Grow your coaching business
Edelman and LinkedIn · June 2025 · Registration required
2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report
The seventh annual Edelman–LinkedIn study looks at how thought leadership reaches both visible buyers and the quieter internal voices that can help or halt a deal.
Also listed under Winning organisational work.
Independent coaches rarely have a well-known brand. This report is useful because it looks at how lesser-known suppliers become credible with people who influence a purchase but never appear on the original briefing call.
Edelman and LinkedIn draw on nearly 2,000 professionals, including those they call hidden buyers. The report argues that thought leadership can help those people advocate internally, including for suppliers they did not already know.
We are not treating this as proof that posting more content wins coaching contracts. It is a B2B marketing study. The value is the buying-group lens, not a coaching-specific formula.
If you want organisational work, the first conversation is often not the whole decision. HR, L&D, a sponsor, finance and a sceptical senior leader may all have a view before anyone asks you for a proposal.
Writing clearly about how coaching is bought, where it fails, or what organisations should ask of a coach may help those quieter voices recognise you before a shortlist is drawn up.
The report also belongs in Winning organisational work for that reason: the commercial problem is not only generating leads. It is being known, and trusted, by more than one person in the buying group.
This is an external source. Four Corners Coaching did not produce the original report.
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6sense · November 2025
6sense’s global buyer study finds that most B2B buying groups rank preferred suppliers before they speak to anyone, and that the early favourite still usually wins.
Why we picked it. It is one of the clearer explanations of why waiting for a tender or a warm referral can be too late.
Grow your coaching business · Registration required
LinkedIn and Ipsos · June 2025
LinkedIn’s Ipsos survey of 1,500 B2B marketers finds that trust is treated as the foundation of brand success, built more through social proof than through being widely famous.
Why we picked it. It is a useful check on whether coaches are chasing visibility when buyers may be looking for proof they can trust.
Winning organisational work · Free to read
UK Government Commercial Function · November 2024, updated August 2025
Official guidance on the Procurement Act 2023 regime, Find a Tender, and how smaller suppliers are expected to register and bid for public-sector work.
Why we picked it. It is the government’s own starting point for suppliers, including small businesses, under the current procurement rules.