Looking to host a must-attend coaching session?
Maybe you’re a marketing consultant and want to educate clients on the latest promotional tactics. Perhaps you own a software company and want to teach customers how to use it.
Whatever the case maybe, a coaching session will help you achieve your goals.
In the past, said coaching sessions had to be held in-person—which is still an option, to be sure. But it limits the number of people/companies you can work with. Enter webinars.
Webinars are a fantastic way to host coaching sessions. They allow you to connect with attendees all over the world, see them face-to-face, and engage with them in real time. Win!
In this article, we share eight tips to help improve your next coaching session. That way you and your attendees gain value from the experience. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Setting Up for Success
You need a solid foundation to host an effective coaching session via webinar. That means you need to choose the right software and take the technical setup process seriously:
1. Choose the Right Software
The software you choose can make or break your event.
Look for a solution that’s easy to use and allows for interaction between you and your attendees. Consider your budget as well, so that you don’t overspend on this kind of tool.
ClickMeeting is a fantastic option in the webinar space. It’s user-friendly and includes engagement features like screen sharing, collaborative whiteboards, polls and surveys, and moderated chat. It also comes with built-in recording and analytics tools.
This is why tens of thousands of people in 125+ countries around the world use ClickMeeting to host online get-togethers. Sign up for your free 30 day trial to see if it’s right for you too!
2. Take Technical Setup Seriously
Technical issues can completely ruin an otherwise successful coaching session. Best to avoid them if at all possible. Prioritize the following items to ensure a seamless experience:
- Internet Connection: Make sure you have a stable internet connection. If you don’t, you might lose access to the internet which will disrupt your session.
- Camera: Use a camera that records quality video; then position it at eye level. This will give you a professional appearance and ensure clear visibility for attendees.
- Microphone: Invest in a quality microphone to ensure clear audio transmission. (But don’t feel like you need to spend hundreds of dollars. There are cheaper options.)
- Lighting: Optimize your lighting setup so you’re well-lit and easily visible to your clients. This might mean recording near an open window. Or purchasing a video lighting kit.
Engaging Participants
Want to host a stellar coaching session? You need to find ways to engage attendees.
This isn’t easy to do in virtual scenarios, where distractions are literally a click away. But it’s far from impossible. You just need to take a strategic approach:
3. Use Interactive Tools
The right software will help you engage your audience. How so? These tools are often stocked with numerous engagement features you can use to connect with attendees.
For example, you can ask your audience questions throughout your coaching session, which will naturally engage them in your material. Questions can be asked directly, or via the polls and surveys feature built into ClickMeeting (or whatever software you prefer.)
Visuals can increase engagement as well. Charts, graphs, and video clips are more fun to look at than walls of text. And when attendees have fun, they tend to pay more attention.
Finally, your presentation style can also capture your attendees attention. We’ll talk more about this in a later section titled, “Adopt an Engaging Presentation Style”.
Also worth noting, these engagement tools mentioned above will help you collect feedback, which you can then use to improve future coaching sessions and keep participants engaged.
4. Encourage Discussion
As we just talked about, audience engagement is vital to a successful coaching session.
But you don’t want to only stimulate engagement between you and each attendee. You want to stimulate engagement between attendees, too (assuming you have more than one.)
Doing so will help encourage participants to share their thoughts, ask questions, and otherwise build a sense of community. All of these things will allow for a more valuable coaching session.
Delivering Impactful Content
We’ve talked about software and audience engagement strategies…
Here’s the thing: neither of them matter if you don’t deliver impactful content to your audience. With that in mind, here are a couple of tips to make sure your next coaching session is valuable:
5. Set Clear Objectives
First, define what you want each coaching session to achieve. This will give you a goal to aim for and ensure your content is focused on the specific outcomes you want to achieve.
Once you’ve identified your objectives, create a structured agenda and share it with participants.
Why is this so important? It will build excitement for your coaching sessions, and give participants a chance to prepare questions to ask you. It will also keep you on track during the event and ensure you cover all of the material you need to cover per session.
6. Adopt an Engaging Presentation Style
You know what your next coaching session needs to achieve. And you’ve created content that follows a structured agenda. Now you need to deliver said content in an engaging way.
Think about your favorite teacher in high school. Why did you like them so much? They probably told you stories and personal anecdotes to make the information they shared come to life. In other words, they presented their lessons in an engaging way. You need to do the same!
Don’t just tell your clients what they need to know. Incorporate storytelling and real-life examples into your presentations. Doing so will help you establish deep connections with each of your participants and keep them actively engaged throughout the entire session.
Ensuring Post-Session Follow-Up
You’ve just finished another coaching session. You can kick up your legs and relax now, right? Actually, no. You still have some work to do to ensure your sessions are successful:
7. Collect Feedback
What did attendees think about your coaching session?
You won’t really know until you collect feedback. This is super important. Skip this step and you’ll never understand your shortcomings, which will make your sessions less valuable.
There are plenty of ways to collect feedback. For example, ClickMeeting will let you send a post-webinar survey to all attendees. You can then analyze the feedback and adjust.
If you want to take a more personal approach, you can straight-up ask attendees what they thought. Just make sure you have a thick skin before using this tactic.
At the end of the day, feedback will give you the data you need to improve your coaching skills. When that happens you’ll deliver more value to clients—and likely get more clients as a result.
8. Create Action Plans
Last but not least, give each of your coaching clients a personalized action plan after you complete a session with them. This is a highly effective way to drive lasting change.
What should your action plan include? Specific steps clients can take to implement your advice and achieve their goals, leading to tangible results and sustained growth. This will ensure that the impact of your coaching sessions will extend well beyond the initial webinar you host.
Elevate Your Coaching Sessions With Webinars
Host your next coaching session via webinars and coach clients from around the world, while still connecting with them in a face-to-face manner that engages them in your material.
To ensure your sessions are effective, follow the tips we shared in this article. As long as you choose the right software, work to engage attendees via interactive tools, deliver impactful content, and follow-up with participants after your event ends you should do just fine.
Speaking of the “right software” give ClickMeeting a try. Our solution has all the tools you need to host a top-rated coaching session. Start your free 30-day trial of ClickMeeting today!
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