One of the most overlooked money producing sections in your business is not finding new clients, but instead, keeping your current clients.
With so many coaches thinking they have to become masters of advertising and copywriting to get more clients they often forget about the ones who already know, like, and trust them.
A raving fan who stays with you is worth tens of thousands of dollars in the long run, so, don’t get things backwards always looking for the next sale.
Of course, you still want that next sale — but never at the expense of the satisfaction that your current clients have with you.
One simple way to increase the average retention rate you can achieve with each client who walks through the door is one simple term…
Periodization.
Why Periodization Makes You Money
Since you’re a fitness professional, I don’t have to explain periodization in depth here.
Essentially, a training year is broken up by training blocks.
Training blocks are broken up by training cycles.
Training cycles are broken up by training weeks.
Training weeks are broken up by training days.
And finally, training days are broken up by training sessions.
Although there is a deep science here as to how to organize these things to attain a certain result, when it comes to adjusting your business model you need only concern yourself with the training year.
Why?
Three reasons,
#1: Results take time and we have to be honest with our clients.
#2: It demonstrates you have a plan for your client, which increases their buy-in to the process because you’re organized and in control.
#3: Since they are bought in to you and your plan for them for the entire year, they are now much more likely to stick with you for the entire year because that’s the length of the plan.
As boring as periodization can be to some people, it’s one of the best methods that you can use in your FIRST consultation to increase your retention rate immediately with your clients because they are bought in to both the short and long-term aspects of the process.
How To Set It Up In A Sales Setting
What you need to get is a paper calendar that includes all 12-Months, preferably this would be on a sheet of paper that is convenient for them to take home (in other words, don’t erase or throw this out when you’re done, you need this).
Once you have this item, you now have the tool that is going to increase your client retention and simultaneously make your life easier as well.
All you’re going to do is create the “big picture” of the year by filling out the dates that will not change. Start with two end points — the beginning and the end.
Then, fill in anything in the middle that will impact the clients training.
For example, if you’re client has:
- Business trips
- Competitions
- Vacations
- Camps
- Surgery
- Birthdays
- Weddings
- Tournaments
Anything that will be an automatic “off day” or “off week”, write it in their personal calendar.
This yearly calendar does not require you to get into the specifics of periodization with your client, in fact, I would avoid most of that conversation because they don’t care about it nearly as much as you do.
All we are doing here is creating a “big picture” for the client/prospect so you can see how long you have between various activities and the times when training will not take place.
How It Makes You Better At Your Job
Previously I said that it makes your life more simple, and that’s true, it does. But, with simplicity also comes an all-round greater execution of program design.
This yearly plan allows you to quickly see what parameters you need to be working on and what time of the year you need to emphasize them.
It also allows you to quickly and easily see how many cycles you can fit into a period of training. Sometimes you have plenty of time to go through your phases, other times you will be in a crunch.
However, most clients don’t plan ahead with their training and then we are left having to make awkward changes to their program design that limit how much results the client can expect to gain.
This shouldn’t happen, and it ends today.
You both need to get into the real-world and program your off-days right into your yearly schedule so you are never caught off guard.
In the end, this will make your life easier, get your client better results, and improve their retention rate (because rarely are packages sold for a full year) to drive more revenue to your business.
Final Thoughts
An example phasic structure for a training block would be:
- Structural Balance/Conditioning: 4 Weeks
- Hypertrophy/Strength: 4 Weeks
- Strength/Power: 4 Weeks
- Power/Endurance: 4 Weeks
When you lay out the full year and then block off the already known dates they can’t train, you are able to plug and implement your phasic structure simply and easily where you need to.
Not to mention, this strategy also allows you to program in when they need to get ready for things which will also completely jack up your retention rate.
For example, if they have a destination wedding they want to look good for in 11-Months — You can talk about how you’re going to “peak” for that event using your phasic structure.
So, even though they may have only paid for 3-Months of coaching with you now, you’re already planning how they are going to look amazing in their bathing suit 11-Months from now.
Using a yearly template works on so many levels that it blows me away how almost no organizations are using this tool to close more sales and retain more clients.
Their loss is your gain, try this one out and let me know how it goes!
And if you’re interested in tons of more tips, tricks, and systems that you can use to blow up your reputation and income — check out the Create Freedom Academy today.
Dan Garner
