Imagine for a minute you are about to take a jog with a good friend when before you start, you wince as you get up from a stretch with a sore back, then your friend tells you, “You should see MY physiotherapist….She is amazing with backs and helped fix me” Let’s face it – The ULTIMATE business referral is when one of your members mentions you to a friend as “MY” gym or “MY” trainer with a personal recommendation right?
The “my” statements show ownership and a testimony that we stand by what we recommend. It’s a language that we use when we own our opinions, and we use it to refer to people and businesses that we trust. It demonstrates a high level of trust and faith in your ability to do what you do. Of course, the benefits of this to your business is very obvious and works the other way too. When you become someone’s “my” you work extra hard to keep that trust and never let them down either, because they are such a good pipeline for referrals.
According to Oxford Psychology Professor, Robin Dunbar, there’s a limit to how many stable personal relationships that a person can maintain. These are people that you know on an individual level and to whom you can relate to personally. He added that the mean size of individuals in a community is about 148 and it’s at this number that a community has the highest probability of remaining together. Anything higher than that allows for relationships to break down.
This means that its not possible for you to be everyone you know’s “my”, and actually this isn’t such a bad thing. Being someone’s “my” needs to be authentic, this simply can’t be faked. If you want to be your client’s “my” here are 3 key things to keep in mind:
- You should maintain a genuine interest in that client’s life and work
- There should be a genuine emotional investment in their success and well-being
- You should always be dependable, and NOT indispensable
Being someone’s “my” is built on respect for your craft. Although its impossible to be the “my” guy for everyone you know, what’s important to remember is that you have to nurture the “my” clients that you currently have not only to make sure that you maintain a beneficial relationship but as a social proof that you and your fitness business are as good as you claim it to be.
