On the other hand<\/strong>, if you ever want a profitable business, you\u2019ll need to scale things up and coach more clients. One way to do that is to streamline or even automate some of your communications, which in turns may lead to losing that important touch of personalization.<\/p>\n How do you reconcile these two conflicting concepts? Here are a few tricks that\u2019ll make you more efficient with your communications, while still sounding like the Awesome, attentive human being your clients love.<\/p>\n First, make a list of all the messages you send on a regular basis. You should be able to separate them into 3 categories:<\/p>\n Your list will look something like this (you\u2019ll have a few more, as this is just a brief example):<\/p>\n Let\u2019s get rid of the two easiest categories: the fully automated ones, and the ones that are 100% customized.<\/p>\n Do you have a blog? If you don\u2019t, perhaps you should consider it<\/a>.<\/p>\n If (or when) you do, the email you send out to your clients to announce a new blog post will need to be automated, so that all you need to do is click on a button, and the post is out. This one is a no-brainer, because none of your clients will expect a personal message for that. Just make sure to follow these simple rules when setting up this automation.<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to read this article from Jim Davidson<\/a> about how to avoid common mistakes when launching automated messages.<\/p>\n You probably already know that the most popular tool for this is Mailchimp<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is a super important one. Each time a client tells you how he felt after a workout, he\u2019s actually opening the door for you to show how good or how bad you are as a coach. It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re bad<\/strong>, you\u2019re going to wait 3 days before replying with some kind of generic response like *\u201cI got your feedback, let\u2019s talk about it when you come see me\u201d. *<\/p>\n If you\u2019re good<\/strong>, you\u2019ll reply right away with a perfectly customized message, where you\u2019ll acknowledge the question, show empathy, and suggest concrete solutions. No room for automation or canned responses here.<\/p>\n A Welcome email is an example of a message that could benefit from a \u2018canned\u2019 template.<\/p>\n Once your client has paid for your services, you probably already send out some kind of \u2018Thank you\u2019 or \u2018Welcome\u2019 email.<\/p>\n Although that message could be sent automatically through your payment platform as soon as a payment is collected, you wouldn\u2019t want to miss an opportunity to make an outstanding first impression. Therefore, you\u2019ll need to add a good deal of personalization to this important message.<\/p>\n On the other hand, this message will go out to virtually all your new clients; so obviously, the main elements will remain the same across all your clients<\/p>\n Perfect opportunity to use a canned response (pre-created response)\u2026<\/p>\n No matter what emailing client you\u2019re using, you have ways of canning responses and using them in future emails.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re using Mac Mail<\/strong><\/p>\n With Mac mail, you have a decent workaround that allows you to create canned responses and re-use them in the future.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re using Gmail<\/strong><\/p>\n Gmail is even easier if you\u2019re ok with using beta features. Just go in your Settings<\/strong> > \u201cLabs\u201d features<\/strong>, and activate the \u2018Canned Responses\u2019<\/strong>. Once activated, the process will be similar as above.<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to find more detailed guidelines from Doug Aamoth<\/a> as well as a step-by-step video guide.<\/p>\n Now this is a big one. One very good way to streamline your communications is to segment your clients into various lists, groups, sub-groups, etc.<\/p>\n The idea here is to separate your clients according to the types of interactions you\u2019ll need to have with the clients.<\/p>\n For example, one structure that\u2019s pretty popular resembles the following (with different package names):<\/p>\n Clients who receive most of your attention. You read their every feedback and respond to them as often as they need, as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n Clients who have a limited amount of communications per month. For these, you\u2019ll \u00a0probably identify one of two moments during the week, and answer their \u00a0questions at these specific moments.<\/p>\n Clients who do not need any personal attention, outside of programming.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re using TotalCoaching as a personal training software, this can be done by creating sub-groups of clients. If you\u2019re using any other software, chances are you also have a similar feature. If you\u2019re relying on Mailchimp for your mass-communications, this can be done by first creating a list, and then adding \u2018Groups\u2019 within that list.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t make the mistake of creating too many segments. You basically want enough people in each segment to make that segmenting worth it!<\/p>\n One great aspect of online coaching (for your clients) is that they have access to you 24\/7. Meaning that they can at least try to contact you (through email, SMS, or the messaging system of your online management software) at pretty much any moment of their day.<\/p>\n Imagine that when you add up all your clients, you end up receiving a message, a question, or feedback pretty much every 15 minutes of all waking hours.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re like me (a borderline TDHD) and can\u2019t refrain from putting the current task aside to read that newly arrived message, you\u2019re headed for trouble. If you don\u2019t streamline this side of your business, it\u2019ll quickly turn into a vortex of inefficiency, as demonstrated in this article on Yast<\/em> about task-interruption and time management<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to that article, getting sidetracked by something as futile as an email can require an average of 23 minutes just for you to get back into the zone to, say, build your client\u2019s training program.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll do: first you need to identify a specific period of the day that will be reserved for reading and replying to messages from clients. This should be done relatively often (1X to 2X per day). The most important here is this: NEVER reply to a message outside of the predetermined periods<\/strong>. Even more important: Don\u2019t even READ messages outside of these hours.<\/strong><\/p>\n Don\u2019t worry, your clients will still consider you \u201chighly responsive\u201d if you allocate two periods per day to answer them.<\/p>\n To go hand in hand with the previous point: perhaps you should set daily reminders, say at 9AM and at 4PM, which mark the beginning of a 1-hour period during which you do nothing but answer your client\u2019s messages, questions, comments and feedback.<\/p>\n![\"Coach](\"https:\/\/www.totalcoaching.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/coach-more-clients-with-these-simple-communication-hacks-2.png\")
<\/p>\nSeparate What Can Be Automated, From What Needs To Be Customized<\/h2>\n
\n
![\"List](\"https:\/\/www.totalcoaching.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/list-screenshot.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
\n
Use Canned Responses<\/h2>\n
\n
\nFrom that moment on, you\u2019ll have access to that message. Whenever you need to use it, just open the \u2018Canned responses\u2019 folder, select and copy the text, and paste it within the message you want to send to your client. Replace the variables with real information, and send!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.totalcoaching.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/create-canned-response.png\")
<\/p>\nSegment Your Clients<\/h2>\n
![\"Gold](\"https:\/\/www.totalcoaching.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Capture-d-e-cran-2015-11-06-a-17-23-25.png\")
Gold package<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Silver](\"https:\/\/www.totalcoaching.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Capture-d-e-cran-2015-11-06-a-17-23-38.png\")
\u00a0Silver package<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Bronze](\"https:\/\/www.totalcoaching.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Capture-d-e-cran-2015-11-06-a-17-23-49.png\")
Bronze package<\/strong><\/p>\nSchedule Your Communications<\/h2>\n