Regain Control of Your Life, Insure Survivial, and Have Your Clients Excited About It!

Ever want to have a place of your own? This is how you build a financiable business

This week is a simple raw how-to get it done item. By now you have heard me on multiple occasions discuss the value of monthly, reoccurring, electronic billing, or the industry term EFT. If your business is not using EFT or if you are not in the midst of setting this up I’m sorry but you are sitting in a sinking boat and your bucket has a hole in it.

Now maybe you are willing to buy into what I am saying and ready to try to make the transition. The first major roadblock you are going to face that will completely shake your confidence is…your clients. I know I didn’t even have to write that, you didn’t have to mention it to them, you instantly thought of it and the wall of resistance sprung up in your mind.

The simple truth is if you present it the right way your clients will not only not resist, they will thank you for it. Let me ask you a couple of things:

1)      Do you want more monthly bills? No, of course not, no one does.

2)      Do you like writing cheques? In fact do you even know where your cheque book is? Nope, I sure don’t.

3)      Do you like good your service? Duh.

4)      Do you think your clients would like more of your attention to their needs and goals? This is the easiest final exam ever isn’t it?

Ok here goes, if you are a personal trainer working on your own and you have more than 3 clients you are wasting a lot of time on paper work or at least thinking about things you don’t need to be. Most trainers (including myself back in the day) sell the notorious 10 session package. More often now I see the 24, 36 or whopping 72 session packages for $4998! What a deal. Point is these all suck, you and I both know that your client isn’t going to get anywhere with just 10 sessions and now every few weeks or month you have to: track their sessions, prepare invoicing, deliver paperwork to them, accept that they forgot payment that day, remind them next time, collect and process the payment, rinse and repeat. Or; if you figure the bigger bunches of sessions fix this problem you’re wrong, you still have to do it, just less often. Even worse you will miss out on piles of clients that can’t or won’t pay such a large sum up front, divided payments same problem.

The answer EFT, its better value, better service and as a free bonus ensures your survival and delivers your freedom.

You see the value for the customer is significant. Now they don’t ever have to stress about payments or remembering payment for you. More critical and valuable is no one wants to hire a trainer that is distracted by whether he remembered to invoice, collect payment or prepare statements. And no one wants a portion of their session tied up every couple of weeks for paperwork or collecting payments. So forget hiring an assistant that you can’t yet afford and automate the system. By moving to an EFT system you have effectively offered your clients more value and better service.

In addition you know have a tangible business with repeat and reoccurring income that shows steady cash flow. If you ever want to open a studio, gym or for that matter think that one day you might sell your business this is critical. Steady cash flow also allows for monthly budgeting and the ability to work on your terms, take holidays and generally take back control of your life. EFT is essential to your success and that is how it needs to be presented to your clients.

A sample script is as follows:

“Jane, I’ve recently restructured my services to provide you more value and better service. Because I know you are committed to improving your health and fitness with this lifestyle I have stopped selling sessions and just bill my clients monthly for their services.”

“This whole process can be completed automated so you will never have to worry about remembering your cheque book and I can be much more focused on you and your goals because I won’t have to prepare invoicing, collect and process payments and generally spend so many hours on things not related to your fitness and nutritional programming.”

All you need to do further is re-assure them with a simple cancellation process/policy and assure them that missed sessions with proper notice will also be credited to them accordingly. But we can discuss that in a future post.