Running your own fitness business can allow you the freedom to take holidays when you want! Last month I went on a big holiday, the longest holiday that I have taken in 15 years. Barry and I went to Croatia and spent a week sailing followed by 10 days travelling around and scuba diving.All together we had 19 days of relaxation plus a couple of travel days!

Having spent all that time staying at hotels and eating out it really hit home that not only customer service but manners a critical part of keeping your clients satisfied. From the moment people interact with you they are creating impressions, good, bad, neutral, you have the ability to create an experience that will make the people remember you and what you do favourably.

Running your own fitness business requires you to be an expert in a lot of different areas and sometimes that can be an incredibly challenging position to be in. Good manners will allow you to create a positive impression even if you are struggling with some part of the interaction.

Good manners are considered old fashioned but when you stop and think about it good manners never go out of style, respect others, care about people other than yourself and help those around you. In our fast paced world of cell phones and other technologies it is easy to become internally focused and forget to look up and see what is happening around us but this is a critical moment to make an impression.

My Top 4 Good Manner Moments:

1. Think before speaking; do you understand the question? If you have a sales pitch make sure to practice it in the mirror so that you don’t have stops and starts or the ‘ums’ and ‘ers’. If you know there are critical pieces of information that your potential clients need to make a decision practice answering the unasked questions to create a total experience. We don’t know what we don’t know, but the professionals do, you are the fitness professional walk them through the process with confidence and care so they don’t feel stupid or afraid.
2. Look at people; when your clients (friends, loved ones) are talking with you set down whatever you have in your hands and actually look at them. Connect with people when you communicate this respect for their time and what they have to say will set you apart from others. Remember you have 2 ears and 1 mouth, listen twice as much as you speak.
3. Pay attention to how you carry yourself; slouching, not being well groomed – even at 5 am, poorly fitting clothes and uncombed hair all send a message. That message usually gets read as the person you are with wasn’t worth the effort that it takes to present yourself professionally.
4. Don’t interrupt or override others; we have all done this, someone starts telling you something and you immediately want to tell them something that happened to you that was similar. In your head you are creating what you want to tell them about what happened to you and why it was even worse (or better) than what happened to them. STOP yourself and remember that you are supposed to be listening not plotting your response.

These are a  few of the areas that I know that I have to keep working on but there are lot of other areas that I would consider critical to creating a positive impression and opening the door so that we can help people change their lives.

Connecting with people to help them make change in their lives is what we as fitness professionals do. We would like to connect with you, like our Facbook page and join the conversation. 

 What do you think is the 1 thing that we can do to create a positive impression or sabotage this? Please post your thoughts below.