Personal Training: 6 Secrets Of Award Winning Customer Service

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Article Title: Personal Training: 6 Secrets Of Award Winning

Customer Service

Author: Potts

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet

Word Count: 1824

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Would you believe that your ability to provide quality customer

service to your clients is at least as important as your ability

to get them results from their training program? Did you even

know that customer service was going to be part of your

business model? After all, what does personal training have to

with customer service?

The answer: everything. Remember that your clients are people

first, and their status as one of your clients comes second.

Knowing how to tend to the needs of your customers will

literally make the difference between a long and prosperous

career in the fitness industry, or a short-lived stint that

leaves you wondering what career path you should try next!

In order to assist you in walking down the success path, here

are six methods that you can use to " WOW " your clients on a

regular basis, keeping them happy, loyal to you, and engaging

in long-term prosperous business relationships. In no

particular order they are: contact, date and event recognition,

listening, flexibility, forward thinking, and over-delivering.

Contact

When you get a new personal training client, many people will

still second-guess their decision to hire you. After all, a

personal trainer can be an expensive asset, and your clients

need to believe that they made the right decision. One of the

easiest ways for you to ease their mind in the beginning as

well as during the course of their training program is by

simply staying in contact with them.

Most clients will see you at most 3 times each week, and some

clients even less than that. With at least 4 days in each week

when your clients don't see you, you are influencing them less

than 50% of the time! Many clients hire a personal trainer

because they need constant guidance and support, and less than

50% could hardly be considered constant.

An easy solution to this is to send your clients a few emails a

week, or mail them an actual snail mail letter once in awhile.

Clip an appropriate article from a magazine and make copies of

it to mail to your clients, or email them the URL of a great

motivational story about weight loss that you found on the

Internet. Forward them funny anecdotes about health and

fitness, or drop them a postcard congratulating them on their

latest progress.

For that matter, pick up the phone! Call Suzie Client on

Saturday to let her know that you just got done updating her

client record and had reason to again marvel at how great she

is doing with her program. You just can't pay for the type of

customer feedback you will get from something like that!

Stay in contact with your clients in between training sessions,

and the increased attention will remind them on a regular basis

that in the beginning you committed to a one on one training

program for them, not just to stand there 3 times a week while

they exercise.

Date and Event Recognition

Recognizing special dates in your client's lives is another

great way to show them that you are thinking about them in

between training sessions.

- Send your clients a birthday card, or even a small but

thoughtful gift.

- Congratulate them on their wedding anniversary, or even send

flowers or a card to their house.

- Ask them how excited they are about the upcoming graduation

of their child from high school or college.

- Have a special token of your appreciation sent to their home

or office after a set amount of time that they have been

training with you - maybe annually or semi-annually.

- Give them a special award every time they lose 5 pounds, or

drop a percentage of body fat.

- Attend the race or other fitness event that you have been

training them for.

As you can see, the possibilities are limitless. The lesson

that you want to take away from this section is that you went

above and beyond the call of duty to recognize a date or an

event that was important to your client. They won't forget that

when it comes time to decide whether or not to keep working with

you!

Listening

The fact that you should listen to your clients should go

without saying. If your title is " Personal Trainer " , please

take a moment at this time to re-read the first word! Too many

trainers fall into the familiar trap of just taking their

clients through workouts. Your clients aren't paying you to

workout with them. They are paying you to give them dedicated

one on one service, and the actual workout is only one part of

that.

In addition to the exercise programming, you must again think

about the fact that your clients are humans before they are

clients. As humans, they have as many outside considerations as

you do. If you are only seeing them 3 hours per week, that

leaves 165 hours each week when you are not around, and the

lifestyle events that happen during that time will spill over

into the training sessions.

Your clients will talk about their jobs, their spouses, their

relatives and in-laws, their children and their neighbors,

their gardener and their mailman, etc. Any good personal

trainer realizes that although we have no business actually

dispensing professional advice on personal or spiritual

matters, we are a 3 time per week sounding board for our

clients, and that is just part of the job. Listen to what your

clients have to say, help out without leaving your professional

boundaries, and let your clients know that you care about what

happens to them, not just about what happens during the

training session.

Flexibility

Although a trainer's day is usually dictated by a preset

schedule, if you paint yourself into a corner with your

calendar, you will quickly find that some of your clients can't

stick with their program because their schedule is just not that

black and white. In today's world of the ever-changing landscape

of professional as well as personal lifestyle factors, many

people have trouble doing the same thing day after day, and

week after week. In order to keep your clients happy and on

track with their programs, you must " roll with the punches " and

exhibit some flexibility when it comes to scheduling and

training issues.

It is a very good idea to have a running cancellation policy

for your business, and it is an equally good idea to educate

your clients on the need for regularity in their training

program. However, being so inflexible that you charge a client

$50 every time they get a flat tire, have to work late, or have

a family emergency will quickly eliminate any professional

bonding that your clients may have previously felt was a part

of your working relationship. Enforce your policies, but be

realistic about the fact that life is just not as black and

white as it may have been 20 years ago.

Forward Thinking

This is as much of a sales technique as it is a great customer

service tool. In a nutshell, it means that you should always be

planning for the future when it comes to your clients. Talk to

them about how you are going to start running with them once

they get their weight down enough for their knees to handle the

stress. Explain to them how much fun it will be when you can

start taking them through the new training protocol that you

put together. Get them excited about how good they are going to

look on the beach this summer after several more months of

working out with you, or about how their cousin Sally is going

to be so envious at Christmas time this year when she sees how

much weight your client has lost.

All of these things plant the seed for your clients that you

are thinking about their future, and not just taking them

through a workout. Let them know that you have great plans for

them in the future, and that you can't wait to see their

results when they get to a certain point in the program that

you have them on. Again, your clients are people, and they want

to be made to feel important, needed, and respected.

Over-delivering

Over-delivering value to your clients is probably the most

important technique out of any that have been listed so far. It

is last in our list of customer service secrets so that it is

the one that you remember the most!

Over-delivering is just what it sounds like - giving your

clients more value for their money than they originally

expected to get. In fact, all of the items listed above are

great examples of over-delivery. Do you think that when your

clients hired you they expected to be getting gifts on their

birthday, expected you to be excited about the graduation of

their children, or that they could vent to you about their

mother-in-law during training sessions? These are all examples

of the infinite number of ways that you can over-deliver value

to your clients.

In addition to what has already been listed, you can get much

more specific with your over-delivery efforts. Each of your

clients has a very well defined fitness goal that they are

diligently working towards. As a fitness professional, you

should be regularly keeping up with the latest news stories

about health and fitness, as well as getting Continuing

Education Credits.

Put that information directly to use for your clients! How

impressed do you think your client would be if their fitness

goal is to be a competitive swimmer, and you take a course on

training competitive swimmers? What about if you have picked up

some clients who are over the age of 55 and you start reading

books and clipping articles on Senior Fitness? How about a

bonus training session that you give your client when they

reach a goal? What about if you have a client who is on the

high school wrestling team, and after working with him for 2

months, you offer to do a free class for his entire team? The

teenager becomes a hero because his personal trainer gave up

some winning tips before the big meet, and you get a boat load

of free publicity!

Conclusion

The pattern developing here is clear, and the above examples

are only sketches of things that you might consider. Remember

that every successful personal trainer runs a business, he or

she doesn't just workout with their clients. Get under the hood

of your business, tinker around with the wiring, and find ways

to " WOW " your clients everyday!

About The Author: Potts is the author and creator of The

Ultimate Complete Personal Training Business Kit, a quick-start

kit and business guide for new as well as seasoned fitness

professionals. Find out more about 's programs at

http://www.completepersonaltrainingbusiness.com or his personal

training site at http://www.aaronspersonaltraining.com

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