How to Improve Your Fitness Programs and Make Your Clients Happy
By Sean Greeley
What’s love got to do with fitness?
The quick answer is EVERYTHING.
Here is a quick way to determine if your clients love you.
How many referrals did you get last month?
How many clients left you last month?
If you aren’t getting organic referrals, or have a net gain of clients that is 50% of the new clients (15 new clients, lose 7, means you have a net 8 clients) you have a huge problem.
Potentially your clients don’t love you.
Let’s be clear when I say love. I don’t want clients to fall in love with you in the traditional sense. I want them to fall in love with you the way people fall in love with 5 star hotel service, a great massage, and a new car.
It’s something they think of and SMILE!!!
If clients love you, and they feel good when they are at your facility, and have a positive association with your business, then they will share it with everyone they can.
If they don’t think positively, or not at all about your business, then you are not showing the love.
Many of us like to tell ourselves that our clients left for legitimate reasons, and it wasn’t “my fault.” If this is what you believe, then this message is going to be tough to take today.
Whatever reason clients give you, if they leave, they are not happy or don’t see the value. Remember, as business owners, we are taught to focus on the results of our actions.
If we have clients leave us, and we are not getting referrals, our actions are causing it. Either directly, or if you have a staff, indirectly.
Whatever the case is, you can increase clients, and cut back on marketing simply by showing the love, getting more referrals, and losing less clients.
Too often we speak with business owners that are so focused on new client acquisition that they lose sight of the most important asset.
Their current clients.
Without your clients, you do not have a business. Bottom line. It only makes sense then to spend time, energy, and money on the clients that are currently paying you.
Have a plan in place that shows the love to your clients.
Show genuine interest in the clients, and give them recognition.
There are a lot of strategies and ways to show the love to the clients, but here is a short list to get you started.
1- Welcome a new client with a letter.
2- Welcome a new client via email
3- Introduce a new client via social media
4- Introduce new client to other clients
5- Introduce new client via monthly newsletter
6- Follow up with client after first week to check in
7- Birthday cards
8- Holiday cards
9- Anniversary cards
10- Accomplishment cards
11- Printed Newsletter
12 – Award T-shirts to clients after they’ve achieved a certain metric, for example, a weight loss target or how long they’ve been a client
13- Random acts of kindness
14- Client appreciation events
15- Build community through internal contest
16- Build community by sharing customer stories with your clients
17- Give genuinely to your clients to help them
18- Make a big deal about everything
19- Give recognition to your clients privately and publicly
20- Always act in the best interest of the clients. This should automatically be in the best interest of your company as your clients sustain your business.
Remember that your competition can do just as much marketing as you can. They can say the same things, and they can hit your audience.
What your competition cannot compete with is how you treat your clients.
Increase your love for your clients, and you will create loyal clients; clients that want to refer you, and outdo the competition.
Go show the love!
