Ep47: How To Keep Your Clients During The Xmas Period

How are we team Matt here for another episode of the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle show. Hope you're all having an amazing day. And I haven't actually done a episode just with me in a couple of weeks, actually in about a month. I've had back to back guests come on the the podcast, which has been epic. And I got some more awesome guests coming up the next couple of weeks as well. So if you're watching this, I've got a bit of a new setup here, so ignore all the Christmas presents in the background. Been very busy buying heaps of presents for the kitties, but I've just actually upgraded my office a little bit, so I've actually got my computer a little bit higher so the actual camera is actually in a good spot, which is good. Got my nice little microphone here, which is awesome. And super keen to deliver heaps of value to you today as well. So you guys who don't know, podcast gone bonkers. So if you guys, I get a lot of messages about the podcast. So if you do happen to get some value from the podcast, make sure you share it with a friend or another PT that you know, because that's the only way that the podcast does grow. I don't do any advertising or paid advertising for the podcast because the only way it does grow is if you guys share it with other people. So I appreciate you, Appreciate you guys for doing that. Very important topic to discuss today around what to do with your clients during the Christmas and New Year period. I've got a couple of notes here for you guys because I go, I go through this stuff every single year with my current clients because most personal trainers shit in bed when it comes to keeping clients during this time. So I'm going to go through the exact strategy that I do myself. Like I don't do too much PT anymore, but the exact strategy that I go through with my clients and what I've done in the past to ensure the income stays as stable as possible. You know, people in jobs, they get to take annual leave or whatever, they get to actually enjoy their time away. For a lot of personal trainers, they get their clients going away and what happens, they put on all this weight and they lose all their muscle or whatever and then they don't even want to come back after that. And it just, just a really depressing way to start next year. So let's get into it. I've got a couple of notes here which I'll refer to, but most of the stuff I'll just be talking to the Camera. So let's get stuck into, into it. Okay, so first thing, you need to set the example for the clients. So if you're going to take a break from training, expect your clients to do the same thing. Okay, you're the exercise professional. If you're going to take a break, they're going to take a break as well. Which is fine, by the way. Which is fine. But you need to make sure they have a plan of attack for when they come back. This is all about preparation. Most personal trainers go backwards 50% or more during this time. I always tell my clients, if you just maintain your income for the month of December, then that's a win because some people will be going away. Some people want, we want to speak today. They'll want to pause their payments, which is fine, which is normal. But you want to avoid how many people are actually pausing their payments because you still want money for Christmas as well. You know, sometimes we've got to be selfish. So the first thing, set the example. The second thing, if you haven't already, I suggest organizing a Christmas party to reward your clients. Not so much to get pissed and, you know, consume 15,000 calories in one night. It's not about that. It's about acknowledging the success that they've had and getting together as a community, as a group to share the wins and the lessons and to celebrate the success that they've had. So a couple of ideas that you guys can do. And apologies if you can hear my neighbor, he's doing the mowing right now. So hopefully the microphone is doing a good job with not picking that up. So Christmas party. I've done a variety of different things over the years. Grilled is always a good one. Or any type of pub restaurant. Usually you can fit in, you know, 10, 20, 30 people quite easily for that. I've done barefoot bowls, I've done Kingpin, which is ten pin bowling. I've done laser tag. Yeah, you could, you could probably try and make it an actual activity as well to, you know, make it a bit of fun. You know, a lot of people are quite competitive as well. Now a lot of people ask me, oh, I don't have the money to pay for everyone for a Christmas party. You don't need to do that. All you need to do is sort the venue. And by the way, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to pay for a venue either. You don't have to pay for anything. It's just for you guys to get together and celebrate success that you've had over the last 12 months. So keep it simple. Like, my first one, I think was just the grilled. I think I booked a table for 15 people, which is awesome. I bought everyone's first drink and they paid for their own food. So it might have cost me five, $5 to $10 per drink. So couple hundred bucks, which is all tax deductible, by the way. And by getting everyone together, it's going to actually help with your retention long term as well. Because what happens is people are more than likely going to get along because they're all your type of clients. They're all similar. If you're. If you've got a niche, niche market, they've all got similar problems. So we're going to talk about the similar problems and they're going to relate to each other and they're going to. They're going to notice each other in the gym more. They're going to be talking to each other in the gym more. Going to be talking about your stuff. How's your training going with John? Oh, yeah, I love John. I just had a session this morning. It was awesome. That sort of subconsciously helped with your retention as well. So we've done the Christmas party or we've organized the Christmas party. What you want to do now is actually send out an email a couple of weeks prior or at least a week prior to the Christmas party. And you want to do this ideally pretty much now when this podcast episode's coming out, because people are going to start going away from like the 14th. Yeah, 14th, 15th, 20th of December, and people want to sort out what they're doing with their sessions. But basically you want to send an email. And if you want the specific email, I can send you the exact email. If you want, just send me a DM on probably Instagram or Facebook and I will send you the exact email that I use. But I'm just going to summarize it for you, just for. Just for time's sake. Actually, let me, let me get the email up, actually. Stay with me two seconds, team. Okay. I'm not going to read a word for word, but I'm just going to paraphrase. So it's basically you're going to say the subject line is just going to be business name updates. That's basically going to say another year has come to a close and we can't wait to continue your fitness journey in 2025. This email is to notify you of a couple of important announcements. The first one is the Christmas party. So you'll go through that stuff. The second one is basically it's going to say here at XYZ Business Name we are entering a busy period with New Year resolutions around the corner and this may be busy for you guys too. Now, essentially what you're going to say here is it's basically preempting that some people are going to go away. And it's basically saying if you are going away for that time, there is a specific time hold form that you need to fill out to hold your PT sessions for when you get back. So if you want that time hold form, reply to this email and send the form back by XYZ date to enable us to hold your spots during that time. Now it's also going to say in there to make sure there is no regression with your health and fitness goals, which means they're not going to go backwards. What that means is to you're basically going to say, in order to prevent regression in your health and fitness, we're going to be doing makeup sessions before and after you go away for your time away. What that means is if one, if people are doing one session a week, let's say they're going away for two weeks, they got two sessions to make up you're an extra session before they go away and an extra session when they come back, the payments still would stay exactly the same. Now you might be thinking, well, I've actually got too many clients to do that for. Well, lucky for you, you can put them onto an online model or a hybrid model, so you're still going to get paid. But they have the structure and accountability while they're away to still get results. And it's all good if they're actually going to take a little bit of time off. But they've got the option there to maybe do workouts at a home gym, for example, or maybe you just get them to do stuff outside. Maybe you just keeping them accountable with their nutrition, you know, whatever it is. But you need to make sure people don't go backwards during that time. So they either go into the makeup sessions or they go into the online model or worst case scenario, they do the time hold. Now the next point you need to do, you need to get them to fill in a specific time hold form which ensures that they're going to come back after they go away. Now, if you guys have listened to my podcast before, you will notice we do have time hold forms and cancellation forms so that we have a systemized process for those type of things that come up in business Same thing with timehold. Now the difference is this is specifically a timehold form for Christmas and there's a slight difference in this time hold form compared to the other ones or the other one that we've got. So the basic time hole form is. And I'll share my screen for those watching, I'm going to share with you the Christmas version. I'm going to show you the difference between this one and, and the Christmas one, the Christmas one and the normal one. So you've got the details at the top of the member contact name, email and trainer. It is basically says on this date please pause the payments of this much. And, and they understand that payments will continue from this date. So basically saying I need you to report the payments from this date and resume them on this date. So it guarantees them that they're going to come back during that time. Okay, now in red you can quite clearly see in here and I'll just read it out for the people that can't actually see it. Maximum time holders four weeks unless there is any forgiving circumstances. And I'll just get to the next part. So if you do not wish to continue training after the pause date, please be advised that you will be debited for the full duration of your whole period. And the normal cooling off period, which in my case was 14 days, you might have a 30 day notice period, for example. This is because we are reserving your training slots for that six week total. So it's missed missed opportunity for revenue. Now by having this clause in there, it makes it very difficult for your clients to want to stop training with you during this time. Worst case scenario, if they do want to quit after they come back, they at least start back with you and then do your normal notice period after that. But 90% of the time they're gonna come back as per usual and it'll be business as usual for you guys. Now there's a couple. Now that part is not in the normal timehold form. The normal time hold form just says there's a four week maximum time hold and everything else is pretty much exactly the same. Now the other stuff that just says down the bottom basically says, you know, it's your responsibility as the client to set a reminder that the payments are going to come out and it's basically not the trainer's fault if the payments bounce back. You forgot to put money in the account and then it basically just says if any missed payments fail to be collected, you'll be sent to a third party debt collection agency. So that's essentially that Hope that makes sense team. So now we've covered. We've covered the example you're going to set. We've covered the Christmas party, how to organize that or what to do. Sorry, we've set. We've got your client email to send out, which again, if you want to copy, send me a DM and I'll send it over to you. We've got the time hold forms. Now you do not pause payments unless the timehold form is filled out. Use the direct debit company as an excuse. Hey, I can't pause the payments because I actually send this form to the direct debit company. Okay. Use them as the excuse you need. The time hold form filled out the amount of times I used to do this where people would say they're coming back and they don't. It's too many times to count. So live and learn from my mistakes. Okay? Now just to recap, you want to avoid getting people to do the time hold, so either make up sessions or put them onto your online model. If you need help creating an online model, then let me know and I'll send you some training on how to do that. That'll be a separate podcast episode. Now a couple of quick little tips for you on this. Start early. Send this out asap, because clients are going to start to go away pretty soon when this podcast gets released. Focus on retention In December, there will be some people signing up, but there's not going to be a massive amount of people signing up because of natural reasons. People have other things going on. They got holidays, et cetera. They're not going to start a fitness journey during this time. They'll start when they come back. So you won't get a lot of people signing up. And if you do, great, the majority of the time it's about retention in the month of December. We're also doing a lot of marketing in the month of December, just not a whole lot. A whole lot of people signing up this month. The other notes I've got in here with your makeup sessions, do your makeup sessions if possible, ASAP as well. If someone's going away the last week of December, be a makeup session is done now get it over and done with. So then if you want to take time off, you can. And this is the same thing as well, right? If you want to take time off, which is completely fine by the way, you need to make sure you set your clients up for success. So if you have a one week off, all those sessions need to be either transferred into online or makeup sessions. Now, obviously there's gonna be a question on here about the pricing. So, yes, online is usually a bit cheaper than face to face sessions, which is normal. You will have a small gap there. But in saying that, would you rather the clients go on pause and your clients not get the results, or would you rather set your clients up for success, give them their training program on the app, do a weekly check in, and then it takes you five minutes for the week and you get paid a little bit less? I know which one I would rather do. So get it done and then organize your Christmas party, obviously ASAP as well. So lot of these things are taking action pretty much right now because of when this podcast is coming out. And the last thing is just keep clear communication with your clients during this process. Like, they're going to struggle. Everyone does. Just this time of year, not everyone is going to have, you know, what should I say? Should I say everyone's going to have parties that they're going to go to. They got work Christmas parties, they got gym Christmas parties, they've got friends parties, they've got, you know, catch up with family. There's going to be alcohol for a lot of people, there's going to be more food, there's going to be excess food, there's going to be, you know, cakes. There's going to be so many extra temptations. You need to set your clients. You need to set your clients up for success during this time to not go backwards. Same with business. I always think for my clients, if you're not going backwards, that's a great result for December. And then New Year's comes along, boom, we'll get straight back into it. So again, if this was valuable, share this with a friend. Send me a message as well. I love hearing the messages on the podcast. I get so many people message me about it. So send me a message. Send me a DM if you got value from this podcast episode and I look forward to serving you in the next podcast.