How I Use Paper to Sell Personal Training

If you haven’t already read last week’s post you should do so before reading this one.

In this week’s post we’re going to pick up where we left off. Now that you understand your client’s needs, previous experiences, expectations and have made them a little emotional about the whole situation; how do you move them to a buying mode? How do you make them feel confident that your services are the right decision for them?

In my opinion there are two things you must accomplish in this portion of the sales meeting. The first is you must demonstrate higher value, the second is differentiation. By higher value I mean more than your competition and more than their expectations. Differentiation will be the subtle differences in your services or the way you provide your services that makes you stand out.

I’ve always created value and differentiation with paper. Let me explain.

Begin by understanding that the prospect of weight loss, fitness, and greater health are all promises of an intangible product. We’ve all been lied to before, we’ve all tried to get in shape and failed, we’ve all bought something that didn’t deliver. Why is your service going to succeed where others did not?

For as long as I can remember I have always used paper materials as part of my presentation. I used to show clients sample workout sheets, exercise descriptions, warm up outlines and sample nutritional menus. These days this has evolved to professional looking color slides with testimonials and explanations of the various forms and aspects of the service that One-to-1 Fitness provides. But ten years ago when many personal trainers were just leading people from machine to machine I was showing my clients that my service included instruction as well as a take home education. ß(Higher value and differentiation)

Likely less than 10% of my clients ever read any of those materials, they relied on me to educate them. The point is about two dollars worth of materials created a tangible product for my service that closed many deals because I had generated higher value than the other trainers around me.

As for differentiation the materials that I had generated also gave me a very unique approach to meeting with a client. Today it’s still unique within our facility, potential clients come in to see what we’re about and we introduce them to a process they have never seen or come to expect from a personal trainer. Now when it comes to differentiation the materials are only one aspect of it. I have always made it a habit to offer my services in a different way than the other trainers around me. Perhaps a unique form of assessment, a non-typical session length, some extra type of service or for instance I used to charge less per session but I was the only trainer that had an ‘initial assessment fee.’ This initial assessment made me more expensive than all the other trainers but it also created higher value and differentiation as it made me appear to be the only trainer that offered an initial process that gave the client the perception of likely better results. (And in my opinion it did, so don’t think I am suggesting you develop creative ways to rip people off, just unique ways to create a different service.)

Now many coaches I have used insist that just have a blank piece of paper that you scribble on and draw out important charts and points for the client can be just as effective for an initial presentation. I wouldn’t disagree with this in that you can then emphasize the most important things for each particular client. However I have always liked to project prestige and quality with nicely printed materials so what I have done is generated different materials for different situations to try to limit information overload. The negative to this is the cost and time generating all the materials, the positive is it has given me a defined system I can both teach to employees and maintain an emphasis on quality control of the presentation and information provided.

Though a plain piece of paper will work just fine for a skilled presenter, the final point in either case is it’s critical you have a defined way of presenting that you follow for each and every client, improving each time until it becomes systematic. Loosely scripted is fine but never totally scripted as you need to always emphasize sincerity.