to help clients reach their goals.

An online coach needs to be extremely receptive to what the customers are telling about themselves, their worries or problems. Every client you will work with will have different needs and goals, so you need to be able to effectively understand their pain points and create an action plan specifically designed to help their particular situation.

#8. Leadership

Online coaching is all about inspiring people to work towards achieving certain goals. As a coach, you will have to know how to motivate your clients to meet their results.

Your clients need a leader to help them in their journey: they need someone to guide them and tell them what works and what doesn't.

Leadership is the art of motivating people to act toward achieving a common goal. That is exactly what coaching is about, so in order to become a successful coach, it is essential to act as a leader and inspire your clients to reach their goals.

Conclusion

There are many qualities that make up for a great online coach: confidence, experience, accountability, social skills, availability, listening skills, empathy and leadership.

If you have all of these skills, great!

However, it is likely that you lack one skill or another, that is totally ok.

Especially when you are getting started as an online coach, you still have a lot to learn. With time and experience, you will be able to master most skills.

One skill we have not mentioned yet is humility and positive self-criticism. Even if you already have all the qualities mentioned in this article, it is always good to keep trying to perfect yourself and become better at what you do.