Are you a fitness professional looking to connect and build rapport with your clients? I think as fitness professionals this is one of the things that trainers miss more often than not. If you can’t get a client to trust you and you can’t build a relationship with them how can you possibly expect for them to remain a client?
The truth is that the vast majority of personal training clients are looking for someone who is honest with them, someone they can trust, someone who is real with them, someone to listen. I believe it’s time for more trainers to get on board with their clients and work on developing these relationships to get clients to truly by into what trainers are trying to do.
But as a trainer, how do you do this? Firstly, I believe this is something that needs to be learned through experience. You need to work with clients in order to learn what works for real people and what doesn’t, but I’m also going to share 6 tips that I believe will help you develop better relationships with your client and get their buy in.
Ask Questions, and the Listen to the Answer
In my opinion this is something that separates good trainers from great trainers. In reality any trainer (or any person) can pick up a questionnaire and start firing questions at a client, that is the easy part. The harder part becomes truly listening to what the client is saying as they answer these questions, and the hardest part is listening to the things that a client isn’t saying. When you are working with someone you’ve just met it isn’t likely that they are going to offer up all their weaknesses or shortcomings in the first few minutes, at least not directly. When you are speaking with clients, it’s important to read between the lines of what they are saying and then probe further. Listen to how clients talk about their day-to-day life. Listen for the people they talk about, they are likely spending a lot of time with those people, are those people supportive of whatever goals the client is chasing. When asking about their past exercise history, listen to the things they talk about eagerly and notice the things that they maybe don’t mention to help determine things they may enjoy or not. Clients can say more than they realize in initial consultations, you just have to make sure that you are looking for it in detail.
When Clients Talk About the Small Things, Remember Them
The longer you work with clients the more they will open up about their lives. When they share things with you remember them (and if you can’t remember them, write them down). Maybe they mention their partner’s name or their kid’s name. Maybe they talk about where they work, or what their favourite TV show is. These things may seem small, but they are a connection point with your client and a way for your to engage in more personal conversations with your clients. You may have a full roster of clients, but remembering small details about your client’s lives that you can bring up in conversations days or weeks later will make your clients feel special and like their lives do matter to you.
Share Small Personal Details or Connection Points with Them
As great as it is to get to know the small details about your client’s lives, it’s great to let them see a little bit of your life as well. I’m not saying that you need to spill your entire life story to every client who walks through the door but through those small details you learn about your clients you can find details about your life to share that may resonate. Perhaps you have a client who loves a certain TV show, if it’s something that you enjoy, share that with them. Maybe you have a client who loves to cook, share your favourite recipes. You get the point…when I say personal details you don’t need to air your dirty laundry, but you can find connection points with almost any client if you get to know the client well enough.
Make Training a Collaborative Effort
Clients come to you because you are an expert, however that doesn’t mean that you always know what’s best for the client. A client who is striving for certain goals or chasing certain things needs to be a part of the conversation instead of just being told what to do. Often when we tell people what they should or shouldn’t do it doesn’t build a great relationship and a lot of people tend to “rebel” against trainers if they are just told what they should be doing. When you are building training programs and schedules make your clients a part of the conversation. Consider things they enjoy, things they may not enjoy. Include them in the conversation about what days/times may work for them. When training becomes collaborative between the trainer and the client success is much more likely for clients.
Set Your Clients Up For Success
If you can set your clients up for success the relationship you develop with them will be a positive one, plain and simple. Clients often walk into personal training with goals. It’s a trainers job to ensure that these goals are realistic and achievable for the client. If they are not (and often they aren’t in the beginning) you need to help the client break them down so that they can find success. Breaking goals down into smaller chunks that clients can achieve on a week to week basis can help clients see success relatively quickly which will keep them coming back to you for more. Learning how to set your client’s up for success is one of the simplest ways to help build a positive relationship so teach clients how to set small goals that can have them seeing success relatively quickly.
Be Yourself
At the end of the day being yourself is probably one the easiest things that you can do in order to help develop quality relationships with your clients. Clients will learn to read you over time and if you are fake they will see right through it. Trainers are humans too…they miss workouts, or they eat crappy foods. Many trainers will try and hide stuff like this from clients, but letting your clients see that you struggle with some of the same things that they are currently struggling with makes you more relatable, more human. It’s okay to show your clients that you aren’t perfect just like them.
Do you have other things that have helped you develop positive relationships with clients? Nurturing relationships with clients will not only help you keep those clients around, but it will also help you build a positive reputation and will keep clients coming your way for years to come. Learning how to develop these positive relationships can be one of the most important tools in your roster building toolkit so make sure that you don’t neglect it.
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