Hopefully you were able to answer yes to at least one of those questions, but the truth is, most trainers know nothing about their clients besides their BMI's and what they did on the weekend.
Getting honest answers to those kinds of questions can be very difficult. I suppose you could just walk up to your clients and ask them if they like you or the way you train them, but who's to say they're going to tell you the truth?
You have to be a little sneaky sometimes and surveys are absolutely vital to not only your businesses development, but your own professional and personal development.
Keep in mind though; if you don't like facing facts or criticism then my suggestion is to carry on in your dream world and churning through clients, but if you see value in information then let's get down to business.
A survey by definition is a detailed inspection or investigation. A general or comprehensive view. A gathering of a sample of data or opinions considered to be representative of a whole.
You can imagine that it's not as easy as just asking a few questions, getting some answers and calling it a day; that would be called a suggestion box and that's a completely different article.
A survey is a way to get your clients actively involved in the growth of your business; a suggestion box is for reminders like the toilet seat in the women's locker room is broken.
A survey has structure and purpose, a survey is used to determine an outcome and a course of action and here's how you do it.
Before you begin, there are a few important points to consider:
1. What is it you want to learn from your survey?
Be specific with what you want to learn because the questions you ask need to all reflect that particular outcome.
2. How will you conduct your survey?
Over the phone, on paper, by email? Whatever will be most convenient for your clients should be your first consideration. Also realise that how you present your survey could have an effect on responses, so decide carefully.
Another method is to use an online source; Survey Monkey is free and easy to use.
3. If you choose to use a rating scale, go from bad to good.
If for example you wanted to use numbers for responses; 1 would translate to very dissatisfied and 5 would represent very satisfied.
4. Order your questions so that the easiest are first.
More difficult are second and the more personal questions are towards the end, once you have established trust with the survey taker.
5. Make sure you're only asking one question at a time.
You don't want to confuse your client and in turn give you inaccurate responses. "Do you find you workouts challenging and rewarding?" for example would be two separate questions, so break them up.
6. Include an open question at the end of your survey.
Fo example: ask what your client thinks could be done to improve your service.
7. Get someone independent to review the responses.
This person should have no prior knowledge of the survey and had no communication with you about it, that way they're not biased or pursuaded to interpret the information a certain way.
So what do you do once you have all of this valuable information? Take action and survey your clients!
Present them with the conclusions based on their responses and what you are going to do moving forward. You will notice your retention rate will stabalise and your clients will be accustommed to giving you constructive feedback. In six months time run a variable of the same survey and see how you're doing.
Here is a link to some sample surveys with different objectives in case you get stuck putting it all together.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and as always, if you found this article helpful, please share it on facebook and twitter!
Have a great day!
Ben
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