Retaining your clients Retaining clients is the first concern of any business, but it becomes especially important when you're a personal trainer. Because you are shaping the bodies and the health of your clients, you have goals that you need to meet for them. If you're not doing your job, then your clients will want to look somewhere else for someone who CAN help them. In order to retain your clients and keep your personal training business up and running (no pun intended), you need to learn these five basic strategies. When you're first beginning your personal training business, you needed to identify who your primary customer would be, what they wanted from you and what they expected of you. If you're focusing on retaining clients, this becomes all the more important of a planning tool. You can't please the people that you don't know how to please. Knowing your customer is the most important key to client retention and happiness. What you might want to do is set up regular appointments with your clients and satisfaction surveys to see what they like and don't like about the services that you are providing. By working together, you will both be able to create a working relationship that benefits the health of the client as well as the satisfaction, while you are able to make changes that will help to keep that client coming back. The next step to retaining clients is to make sure that they are happy. It seems simple enough, but you would be surprised at how often this doesn't happen. You aren't just trying to create profits for yourself here; you are changing the lives of your clients, so why not act like a friend in that endeavor? Talk about their lives and what is affecting their training and their chances of success. Take a personal interest in your clients so that they realize that you are interested in helping them as a whole person, not just a set of goals. Go beyond what they expect you to do and make sure that they feel happy when they see the results that they are making. If they're not happy, make immediate plans to make sure that they are heading in that direction. However, you need to be realistic with your customers as well. While you might want to promise them the moon and the stars, the truth is that not every man is going to look like their favorite action hero and not all women are going to be the size zero that they want to be. Try to focus on the potential of your clients, but also be honest. This will allow them to understand what they are capable of doing and not to be disappointed if the picture in their head isn't the body that you can help them create. You want to be able to deliver on your promises, so only make those that you can deliver. Your clients are counting on you to be the steady part of the relationship. In the past, they might have started workout regimes, failed, and then started again, without the success that they wanted to achieve. They felt that YOU could help them reach their fitness goals, so it's up to you to be the one that is consistently helping them do that. This means that you need to be on time and consistent about the kinds of challenges that you are offering them. Maybe you can create goals that constantly work up to a certain goal and then allow your clients to have rest days or days where you do fun activities. What's key in this consistency is that you keep up your end of the relationship; time and time again. A running dialogue is another key to retaining clients. When you're constantly informing your clients of how they're doing and where you plan on taking them in their fitness, they will be able to look ahead at their eventual results instead of focusing on the miserable, right nows. You will also be able to give them the opportunity to speak up when they're not happy and feel comfortable doing so. Likewise, if they feel like they can do more, then you will be able to hear it from them. These exchanges will lead to more satisfying experiences for the both of you. Plus, it will always seem like you are working together instead of your just telling them what to do. In closing, retaining clients is as simple as respecting them and what they are trying to do. It takes a lot to do something about your health, so when you become their partner on the journey instead of their adversary, they will stay with you until they can maintain their fitness on their own or until they want to start training others.--------------------------------------------If you are a business owner get listed at Best Personal Care Site, part of Localwin Network.