Aaron Potts
Would you believe that your ability to provide quality customer service to your clients is at least as influential as your ability to get them results from their training program? Did you even know that customer service was going to be part of your business model? After all, what does personal training have to with customer service?
The answer: everything. Remember that your clients are people first, and their status as one of your clients comes second. Knowing how to tend to the needs of your customers will literally make the difference between a long and rich career in the fitness industry, or a short-lived stint that leaves you wondering what career path you should try next!
In order to assist you in close down the success path, here are six methods that you can use to "WOW" your clients on a regular basis, keeping them happy, loyal to you, and engaging in long prosperous business relationships. In no specific order they are: contact, date and event recognition, listening, flexibility, forward thinking, and over-delivering.
Contact
When you get a new own training client, galore people will standing second-guess their decision to hire you. After all, a personal trainer can be an high-priced asset, and your clients need to believe that they made the far decision. One of the easiest ways for you to ease their mind in the opening as well as during the course of their training program is by simply staying in contact with them.
Most clients will see you at most 3 times each week, and some clients equal less than that. With at least 4 days in each week when your clients don't see you, you are influencing them less than 50% of the time! Many clients hire a personal trainer because they need constant guidance and support, and little than 50% could hardly be thoughtful constant.
An easy solution to this is to send your clients a few emails a week, or mail them an actual snail mail letter once in awhile. Clip an appropriate article from a magazine and make copies of it to mail to your clients, or email them the URL of a great motivational story about weight loss that you found on the Internet. Forward them funny anecdotes active health and fitness, or drop them a postcard congratulating them on their latest progress.
For that matter, pick up the phone! Call Suzie Client on Saturday to let her know that you just got finished updating her client record and had reason to again marvel at how great she is doing with her program. You retributory can't pay for the type of customer feedback you will get from something like that!
Stay in contact with your clients in between training sessions, and the increased attention will remind them on a regular basis that in the beginning you wrapped up to a cardinal on one training program for them, not just to stand there 3 times a week while they exercise.
Date and Event Recognition
Recognizing specific dates in your client's lives is another great way to show them that you are thinking about them in between training sessions.
- Send your clients a birthday card, or even a small but profound gift.
- Congratulate them on their wedding anniversary, or equal send flowers or a card to their house.
- Ask them how fevered they are active the upcoming graduation of their child from high school or college.
- Have a special minimal of your appreciation sent to their home or office after a ready amount of time that they have been training with you - maybe annually or semi-annually.
- Give them a special award all time they lose 5 pounds, or drop a percentage of body fat.
- Attend the race or other fitness event that you have been training them for.
As you can see, the possibilities are limitless. The lesson that you want to take away from this section is that you went preceding and beyond the call of duty to recognize a date or an event that was important to your client. They won't forget that when it comes time to decide whether or not to keep working with you!
Listening
The fact that you should listen to your clients should go without saying. If your title is "Personal Trainer", please take a moment at this time to re-read the first word! Too many trainers fall into the familiar trap of just taking their clients through workouts. Your clients aren't paying you to workout with them. They are profitable you to give them dedicated cardinal on one service, and the actualised workout is single one part of that.
In addition to the exercise programming, you essential again think active the fact that your clients are humans before they are clients. As humans, they have as many extrinsic considerations as you do. If you are only sighted them 3 hours per week, that leaves 165 hours each week when you are not around, and the lifestyle events that happen during that time will spill over into the training sessions.
Your clients will talk about their jobs, their spouses, their relatives and in-laws, their children and their neighbors, their gardener and their mailman, etc. some good personal trainer realizes that although we have no business actually dispensing professional advice on personal or supernatural matters, we are a 3 time per week superficial board for our clients, and that is just part of the job. Listen to what your clients have to say, help out without leaving your professional boundaries, and let your clients know that you care active what happens to them, not retributory about what happens during the training session.
Flexibility
Although a trainer's day is usually settled by a planned schedule, if you paint yourself into a corner with your calendar, you will quickly find that some of your clients can't stick with their program because their schedule is retributory not that coloured and white. In today's world of the ever-changing landscape of professional as well as own lifestyle factors, galore people have trouble doing the unvarying thing day aft day, and week after week. In order to keep your clients joyful and on track with their programs, you must "roll with the punches" and exhibit whatsoever flexibility when it comes to scheduling and training issues.
It is a very good idea to have a running cancellation policy for your business, and it is an equally good idea to educate your clients on the need for regularity in their training program. However, being so inflexible that you charge a client $50 every time they get a flat tire, have to work late, or have a family emergency will quickly eliminate some professional bonding that your clients may have previously felt was a part of your employed relationship. Enforce your policies, but be realistic about the fact that life is just not as black and white as it may have been 20 years ago.
Forward Thinking
This is as much of a sales technique as it is a great customer service tool. In a nutshell, it means that you should always be planning for the future when it comes to your clients. Talk to them about how you are active to start moving with them once they get their weight down sufficient for their knees to handle the stress. Explain to them how untold fun it will be when you can start attractive them through the new training protocol that you put together. Get them excited about how good they are going to look on the beach this summer aft several more months of working down with you, or about how their cousin Sally is going to be so envious at Christmas time this year when she sees how untold weight your client has lost.
All of these things plant the seed for your clients that you are thinking active their future, and not just attractive them through a workout. Let them know that you have great plans for them in the future, and that you can't wait to see their results when they get to a certain point in the program that you have them on. Again, your clients are people, and they want to be made to feel important, needed, and respected.
Over-delivering
Over-delivering value to your clients is probably the most influential technique out of any that have been listed so far. It is last in our list of customer service secrets so that it is the one that you remember the most!
Over-delivering is just what it sounds like - giving your clients more value for their money than they originally supposed to get. In fact, all of the items catalogued above are big examples of over-delivery. Do you think that when your clients hired you they expected to be getting gifts on their birthday, expected you to be excited active the graduation of their children, or that they could vent to you about their mother-in-law during training sessions? These are complete examples of the infinite number of ways that you can over-deliver value to your clients.
In addition to what has already been listed, you can get untold more specific with your over-delivery efforts. Each of your clients has a very well delimited fitness goal that they are diligently working towards. As a fitness professional, you should be regularly keeping up with the current news stories active health and fitness, as well as getting Continuing Education Credits.
Put that information directly to use for your clients! How impressed do you think your client would be if their fitness goal is to be a competitive swimmer, and you take a course on training competitive swimmers? What about if you have picked up some clients who are finished the age of 55 and you start reading books and clipping articles on Senior Fitness? How about a bonus training session that you give your client when they reach a goal? What active if you have a client who is on the high school wrestling team, and aft working with him for 2 months, you offer to do a liberated class for his entire team? The teenager becomes a hero because his personal trainer gave up some successful tips before the big meet, and you get a boat load of free publicity!
Conclusion
The pattern nonindustrial here is clear, and the preceding examples are single sketches of things that you might consider. Remember that every successful own trainer runs a business, he or she doesn't retributory workout with their clients. Get low the hood of your business, tinker around with the wiring, and find ways to "WOW" your clients everyday!
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