They say that it costs anywhere from three to eight times more to get a new client than it does to keep an old client. What are you doing to keep your old clients from leaving? Do you know why your clients leave you? People call and say, I can’t afford your services anymore so, I’m going to have to stop training. Okay, well they said they couldn’t afford it, but is that really the reason that they’re canceling their program?
I always look at the attrition rate of our clients. I want to make sure it’s less than 5% a month. When I started to see that kind of trickle up, I was like oh, time to find out why people are leaving so we did an exit survey to find out.
You need very thick skin when you do that. You want to make an exit survey anonymous. It gave me great information on why people were leaving. The number one thing I found is that we were not providing enough accountability. That’s why people came to us in the first place and they felt like they weren’t getting what they were paying for.
I made a very concerted effort with the staff to come up with a good accountability system that we rolled out. It keeps people not only coming back each month, but it keeps them educated as well. If you’re just doing measurements every month, people don’t always know want to get measured. If you make it more about education, then they’re going to come in for the education piece and, by the way, we have to do measurements as well. You can keep track of people and what they’re doing, but also give more value and that’s what we talked about before – finding value. We came up with a twelve-month accountability program.
We just repeat it every year, and not only do we go through education one on one with our clients, but we also do seminars and we have a whole theme for that month. It’s pretty awesome and it gets people engaged in the program and educating and getting healthier. That’s really what it is all about — helping people get healthier.
I would suggest that you do something similar. If you’re in the fitness business, you need to keep your clients accountable to getting the results. First of all, learn what results they’re searching for. What are their goals, so you know what they’re searching for, and then track it on a regular basis and let them know how they’re progressing towards their goal.
If they don’t want to come in for accountability, find out why. Maybe they’re just embarrassed. Ask them to come in for a chat about what they want and help them work out a way to maintain and stay healthy. That is absolutely critical for fitness trainers. That’s why people are paying you is to hold them accountable, because they can’t do it themselves.
If you have questions about how to help people with accountability or any other aspect of your client relations, drop me an email at tom@tomjackobs.com. I’d love to hear from you and help you turn your business into the success you want it to be.
