I get long client emails; how do I respond respectfully and quickly?
I have a fitness coaching business and my client base has doubled since I started. Definitely grateful for the extra cash but I’m finding people are sending me novels about their workouts that are holding me up. I want to refine my efficiency to give them the help they need but I feel bad not responding and don’t want them to think I’m ignoring it.
How should I approach the response without being rude?
And because I’m getting more clients, I’ve become more irritable and burnt out. One client is bouncing between myself and another trainer. When issues pop up where people are being annoying, I’m just saying “yes” instead of arguing my point. How do I get out of this situation?
The way you are currently responding requires spending too much time understanding the long emails. Spend less time on the details of the email. You can get your response in 1 minute when they do not ask a direct question.
When you see a long email, skim it to look for a direct question. If there is no direct question, pick one thing in the email and respond to that.
You probably attracted people who are lonely and liked having someone to talk to. Now you might be finding talking about extraneous topics annoyed you. In that case, the person who left you for another trainer is looking for a lot of contact and interaction that you don’t want to give. So, you are losing clients you don’t want. It’s good that person left.
Separating who is worth extra time and who isn’t, is an important skill. And losing some clients as a result is okay. I think you care a lot about fitness, and you like to share your knowledge. But also, think about raising your price so you are talking to fewer people so you can give them more attention.
One of my favorite parts of my job is answering random emails and meeting people I really like because of that.
Penelope