Developing Your Pricing Structure as a Personal Trainer in Alberta

When starting out as a new personal trainer in Alberta, how much to charge is a common question. At least through central Alberta the average for personal training is around $1/minute. Many new solo trainers are charging somewhat less and many established trainers and studios like ours are charging significantly more. So the question now is what’s right for you?

Truth is how much you CAN charge is determined more by how you present it to the client. There are many factors of an initial appointment far before pricing that will determine whether they become your client or not but since this question was asked directly by email I wanted to try to answer it right away. Over the coming weeks you can expect numerous posts that will breakdown the aspects of meeting a new potential client and increasing your closing ratio. (The number that progress into your services versus those that don’t.)

When it comes to pricing there are two primary important factors.

1)      Can you build enough value? – Whether you are charging $20/hr or $100/hr the deciding factor will be can you create enough perceived value for your potential client? The higher your rate the more value you will need to provide, here are some examples of ways that I have used to create value for my training rates when I was a solo personal trainer:

1. Explain the testing protocols and process that are involved in developing their program, and that it is in fact a process. Show them the steps and assign a value to this process but then include it in their programming as a no-charge benefit to create value.
2. Provide more paper. At one time I had written and photographed all the primary foundation exercises. Even though my clients would never read or use these descriptions it was given to them as an additional value to reassure them that if they ever need to exercise on their own they could. It also created a solid tangible product that they were buying as opposed to an intangible service.
3. Provide additional unique service or service variations. For instance it may be standard practice for all trainers to measure blood pressure, girth measures and a 12 min run/walk or 3 min step test. However you can bundle this and give it a unique name that set’s you apart such as: Dynamic Client Health Assessment. This bundled service also now has a value attached but when included in your programming creates extra value.

All of these additional services take up your valuable time so it is important to charge for them. From a business building standpoint, remember this is a service industry and what will set you apart from your competitors is not price but rather service and results.

2)      What structure you present. – Now many of you are no different than I was when I was a solo trainer. I performed only 1 hour training sessions and I sold them in small packs of 1, 5 or 10. Now I would never sell training like this again (which I will discuss in greater detail in a future post). It is more effective, especially for your businesses health and growth, to sell your service on reoccurring monthly billing but for this post let’s keep it simple and discuss an end or situation.

If you sell sessions I would recommend you build packages that include an assessment period that creates value and bundles your testing sessions together in a discounted format. This creates a large amount of value for the client to base their initial decision off of. After the assessment period I would suggest you bundle your sessions into packages of multiple of 4 to create a typical monthly cycle. (ie. 4, 8, 12, 16) Now for the tips:

i)        When you present these to your client I would only present the 8, 12 and maybe 16 packages as the 12 is what you will probably sell the most of.

ii)       Don’t show the monthly total but rather the cost per session, lower numbers are always better.

iii)     Use nice numbers such as $x5, $x7, or $x9/session.

iv)     Make your rate breaks at least +/- $5/session.

If you want to charge more and be price competitive in your market or simply offer a service that stands out to be unique to your competitors my final suggestion is to change the length of your sessions. Don’t offer a standard 60 minute sessions, offer a 50 min or a 45 min, explain you offer the same results in less time. Cost wise when you divide your hourly rate into the new session length you can now match your competitor or even appear cheaper while maintaining a greater margin for your time.

As for where to start if you are a personal trainer in Alberta I would never suggest you start below $50/session. And a good rule of thumb is that as you grow about 5-8% of your clients should complain about your prices, otherwise you are not charging as much as you could. As my coach used to always tell me go increase your rates by $8/session right now.