An interesting thing happened yesterday that I felt was worth blogging about, something not just important to personal trainer marketing but really to anyone running a business.

We recently ran another of our 6 Week Body Transformation Challenges, one of the prizes for the winner was a vacation on us, a $1000 travel voucher.

This is the second time we’ve given away such a prize, and something we intend to do on a regular basis, that is until I can figure out how to give away cars.

Anyways, I stopped by the same travel agency I did last time, the same travel agency I used to handle all of my arrangements for my adventure to Africa last year. By no means am I a big customer to them, but none the less I am a repeat customer. Now even if I weren’t I think we can all agree how valuable a customer is. If for any reason you’re unsure you should really be using a sales report to determine your average sale, and comparing your new leads to the money spent on advertising from your cash flow statement as a means to determine the average cost of a customer.

Ok…so here’s where this get’s interesting. When I asked to purchase the voucher the agent kindly asked me how I would be paying. I indicated I would pay with my company Visa, her response was that because I was paying by Visa there would be an additional charge for the fees they face from the bank for someone using a Visa. This was instantly a problem for me, can you see why? I think this is something many business owners might overlook, or think that passing on this charge would be more than fine (including the owner of the travel agency) but as I then indicated to the agent it was enough for me to take my future business elsewhere. The agent was puzzled, and if you are too, you shouldn’t be.

Bank fees are frustrating; we pay thousands of dollars of bank related fees every month. In this instance the fee from the travel agency for their Visa processing was 2.8% or $28 on the $1000 voucher. But as a customer what it said to me, is we’d like you to pay this additional fee for giving us a referral. The voucher, once purchased, cannot be exchanged for cash and even has a 1 year expiry. So I have just provided them $1000 worth of guaranteed business (interestingly enough when I worked in electronic sales the statistic for gift cards was $7 spent for every $1 on the gift card, I’m sure it’s different for travel but it’s an example of how valuable this kind of business could be) and introduced them to one of my customers whom they may never have met otherwise. Why am I paying a $28 customer acquisition fee on their behalf? Shouldn’t they be paying me or rewarding me instead? I can pretty much guarantee they pay a much higher customer acquisition fee through every other marketing channel they use.

My point in all of this, I know it seems like a bit of a rant, is that in this day and age where more and more things are automated, every step is met with a challenge, inconvenience or a price one of the greatest opportunities you have within your personal trainer marketing efforts is to make life simple and more enjoyable for your customers.

Acknowledge their value, absorb annoying little fees because you know that other businesses won’t and your customers will remember that. After all would you turn away a $1000 sale for $28? I most certainly wouldn’t.