With so many resources are available today that support coaches supporting their clients with professional development, it can often feel overwhelming trying to find the best resources and templates to use in your coaching practice. Here at the Business Coach Directory, we have designed and uploaded our resources with the pure intention of supporting business coaches to download, adapt and utilise the perfect set of training materials and templates. This list of the top 10 best resources is designed to help coaches identify with what is available on our Marketplace today, and to make it easier for them to identify the best resources and templates that they could use when coaching their clients.

Business Plan – Basic

If you are just starting your journey in the world of business coaching, you will probably have been told that you will need a business plan in order to set out your services, plan your business goals and objectives and ensure you have the financial means to make your business a success.

Business Coach Directory have put together an easy initial business plan that is flexible to your needs. Whether you need it for funding requests, setting up your business or using it for ongoing development, this document is a perfect solution for you. Including in the document are the following sections:

1. High-level business strategy.
2. Summary of products and services.
3. Business objectives/ goals.
4. Strengths/ Weaknesses/ Opportunities/ Threats (SWOT) analysis.
5. High-level financial summary.
6. Operational requirements (e.g. Technology, Legal Documents)

Client Contract

To ensure you are covering all parameters and service plans with your clients, it important to incorporate a client contract within your onboarding process. The 3 page word document that Business Coach Directory has put together sets out a straightforward agreement between coach and client, including roles and responsibilities of both, professional boundaries of the relationship and the nature of the services provided. Fees, GDPR and confidentiality rules are also included within the document. As with many of the documents provided by Business Coach Directory, this contract is completely customisable leaving you free to add your branding, logo, terms and conditions and pricing structure.

Client onboarding checklist

When a client first makes contact with you to find out more about coaching and the benefits for them, it is important to get as much information as possible in order to ascertain the correct coaching for them and to understand the basis of where they currently are in their role/life. This onboarding checklist goes through the main points you will want to capture in great detail, whilst still being a simple and easy to read document. Included in the document are the following sections:

1. Explore what the client wants to achieve from the coaching.
2. To understand the client’s reason for wanting to be coached and why at this present moment.
3. For the coach to explain their preferred coaching style.
4. Explore and explain how the coaching process works.
5. To discuss the roles and responsibilities of the coach and client.
6. Agree on a way forward including payment options and setting dates for the sessions.

Coaching Practice Bundle

Our coaching practice bundle is a brilliant offer for those just starting their coaching career and requiring a variety of documents to support them in getting started. Not only is this bundle a great admin saver for you, as it has a variety of business focused documents included, it will also support you to get started with your first set of clients and ensure you have all the necessary paperwork to hand when you require. Whats more, this bundle is completely customisable, meaning you can add your own logo and branding to give it a truly unique feeling. Included in the bundle is:

1. Client On-Boarding checklist – for the initial call
2. Coaching Contract – Partnership agreement between the client and coach
3. Coaching Log – to record individual and group clients details
4. Coach Reflection Template – review and assess your coaching skills in a session
5. Coaching Session Notes – Capture the notes in the session to help you stay focused on the client outcome
6. Invoice template
7. Daily Planner

Wheel of Life

When a client first comes to you, they may be unsure of where they want to start on their self-development journey and how they can see themselves achieving this. The Wheel of Life provides a good holistic view of the areas that make up different parts of a clients daily life, including to focus on areas of fulfilment or dissatisfaction. This guide can support a client to focus on one aspect of their life that may need more attention than others. This document also offers a great way of self reflection as a client can see how they originally felt before beginning sessions with you, as opposed to how they feel after a few / many sessions. The Wheel of Life can also be used as confirmation that you clients are focussing on areas that will bring them greater transformation.

Invoice and Receipt template

Invoicing and receipting can be a difficult or arduous task that often takes up much of your valuable time. If you are in sessions for much of the day, you may find yourself putting off this task in the evening to carry on with your personal life. Business Coach Directory have compiled a simple invoice and receipt template that you can send to clients, taking out some of the hassle of your daily admin requirements. The products are completely customisable, leaving you free to add your own branding and logo. Created on excel format, the invoice and receipts also include VAT if you require this.

Coach Reflection template

It’s one of the most important documents in a coaches arsenal, a coach reflection template. Whether you are an experienced coach or just starting out, being able to reflect on the coaching sessions you undertake with your clients is key to you continually improving yourself and providing key insights to your clients that they may not have been aware of. The Coach Reflection template is based on the ICF markers for professional coaching skills. Questions throughout the template include giving you the opportunity to review what went well during the session and what could be improved upon or practiced in the future.

Client Record – coaching session log

For a coach it is important to ensure that all client details including sessions, hours and payment have been captured so you can use this to reconcile invoices and receipts before your year end. With out client record, you will be able to capture all details in one easy to read excel format, with each client section split out for ease of access.

Included in these sections are:

• Tab 1 – Coaching list of all clients
• Tab 2 – Individual Coaching Sessions Log
• Tab 3 – Group Coaching Sessions Log (Suitable as a record for the ICF accreditation)

Coaching session notes

In order to further reflect after your client session, it is important to capture notes during the session. Once you have finished you can then go back across these notes in a critical approach in order to focus on your clients needs and outcomes, capture keywords and thought patterns so you can raise these as observations when conducting further sessions with your client. You can also utilise this document as a nice way to open and close your session in a constructive way by beginning with noting your observations from the last session and and finishing by summing up the notes you have taken to ensure they are a true representation.

Daily Planner

Our daily diary can get very busy very quickly and it can often be challenging to ascertain where you are supposed to be, who you are supposed to be meeting etc. Your average shop bought diary doesn’t not lend itself well to a coach due to the lack of space provided to amend and change sessions and the information that you may need to include within the appointment booking. Our daily planner is a great tool for you to download for free (!) that includes a variety of sections to help you plan your day in the most efficient way focussing on priorities and tasks. The daily planner includes sections for:

1. Morning / Afternoon / Evening
2. To do list
3. Notes

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Business Coach Directory have the tool and expertise for your coaching needs

Business Coach Directory was founded in order to create a central space where coaches could register, showcase, learn and develop within their roles in order to support various clients and hone their skills and expertise.

We host a range of different events for coaches to come together with the intention of sharing best practice, networking and learning more about each other. This in turn gives our coaches a great platform to deliver their own events.

If you are a coach looking to join a network of like minded people who share the same ethos and passion for training and developing business leaders and individuals, register with Business Coach Directory today and take advantage of the unique tools and offers we have available to our members.