How to Retain clients as a Personal Trainer

Losing clients suck. Sometimes its out of your control, but there is a harsh reality. Often, losing client comes down to you.

Many trainers will agree that most of their business comes from a small handful of clients that they have had for a long time, but often struggle to keep their other clients for longer than 3 months.

To maximize the retention for everyone else, you must have a bullet proof approach and find out what works for your clients. The following are strategies to help make your clients more sticky for your business.

Ensure client goal orientation

The first question I would be asking you if we had a one on one coaching session is are you setting goals with your clients? Do you even know their goals? Are you tracking them over time?

When you first onboard a client, work through with them their 8 week goals, 6 month goals and their 12 month goals; for example:

• 8 Week Plan: Lose 4KG (8.8 lbs)

• 6 Month (~26 Weeks): Perform 1 pushup

• 12 Month (~52 Weeks): Perform 1 Pullup

The reason why you want to do this is you can work with them immediately on their 8 week plan. Then going forward you have something to work towards and recalibrate every 6-8 weeks. This is because people’s circumstances change and so do their goals and aspirations. Being dialed in will keep your clients on track and avoid loss of engagement.

Focusing on the outcome and goals gives you a checklist and lever you can use to assist your clients overcome mental and physical barriers that are put in place when things get tough.

Imagine if at month 8, your client was doing muscles ups. think how you would make their day by telling them on day 1 that their original goal was to do a pushup.

The other side of the coin is you can package and focus on delivering a goal every 6 - 8 weeks. So instead of arbitrarily pissing in the wind, you and your clients are locked in and focusing on achieving an agreed outcome.

Connect your clients to a larger community

Building relationships and connecting with new friends at the gym can be tough, especially after school and university.

Do as much as possible to help your members make genuine connections at your gym and build a larger community with your business embedded in the middle.

Introduce your members who have similar fitness levels and goals. This can help build friendships while providing motivation.

Here’s a few ideas on how you can grow and nurture a community:

• Taking advantage of people's competitive nature to motivate your members to push themselves harder.

• Allow members to compete with their friends or peers in a monthly challenge.

• Organise Group events or host a regular catchup with your clients as a group.

• When onboarding new clients, introduce them to a buddy, based on similar interests.

Change how you model your pricing

Your clients, unless they are your mum are likely paying you to help them achieve a goal and not just give you money. As a business you need to focus on these goals and not on how much your services cost; if you fail this, you are failing the first rule of business.

Instead of advertising PT sessions at $80/hr, you should package and bundle them into a plan that is attuned to your clients goals. You are still charging the same rate, or perhaps more.

You can still sell the services and make the same money but you are instead charging them in 6-8 week blocks. There is less decisions for your client, they pay you once, say $700, and for the next 8 weeks you take care of the rest - after the 8 weeks, they hopefully have achieved a desired outcome.

When it comes to renewing, approach 2 weeks before the end of the block and offer another round, whilst assessing their goals and desired outcomes - you are basically locking in 2+ months of bookings at a time and you haven’t changed the underlying service.

Provide better value for your services

Do you feel that your clients are getting the most out of you? If you only had 1-2 loyal customers are you going above and beyond for them to thank them for their loyalty? What if you have 4-5 clients - are you still doing the most you can to help them achieve their outcomes?

Until you have a time problem, where you are servicing 50 clients and working 60+hrs a week, you have a money problem. Acquiring and keeping new clients is all about your offer and the value of your services your provide. If you are not making your clients feel like paying you is the best money they have ever spent, then you are leaving money on the table.

Alex Hormozi talks about when you don’t have a time problem put everything into servicing your existing clients. The reason is a lot of future business comes from referrals and word of mouth.

Why would your client refer you if you aren’t doing a great job. Once you have a time problem, you will have the money to help overcome them and your clients will still be happy.

Some ideas are:

• Meet them at their house before a training session

• Go for walk / runs with them and include them in your workouts

• Have coffee catch ups with them after the workout each week

• For the first month go grocery shopping with them and help advise them on good food options

• Do monthly community events with your clients

Whilst you have a money problem, put time into your business, the investment will compound.

So those were some ideas on how to improve client retention and to summarise my key takeaway points:

1. Ensure your business focuses on your clients goals

2. Connect your clients to a community embedded into your business

3. Sell packaged outcomes, not hourly sessions

4. Go above and beyond for your clients whilst you have a money problem.