Here are two sure-fire ways to ensure you are interesting and providing great customer service to your clients.
Are you scale-able?
What does this mean exactly, being able to scale means you can continue to grow and meet clients changing needs all while keeping the client motivated, inspired and subsequently engaged in your service.
Have you noticed that your clients will never ask you "what's old?" That's because they are not interested in what's old! Your job as a coach and a leader is to keep coming up with interesting and exciting answers to the question "what's new?
Understanding this important lesson on keeping your clients interested will mean being disciplined in many facets, with personal development being one of the most important aspects of having a successful coaching career. You can only take someone as high as you are.
One of my high profile clients gauges a lot of his staff on their ability to teach him something. He is constantly asking the question what can I learn from this person? We have all had those relationships where it feels like a one-way street of information and knowledge sharing, getting minimal in return. How good to you feel about those people and how much time, do you want to commit to a non-reciprocal relationship of little benefit to you?
This is compounded when you have a paying client expecting to get a result, through the education, inspiration and guidance that you are providing. The client you want to train the most will be a person who values their time, and these people will be asking the questions:
What am I learning from you the trainer?
What are the training/coaching sessions teaching me about myself?
To grow personally will aid in your ability to keep your clients interested, the question is what is your plan for growth this year? I committed myself to reading a book a month in order to grow exponentially as a person. Start off smaller and build up, your career depends on differentiating yourself from the rest, and the best way I know how to do this, is through personal development and implementing and sharing the learning from each book.
Consistent service.
This is huge! We are in the service industry. Your ability to keep clients interested and paying your session fees has everything to do with how you treat them. My 10 years career as a personal trainer and business owner has shown me that service standards and consistency of service is a big contributor in how to keep clients interested.
To be effective with clients you have to understand their specific needs in detail, formulate a plan to help them achieve their goals and implement that plan with a consistent and methodological approach, providing accountability and tracking along the way Vision Personal Training provides the system in which to do so effectively.
What sets a good trainer apart from an average one is they don't over promise and under deliver. Gun personal trainers and coaches know how to focus on the 20% that gets their clients 80% of their results and delivers that every single time. Promise that 20% and deliver it 100% of the time, the rest is just cream.
Don't set yourself up for failure by offering over the top service, or too much variety to your clients in the initial stages of the relationship, they will come to expect it and inevitably you wont be able to maintain consistent service by over extending yourself to your client, especially in after session support.
Don't just give them a weekly goal for the first month and then have that discipline fall by the wayside at Vision Personal Training we provide weekly accountability and goal setting. Don't text message your clients everyday for the first 7 days only to offer minimal support thereafter. Have a plan that you can stick to, and that the client responds to given their personal needs and deliver that every time.
I liken a great PT session experience to be like a master barber haircut. It all about the experience from the very first appointment and long term loyalty to that barber depends on the consistency of the service being delivered to me each time. Consistency in the person providing the haircut saves me explaining my needs every 3 weeks. Consistent high service standards - punctuality to appointment, hair wash and scalp massage, a cut that I'm happy with, and great rapport to enable good conversation about interests we share in common.
Most customer service experiences can be related to and used in our personal training businesses and customer dealings.
Become a student of great customer service, model people who do it exceptionally well and apply your learning to your own PT business and clients consistently.
These two tips alone, followed with discipline will keep your clients interested and on track to achieving all their health and fitness goals.
Yours in health,
Elliott
*Disclaimer: Individual results vary based on agreed goals. Click here for details.
