When to Listen to Your Clients (and When Not To)

You're in the service business—but that doesn't mean you always have to listen to your clients.

As a gym owner, you need to carefully consider when to give the squeaky wheels the grease and when to keep your own counsel.

In this episode of Run a Profitable Gym, Chris Cooper gives you an exercise that will help you identify your best clients, and he'll help you use them to improve your gym or fitness business.

A word to the wise: Avoid member surveys at your gym or affiliate. Your clients deserve your respect and care, but their feedback won't help you grow your business. Your best clients won’t give you anything actionable in a survey. Your worst clients will complain and expect action. Worst of all, surveys make it easy to confuse the squeaky wheels with the people who are really driving the train.

Instead of surveys, identify your best clients. Take them for coffee. Listen carefully. They won’t give you good advice on how to run your business (that’s a mentor’s job), but they’ll tell you how to serve them more—and how to find others like them, too.

Links

Gym Owners United

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1:40 - Identifying your best clients

3:50 - Questions to ask your best clients

5:35 - When to ignore clients and members of the "loud minority"

10:30 - Why surveys are a bad idea