Fitness Marketing Guest Post By Zach Hunt

Hey what’s up? Hope you’re having an awesome day…

I was just looking over my client sheet for this week so far and was pretty pleased, looks to be 7 new clients so far this week. I like those numbers. And those numbers look even better when I know my client retention is rock solid.

Check this out, for every well qualified prospect that comes in and does the two week trial, they end up staying on average 10-24 months, quite a few of them for many years to come.

That’s pretty good for peace of mind.

I don’t have to worry about constantly plugging the leaking bucket with new clients just to keep at a consistent income.

It’s been quite awhile since I had a lot of turnarounds in my client base

It used to happen when I had clients paying by check, and I was doing in-home training. (Not a fun time in my life, seriously).

I basically had a new set of clients every month. Not to mention the adventures every week going into peoples houses. I remember a time when this lady decided to get an attack dog inside her house, and I had to make sure he was in his cage before I came in otherwise things wouldn’t be pretty. And the dog would sit there the whole workout barking at us. Yeah, that was fun.

On a side note if you’re still letting clients pay by check, please look into EFT immediately. If you make it mandatory, not even an option to pay cash or check for clients, then 99% of people plus will not even have a 2nd thought.

So, to the title of this post, “The Big and SIMPLE Secret To Client Retention”.

Really, after EFT, there is a SIMPLE thing I can point to that has dramatically helped my client retention, and when I look at other trainers, see almost no one doing it, especially in larger semi-private and boot camp programs.

So here it is:

Keeping Clients Accountable

That’s it, really pretty simple. Basically what this means is just keeping on top of clients if they flake on workouts or don’t show up for a few days

Now when you get above 100 clients plus especially for any type of semi-private / large group or bootcamp program, keeping track of all your clients can be fairly tough and grueling, which is why some trainers might not even bother.

First why is this so powerful?

It’s all about getting clients into the habit of working out with “your program” or “your service”. If they make it into a habit, it’s like they’ll stick with it for years to come.

Just like could you imagine not brushing your teeth for a period of time, it would be pretty hard.

It would feel like my mouth is pasty and well I just wouldn’t like it. And I’m pretty used to the type of tooth-paste I have, it has a flip top and I like it. Soooo…yeah!

Getting back to getting clients into the habit of working out. If they skip a few workouts here and there. Who’s to say they won’t skip another few workouts, then go on a trip for a week, then what do you know, they want to stop training by the time they get back.

But what if, after the first time they skipped a workout, they got a call from their trainer, or your admin saying where they were and why they weren’t at the workout. Odds are they’ll make sure they show up at the next workout.

On another side note. I’ve tested charging people if they don’t show up on any given week at least twice (unless they let us know ahead of time). Results have been pretty good from what I’ve seen. Kind of like when I first started charging for initial appointments when they didn’t show. I now have a near 100% show rate. A lot better than the 60% or so show rate I was getting before.

Keeping clients financially committed is huge. Which is why this can work well. Especially for anything free. Free trial workout, free two-week trial, or anything where there’s no penalty for the client. Having a mandatory penalty fee can be a great policy to implement to help with your no-show rates. You just have to position this to where it’s in the clients favor when they are signing up. Saying something to the effect of, “Hey Sally you want to get great results right? And you know the only way to get great results is by staying consistent with your workouts and making sure you show up on a regular basis, right? Okay, cool, so this won’t even be an issue for you here.” Something to that effect to where it’s for their benefit.

Anyway, back to the original point of this post. Keeping clients accountable.

Here’s how I’ve done it and it works really well…

First:

Make sure clients know ahead of time that they will get results here, part of the reason why is we keep clients accountable. We also let them know what’s expected out of them, food journaling, showing up for their workouts and everything else.

Second:

We have a big list of all our clients printed out each Sat for the next week. That way whichever trainer is there can check off any client who comes in for a workout. So if 10 people come in the first hour on Monday, we check off those 10 people on the list as they came in once that week. Basically just putting a check after their name.

Third:

At the end of the week, if someone hasn’t come in at least twice. We then give that list to our main admin, and she calls everyone on the list as their accountability call. People usually then call her back to explain why they were gone or certainly show up the next week. But also important, it shows that we care about them and want them to get results.

That’s really all there is to it. Making sure all clients are accounted for and do show up on a regular basis, until it’s ingrained as a habit into their life.

This system has actually worked really well. I remember before this I would look over the client list and between the different trainers, we wouldn’t really know who has been in overall. Cause the clients can come in for training whenever they want.

We would sometimes have clients that hadn’t been in for a month or two or even three, even though with EFT we can still charge them as long as we want until they let us know, sometimes a few months down the way they would call and say they want their money back for those few months cause they didn’t notice it on their credit card bill.

This way they never have an excuse cause they get a call on at least a weekly basis.

Anyway, hope this helps. It’s certainly helped me with my client retention. Let me know what you think.

And, if you want ALL of Big Chris’s and mine Client Retention Systems in detail ( especially all the ninja stuff Big Chris does), definitely check out the Client Retention Blueprint… it’s jam packed with strategies to help you keep your clients as long as possible…

Click Here To Check Out The Client Retention Blueprint

Click Here for the Client Retention Blueprint

Zach Hunt is a Personal Trainer In Spokane WA and fitness studio owner.