Essential Retention Tactic: The Client Journey

It was this, you drop in, you do Fran, you puke, and then you decide whether you wanna stay for about three years or you disappear completely The end. It's not good. It wasn't good, it wasn't a great retention plan. It had no nothing in there to keep people coming and doing the things that they wanna do and accomplish their goals. It was super weak. So 2024, what is a client journey?

Why should a client, why should someone have one? And who are the essential staff people that deal with this?

There's still time to change it.

And I'll talk about some key things that are really important on knowing who you're talking to from that, that point right there. And then our goal, when someone finds us on social media or somewhere else in the world, get 'em from social media. Get 'em to your website to give you their contact information as smooth and quick as possible with as few clicks as possible.

And once you get their information, now the ball's in our court as owners or CSMs or high level managers. 'cause now that real client journey starts inside of our gym, how are we gonna contact them for the first time? What is it gonna be? Text, phone, email. That process is really important.

Get 'em in our door as quick as possible, get to know who they are, and then lay out the first , uh, 14 days and then the first 90 days. And we'll break that apart into some of this episode.

Or it could be they moved to another city or it could be some other reason. We're gonna document everything in between and talk to about how you can keep clients as long as possible. Who's responsible for that and all that other stuff. So it's like from first contact to Final exit, what happens for every client?

And the more that you can make that a cohesive process, that's the same for every single client, you can raise your standard of excellence, you can delegate that to staff members who hold that standard of excellence and you'll keep more clients longer. So let's talk about it . What are some of the essential elements that you can put in pre , into this client journey to increase length of engagement?

How are you activating them and getting them started? What accomplishments are they getting in the first month, 90 days? And then how do you adopt them for the long term ? So those are five big ones, and I'm not gonna break those down today. That's, that's what full-time mentorship is for. But the three key things that fall in there for me, so three main ones is the no sweat intro process.

This truly is our opportunity to shine. And there's so many small things that someone listening to this today can do to make their gym stand out from the gym down the street. So no sweat. Intro process. Number one, know who you are talking to. Newsflash is 2024. If you haven't paid attention to social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok , LinkedIn, you can know your client before they walk in a little bit.

And that is just huge. We'll talk about that more in a moment. And then finally, setting your gym, especially in the first 90 days as a , a gym that can do either unreasonable hospitality or powerful moments. And these two are also books. Uh, actually at the 2023 Summit, I did a whole speech on powerful Moments and the 2024 summit, Chris Plenti rocked the stage with the whole speed , time unreasonable hospitality.

So these are very important topics.

So we're gonna skip past the part where you get a lead into your gym. We've got lots of resources for you to help you do that once they're there. What happens in this essential step of the client journey and how does it help us keep them for years?

Make sure you park in these key spots and send them a personalized video so they feel like they're the most special person to you. Even AI will do that now, right? There's recording ways that you can make AI say the person's name so you can just do have a forever green video that gets replicated. So that step for many gyms is really important. So how do they park? How do they arrive when they walk in?

Mike, oh , this one. We did this in like 2017 and it changed everything a little. You have whiteboards. Everybody has whiteboards in our gym already, right? Welcome Mike on the whiteboard. Everybody could do that today. When someone walks into the gym for the first time, they know they're coming, write their name. Better yet, if you have a tv, you're using one of those, put a welcome on the sign.

Or you use one of those little pegboards. There's so many ways to make someone feel unique. I guarantee you the gym down the street is not doing something that simple.

Come in and like Bells go off and my name's on the board, I already feel like I like this place

If we're talking unreasonable hospitality and really going the extra distance to set yourself apart and build value, that's what it takes, is doing the same high level of service every time. Not just like for Tim, but not John , right ? What else we got related to the no sweat intro process.

If you wanna see more of it, by all means. But this conversation is about you and your goals.

And they're not gonna sign up because you have rogue echo bikes as opposed to Airbus or whatever it is. Like talk to them,

Make sure you understand where we're at. Then I'll tell you about our pricing and what's the best prescription for you. And then I'll make sure that you have the right choice. And we're gonna get you signed up to get started as early as tomorrow, as long as our coach is available. So I outline all that before I start the conversation. 'cause otherwise people are like, Mike, I just wanna know the price.

I just wanna get started. What are we doing?

It's essential to find out what the client wants to accomplish, not what you think the client wants to accomplish. I made this mistake for decades or a decade. Find out the client's goal. Mm-Hmm , , tell me more. What do you got ?

Do they wanna go skiing this winter? Do they have family? Do they wanna be the best dad, the best grandfather? Uh, whatever it is, they're, so that's such an important part because then we get into that keyword. I also set a minute ago the prescriptive method. Yeah, really big one. Every client might start very similar. You might only have one or two prescriptions and that's okay.

But when I sell you that prescription, you want it to make it feel like it's the most important prescription for that client. Again, a very simple thing to, to start with tomorrow on the next client you talk to is even if you only offer the same thing for everybody, make them feel like they're the most unique person to ever get this offer, this deal . And so the prescription usually would be four to six.

One-on-one sessions. So they really understand your culture and your vibe . I don't care if they know the snatch and clean and jerk down the street. Maybe they were taught different ways. Who knows what it was? We wanna make sure they understand our gym and our lingo because we want the other 150 members we have in classes not to be slowed down by the new person. All of a sudden confused.

So that prescriptive method where they do four to six, one-on-one sessions and then get started is really important.

The prescription might be the same for everyone, but you personalize it because you know lots about the client and you're just gonna say, based on your goals and your schedule and your budget, the best thing that we can do to accomplish your goals fast is X. Maybe it's six, you know, three times a week , uh, personal training, or maybe it's group classes or whatever it is. Give them the prescription.

You are showing them your expertise and telling them the plan, and you're gonna provide accountability to that plan. So that's goal plan, accountability. What else we got on this one? So

You'll also have chances to upsell them and goal reviews and stuff in the future right now, keep it simple, keep it streamlined, get 'em in the door, get 'em started. So that's really from a no sweat intro process, that's the simplest things I could talk about right

This alone will set you apart. It raises the value of your service. You're going to sell more. And here's a key one where, I'm not gonna jump in front of you, Peter, but you're gonna book that 90 day goal review session at that time. Okay, we'll get to that in a second. But like this is all packaged together because we talked about the client journey. Start to finish, you're going to actually set up the next steps.

And in the podcast I did before this, Chris Cooper talked about this. He says, at that client journey , at that meeting in 90 days, I'm gonna ask you for a referral. If you're happy, are you setting the table for more? And so this client journey is all documented. If you start doing this stuff, you will have better results.

Take me onto the next, the next thing on your list, Peter, what can we do to improve retention on the client journey?

You're gonna find me. I'm , I think I'm the only one in the United States. So not , not hard to find me. Please know who you're talking to. You're gonna know, you know, did they just move to town? Do they have kids? Do they have family? Sure, it sounds creepy, but that person's also gonna feel special. So do it in a way that's not over the top and say, ah , Peter, I , you know, I saw you were coming in.

I'd like to know who my clients are. So I threw your name in the quick search and I saw that you work at Two Brain . That's super exciting. I've always wanted to hire Two Brain as a mentor. So know who you're talking to, especially with LinkedIn. People wanna be found and people wanna be seen and they wanna be heard. So again, you have to know with some context who you're talking to, but, and not go over the top.

But you should know I'm talking to Peter Braman . These are some things I know about him. People also, Mike, they love to hear their name. You should be in trying to incorporate someone's name into the sales process a minimum of three times, probably five to seven times by just saying, Mike, I hear what you're saying. Thanks for that great question. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Or Mike, here's your plan.

And the more you can work that in, again, not over the top, but doing it subtly and getting it in , people are gonna feel like they're the most special person to you during that time. So know who you're talking to.

So when you're asking for a sale later on, they already know that you're doing some work. You're not treating them like a number or just a faceless person. You're treating them like a real human being. You know something about them. You put in some extra effort, they're gonna be more inclined. Like you're, you're becoming a friend essentially.

And like if you do it the right way, like Peter said, you're not saying I was creeping in your Facebook and I saw you drunk on uh, main Street the other night . You're not doing that. You're just saying, Hey, you know, I saw you went on vacation. Like holy cow, you climbed like whatever mountain that was. Wow, that's incredible. Like that's gonna relate to your fitness goals. I can't wait to hear what they are.

That kind of stuff is essential. And I'm gonna take this further. Peter, if we go further on the client journey, this should never stop. You should never stop learning about your client . So if you look at a picture, take, take a group picture of your, of uh , each your next workout. Look through there. Can you name everybody? Can you name everybody's, you know, spouse? Can you name everybody's Jo job or what they do?

If you can't do that stuff, you need to start asking more about your clients and getting to know them on a personal level. If you do, then you can ask for referrals. You can ask, Hey, can your spouse come in? Can your friend come in, blah, blah, blah . If you don't do that, there is a random client that I don't really know anything about. Do you have any friends who might like to join? That's crappy.

Don't do that. You know, take me further on this one . Is there anything else we need to know about finding out more about your clients?

Once they decide to join, you give them their best prescription for their most successful client journey. Now we go into how do we, we retain them for the first focus needs to be only 90 days. If we go straight into long-term retention, we're gonna miss the most critical time in any journey is the first 90 days. So in that time, affinity marketing goes a long way.

If you start to understand who someone's brother, sister , spouse is , who , uh, their neighbors are, what sports do they play? Kickball, dodgeball, do they auxiliary thing , softball, whatever. And then where do they work? What kind of coworkers they have. 'cause once someone's a , uh, becomes a member of your gym, losing a customer is the biggest threat, right? And that's where the client journey is.

We don't realize this, we just probably spent 30 minutes to upwards of two hours to get this client in our doors between the no sweat intro, doing the research, all this stuff. And now we have this customer and they probably have a minimum of two to seven people that they could bring into the gym if we start the affinity marketing process right then. So your client journey at this point becomes really important.

And as a smaller gym owner, what I'm about to say probably hits you up , hits you right in the heartstrings. You need teammates to help 'em . And if you only are a one man , one woman show right? Now, this is tough.

But if you can start to think of things like a client success manager, even if they're only part-time, five to seven hours a week, or your coaches, your coaches are the front line and they need to understand that every day they show up, they need to be hitting the processes of the client journey. If it's a , if it's Mike's 20th class, they should know that because we're checking people in.

Hey Mike, congratulations, you made 20 classes. You get your T-shirt today, or whatever it might be. All client journeys should have some type of simplified process that tracks people at 30, 60 and 90 days at a minimum. And the coaches need to be in on that. Or a client success manager that needs to be in on that because that's gonna be critical to long-term success.

And then you get your staff members to perform to that level, either through mentorship or checklists and make sure that they're , you provide the accountability they need to serve your clients the way you want. Do that stuff. And your client journey could be a little bit different than we're talking about, but whatever it is, everyone has to be on the same page and everyone has to know their role.

And you can delegate retention. In fact, when your gym gets bigger, you're going to have to , but you have to do that with a system and you have to ensure excellence within that system because otherwise what happens? You get 300 clients, no one's taking care of anything, and all of a sudden you have 150 clients and everyone bled out. So that's the short version.

We have shows in our archives here for , uh, standard operating procedures and inspiring your staff. Check that stuff out because it will help you. Alright , take us on to the next essential element. What have we got? Well,

Whatever you start today will probably and should be different six months and 12 months from now. So don't get frozen or paralyzed because Mike's saying all these fancy things and go listen to other podcasts and episodes 'cause they're there. And you could do all this on your own, but just take action on that.

Even if it's as simple as update grading, that no sweat intro like we just talked about, that is better than doing nothing at the end of today's call. The next big thing though is to get those systems and processes in place. Do go listen to those things.

But whatever you do today, keep it simple, Mike, keep it super simple because you can make it better for the next 10 people come August or September or whenever it is in the next few months. The last big piece falls into this 90 day journey. This is the powerful moments. I cannot tell you how many gym owners and you could go interview every gym owner. Tell me something you love about your gym. That's super special.

A top comment is always we have the best community. Newsflash, everyone should be saying that. And if they're not saying that, then they're probably is something really incorrect. So if you are fighting the gym down the street for more clients and you're all saying, we have the best community, you need to really do something that sets yourself apart. What is something that they cannot provide?

Because you as the owner uniquely are doing for your gym. And to me this is , uh, serving powerful moments and and unreasonable hospitality.

If you are willing to write handwritten cards after somebody gets to their 25th class, or you're giving a special 25th class t-shirt that you can't get anywhere else, or you're going ahead and sending somebody a card because they had a baby or because their dog passed away, sure other gyms can try to do that, but it will never sound the same as it does from who you are.

And so in your 90 day journey, again, keep it simple, but have at least three touch points . One at the 30 day, one at the 60 day, and one at the, the 90 day that elevates a client to what we say, putting 'em on a pedestal and makes them feel like, holy cow, these people are really caring about me and tracking me along my process.

And then at the very least, at that 90 day mark, as Mike said once earlier, and Chris Cooper talks about this all the time, there has to be a pre-scheduled 90 day check-in and at that check-in. If you can come in with something that they weren't expecting , uh, maybe it's a a , a personalized water bottle at that time, or maybe it's this personalized jump rope.

But if you come to that meeting saying, congratulations on your first 90 days, I can't wait to talk to you in a year, that person's gonna be with you and they're gonna become a raving fan. And so for those powerful moments that unreasonable hospitality, what can you do? And is it , I'm not trying to say break the bank, a lot of this can be done for free.

Again, a handwritten card costs 30 cents and five minutes of your time.

Holy crap, you are so close. You're so far on your way already towards your goal of x. A simple thing like that costs nothing. But it improves the client experience. And all the gyms that are talking about community, like Peter said, how many of them are doing that? Almost none. Right? It could be just you and if you are the client, think about how that makes you feel, right Peter?

What's, what's one of the most powerful moments that you've ever had for a client? Do you have any examples of something that was just like, oh my God, that was, you know, incredible. Coops talked about this a few times when he's had clients like literally in tears crying about something that happened at the gym and it was incredible. Has he got anything like that?

So they got 'em specified colors. I think they even tried to put their names on 'em . And now some of these longest time seed clients to have their own personalized barbell. And when I went to drop in there not too long ago, two guys like wanted to show me their barbell look. That barbell I got. And it was like one of the coolest client journey things I've ever seen.

Like, thanks for putting up with us while we move all this stuff. And now I have my own orange and black barbell this guy showed me. I thought that was one of really, that one brought me. And then a lot of times just simply recognizing people. Uh, we used to do a quarterly meetup for new members. This was

It cost us a jug of coffee and a couple snacks and only five to 10 people were to join. But those five to 10 people were with us for years afterwards. And so quarterly meetups for new members was huge.

You are holding them. You're , you're showing them their success according to the plan and you're holding 'em accountable. We, we lost a pound, the next one's coming, whatever it is . That's just one example. Do this stuff, put this stuff, document it and like Peter said, keep it simple, but put this stuff in there and add these touch points in. We touched on this a little bit, Peter, but I'm gonna ask you this.

It sounds cool for you and me to like, we could do this with 80 people and you know, we'd be great at it. What happens when gyms start to get bigger and you have to have the staff people in place. And I wanna ask you specifically about the client success manager role in this and delegating retention.

Because every single gym owner I've talked to on the show who hires a client success manager says it is a 100% investment it you , they see a return on it. So talk about that one a little bit for me.

I need to get, every member needs to have a handwritten card at least twice a year and I want them to have at least one touch point once a quarter. And I need the coaches to be a part of this process. So I need you to help me organize the coaches. Ultimately you are in charge, but you have them to work with you .

And so the CSM could be utilized in so many ways, but the first CSM probably needs to be about five to 10 hours a week. Checking in on the new members first. The new members are the most important right now if you're just getting started with this process. So take care of them for the first 90 days and that should be about five hours a week.

And the other five hours a week should be checking in on old members and working with the team to delegate. Are we doing goal reviews? We haven't even talked about that on this episode. Goal reviews are so huge. Mm-Hmm , , right ? If we're doing goal reviews, that's a beyond 90 day thing. And then are the coaches realizing that they, and I said this already, are they are the absolute most important person.

If a coach is coming in and they're tired and exhausted and showing up to the 5:00 AM at 5 0 5, honestly that's a client success manager thing. Yes, the owner needs to take care of that. Don't get me wrong. But the client success manager needs to realize we are losing our ability to be the best gym because we're showing up five minutes late. We need to be this, that, and the other.

So we need to put our best people in the front of the best , uh, most amount of people. And the client success manager needs to be in charge of these people riding the cars, doing all these things that we talked about today.

People who are potentially on their way outta your gym, what if you could save them with a phone call that happens . So that's an interesting one that you guys could look at. Again, keep it simple, but that's another market inside your gym where you can look at the client journey. Someone is on the verge of quitting, how do I keep them in there? Gimme a quick couple quick details.

Client success manager, what kind of pay rates are we looking at? Like this is like a $50 an hour job or 20 or what are we looking at here?

So that was really important because we looked at career roadmaps as well, a whole nother episode. But if you want more, if you wanna make a full-time career in your gym, then you could do more work by being a part of the client success team at that point for larger gyms. But the pay rates really, it's gonna depend market by market still and it's gonna depend on what your needs are.

They still can be $15 an hour type of roles in tasks for a very starter gym. It still can be in many markets. Uh, but we are probably looking at something like 18 to $22 an hour type deal. But we're still not breaking the bank on this five hours a week. Maybe a hundred to $150 a week. But if you keep one client each week longer, that pays for itself without even thinking it's

And then you write an SOP and it should be probably a checklist. Very simple. I've used this so often today because most of this stuff just needs to be simple and clear. These are the five to six tasks that must happen each week. They're non-negotiable. If all of these are done, then here's your list of things that are a little bit more negotiable. You're sending videos, you're sending flowers and doing something else.

We actually, one last thing that was really important. We gave our client success. She came to us one day and she's like, I really wanna do all these things. How come I can't do 'em ? I don't understand. I was like, well what do you need to be successful? She's like, I just need a budget. And I was like, what? I'll give you $500 a month again, we are a large gym. I could afford that $500 a month.

Keep it in these parameters. Do whatever you want, keep the receipts and let me know what it is. And all of a sudden people were getting flowers and they were getting gift cards to the restaurant and they were getting all these things and she loved it because we did have a checklist. We gave her parameters to work with and then we gave her a budget to work with and then she just, she took off from there.

You cannot just push it. You can't abdicate and say do the stuff you have to get , get the lists in place, give the options and the resources check in and mentor and then things will improve. So let's go on to this one. What are some of the sticking points in a client journey? Like you've got one and you've set one up.

Where are some of the things where you've commonly seen people or things go off the rails for gym owners?

Uh, and then also just letting you must as the gym owner be in the driver's seat. I'm gonna say that in the affirmative, the gym owner must be in the driver's seat. I hear in the, in the reverse of that is, well the, the client doesn't want a goal review. Oh no , my clients are different. Our clients don't do goal reviews. Oh, if I had a dollar for every time that's set . Yep , yep .

That's because you're letting them dictate what the gym looks like. But if you are saying we do goal reviews, fine, change it to a synonym. We do athlete check-ins, we do client check-ins. I just wanna know what's going on in your life. Hey, how are you doing?

It doesn't have to be the specific word goal review, but by letting the client dictate if they do or don't show up or if they do or don't give you affinity marketing, then that's where these things get really derailed. If you're just a fly on the wall in your gym and listening to someone's on a Monday say, oh I had a great weekend. I went boating. I did this, this and this. And you're jotting that down.

That's a part of affinity marketing. So this is the positive is do this every day . The affirmative is do this every day and be a part of the client journey. The things that people get derailed on is they just are passive on it. They're not consistent on it. They let the client dictate the journey and then they don't follow through with the coaches or hold them accountable.

And so that lack of accountability and lack of follow through are the biggest things.

If you're gonna be an excellent business, if you're not, if one client gets excellent service and the rest get a c, not a good gym . So you gotta keep that stuff top of mind. It's, it's funny 'cause that happens so much. You put together this great amazing client journey and then implementing it, you just can't do it. It never happens. And you're just like, what did I do? You know? Did that happen at your gym ?

Was there any backsliding or were you able to keep it right in in line?

Maybe not rot, but we had failure or mistakes, but we were always keeping up and keeping it growing. And so , uh, yeah. Uh , a lot of learning process by , by by mistakes and growth. So

But in theory, if you only lost one to two clients a month because of moving in life circumstances and then you gained, let's call it two losses a month and gained four a month, you'd have 24 extra clients by the end of the year. So an airtight client journey allows you to really back off the need for more sales.

You might not even have to run ads or do anything big because your client journey is so well airtight that you might be just getting referrals on the backend and get two to four new members and lose one or two. 'cause people move and you get such a big reward. People just don't understand that losing customers is absolutely more detrimental than the need for gaining more customers.

And an airtight client journey allows you to keep clients longer. And that's the bottom line.

And that comes all from that model. Average revenue per member in this model goes up. Every client who does, sorry, 30% of clients who do goal review sessions will upgrade their packages by about 30%. Drives up a RM, everything gets better. All these metrics start to go up. So lifetime value goes up, profit goes up, gross goes up, everything goes up in your business. And I'll give you this one. Tacking what Peter said.

Marketing costs may go down because you don't need as many clients. You don't need to replace as many clients and get this, every client that comes in has a whole bunch of friends and a spouse, partner, whatever. You can probably get one of those. So every person that comes in is a plus one. All these people stay longer and refer more people. There is a gym, Sarah s Snowman runs it in Zurich, Switzerland.

She has, I think it's capped at like three 40 members or something like that. She has zero marketing costs. She loses from 340 10 members a month. That's it. And she replaces them by going to her waiting list and saying, you're up and all . That's all she does. She also gets other clients , uh, back. She'll call former clients and say, Hey, you know, know we got a spot. You wanna come back.

And they do zero marketing costs, huge revenue. And it's all based on this model. So like we can't understate how important this thing is. You know , let's close this off. Give someone out there. We've gone through a ton of stuff and you said keep it simple. What is a simple thing someone can do today to start on this path of the client journey? What would you advise?

Or is it super easy where it's like, Hey, I can give you this free guide, want it email address, or whatever it is. So do something there. I'm gonna give you a second step. If you're super aggressive, figure out what to do after that. You've got this person's contact info, what are you gonna do? My advice, call them within five minutes and ask about their fitness goals. Those are two simple things.

And you can try that with the next lead that you get. Absolutely . So try that today. Put that down. Peter, thanks so much for doing the client journey for us. If people use this, I think all metrics are gonna go up. Do you agree?

I'd love to have you in that group. It's Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gym owners united.com to join. Do it today.