Since many people who are not familiar or vaguely familiar with life coaching but are looking to work with a life coach have this dilemma, I’ll be very pleased if this article serves as a useful resource for you.

Firstly, establish and write the criteria for selecting a life coach.  

If you find 10 coaches online whose websites you like, how will you shortlist them?  How will you decide which of the 10 you’ll contact?  And once you’ve spoken to the shortlisted, how will you know who to choose?  You need some criteria according to which you’ll choose.  Hence here they are:

1. Place  

• Where are you looking to work with a life coach?  At your home?  At your coach’s base?  In a public place such as a coffee shop / hotel lobby?  At your chosen location which you’d like your coach to come to? Online?
• If you’re willing to travel to either the coach’s plase or a mutually agreed public place, what’s the farthest distance you are willing to travel?

2. Time 

• How important is the life coach’s flexibility on time?  Some coaches operate office hours.  After a certain hour they switch off the phones until a certain hour the next morning.
• Do you want to have coaching sessions late in the evenings?  On a Friday or Saturday evening [when your family members are out]?  Then consider asking the potential life coach whether s/he would coach at these times.
• Similarly, do you want to have coaching at weekends rather than on weekdays?  If yes, ask the potential coach whether s/he is willing to coach at weekends.  Not all coaches are!
• Or do you want to work with a coach who is totally flexible on time, no matter what the day of the week or time of the day?  If you have a busy schedule and / or travel a lot, a life coach who offers total flexibility on time will be much more beneficial, because you will be free to choose session times that suit you, not the coach.
• Do you want a life coach who works across the time zones?  This is immensely beneficial if you travel a lot.  If your coach operates across the time zones, it really doesn’t matter whether it’s 3p.m. in New Zealand now and you want a coaching session albeit your life coach resides in Toronto which is 17 hours behind New Zealand!  Your coach will be there for you at 3p.m. of New Zealand time.

3. Skills and coaching style

•  What skills or specialisation do you want the life coach to have?  NLP?  Hypnosis?  Both?  CBT?  Ontological?  Other?  Only you know the answer.  If you don’t know the answer, find it, then find a life coach!
• Do you want a life coach who has a bias in one area more than others, such as a learning difficulties coach, a coach in retail, or a landlord and tenant coach?
• Furthermore, what style of coaching would you best respond to?  Direct and factual? Metaphorical?  Reflective?

4. How do you want coaching sessions to be conducted?

• In person only?
• On the phone?
• On Skype or Zoom?
• In a combination of two or all means, depending on how you feel and what you can do for each session?

5. Do you prefer the life coach to be a man or a woman?

6. And finally, the price range.

Since coaching is not funded by the state, you will pay for it from your pocket.  Hence set a budget and look for a life coach whose fees are within the budget.  You will definitely find huge value in life coaching! So would you like to  start a conversation?

The post Looking for a Life Coach? appeared first on nlp-life-coaching-2026.

Write or draw it – retail banking is visual too!

Whenever a new customer comes to you to enquire about your banking / financial products, have a blank sheet of paper ready to write on.  Banking involves numbers and numbers are a visual science. Hence banking needs visual references.  I’ve experienced only 20% of retail banking professionals who realize this and draw numbers and figures on paper while explaining them. The remaining 80% talk like a radio and often get themselves and the customer lost in the talk!

Writing numbers and drawing figures while you’re explaining them to the customer will inevitably force you to keep your explanations clear, short, sharp, to the point.  While talking without the support of visual reference can easily go off on a tangent and around in circles, talking supported by visual reference keeps you on track.

Observe – retail is detail and NLP supplies it!

Especially if you’re a financial professional with a highly mathematical brain you’ll likely be immensely knowledgeable about your banking products and the financial markets. But you may be bad at calibrating to the customer’s body language.  Learn to be attuned to your environment. Observe the customer’s body language.  Is s/he taking notes?  If yes, wait for cues that s/he is ready to proceed.  Is s/he fumbling around in the bag for a pen?  Observe, wait, sense, and continue speaking when you see that the customer is listening. And if you’re really good, you’ll even offer a pen!

Be procedural

Customers who come to enquire about banking / financial products want responses structured in the a-b-c, step by step form.  Questions beginning with where, when, what, and how seek step by step answers. Questions beginning with why accommodate options.

Speak to the point

Always respond EXACTLY to the content of the customer’s question. Then, if you wish, add explaining products in other areas of banking then the area which the customer asked about.  If a customer asks about the types of accounts that your bank offers, combine all the tips in this article and tell him/her about the types of accounts. Don’t go into credit cards.

If you want to explain about credit cards, finish explaining the accounts and THEN introduce credit cards. You can say something like: “Some of our accounts have credit cards associated with them for your grater benefit.  Would you like to know about any of them?”  This will give the customer a sense of structure and completion to your response, prepare him/her for the second topic, and give him/her the option to hear or not to hear about the second topic. This approach will also save time and energy if the customer does not want to hear about credit cards.

Watch your state

Be especially careful about your state of being all the time during your interaction with a customer.  People are immensely accurate at picking up subtle energies from you. They’ll quickly sense when you can’t wait to finish with them, or when you’re pushy for a sale, or when you’re so eager to help that you go into hyper mode and become tense, breathe high in the chest, and speak quickly and incessantly like a robot.  Relax, breathe, be physically and mentally comfortable, enjoy the job. Or get out of it if you don’t totally enjoy working with people!  False smiles and acting won’t get the sale.

Keep it private

Respect people’s privacy and show them that you DO respect it!  There’s nothing I hate more than when I go to a bank and the door of the office stays wide open for the branch to hear my financial circumstances!  An even worse case is when the advisor opens the conversation with a question about my financial circumstances WHILE WALKING INTO THE OFFICE!  Wait till the customer is sitting in the office and shut the door to show that you value his/her privacy. Then start talking.

Small talk doesn’t make you different

If you want to establish rapport, you don’t have to do it with small talk!  Take time to observe the customer’s verbal and nonverbal communication. It will give you a choice to establish rapport by subtly matching the customer’s voice tone, volume, speed of speech, posture, gestures, amount of eye contact, head nodding, smiling, etc. Skipping small talk will actually make you stand out. The reason is that small talk is so common and standard that people don’t pay attention to it anymore. And there are even people whom small talk insults and annoys!

Speak slowly and pause frequently.  People will see you as credible and credibility is reassuring. And you’ll give space for the customer to process the information.

NLP for retail banking

If you’re a retail or investment banking or financial professional interested in enriching your personal and professional life with NLP, let’s talk about it.

The post NLP for Financial Professionals in Retail Banking appeared first on nlp-life-coaching-2026.