Personal Training Business Tips

This weekend I invited some of my coaching clients to take in a day of coaching and role-playing at my studio in Red Deer. I left no secret untold and exposed them to every aspect of our “million dollar” sales presentation.

When it comes to sales success is not about manipulation or dirty tricks but rather helping your potential client find comfortable affirmation in the decision to use your services. Understanding their fears, concerns, emotions and body language is incredibly important in the sales process. In this short video I discuss a few of the aspects of what makes our consultation so successful.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORfvTiS68UY[/youtube]

My Last slide from my presentation upcoming at the 2011 Fitness Business Summit in Anahiem, CA

Today I was preparing my presentation for this year’s Fitness Business Summit in Anaheim, California. I’ll be speaking there in about 6 weeks from now. I’ve really become known in my mastermind group for the systematic way I approach, execute and build my business. In the last few weeks working with new and old coaching clients I’ve been reminded of our (people’s) tendency to just jump into things without a plan, support or a foundation to lean on. It’s no wonder that more than 50% of new personal trainers don’t renew their certification or that the majority of small businesses fail within the first year.

I want you to complete this very important exercise. Who is the most likely customer of your business? By the time you finished that sentence I am sure many of you feel you have answered or know the answer to this question but you are wrong. Your answer should fill 2-3 typed pages.

• How old are they?
• Are they male or female?
• What do they look like? (Even better find a picture to represent them.)
• What are their fitness goals?
• What do they do for a living?
• Do they have kids? How many? How old on average?
• How much money do they make?
• Where do they live? (Suburb in relation to 15-20 min drive radius of your business.)
• What do they like to do?
• Where do they hang out?
• Where do they shop? What kinds of things do they buy?
• What kind of clothes do they wear?
• If you wanted to find a bunch of them in the next 30 minutes where are they likely to be?
• Think of even more questions to ask…

This may seem silly but the more you can think and put yourself in someone’s shoes the better you can communicate with them. Imagine the steps you would go through to try to communicate a complex idea to a small child (or maybe the dreaded parental sex talk for instance.)

By having this comprehensive word picture you can write an article that speaks to your desired client, you can use images that may appeal to them. You might place draw boxes, business cards, or co-op offers in the places they frequent. Your whole business should develop a razor like, consistent, ongoing focus and effort to communicate with these people. Like magic you should just always seem to be in the same place they are, coincidence? I think not. This will set you apart from your competition and immediately give you massive amounts of credibility with much less effort. Not only will you begin to quickly attract your desired customer but other segments too. Because you will begin communicating specifically and so intelligently to your specific group other groups will become immediately more receptive automatically increasing your value.

Ok you’re half done. The next part is equally critical. Now put the almighty internet to work for you, look for the census and economic statistics for your community. From the questions above compare as many points of data as you can. Home value, ages, gender, children, income, occupation etc to the customer profile you have developed. Soon you will have pretty accurate picture of just how many potential customers there are that fit your profile or who you feel you are trying to communicate to. As my coaching clients have found this can be suddenly very different than what you had originally assumed and big reason why you may be struggling to grow your business.

Well it’s almost that time, that time of year where everyone begins with a clean slate. Unusually motivated, ready to dive in and commit, and unfortunately fiscally compromised from Christmas festivities and holiday spending.

In the twelve years I’ve been a personal trainer here in Red Deer, January has always been a little anti-climatic. You kind of think and hope that you are going to be swamped, and I mean there is a steady stream of traffic to the health club’s door and endless chatter about your co-worker’s “resolutionary” weight loss program.

The cold reality is though that as a one-on-one personal trainer your appeal is not at its strongest come January 1^st. I mean after all why do people need you? Support, accountability, they don’t need that, I mean this is the year, you and everyone else is so fired up you can single-handedly take on the world, right? With all this motivation and willpower why would anyone need an expensive personal trainer? Being so motivated and determined a space to workout in for $20-30/month is sufficient. Forget paying a professional hundreds of dollars per month for all that common sense knowledge.

Fast forward 3-4 weeks…

Determination has fizzled; motivation has turned to frustration or worse…desperation. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde, just a few weeks ago there is nothing our resolutionist wasn’t ready for or couldn’t do when it comes to their weight loss goals, now that same person often winds up feeling so low they just want to push that belly under a shirt and tuck it in all the way until the next year.

This is when our BIG rush comes, end of January, February. The time to pick up the pieces, the time for everyone to put it in perspective and succeed…the realization that they just can’t do it alone after all. Unfortunately you still have a very big problem, or perhaps often just one very big objection.

“I’d love to start your program but I’m stuck in this gym membership, if only I had known.”

January personal trainer marketing has to be very calculated. It’s a time where you must consider the emotional state of your prospect. (Highly motivated, confident, self-assured and generally on a tighter budget.) Once you understand this you can acknowledge that your offer has to appeal to this unusual situation. You need to meet their financial objectives of the “best bang for their buck.” If you don’t than you wind up losing them later because the gyms sink their claws in ensuring they think twice about committing financial resources somewhere else. (Which is what they should be doing, afterall come January 1 they are at their strongest appeal.)

If you don’t have a group program this is a good time to start one, leverage your time so you can financially compete with the major fitness centres. If you’ve been nervous about trying aggressive low/no cost trials now is a good time to execute these strategies to get your prospects onboard before they let their misguided emotion commit their financial fitness resources elsewhere.

Essentially what I am trying to say is that if you are newer to this industry you may be thinking that January is going to be easy. Truth is; it is the busiest time of year for fitness but if you don’t understand the psychology of who’s buying YOU won’t be as busy as you could be.

Merry Christmas, and May 2011 be the year where you realize all your dreams will come true.