PEOPLEskills | Human Insight – Enhancing Your PT Business
As a personal trainer, you are a service provider; your client base will reflect how you work with your clients, so understanding key PEOPLEskills is imperative to a successful career.
How we Learn and Buy…
| 83% | Through | SIGHT |
| 11% | Through | HEARING |
| 3 ½ % | Through | SMELL |
| 1 ½% | Through | TOUCH |
| 1% | Through | TASTE |
How we Retain Information:
| 10% | Of what we read |
| 20% | Of what we hear |
| 30% | Of what we see |
| 50% | Of what we see and hear |
| 70% | Of what we say as we talk |
| 90% | Of what we say as we do a thing |
| METHOD OF INSTRUCTION | RECALL 3HRS LATER | RECALL 3DAYS LATER |
| TELLING WHEN USED ALONE |
70% |
10% |
| SHOWING WHEN USED ALONE |
72% |
20% |
| WHEN A BLEND OF TELLING AND SHOWING IS USED |
85% |
65% |
Understanding People & Human Nature:
The first step to increase your skill in dealing with people is to properly understand people and their nature. When you have a proper understanding of a human nature and people, when you know why people do things that they do, when you know why and how people will react under certain conditions – then and only then can you have a total understanding how to look after your clients, give them the service they should receive and retain long term.
Understanding human nature and people, simply involves recognising people for what they are and not what you think they are.
What are they? PEOPLE ARE PRIMARILY INTERESTED IN THEMSELVES, NOT IN YOU!
Putting the statement above in another way, the other person is ten thousand times more interested in themselves than they are in you… Remember they are coming to you for a reason, it’s about them, their goals, to lose weight, get fit, shape up, run a marathon, and you are their tool to get there.
On the other side, you need to be the opposite, totally interested in their goals, understand their personality, likes and dislikes, as remember there is no point in putting a client on a bike if they hate cycling. We have two ears and one mouth so remember to listen twice as much as you talk.
Using this knowledge that people are primarily interested in themselves, gives you the basis on which to work in your dealings with your clients to get them the results they want from training with you.
How to Skilfully Talk to People
As a personal trainer, your business revolves around speaking to people, usually on a one2one but sometimes in small groups. Either way, if you don’t have the skill to talk to people then you will suffer finding new business.
When talking to people, pick out the most interesting subject in the world to talk about, and what is the most interesting subject for your prospective client to talk about? Yes you’ve got it, THEMSELVES.
Of course meeting a client for the first time you do need to talk about them and their needs, their goals, but make it more personal, find out their hobbies, interests etc, these maybe able to focus in the training, but if not it gives you a better picture of who they are and what they are like and for them it shows you are interested in them as a person and not just as another client.
When you talk to them about themselves, they will be deeply thankful to you and in turn will be interested in what you have to say in training methods you will look to use with them and advice that you give. When you talk with people in this way, you are working with human nature.
Substitute these four words “I, Me, My, Mine” with one word, the most powerful word “YOU”… use phrases like “We are going to get you in shape” The use of the word “We” is about working together, including the client into the equation and “You” is talking about them again.
Admittedly, it is hard to do at first and does take practice, but once you have the hang of it and it becomes second nature then you will reap the rewards of a successful PT Business.
By Mike Buss.
Category: For the Trainer
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We would like to thank you all over again for the wonderful ideas you offered Jesse when preparing her own post-graduate research in addition to, most importantly, for providing every one of the ideas in one blog post. In case we had been aware of your site a year ago, we may have been saved the unwanted measures we were choosing. Thank you very much.