As a personal trainer, your long-term clients are those that are most essential to the sustainability and success of your business. Beyond that, they are your ambassadors, those who spread your good name through word-of-mouth or offer testimonials that get you referrals. Your clients are not only an important part of your continued business but are also important for ensuring its growth. Because of this, it is important to know how to keep them coming back day after day, week after week, year after year.
So let’s take a look at a few strategies that you can implement to increase the retention of your fitness clients:
Customer retention strategies
Creating Common Ground: Mirroring
People naturally prefer to interact with like-minded people, a concept that is often used in business to complete a sale or retain a valued customer.
In the fitness industry, you personality is a large part of your advertising efforts; so use body language, expressive speech and tones, address your clients by their names, encourage them and build a rapport with them.
This creation of common ground will build a sense of loyalty in them, and will have them continuously coming back.
Creating a Setting of Excitement, Electricity and Positivity
For many, the reason they seek the services of a personal trainer is that they feel incomplete and unhappy with themselves, and seek the motivation, tools and energy required to improve themselves. You need to be able to give this to them.
By fostering a training environment that is energetic, exciting and positive, you will naturally encourage clients to keep coming back to experience a sense of self-improvement.
Remember that fostering such an environment depends heavily on your own actions and behaviours.
So use positive tones of voice and types of speech, use energetic body language and be the fountain of motivation that your clients are looking to you to be.
Using Mission Statements
Having a solid mission statement isn’t just great for you to set down guidelines for yourself (with regards to how you approach work) but also presents an excellent opportunity to create an environment of shared-values with your client.
This can be used as part of your strategies to create common ground between you and your existing clients as well as a means of attracting new ones.
So take some time to develop a mission statement that not only communicates your own prowess and dedication as a personal trainer but also seeks to share that philosophy with existing and potential clients.
Ethics and Reputation: Keep them Intact
While we’re on the topic of your mission statement and the message it sends to your existing and potential clients, it is important to remember that your image needs to be maintained through adherence to a strict code of ethics designed to protect your approach to training, your business, your clients and of course, your reputation.
Consistency and dedication are a key part of this.
Never take shortcuts, offer services based on ethical practices.
The only thing that you should put more effort into than building your reputation is managing it.
Stay in Contact with Clients
Regular communication with your clients is a vital strategy for ensuring that they constantly feel important to you.
On top of that, it builds value for them with regards to the training services you offer, keeps you at the forefront of their minds and ensures that they continuously return for your services.
This is as true for newer ones where progress reports and motivation is important, but also for those older ones that you haven’t seen in a while.
Getting into contact with a client you haven’t seen in a while is often a great way to suddenly bump up numbers in your schedule, without the added cost and effort expended on marketing.
Ask for Feedback
Encouraging your clients to give you feedback works to retain them on two levels:
Firstly, it makes them aware that you put personal pride in the quality of your services. The fact that you want to hear from them about how you can improve on them is a positive point for many of your clients. It shows them that when the need for adaptability calls, that you are able to do it to improve your services to them.
Secondly, asking for feedback from your clients demonstrates to them that you value their opinion, which makes them feel important and further builds a repore with them.
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy for Details
Client retention is an important part of running a successful fitness business, but it is not the only one. Being a personal trainer requires a unique set of skills and experience related to both the fitness world and the business one.
If you would like to be outfitted with the skills needed for success as a trainer, why not consider enrolling in a fully accredited course through Trifocus Fitness Academy. Contact us today or visit our website for additional information on our courses.