Personal Training Business Tips

No I’m not confused trying to explain the inner workings of either basketball or football but rather going to provide you a whole simple system that can fuel your personal trainer marketing engine.

As you know Bedros Keuilian has been my mentor for a number of years, recently he was in Calgary and we put on a business building workshop together for fitness professionals. In his usual fashion he left inspired and came up with something cool to give back to the fitness industry.

On his way home he crafted an awesome new client getting email series, the 28 Day Flat Belly Formula.

To compliment that program and his others that many of us have used with great success (The 14 Day Fat Flush and the 21 Day Rapid Fat Loss Program) I wanted to share with you the sales and conversion strategy we use with massive success at One-to-1 Fitness. (HINT: Bookmark the links above and this post so you can refer back to them any time you need to run a massive revenue generating promo.)

Personal trainers are often afraid to give away an extended period of service for a deep discount or no cost but if you truly understand and have a clear path to conversion than you will realize high value offers are not really discounted or free but rather are a deferred payment plan which can make consistent aggressive personal trainer marketing very cost effective.

Any time you sell or provide a high value discounted trial offer, before you even run the campaign you should develop your 3 Point Conversion strategy. This will work for pretty much any campaign in any medium. By now you better know what EFT is, and you realize that growing your EFT is the gateway to greatness, so naturally every campaign really has one final business objective: a larger EFT. (Of course service, value to the customer, etc should go without saying.)

In a 3 Point Conversion strategy the goal is to aggressively convert upon the first meeting and if that’s not possible to set the foundation and rapport with the prospect that conversion is practically assumed. This is not a pushy sales tactic, it is always win-win in an effort to be the assistant buyer that ensures people feel comfortable enough with you, know that you have their best interests at heart all in the name of being able to make a difficult decision or avoid procrastination any longer.

Conversion Point 1: The Consult Offer – We have achieved about 80% or more of our conversion on any promotion before our clients have even completed a workout in any trial program. If your offer has attracted prospects to inquire about your service it obviously provided enough value to overcome their fears of whether they trust you or not. Through the use of a meeting that helps the prospect become more aware of their emotional connection to their goals it likely won’t take them long to realize that the trial offer is not going to allow them to reach their goals. At this point you’ve also spent the least amount of time or investment on the prospect, if they are to make a long term commitment to you today you have the greatest amount of profitability. There is a strong win-win for you and the prospect to form a long term relationship at this point; the missing ingredient is trust. In a effort to make up for the missing trust this is where you should be providing the largest amount of additional value and the most emphasis on risk reversal to simply overcome the trust barrier with a “deal they can’t refuse.”

If this at all seems more difficult than it seems think about the last major items you bought as a consumer and the time it took you to make that decision. At some point we’ve all been sold faster than usual by a salesperson that was genuine, sincere and just helped us realize if we wanted to reach our goals we needed to act now.

So here is the premise of the consult deal:

Trade your whatever deal you came in today for this better deal. (ex. 10 class for 10 bucks, trade for first month at $14 then auto billing at 10-15% off normal rates) and you really want to add any bonus you can provide at no cost to you. Strategic business alliances work really well for this, tanning programs, haircuts, dollar value discounts on complimentary services, gift cards, trades, etc. The goal is to add about 2-3X the value of the desired monthly commitment. For example if I want them to pay $200/month I would try to provide a total value of $400-600 of extra value in this first offer.

Conversion Point 2: The Feedback call – If they don’t convert at the consult don’t worry, it simply means in spite of the extra value they still don’t know you or trust that you and your services are the answer and the extra value wasn’t enough to overcome that to the point that they were comfortable to take a chance that day. This is not uncommon in our consumerist society because we are all faced but so much advertising in an attempt to relieve us of our precious disposable dollars, once bitten twice shy.

Those that don’t convert at consult should start right into the trial program, and you should make every effort to provide your best possible service to build as much rapport with them as possible. At a little over half way through the trial you (better yet an assistant) should call them and ask what they love the program. You should always be happy to receive either positive or negative feedback, though negative may not help with converting that client to a long term EFT program it will provide even more valuable information to improve your product.

When the client gives you their positive feedback they’ve now put themselves in a positive state of mind in relation to thinking of your services this is your chance to remind them that they are not likely to reach their goals or experience the full benefits of the program during the trial.

At this point you ask them if they’d like to get on board, explain that many others jumped on board at the beginning of the program (which will be true based on our results) and as a result they can still get an amazing deal but spots are filling up. This offer should be similar to the first one but with about 1/3 less additional value. I recommend keeping any price point reductions the same as the initial offer but decrease the amount of the additional value offered accordingly. When met with resistance, see the TOP SECRET close at the end.

Conversion Point 3: The End of the Road – Anyone who didn’t yet convert at conversion point 2 should continue in the program of course, continue to do everything you can to provide them the best possible service. The last offer will place them in a position of a fear of loss, from which if they still don’t convert you should use any information you’ve gathered during the trial to overcome possible objections for time, price, or services. The final conversion process is best handled in a “near end of program results consultation.”

Again begin by asking what they loved about the program, once they have affirmed they have enjoyed and found value in the program create the fear of loss with the following scarcity type of script:

“Well you’re almost done, my promo spots have really filled up, I have only 2 spots left, I know you’ve been doing awesome, you should stay. I can save you $50 off your next month and give you 10% off my regular rates but only if you commit today as I can only promo these 2 more spots.” The deal is now not quite as strong as Conversion Point 1 or 2, the point is to get them a little remorseful that they should have committed sooner when all the extra value was provided as they now realize they do trust you and have seen value in your service first hand.

And here is the TOP SECRET CLOSE that you should be ready to use at any of the 3 conversion points that almost guarantees conversion.

If met with resistance bust out the good guy deal, Conversion Point 1, though it contains the highest value it should also be an offer you can live with at any point during this process. If it’s not I highly suggest adjusting your rates or building more strategic relationships to ensure you can provide all that additional value without sacrificing profitability.

“Well I am not supposed to do this, but I’ll tell you want, because your awesome I will give you the first offer today (Conversion Point 1() but you must get on board today, is that cool?”

Suddenly the relief from fear of loss that they should have jumped sooner puts the prospect at total ease and you both win. They reward you with their business and a bigger EFT and you reward them with an awesome experience, great value and dynamite results.

That’s it, the super simplified system for 3 Point Conversion, just rinse and repeat with all your promos and you’ll see why there are no free programs just powerful deferred payment plans.

Recently a client was asking for my feedback and opinion on a display ad that they had run previously and was up for renewal. The ad was of the typical type that most gyms and personal trainers do. Logo in the top corner, some features or services in bullets, an address, phone number, hours, tagline, but no offer.

My response was simply not to run the ad.

Here’s the thing, when we think of advertising we think of the ads that we’re exposed to. All those commercials from the major brands and franchises, naturally we associate that with our business and assume this is what we should do also. The problem, we don’t have units nationwide and our advertising budget is just slightly smaller.

From right now forward you need to shift your whole attitude when it comes to marketing. Any marketing you do is for one of two purposes

1)      To increase the size of your list. These ads are very low barrier of entry where you are generally giving something away in exchange for someone giving you their contact information (primarily just email is your best bet to get the biggest response.) By building your mailing list you are earning the opportunity to talk to people over and over again to establish a relationship that will lead them to you when they need your service.

Let’s compare that for a moment to the ad I mentioned my client was going to run. That ad was going to cost more than $1000. The hope is that by creating awareness it may generate new sales over the course of the year, however the problem is we will likely never really know if it worked and if we would have sold those services anyways as when someone looks and converts on a branding ad they were already actively looking for the service anyways.

By comparison if I offer you something high value in exchange for your email I can now contact you as often as wish at the push of a button and for no extra cost, I don’t have to hope you are looking for my service today. Isn’t it obvious why spending that same $1000 on advertising geared toward list building would be much more effective? Things like e-book offers, free giveaways, etc.

Now here’s the best part, a list building strategy is completely trackable. Since the ad I’ve been criticizing was a print ad let’s assume our list building program will run with a similar print ad. Instead of features and benefit the ad should provide information about a big problem your most likely customer faces, then offer a solution in terms of your free ebooks, videos, etc. Even wrap it up with high profile consumer goods like Apple products and you have a really solid giveaway that will garner tonnes of interest.

Now in that ad we can direct them to enter online, or by phone. In either case we can measure, by tracking page visits we know how many people responded to the ad, by comparing that to the number of people that entered you can learn how valuable they thought the offer was and converted. And over time as you email them you can (thanks to email software) see how many open the email and how many respond further to any offer you give them. Now with simple math you could work backwards with the cost of your ad instantly knowing if it was a good investment or not.

Now the second type of ads you should run…well you’re just going to have to wait until next week to discuss that.

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective and time efficient ways to provide over the top value to exisiting clients and easily attract new ones. Especially if you are still training a lot of clients personally you should be using email marketing to really maxmize your time so you don’t fall victim to the “desperation wave”. (Watch the video, you’ll see what I mean.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrP63ySU3jE[/youtube]

There are a number of different options for email marketing software, Aweber and iContact are among the most well known and the cheapest. However inspite of the slightly higher cost there is none that remotely compare to the done-for-you, specific to fitness professionals features that FitPro Newsletter uses. You should be using FitPro Newsletter, it’s hands down one of the best products available for new or veteran fitness professionals.