If you don’t understand them, you don’t earn the right to serve them.
“The art of coaching in the private sector is found in balancing the dichotomy of understanding consumer perceptions, behavior, & desires and sound mentoring, training prescription & coaching.
Being better than the charlatans isn’t enough because ‘they’ (the consumer) don’t know good from bad.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
One of the biggest things coaches across all sectors fail to understand is consumer perceptions and behavior.
Being highly educated, qualified, and understanding the ins and outs of your field is important, vitally important, but to the unknowing consumer, it’s all the same thing.
All the training, the great, good, bad, and ugly, is dumped into one bucket.
We as the Professionals know the difference between good and bad. We know that some training is a MASSIVE investment and some training, that may in some ways, look eerily similar is a MASSIVE expense, but again, the consumers’ don’t know. They don’t have time to figure it out.
So what are they going to do? (I’m speaking from a mass market perspective.) They are going to jump not to what is best, but to what they PERCEIVE to be best.
This is why kicking, scratching, and clawing to educate often falls on deaf ears. Most don’t care that you’re better. That you know more. That you’re more qualified. Remember, all “you trainers” are in the same bucket.
“Where can I save the buck?” And.. “Who looks to be doing the coolest stuff?”
This is a real challenge for Coaches who are wanting to use scientifically sound, age and developmentally appropriate training modality to enhance the performance of youth athletes for 2 reasons. 1. Great work aint cheap, and 2. Great work aint flashy.
So does this mean we should compromise our standards and offer a cut rate service to immerse ourselves in the mix with the “average guys in the training bucket”?
Of course not.
It’s paramount to maintain integrity, do things the right way, but to also understand the perceptions of the consumers’.
They don’t care about this stuff like you and I do. They never will. The science-y shit behind all this is unimportant to them on the front end.
They want to get a good work out in, sweat, get big arms, and do abs, right?
So, what if we build out a program model that IS rooted in integrity. This is wildly beneficial to them as developing athletes, but then feed them a little of what they “perceive” training should look like to appease their own intrinsic desires?
That is the art of this game.
