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How to Retain Personal Training Clients
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How to Retain Personal Training Clients

How to Retain PT Clients: Proven Strategies (2024)

Carl Smith

If you're a qualified Personal Trainer and are looking to increase your personal training client retention, you are addressing what most trainers heavily overlook.

Why Working on your Retention Strategy is MORE important than working on your Marketing:

  • Increasing your existing clients duration will cost you far less than if you are trying to acquire a new client as you don't need to fork out money on adverts or promotion.

  • You will make more profit in the long-run as the lifetime value of customers life-cycle will increase.

  • Long-term and loyal clients provide more guaranteed income stability and predictability that you can rely on.

  • You can utilise your impressive personal training client retention statistics as a marketing tool of why new clients should trust you.

  • You will also naturally increase word of mouth referrals as long serving clients will be your biggest advocates and in every business nothing is more powerful than getting clients that have been referred by an existing happy client.

Before we get started, if you're looking for a new and exciting role as a Personal Trainer, make sure to stay up to date with the latest personal trainer jobs in your area.

Lets jump into how you can start improving your PT client retention with these proven strategies and ideas:

1) Restructure your packages to enhance PT retention

If you’re currently selling personal training via blocked bookings you are potentially harming your personal trainer retention rates. 

With blocked booking sessions you’re creating a natural end date of when your services end, meaning that you’re going to have to re-sell your services to your existing client base. 

Consequently this has a negative knock on effect on your retention levels and business as a whole. 

For example, some clients might sign back up after an event such as Christmas or their holiday, whilst others might try and re-negotiate on price and some might stop all together. This severely impacts your ability to retain PT clients and your income. 

This can be mitigated by moving to monthly package based PT packages where your services are ongoing without a predesignated end date. 

Think about how a mobile phone contract operates or insurance, they just roll month to month to which you can cancel at any point in time beyond your contract period and the service just continues unless you state otherwise. You can do the same for your Personal training business. 

Simply create simple packages based on the number of sessions per week someone undertakes. Take a look how Personal Trainer Dean Clarke has done this below:

The reason this works better than selling on blocked sessions for your personal training retention rates is for a few reasons:

  • The client pays smaller chunks as opposed to one big lump sum which can be difficult to afford

  • Your clients will pay monthly and therefore it becomes more of a habitual payment that they can allocate for each month.

  • There is no natural end date to the service you provide thus your client will have to notify you if they wish to cancel. 

  • Keeps every client paying the same based on the jumper of sessions per week they purchase. 

The most successful PTs in the industry implement a monthly PT package system as they are never chasing their existing customer base and focusing on what really matters.....Getting even more clients!

2) Boost Personal Training Client Retention By Creating a Community Feel

When thinking of how to keep clients as a personal trainer, creating a community feel might not sound that important when you're offering one to one services. 

The reality however is that it can have a huge impact on your overall retention and is not that difficult to implement. 

You can create a community amongst your clients by simply offering a free additional group service, whether that’s a free group PT session once per month or by arranging a hike on the weekend. This allows your clients to interact with another and gives them another reason to continue training with you outside of their goals. 

This gives them another friendship group, something to belong to and creates exclusivity around your PT services.

See this great example here by Liverpool City Centre PT studio, Limitless Lifestyle Gym, who have clearly recognised the value in community and offer monthly get togethers with their members:

You can also create a community feel online via setting up a whatsapp group or a Facebook group where clients can engage, motivate each other and praise one another. 

You can even have client of the month award or even annual award ceremonies broken down into different award categories to create inclusivity and recognition. 

You should also consider extending your community building tasks beyond fitness, just like Limitless Lifestyle Gym has done by hosting an event such as a barbecue or a night out for all your clients where they socialise in a more casual setting. 

All these aspects creates community, something your clients love being apart of and helps increase your client retention as a Personal Trainer.

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3) Use SMART Goals & Emotional Drivers to Keep Clients Motivated and Retained

During your personal training course you should have learnt about how to set SMART Goals, which are simply goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time driven.

But what you don’t learn during your qualification is how to motivate and retain PT clients using emotional goals. 

SMART goals are the underpinning way of how you set training goals, but emotional goals are what actually creates motivation and drive in your clients to actually achieve them. 

For example, a client’s goal could be that they want to lose 2 stone of fat in 6 months, whereas their emotional goal would be how that would make them feel when they hit that goal and what is the underlying purpose of why they want to hit that goal.

The client might be saying they want to lose weight, but what is more powerful is the emotional driver for why they want to lose that weight, what it means to them and how it makes them feel. This is what they are really looking to achieve and you can harness this to keep clients focused and retained for longer time periods.

For example, if someones fitness goal is to lose that 2 stone of fat, their emotional goal could be that they want to feel great for their holiday in Ibiza in the summer.

Step 1) Establish the Emotional Goal:

  1. Ask them why they want to achieve that goal?

  2. Ask them how much the goal means to them?

  3. How would it make them feel if they could reach that goal?

Step 2) Use the Emotional Goal as a Motivational driver

  1. Put their emotional goals on the top of their workout programme so they get a constant reminder every time they log in to access their programme.

  2. Refer to their emotional goal every time they suffer a set-back or start falling off the bandwagon. This is what is going to re-acknowledge the real "why" they are doing this.

  3. During checkin-ins, In cohesion with their fitness goals, re-address where they are with their emotional goals too. Are they starting to feel good towards where they want to be.

You will soon notice that keeping them on track mentally with the underlying reasons they are there is more powerful to creating motivation and driving client's towards success. This consequently enhances your personal trainer retention as a motivated client who is progressing, tends to stay a client for longer.

4) How to Keep Clients as a Personal Trainer: Get to Really Know your Clients & Share your Life with Them

Personal Training is exactly that, “personal”. 

Many clients value trainers based on how comfortable they make them feel and the rapport that they have, more than their competency of programme writing or the extent of their qualifications. 

This is why building rapport as a PT is extremely important to you keeping personal training clients over a sustained period of time. 

A great way to develop rapport is to really get to know your clients, what’s going on in their lives, such as their work, their family life, their background as well as hobbies and interests.

Sometimes you discover areas of common interest that you can bond over or things going on their life that you can truly identify with.

Think about this logically, when you go to your hairdresser, who cuts your hair? It's most likely someone you have used for years, a friend or family member and they might not even be the best at what they do, but they make you feel comfortable and you can share whats going on in your life with. Personal Training is exactly the same, it's more than writing programmes and delivering sessions, it's about relationship building.

Asking about their day, their family life, taking an interest ion what their kids are up to and sharing your own life stories is all part of being a Personal Trainer.

Great Personal Trainers know this and implement it as a personal trainer retention strategy to ensure clients keep coming back to them and look forward to training with them.

5) Personal Trainer Client Contracts & Service Agreements

If you offer an ongoing service, which personal training is, you should get your clients to sign a contract and service level agreement. 

When you sign up for new mobile phone, what do you sign?...A contract! When you rent a car or when you take out insurance, what do you sign?.....A contract! Personal Training needs be treated in the same way and for several good reasons:

  • Contracts formalise a relationship between you as a business and your customer, the client.

  • Contracts outline what is included as part of your service and prevent any misunderstandings of what is included as part of your service.

  • Contracts outline your booking procedures and cancellation processes.

  • Without a contract, a client could ask for their money back, despite you delivering your service and there would be very little you could legally do about it.

  • Clients actually expect a contract as they are giving you money in exchange for a paid service. It comes across as professional and benefits them as they know exactly what they are paying for.

  • Contracts give your PT business financial protection when they have been constructed by a qualified lawyer to ensure you get paid on time.

  • Lastly contracts enable you to keep PT clients for longer as they are committing for set time periods and thus can boost your PT revenue.

DISCLAIMER: We have consulted our solicitors to verify the above information - Please seek qualified legal advice before applying consumer based contracts to your business.

6) Conduct Periodised Assessments to Drive PT Retention

As a good personal Trainer you should be conducting periodised assessments with your clients as a form of progress tracking. 

This could be tests such as 1 rep max, body composition, functional movement, muscular endurance, posture and many more. 

The results of the assessment should be leveraged as motivation and to re-align goals to keep your clients focused. Whether the outcome of the assessment was positive or negative you should use this as an opportunity to re-align their thought processes to their goals.

For example, If a client was aiming to lose 7% of body fat by June 20th, but they had only lost 4%, you can still leverage this to push them on to where they want to be. 

Perhaps this is the news they needed to hear to stop missing sessions or take their nutritional intake more seriously. Use your periodised assessments to not just keep your clients informed on their progress and start using them as a catalyst to retain your PT clients for longer by keeping them motivated when they have achieved or when they are struggling.

7) Certain Qualifications to Help You Keep Personal Trainer Clients

Ever had a regular paying client message you to say they might need to stop training as they have just found out they are pregnant but you’re not qualified to deal with this, or that they have picked up a muscular strain and need to stop training whilst they rest or perhaps they have found out they have a particular medical issue that might influence their training?

This is not great to hear as a trainer as you could be losing a regular paying customer for reasons beyond your control. 

But you can actually reduce, and some of the time completely stop clients dropping off and enhance your overall retention when you acquire certain qualifications.

For example, if a client suffers a sprain, strain or muscular issue, you can simply offer to transfer the client from Personal Training over to receiving sports massage sessions. When they are fully recovered, you can simply transfer them back over to your Personal Training business, thus increasing your PT client retention.

See below some further retention boosting qualifications that you might want to consider:

Pre and Post Natal Course

Some clients might drop off when becoming pregnant or seek a trainer that has more knowledge with working with pregnant clients as a safety measure, irrespective how good a PT you actually are.

Becoming pre and post natal qualified will prevent this, allowing you to work with clients and write effective programmes for both pregnant clients and for new mums that have not long given birth. Additionally, you might open a new demographic and income stream from clients that are looking for a pre and post natal specialised trainer.

Exercise Referral

As a personal trainer you should refer clients that have particular medical conditions to more specialised trainers as both your qualifications and insurance will not cover this demographic if something goes wrong. This can negatively effect your personal training retention levels as sometimes clients develop health problems and need to be refer to an exercise referral specialist that can properly cater for their needs.

Being qualified in Level 3 Exercise Referral means you won't have to refer clients and allows you to work with clients with a range of medical conditions including osteoporosis, hypertension, arthritis and diabetes amongst many others.


Lower Back Pain Management

As we age as a population the number of people suffering with lower back injuries is rising. Similar to the above, you might lose clients that develop lower back pain issues as this is outside of your remit of cover as a Level 3 PT, which can lead to a client not benefiting from your services or expertise.

Getting Level 4 Lower Back Pain qualified would improve your personal trainer client retention as you then would be legally covered as a lower back specialist to deliver that form of training and boosting your client retetion in the process.

8) Diversify your Workouts and Environments

Engagement and motivation is the key for how to keep personal training clients, and one way you can keep that level of motivation high is through mixing up your workout environments and the medium in which you deliver Personal training. 

If you have the option to you can mix up where your clients train.

If the weather is nice, try a functional session outdoors using a park, playground, beach or field.

Depending on the clients goals you can introduce some cross-training into your client's workout programme. For example, I had a client for a number of years who wanted to improve their 5km time and they got down to being sub-18 minute runner but started stagnate a little. I introduced some cross-training into their programme, through switching out a session on the bike and even when he went on holiday, a session in the pool. This helped them re-ignite their interest, gave them something different to do and naturally this also has positive benefits for their performance.

Additionally, you can encourage clients to participate in grouped sessions, trying new equipment outside of the core fundamental ones that are crucial to their goals as well as mixing in different workout intensities.

Looking for a new role as a Personal Trainer? View our latest Personal Training Jobs Here

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9) Create a Loyalty Scheme

A brilliant and extremely effective way of increasing PT client retention is through introducing a personal training loyalty scheme.

Loyalty schemes are everywhere, from supermarkets and holiday resorts to coffee shops and clothing brands.

There all implementing them and so should you!

Loyalty schemes reward your customers for exactly that, their loyalty! It keeps personal training clients coming back, shows that you care and values their ongoing support. 

You can create a loyalty scheme by either having a points system, giving discounts or adding value. 

For example, if your clients are paying monthly for their sessions, every 6 months you can give them an additional free session added to their account which will be fulfilled in the following month. 

Other things you can do is to give them free merchandise, supplements or even equipment. As long as it has a high perceived consumer value that you know your customer demographic would want.

You can actually harness your loyalty programme during the sales process as a unique selling point to prospective clients that differentiates you from your local competition. 

10) Educate your Clients & Become an Authority

Some Personal Trainers believe you shouldn’t educate your PT clients as then they have no further use of your service.

Truthfully, this is a sign of a bad personal trainer as it actually boosts your Personal trainer client retention as opposed to hindering it. 

Clients want a PT that they can learn from, improve their own understanding of fitness principles and look up to as an authority within their field.

If clients see you as someone who really knows what they are talking about, why would they want to go anywhere else or gamble on a trainer that they perceive to be less informative?

Sharing the "why" behind their training routine breeds trust and credibility in both you as a person and in them achieving their desired outcomes.

It enables your client to feel empowered and allows them to make calculated decisions off their own accord, which should help them achieve their goals quicker and when clients hit goals they stay motivated and retained.

Lastly, the more educated a client within their own training, the more in-depth you can go also with your feedback and communication with them and you push their understanding even further. Think of it this way, if they don't really understand why they are doing it or the real benefits behind something, they will soon stop doing it.

11) Improve PT Client Retention by Tracking Why Clients Leave you in the first place

If you want to find out how to keep your personal training clients you need to know why they are leaving in the first place. Only then will you know what to remedy in order to improve your retention rates. 

Some reasons may be out of your control such as:

  • location change

  • Change of working hours

  • Injury / Illness

But some may be in your remit: 

  • Not getting results

  • Lack of communication

  • Felt unsupported

  • Hit their goal

  • Switched to a competitor

  • Boredom

  • Sessions too difficult

  • Unprofessional

  • Demotivated

If you have had a list of past clients, outreach to them and allow them to anonymously tell you why they stopped training with you. Don’t take the responses as attacks, but more an opportunity for you to improve. 

Collate your responses to see the common denominators of why people are leaving and make the appropriate actions to rectify the situation.

As a good practice, you can also after the last session with a client conduct an exit interview like an employer does with their staff. Employers do this to find out why an employee is leaving to hopefully enhance the working culture of future employees. You can do the same with your clients.

For example, if you got a lot of clients saying they were “bored”, you could think about the level of variance within your workouts and find ways to make them more fun and engaging. 

By constantly tracking the reasons clients stop paying you allows you to make enhancements to your business and retain clients better in the long run. Every 6 months or so you should review your client retention rate by assessing what is the average length of time a client stays with you. You can use tools such as XXXXXXX to do this effectively. 

12) Offer Multi-channel Communication in between Sessions

Poor client communication outside of PT sessions is one of the big reasons clients get frustrated.

In a world where technology is speeding up processes, clients expect faster communication than ever before and through the medium in which they prefer.

If you restrict your communication channels to just text or email, you’re potentially negatively impacting your client’s customer experience. 

By offering communication through a variety of means allows customers to connect with you through the means they find most convenient and comfortable. Remember, some customers prefer verbal conversations, some prefer a whatsapp message whilst others like to email. 

You need to adapt to your customers, do not expect your customers to adapt to you and the more you can provide them with the support in between sessions that they require, through the medium they prefer, the happier they become. 

As good practice and to maintain good client relations ensure you let your clients know the time parameters that you will get back to them within and ensure you stick to them. You might even have different time periods for different communication channels.

13) Personal Training Client Retention Tip: Surprise Your Clients

Ever received a gift without a designated reason? It makes you feel great and appreciative.

It actually feels even better than when you kind of expect one such as at Christmas or birthdays. 

Every now and then indulge your clients, show them that you care about them and not just their custom. 

A gift does not have to be costly and it can even be something that you got for free that you thought one of your clients would enjoy or benefit from. It doesn’t even have to be fitness related.

For example, a client of mine was complaining about the price of her morning coffee, so I got her a coffee gift card. It showed that I cared and that I actually listened to her.

14) Use Gamification to Boost PT Client Retention & Reward Clients

We discussed earlier about the importance of creating a loyalty programme for rewarding long-term clients for their ongoing service, but this does not necessarily mean that they are some of your “best” clients.

Some of your best clients are the ones that help you grow your business by sharing your content, leaving you a nice review, posting about the results they get with you on social media and telling their friends about how great you are.

These are the customers you really love and want to retain, and a great way about going about this is through using gamification. 

Gamification is the application of applying a game into non game scenarios (such as this one) to motivate clients to take the actions you want them to take. 

For example, if you want your clients to post about how much they have loved training with you on social media, you want them to leave you a 5 star review on Google or refer a friend to you, you can create a game with prizes that motivates them to do that

Here is an example of you can gamify personal training below:

“Hi All,

I’m running a fun competition next week starting Monday, where you can get some cool prizes for free

I have outlined a table below what you need to do and put a points number next to each task.

If you accumulate all 100 pts over the week starting Monday and ending Sunday you will get an additional “personal training session every week next month and a PT XXXXX branded hoodie for free.

See the point structure below:

Task

Points (100pts available) 

Workout 4 times this week

20pts

Share my newsletter

10pts

Refer a friend

30pts

Share my PT Promotion on Facebook

10pts

Share you results on Instagram and tag me in

10pts

Leave me a 5 star review

20pts

By gamifying and rewarding clients for prompting your services, this helps build client trust and gives them recognition for helping you in a fun and engaging way. 

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15) Focus on Being Professional to Keep Clients as a Personal Trainer

As a PT, you're offering a professional service in exchange for quite a lot of money and thus clients have a certain level of expectation of you when it comes to how you conduct yourself.

Clients expect you to be:

  • Presentable

  • Practice what you preach

  • Punctual

  • Knowledgable

  • Communicate using appropriate language

  • Respectful of their personal boundaries

All the above attributes contribute towards being perceived as professional and enhances your trust and credibility with clients as well as their confidence in your abilities to help them towards their goals. This in turn will only help you keep personal training clients coming back and most likely help you gain new ones.

16) How to Retain Personal Training Clients: Review your Client Onboarding Process

First impression really do matter and having a smooth onboarding process is paramountly important to keeping PT clients for the long haul.

According to a survey by Super Office, creating a good first impression leads to 72% of customers likely to spread good word of mouth about your services to six people or more and that negative first impressions can last with customers for months.

It all starts with the onboarding process and making this effective and streamlined to set your new PT client on the right path:

How to Improve Your PT Onboarding :

  • Set Clear Communication Parameters - Many clients sign up to a PT package and are not informed of how they should communicate with their PT outside of sessions, whether they should email, call, text or when is acceptable to message or when they will be due a response.

    Saying "call or message me whenever" is actually poor service as the parameters are not clear and when you're conducting sessions back to back or having a day off and they don't get a quick fire response, this can infuriate clients as you have not set a clearly defined communication parameter with them.

  • Automate Tasks - You should try and automate as many tasks that aply to all clients such as sending out copies of their contracts, their welcome packs, informed consent forms and client onboarding questionnaires. This ensures the client gets the relevant forms in a fast manner and prevents human error. You can find some client onboarding software suggestions here.

  • Book Clients in Immediately - You should book clients in at the earliest opportunity for two reasons. Firstly, so it doesn't create a big gap between them paying you their initial instalment and actually getting a started.

    This can cause them to re-think their buying decision and if they have purchased a package online they are legally entitled to a refund. The second reason is that you

  • Explain the Results Process - Many clients may have unrealistic expectations of what the can achieve or what is going to occur during sessions. Explain the process if what is going to happen over set time periods that is going to help them towards their goals. This well help you to manage expectations and

  • First Session Checklist - Many clients are new to PT and sometimes new to exercise holistically. Give clients a checklist of what to wear to their first session and what to bring with them to makes sure that they are as prepared as possible.

Conclusion

Spending time and a focused lens on your PT business's client retention strategy will pay dividends in the long run and will prevent you panicking when clients stop coming in through the front door as the back door is thoroughly shut.

About the author

Carl Smith

Carl has been a qualified fitness professional for close to two decades and has worked in numerous fitness management positions across the industry. Carl holds a masters degree in Sport Science and ran his own fitness start-up company focusing on health in the workplace before selling it for undisclosed 7 figure sum in 2017. Carl is passionate about fitness, sales and business but loves nothing more than his beloved Norwich City, to which he is has been a season ticket holder for 25 years.