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BALANCING WANTS AND NEEDS

newsletter Oct 06, 2022

Balancing Wants and Needs

Giving clients what they want by giving them what they need.

Abdurahmaan Saloojee is a personal trainer from Ottawa, Canada. He enjoys traveling, reading, and spending time with cats.

 

  • People often don’t know what they need when you first talk to them.
  • Our job as trainers isn’t to tell them what they need, but to help them uncover it.
  • Our job then becomes to provide them with what they need while giving them enough of what they want in order for them to remain interested. 

When people sit down with a personal trainer they usually are not sure what they want, let alone how to get it. If they did, they wouldn’t be asking for a trainer. That often becomes muddied by what they need – sometimes, those can be two different things (in some cases, two opposing things). By asking better questions and listening more, we can gain a better understanding of wants and needs, thus providing a better service  and improving client retention. 

When you sit down with a client and ask them what their goals are, the first words out of their mouths probably have to do with weight loss, losing belly fat, feeling more comfortable, etc. These are all wants that they have that would enhance their quality of living. When you ask how you can help, they typically respond with something to do with guidance and showing them what to do. While this is true and technical knowledge is a big part of our job, what they are really paying us for is not the information but the accountability. What they need is someone to hold them accountable to daily and weekly goals that will allow them to get there. That is why many different approaches to training can all result in the same weight loss, strength, and confidence goals: the tools may be vastly different but the underlying application of accountability is what gets people long-term results that keeps them sticking around. It is always interesting to see new trainers that are married to a certain style of training hate on other trainers that do things differently, when the fact is, everyone can get their clients the results they want. The common denominator is consistency. 

In order to provide clients with a positive service we need to fully understand what results they desire so that we can create a successful program. When coaching, we need to bridge the positive social experience with making sure that they are hitting their weekly objectives. This ensures that when the contract ends they have had a positive experience and tangible goals that they can walk away with. Part of giving them what they want involves asking them directly what ideal training looks like to them. Our goal is to give them that while also making sure that they hit the markers of progress which we have set out for them in order to reach their goals on time. It is almost like having both front facing/customer interface and back end work: it can’t be one or the other; both are needed for a good experience. Ask better questions to understand how you can best be of service, then be their friend while making sure they are on track without seeming like a callous drill sergeant.

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