Client Acquisition: Are there holes in your bucket?

Dec 1, 2022

8 min read

Our topic today is the sinking ship dilemma, or the sunk cost dilemma. To compensate for the holes in the bucket, do we add more water? In other words, I'm referring to your client acquisition process. And also in saying that, what we're missing out on and I will define this in just a second.

People always ask me how to get more leads. It has become an obsession for them. They think that will increase growth. In order to truly measure growth, we must look at whether the number of extra clients that we're getting is greater than the number of clients that we're losing. Because when we lose a client, we have to recruit to replace that client and we're actually breaking even with a number of clients. So we're not actually growing. We're staying the same. Unless of course, you've suddenl

There's another metric (a third metric) that we can put in (a fourth metric) if you are recruiting clients and minimizing the number of clients that drop off or no longer train with you. The lever is increasing the average spend on each client who is training with you. So that's another way that we can increase our growth. And this might be a great option if you are limited with the number of people that you can train in your studio. Because there's always going to be a level to which you are re

Now, let's talk about retention. So retention of clients, when I'm talking about personal trainers or semi private sessions, retention is where 80% of your clients one year after they join and start training with you, are still training with you. So if 80% of your clients or more are continuing to train with you after one year of your services, you are doing great and you don't have a retention issue. If this number is much less, you might need to look at employing some of the strategies which I

Then we are also making the acquisition of more clients and more leads more and more expensive, because we're getting rid of our sort of immediate circles that we can easily recruit from that may have heard about you from someone from a recommendation or heard good things. And then as you get through that immediate kind of inner to slash outer circle. When you get past that you're now looking at getting clients through Facebook advertising, through putting out brochures and that sort of thing. T

There's a number of ways that you can do this, which I detail in the course but that's a benchmark for you. If you are not looking at your client retention strategies and showing people a level of value that far surpasses what they believe that they are paying for the service. So what I mean by that is, in the value equation if people believe they are getting the same amount of service that they are paying for… They'll be relatively okay, but they're not going to shout out loud about your servic

So if you are a new PT and say your knowledge and experience is a four out of 10 when it comes to training someone and this person say is training with you for eight months. Typically personal training clients, the reliable ones, are over the age of say 30 years old, so therefore, they will tend to have an injury more likely than someone who's under that age, and have more niggly things going on and less of a maximum recoverable volume. Again, that's something that's covered in another post. But

They will feel like they are getting better value for money over time because you're learning more about them and you're spending more time on stuff that is meaningful to them. So that is one way that I personally use to help people feel like they're getting good value for money when they are training with me. And it may be one that's easier said than done, but it's just highlighting one way. There's more ways in some of the courses that you will see on My Courses page.

Now the other way is to find more leads and to be able to convert more leads. If you as a rule of thumb, if you are unable to convert any more than 60 to 70% of the leads that are directly coming into you, or 50 to 60 if it's Facebook advertising, you have a conversion problem, you don't have a leads problem. Personally, because I already have a very tight niche and it's very well defined, and it's very obvious from my website, people that reach out to me are about 90 to 95% likely to sign up wi

Learning about that sales and conversion is another thing that we cover in another aspect of the course. But use that as a benchmark to help you understand where the issue might be. In terms of whether it's a hole in the bucket. You're not keeping people for long enough, or whether it's a conversion issue.

The caveat is if you don't need extra clients and you have turned off all your advertising and you're not really actively going out to find people I still think that organically you should be getting about two or three inquiries a week. They may not be qualified leads, but they should be organically coming towards you trying to find out about your services and you're having conversations with them. If you do not have that two to three if you're not actively doing it or five to eight if you are a

I hope by going through this it's highlighting to you that there are some benchmarks here, and these are benchmarks that I've come up with and seen as a result of working with many successful businesses and many unsuccessful businesses to turn that around. So these are not pulled out of a hat. And these are also benchmarks that will help you to see moving forward where you need to address the issue the most. It may be you actually don't have any processes or any standardized recording for any of

It's common for the fitness industry to throw around buzzwords, but when you're a single person or a small team, it's easy to feel overwhelmed at the thought of implementing systems and processes. I get it, there's already so much to do! When you're getting busier and busier, you'll be grateful that you began implementing systems and processes. These are what will help you increase your business' capability and make sure that you don't drop the ball. Without these systems in place, it'll be a lo

I used to be one of those people who thought the busiest person was the most successful. I didn't realize that the busier you are, the less time you have for other stuff. I found out the hard way, but you're far wiser than me, which is why you're reading this! I tried doing more work to get more customers, and I can confidently say I was doing great - but it was taking a toll on my mental health. If you've done more than 100 sessions in a week, you know it's impossible to keep it up for long. So