The starting point is to be clear about what Business Coaching involves. Despite all of the noise in the market to the contrary, it is not:

Consulting (they come, they go)

Counselling (deals with past issues)

Life Coaching (fluffy, non-revenue generating)

Hypnotherapy (helps you give up smoking, get over spiders)

Angel or Venture Investing (give you money, expect a return)

Mentoring (provides sage wisdom and then leaves you to get on with it yourself)

Business Coaching is gaining in popularity exactly because it behaves in a different way to the interventions above. Take a sporting analogy - if you want to be a great tennis player, then working with a great coach would help you to make adjustments to your performance whilst all the time receiving the support and motivation to practice until the improvements became a habit.

In similar fashion, a Coach will work with you to identify and focus you on improving those aspects of your performance that will have a direct impact on your business. Their measure of success is simple; did your business improve and grow?

The following three questions are the critical ones that you should ask to help you find the right Coach to work with.

1) Is being a Business Coach their genuine passion?

Of late, there are many redundant consultants, bankers and other managers that have newly styled themselves as 'business coaches'. There are also an increasing number that have purchased a coaching franchise and now need to make back their investment by tying you into a long-term contract. The truth is that these people rarely know the first thing about coaching or indeed how to motivate people to act.

A good Coach is an experienced Coach first and foremost, but with strong business experience that they can bring to the table in support of your business. They will be genuinely passionate about personal development and will have received training that will improve their ability to coach others. They will almost certainly be members of coaching industry bodies that will have examined their credentials.

A genuine desire to be a Business Coach would also be demonstrated by someone that has sustained themselves successfully as a full-time Business Coach for a number of years.

2) Have they worked with clients from similar types and sizes of businesses / organisations to your own?

If yours is a small business fighting to grow by the skin of its teeth, then it's no good an ex-Senior Director of a major Corporate organisation trying to convince you that he has the down and dirty experience that can help. Similarly, someone who has only ever worked on a market stall is unlikely to be much use to you when your key issues centre on talent management and staff retention; they simply won't have had experience of the right context.

Experience from more than one sector is also critical in order to draw inspiration and insights from the widest possible field. If your Coach has only ever worked in the public sector, they are unlikely to have the commercial insight to be able to help you develop and grow your business.

3) Have they got strong references and testimonials? References and testimonials are the currency by which Coaches ply their trade - only the best coaches will survive into the long term because they will be in demand. In Coaching, references and testimonials count for more because for a client to be willing to act as a referee, the only true measure of success will be whether the Coach has had a favourable impact on their business? So, have they got glowing testimonials and will they provide you the telephone number of a previous client from a similar sized organisation to your own? If not, then they're probably not for you.

These questions are perhaps the minimum you should ask a potential Coach. Your success is simply too important to entrust to a relationship with somebody that falls a whit below these criteria.