What’s ? This is THE stephane ANDRE ! I watched an Olivier Roland’s video and I learned good stuff.

The majority of entrepreneurs all make the same mistake and if you understand this mistake, you can have the advantage over them. This is because theses entrepreneurs are focused on acquiring new clients. For example an entrepreneur who want to increase the client base by 20% per year, he/she will say to himself/herself : « OK, I have to find 20% more new clients per year ». And you know what ? This reasoning is wrong.

I’ll explain why it’s wrong. In this reasoning, these entrepreneurs don’t take in account attrition. Attrition is the clients who no longer do business with the entrepreneur. Look, if an entrepreneur has an attrition of 10% per year, which means that 10% of the clients that the entrepreneur has convinced, stop using his/her products/services. Now, if this entrepreneur wants to increase the client base by 20% per year, he/she must actually find 30% more clients per year.

You see the problem. To improve the situation, it’s necessary to know the 3 category of clients who stop using your product or service (a client who leaves the company).

Category 1

This the easier category to deduce, it’s the client who is not happy. This client liked your product/service for a while, something didn’t go well and this client decided to stop using your product/service. What is important to know is that these clients will leave and never buy a product/service in your company without ever explaining why. That’s why I recommend you to put a system to ask those client who leave, the reasons. You can ask this type of question : « Is there a problem ? If yes, can you describe it to us ? ».

Clients in this category leave your company because there was something wrong with the product/service and often these are things that are very easy to repair. It’s possible that these are legitimate problems that are easy to solve, in this case, repair it very quickly. You can use a sentence like : « Yes, it’s our fault and we solved the problem, sorry. To be forgiven, we give you a ?_ ? % discount on the next product/service you buy. This is a simple way to win back some of those clients who would otherwise be gone forever.

Sometimes, you’ll have clients who want while paying as little as possible and who are never happy. In this case, let these clients go because your business is much better without these people.

Category 2

This is the category whose client situation evolved. This means that at some point in their lives these clients needed your product/service and today they’re in a different situation. It’s not that these clients don’t like you product/service anymore, it’s just that they no longer need to use it.

For example, you sell a product/service for pregnant women. Once women have given birth, they’re automatically no longer clients. It’s impossible to keep those clients. But if these clients were happy with the product/service, you can ask them : « OK, now that you no longer need to use our product/service, can you share our product/service with someone do you know and we will offer her a welcome gift, because this person comes because of you ? ».

In this type of industry, clients use a product/service for a limited time so this little trick make it easy to have new clients.

Category 3

This is the category of clients who used your product/service for a while and have forgotten you. It hurt your ego but we all have billions of things to do. We have already used a good product/service and after a while, forget it. For example, I have a Tumblr‘s account. 2 years ago, I often went on Tumblr and for 1 year, I stopped to use it. For my blog, I automated a process to share a link of each article I publish on my blog to Tumblr. 2-3 weeks ago, I noticed on one of my emails that there were several new people everyday following me on my Tumblr account. Seeing this , I decided to use Tumblr more often.

Sometimes these are cases where you used a product/service for a while and for 1 year, you no longer use this product/service. Once, by chance, you see the ads of a competitor and you will buy from the competitor. You have completely forgotten that there are 1-2 years ago, you used a product/service that did the same thing.

For clients in this category, it’s necessary that you identify them to recontact them as soon as possible by offering them a gift (a discount, an invitation to an event, etc).

Conclusion

By focusing on these 3 clients categories and by setting up actions that I shared with you, you’ll be able to decrease your company’s attrition. With that you’ll have an advantage over your competitors who focus only on having new clients.

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-Steph

I read a Nerd Fitness article and I learned good stuff.

If you didn’t read the part 1, click here

Type de gyms

You noticed there are several categories of gyms. That’s why you have to take your time to think about a gym that fits your needs.

Fitness center franchise

In the best known franchises, you will have cheap membership. It’s cheap but you have few amenities, some type of trainings are forbidden, free weight section is limited and often the staff has no experience.

Health clubs/Sport clubs/YMCA

Clubs look like franchises but they have a better service. There is more amenities, towel service, child care, pool, tennis court. Membership can reach $100, some type of training can be prohibited and free weight’s section limited.

Note : Franchises and clubs can be convenient if you travel a lot because with their membership, you can train in different cities.

Locally owned gyms

These gyms have a better equipement, a free weight’s section bigger and a better quality staff than franchises and health clubs. Membership is around $25-50 and it’s real that amenites are less good than health clubs.

Weightlifting club/barbell club/crossfit

It’s a room with bumper plates, dumbbells, barbells and pullup bar. With the membership, you have a coach and classes, that’s why it’s expensive. These gyms are open at certain hours during the day. These gyms have their own workout program, you can’t do your own workout program.

College/university gyms

it’s cheap and you need to paid upfront in full.

You can have a discount « alumini » memberships if you go to the college or university that you attended. If you don’t live near of you old college/university, some gyms offer memberships to family members of alumini or staff, local « senior » memberships or event just local resident memberships. What is great with this type of gym is you can have acces to their full facilty (pool, racquet courts, classes, etc).

Test drive the gym

The next step is to look for gyms in your city now that you know differtent types of gyms.

Do a test in gyms to see if the equipement meets your needs. Some gyms offer pass for 1-2 weeks. During the test phase, go train the same days that you plan to train after signing the contract.

Imagine that you find the perfect gym, you sign the contract and eveydays you train, it’s war. The gym is full of people and you can’t use equipement. This is a situation to avoid.

Here is what is important to see during the test phase :

Is there enough equipment for everyone or you have to fight to have a bench ?
Does the equipment work well ?
What is the gym’s atmosphere ?
Is it clean ?
If you go befoire school/work, is there enough shower available or you have to wait ?

You can read gym’s reviews on internet by searching with Google or DuckDuckGo. Attention, on internet people prefer to complain than to do compliments so be careful. For me the best thing to do is talk to gym members to know what is positive and negative.

Contracts

A lot of people don’t want to have a membership gym because one of their friend had a bad experience to stop a gym’s membership. This for this reason it’s important to take your time to read the contract and understand clauses.

Here things to look at in a contract :

A membership termination clause because for exemple, you move or you lose you job. This is rare but sometimes you can stop a membership if you live near the gym. Usually there is a fee named « early termination fee » (that’s what I have).

The possibility when you’re on vacation ou you have to work for several weeks in another city to freeze your membership.

If the gym goes bankrupt, what happens to members ?

Membership renewal is automatic ?

You know salespersons work with commission so if a sales person make you a promise, make sure that this promise is in writing. Taking the contract at home is the thing I advise you to read it quietly and understand clauses.

If you feel that the salesperson put pression on you or that you don’t feel comfortable for another reason, leave the gym.

Note : There are states that has specific laws. For exemple, you can cancel the contract only 2 days after signed it. It would be a shame if you signed this type of contract without being aware of this clause. This is why it’s important to take the contract at home to read it quietly.

Here different membership’s fees :

Activation fee

You pay these fees when you’re a new member. You pay these fees once.
Monthly cost

it’s a fee you pay every month

Maintenance fee

You pay these fees per year. Attention, some gyms have a special clause that says : « We don’t have this kind of fee now but later, it’s possible to add these fees without telling you ». Be sure to know this clause if it is in your contract.

When I enrolled in my gym, there was an offer for people who applied for registration on internet. Look at gym’s website to know offers but also ask always to salesperson if there are discounts.

In gyms, there is often a membership’s range of price. You need to negotiate, don’t hesitate. Don’t forget that the more you take the more expensive membership, the more the salesperson will have a larger commission. If the salesperson tell you : « No », it doesn’t matter, you tried to get the best price.

By negotiating, somethimes you can register in a gym for the first time without paying the activation fees. To do it, you need to talk to the person who has permission to do this. Sometimes they can call you 1-2 days after to offer you an exceptional offer.

You can also have a nice offer by paying an annual membership up front. Look at the price difference.

Also you can have offers with you health insurance. It’s always with a limited number of gym but look if you have this option.

Stay focus

The difference between a workout at home and a workout in a gym is that in a workout in a gym, you can really make your potential evolve to the maximum.

For exemple, if you do a barbell’s workout, you will have always heavy weight plates to go to the next level. It’s the same thing for dumbbells. You need heavier, it’s here. No need to worry about buying new.

Of course, there are negative pointst to enroll a gym. You have to move there (bike, bus, car, etc), you to wait if you go during busy hours, the cost and do your workout around unkown people.

I repeat, you can train at home to be healthy or gain strength with a bodyweight workout program. You can buy a set of dumbbell, barbell, kettelbell or a sandbag. You can do sprints or walk (like my father) outside with any weather and it’s free.

For me the gym, it’s an important moment of my day. It’s the moment where I’m focus on myself and the society’s pressure no longer exists.

Share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph