Tom Jacobs: This week on Tom Jackobs.com, we are talking about communication styles and how you can make your business better by communicating better. I have a very special guest today. Kim Nugent, who is the owner of Kijo Consulting, has come in to do some consulting with us. Tell us a little bit of your background and why you got into the communication styles.
Kim Nugent: When I was introduced to a personality assessment tool, one of the things that intrigued me was how people interact with clients on a daily basis to improve customer retention as well as revenue. A lot of personality assessments help you learn about yourself, but don’t help you learn to communicate more effectively. This is a tool that I feel like makes a huge difference.
Tom: I am sure that everybody has done the disk assessment.
Kim: That is fantastic.
Tom: That is one of the most popular, right?
Kim: Awesome.
Tom: I am like an IED.
Kim: You are definitely an IED.
Tom: You think?
Kim: I know! So fun!
Tom: One thing that you did when you came into Body Three and introduced the banks chest… I really liked that because it communicated the retention, the referral, and then more importantly, for me anyway, was the sales aspect.
Kim: Right.
Tom: And being able to communicate to people in their language. Then being able to quickly assess who they are. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the banks and what you teach with that?
Kim: Sure. Well first of all, as you set up a client, get it right, every time. The things that you stand for fit perfectly with Bank. For example, there are four different personality assessments. The first one is called Blueprint. That is the person, the client specifically, who is interested in time and money. Having options available that fit within the budget, being able to work out 30 minutes 3 times a week in small route training your body is a perfect example of a nice fit.
The second is an action personality type. I know Tom, that is so you. You’ve got some fantastic products like the My Zone for example. The other thing is that you just finished the Olympics competition.
Anyone who wants to win is going to compete every single time. So you have that aspect of it.
The third thing is that you have values. You give to the community. That is a natural fit for the nurturing personality type. The last one is knowledge. One of the things that I like is that all of the trainers at Body Three are so different. That is a good thing. For example, you have a person on your staff that is very knowledgeable who bring research and data to that client who wants to know the science behind “How is this really going to change my body?”
So, identify the client immediately when they walk in. Then communicate in a way that makes sense to them. What I have seen you all do in the last nine months is take that and just explode it. I mean, from your email communication to the different activities that you have. The other thing is, when clients come to small group training, the trainers introduce everyone. That is a big piece of customer attention. People need to feel like they belong. They need to feel like they fit. The other thing is the accountability sessions. No one wants to say “Hey I want to come in and weigh!” Unless they have really done well.
So to have a meaningful conversation with the client so they see the value in coming in because you are going to give something they need. Because as a customer, it is all about me.
Tom: Right.
Kim: Now and that is why to me it was a perfect fit. For small business, I see it as a way to drive revenue and retention.
Tom: Absolutely. Talking about retention, the only clients we have lost are people who have moved away. So it is not because of lack of service, which was an issue about a year ago. Lack of accountability, just not understanding, things like that. You came in and went through the whole Banks assessment and showed us to apply that to the business in a way that the trainers understood it. So now, on everybody’s folder we actually have the colors in the order in which the client is. So the moment that the client comes in, we can tell, “Oh it’s a nurturing”, and most of our clients are nurturing clients. So most of our trainers are nurturing. Makes sense. So when they come in they are able to communicate that then in that style.
Kim: Well one of the things that I have actually seen firsthand at Body Three is that after the training it seemed like each trainer really internalized it and really started to apply it, which I think is unique because having knowledge is one thing, but actually putting in the practice is something else. For them to be able to communicate in the way the client really needs it is a really big change and I think that is really effective. Like I said, you had everything in place already. I think the only thing focus on is to for your team to stay in place. People feel good when they see the same trainer when they walk through the door.
Tom: Right. I think the second thing that helped, other than retention, was how employees communicate to each other when there were conflicts. A lot of times hurt feelings would come out of that which is not so great. Now we open up more. We have to communicate in ways that the others communicate in and that has helped out tremendously.
Kim: That is really good to hear and that is really the intention, right?
Tom: Right.
Kim: It is easy and fun. It’s not complicated. People want to have a good time and immediately and see a result.
Tom: That is the big difference that I saw between all of the other kind of assessments. The Banks assessment is 20 questions.
Kim: Yes.
Tom: In 20 questions, we can quickly identify what the person is like then get practical tools on top of that. How do we rewrite our website so that we are attacking the nurture, the action, the knowledge, and the blueprint person? All of that has really improved quite a bit.
Kim: I think the other thing is that now that you know the personality types of the clients that come to Body Three. As you continue to do the marketing and the different events that you have, you can target those emails specifically to that particular personality type. Again, they are looking for words specifically that are going to resonate with them like “Yes, I want to do that. I want to participate.”
Tom: Absolutely. I think we have done this. It was an on app project I think in our infusion software, no plug by the way, we have actually tagged everybody with what their primary personality type is. So when we are sending out emails, we create four different emails for the four different personality types so it really resonates well.
Kim: Good.
Tom: I mean you can really take this to the Nth degree really.
Kim: You can.
Tom: I think for us it was really simple to start with and I think that is why it was so successful.
Kim: Good I am glad to hear that. That was the intention.
Tom: So I understand that you want to give the viewers and readers one of the assessments.
Kim: Absolutely. If they go to a link called www.mybankcode.com/kijoconsulting, which is KIJO Consulting, they can take the Bank assessment. It takes nine seconds or less. It is super fun and you get a report about yourself.
Tom: Where can we find you? Facebook? Twitter? Snapchat?
Kim: You can definitely find me on LinkedIn, as well as Facebook. You can implement the Banks test in your own facility, I would recommend it in terms of just retention, referrals, and then the sales piece. It is kind of the practice that we implemented at Body Three. I think for any business it is absolutely critical.
Kim: Absolutely. I think it is a great investment, it is super fun, and you can see the results.
Tom: Cool. Thanks for spending a little time with us today Kim.
Kim: Thank you.
Tom: Well until next time we will see you later. Make your business what you want.
