Tips for personal trainers: Dealing with client conflict

Conflict is part of everyday life. It is also quite common in business, especially the service industry. How often do you see conflict in your personal training business? If it isn’t very often, then you are doing a great job.

It is important to remember that personal training is a people business and people are generally unpredictable (I know I am!) This coupled with the increased focus on results, means that the possibility of conflict is higher than ever in a PT business.

So what can be done to manage conflict and even better, prevent it? There a few simple things that I have learnt that make all the difference.

1. Set realistic expectations at the start. This is very important but still gets missed by trainers. Whatever the client wants to get out of the personal training experience is up to the client, however if the client has an unrealistic expectation and the trainer “goes along with it” the risk of conflict massively increases.
2. Be honest with people It is sometimes better to lose a client by being honest than to string them along. One of the biggest errors that occur in any service industry is the “get the business at any cost” type of mentality. The truth is that people pay personal trainers for a service and to get results. If results aren’t achieved then that is going to be your fault. This is unless you have been honest from the start and explained to the client what activities they will have to undertake to assist the weight loss process.
3. Be careful about your opinions If you have strong opinions, that’s fine. What we need to be careful of is how we express them. I can be quite outspoken on certain topics and this got me into trouble on numerous occasions. Clients may take offence to something that you think is perfectly harmless.
4. Keep your distance This one could be classed as common sense but if you have built up a good level of rapport with a client, you may feel that you can “get away” with a bit more. If we are correcting an exercise for example, it is important not to (harmlessly) touch a client physically because this may upset them.
5. Dealing with money I believe dealing with money is where a lot of trainers let themselves down. Things like cancellation policies and opening offers not being repeated can cause conflict. In terms of running a business, I believe it comes down to standards. If you set a standard in regards of cancellations at the start, it doesn’t tend to be a problem in the future. When it comes to getting clients on board, if you do have a compelling opening offer that’s great, but if the expectation isn’t set that this is an introductory offer, then you may find yourself in a conflicting situation later on when the client wants to renew.

The tactics mentioned are good but conflicts can still occur. If they do, the best way to deal with them is to empathise and remain calm. Trying to understand the client’s position is the best way to handle a situation like this. If through no fault of your own people get confrontation, the best thing to do is walk away.

Personal training should be enjoyable and challenging at the same time. If you set expectations and standards early on, disagreement and conflict can be kept to a minimum.