Ep8: Navigating Cancellations: A Guide to Setting Expectations and Saving Clients

What's going on, team? I am back from India, so welcome to another episode of the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle Show. I'm your host, Matt Dart. I'm super pumped to get back into it. So for those who don't know, I was just away in India playing crickets, had a little 2020 competition over there and played, played well. But super excited to get back into things. So, you know, back on board, back talking to all my clients. I was still working a little bit while I was away, but I wasn't doing as many coaching calls and you know, obviously I wasn't doing any PT sessions. So my, my trainer, Josh the legend, a living legend, he was doing all the sessions for me. So I was able to, you know, be fully present over there and you know, really have a, have an awesome time. But anyway, since I've been back, a lot of the conversations have been around clients canceling or retention. So what I wanted to do is go through what the ideal cancellation process should be to ensure that you're actually keeping your clients for a long period of time. Because, you know, there's always up and downs in business. Everyone has up and downs in their life and sometimes they might want to throw in the towel. That's natural, it is going to happen. But there's a certain way that you want to, yeah, you, you want to have a certain process involved when people want to cancel. So let me just start by saying people are going to cancel. It's a natural thing to happen. And unfortunately the perception is when things get tough, personal training is the first thing to go. Fortunately, it's, it's not a necessity, it's a, it's an optional expense for a lot of people. And generally it's the first thing to go if you need to cut back one thing. So that's natural, but this is the process I want you to follow. So first thing first, you need to have an agreement or a contract in place. I don't care if you don't have a notice period or no long term lock in agreements, but you need to have some type of agreement in place to ensure that you're covered and you have something to fall back on if the client just stuffs you around. Prime example. One of my clients at the moment that I'm speaking with, They've got a 12 week minimum and after the first two weeks the client now wants to cancel and says they just can't afford it anymore. That's not fair on your business. So imagine if you didn't have a contract in place or an agreement in place legally, they are legally bound to make those payments for those 12 weeks as a minimum. It's obviously if you have the minimum 12 weeks. For me, I've had that, it works really well. I've also had no long term locking, but a minimum four weeks. That's what I, I usually recommend a minimum of four weeks because especially for me being at a Jets club, there's no locking contract. So for me I had to be super flexible. But with like other clubs, like you can easily be like a minimum and that's probably what I prefer. Club, they want you to be a bit more flexible. So that's the first thing. Make sure you have an agreement in place. If you don't have an agreement, I can send you through the template. Just let me know the other thing as well. So when people are wanting to cancel, you've got to remember they're in an emotional state. They're feeling anxious and they probably have a bit of anxiety about canceling because they're not sure how you're going to react. Because at the end of the day, this is like your livelihood. Yes, they're saving money, but then they're also taking money out of your pocket, which is going to affect your family, your friends, how you spend your money and your lifestyle. So no one wants to cancel. So you've got to understand people are not in a stable emotional state when they're canceling. So what you want to do, this is the process that you should follow. Right? The first thing, you do not accept cancellation via text message or over the phone. Everything needs to be in written, well, not handwritten like an email. So an email. So if someone wants to cancel, send me a text message or they talk to you during a session. You don't want to discuss it too much, you just want to say, cool, no worries, no worries at all. Completely understand. Just flick me an email and I'll send you through the appropriate forms that you need to fill out. Point number two, you need to have forms that people need to fill out, need a paper trail. So if you, if you don't, you just need a cancellation form. Actually, I'll see if I can get one up here for you. And if you're, if you're not watching the video, then I highly suggest doing so. All right, here we go. Let's open this bad boy up. All right, this is what it looks like. So they've got name, mobile trainer's name, the date that they want to stop the payment. So it's from the Date that the payments stop, not from when they're actually canceling. So you should have like a notice period that people need to cancel from. So for example, if you have a four week notice period, let's say they want to cancel today, you put the date in here for four weeks time. Okay, that's what you do there. So let me. All right, so the cancellation form. So basically what you want to have in this cancellation form, as I said, was if I just share my screen again for you guys, just so you can see, you're going to have them sign it, which basically allows you to cancel the payments. If they don't fill out the cancellation form, then no payments get changed. It's the same thing. People want to go away on holidays and they want to pause their payments. You need to have them fill out the time hold form which is very similar to this. It's the, you want to port the payments from this date and resume, resume them on this date. And it's a legally binding contract that you guys have with the client. So they sign it and then it's just a little thing down the bottom to get some feedback as well and just an option to make a review. So you want to get some social proof as well. If people do leave, which they will, you want to make sure you get some social proof. Okay, so that's basically the cancellation form. So as I said, process is as soon as they want to cancel, they need to send you an email, email only. And then you're going to send them through the cancellation forms. Now this is what you do. So once they send the email, give it 24 hours before you actually respond because people would have calmed down by then. They would have got rid of their emotional, you know, state that should be neutral by now. Once you're in the neutral state and you're ready to action the cancellation request, give them a call and basically you want to say, hey, Sally, thanks so much for sending through the cancellation form. I just, I'm about to send through your forms to fill out. So sorry, sorry. Thanks for sending through the cancellation request. I'm about to send you through the cancellation form to fill out. I just thought I'd get some feedback on your experience before I do. So firstly, have you found the training? What have you liked? Awesome, blah, blah, awesome. What do you, what have you disliked? Awesome. No, that's awesome feedback. Any happy with your results? Yes or no? Most of the time they should say yes, but if they're not, then that's a whole different conversation. But providing a Happy. What you want to ask then is. Okay, cool. So do you mind if asked the reason for you wanting to cancel? Let's just say that they financially, they can't afford it anymore, which is very common. Awesome. So Sally, I understand financially it's not viable for you anymore. And as it's, as it sounds, it sounds like you had a really good experience, which is awesome. So I just wanted to ask if there was a cheaper option that was affordable to you that was similar to what you're getting now, would you be open to looking at that? So you ask that question and ideally they say yes. And then what you do from here, you're just going to verbally drop, sell them down to one less session per week. So if they're doing three sessions, you drop them down to two. Doing two sessions, you drop them down to one. They're only one session, you drop them down to an online version. Okay. So for example, if you're doing three, they're paying 200 bucks a week. So awesome. Sally, you're paying 200 bucks a week at the moment for three sessions a week. Have you considered if you're just doing two sessions a week, that's only going to be 135 per week instead of 200. So it saves you almost. What's that? Saves you $65 per week. Is that sustainable for you? Yes. Okay, cool. Well, no worries. What I'll do then I'll just change it over to two sessions a week instead of three and I'll see you on Monday for your next session. That's how you save clients. Okay. Now if they, if they can't do it after you're verbally trying to drop sell them down, what you do is say, cool, no worries. I appreciate the honesty. What to do? I'll send you through the cancellation form now and then let's just make the most of the next four weeks. Now they need to send through the cancellation form back for you to actually cancel the service. So they don't send it back and everything's normal, payments will come out, etc. Etc. I've had that before, actually. I've sent the cancellation form and they never filled it out and they just kept training, they just thought about it that people just, they sometimes cancel on a bad day, which is why you want to have the notice period in there. Because if you're going to have the, the four week notice period, it gives you four weeks to actually try and win them over again. So what you want to do in that four weeks is you want to put a little bit more effort in. You want to forecast their results a little bit more. And it's going to ask you, what else are you thinking you need help with? So what's the plan when you're training on your own? How are you going to push yourself this hard? Who's going to keep you accountable? Little triggers like that is going to make them question them actually wanting to cancel. Because I've had that before as well. Like after the. After the first week that wanted to cancel, you sent them the form. Then after two weeks in, they're like, I think I'm actually going to miss this. How much does it just do one session a week instead of two, or how much is it to one instead of three? You know what I mean? Because people will miss it. They don't want to quit in most cases. So hopefully that makes sense. Dean, that's what you should be doing for a cancellation process. A lot of personal trainers don't have any cancellation process. And let's go week to week hoping, hoping that the clients pay and hoping that the clients turn up for their sessions. You have boundaries, structures in place and expectations on what's required if they need to cancel. So I hope that makes sense. Thank you again for tuning in. If you do like the episode, make sure you like and share it with a friend. It's the only favor that I'll ever ask is to share with a friend because that's how we're going to help more people and change the industry. So enjoy your afternoon and I'll see you in the next podcast episode.