Communications & Directions During the Coaching Process

Few people ever have any type of written personal financial plan; and an even smaller percentage prioritize their plans and lay out action steps. Your clients will be different.

A ‘client report’ is a detailed account of the client’s current financial situation delivered in a visual format so they can easily understand their overall financial profiles. Coaches use these reports to establish a baseline analysis of their clients’ situations to be able to set goals, prioritize steps, and track client progress as they move through the coaching process.

The NFEC’s coaching program includes the software and client reporting system.

Once we understand clients and have diagnosed their client reports, we move our attention to working with them to set goals. In this section, you will be introduced to methods for supporting your clients through the goal-setting process. You will not be setting goals for them. Instead, you will be there to help them establish goals and provide guidance on the goal-setting process.

We provide you with a goal-setting planner to organize the information in a clear, concise format. The planner is something to which your clients can refer back and make changes as they achieve their goals.

Once clients’ goals are defined, it’s time to prioritize those goals. Prioritization narrows a client’s focus to specific areas s/he needs to address at different stages. Clear priorities help the client avoid feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start.

The program includes prioritization worksheets so you can help your clients focus their energies on what is most important and urgent.

Now that your client has defined goals to work with, it’s time to break those goals down into action steps. Put another way, action steps are goals broken down into smaller pieces. These steps are the actions you assign clients on a regular basis to keep them progressing toward their larger financial goals.

The Financial Action Planner will be a document you and your clients work on at each meeting. This document will guide their action and allow you to track progress.

Working directly with the Financial Action Planner are the education materials. These resources provide your clients with education and step-by-step actions to take toward resolving the most common financial situations. The resources are geared to help participants feel supported between coaching sessions and empower them with the action steps they need to accomplish the goals they’ve established.

Our graduates have access to our full library of financial education resources – over 2,000 pages in our print library alone. The materials come in multiple formats to meet the needs of your clients: handouts, fillable PDFs, and online learning.

Providing support and accountability is an important part of coaching. Because people’s finances are directly tied to their feelings of self-worth and affect many areas of their lives, providing ongoing encouragement is vital. A coach’s goal is to help clients feel supported as they progress through your coaching program.

To support your efforts, we provide communications that help you follow up with your clients.