Personal Trainer Marketing

Fear, Doubt and Action.

Fear, Doubt and Action.

Published by on September 30, 2010 | Leave a response

Well I am just getting set to head out to Las Vegas to see all my colleagues in Bedros Keuilian’s ‘Seven Figure Mastermind’ group. It’s no secret at all that I believe a big reason my life has changed so much in the last three years is that I’ve turned to coaches and trainers that allowed me to overcome many fears, doubts, and insecurities when it comes to business.

personal-trainer-marketing-failureAs fitness professionals we know full well the value we provide to our clients in terms of knowledge, support, accountability and reassurance when it comes to pushing them to reach our goals. As effective coaches it’s all of those things that we then hope drive our clients into taking action, implementing immediate change into their life and voila! Each time someone does rapid physical change occurs.

After 19 years in the fitness industry, after being near bankrupt, dealing with bill collectors, wondering how I was going to buy groceries next week, to being defeated to the point of leaving the industry not once, not twice, but three times, I can tell you I have a faced fear a few times. Sometimes I’ve won, other times I’ve completely failed. Sometimes I was so dejected I would even spend a few of the final dollars I had to my name on a single lottery ticket. Not because I really believed I would win, but simply for the positive feeling of “what if?” Just that moment to dream would be enough to inspire me to pick myself up and take the next action, even just a little one.

A wise piece of wisdom someone once told me, “You know what a rut is? It’s a grave with the ends kicked out.”

I’ve had training clients and now coaching clients who have expressed to me their fears, in days past they’ve told me why they can’t do something, why now is not the right time. Next week I might be having that same conversation with one of my coaches, its human nature.

Frustration, discouragement will inevitably occur and that’s why we are needed by our clients; that’s why you need colleagues to turn to. If you are stuck in a rut now or the next time you experience that feeling remember those wise words that someone once told me, “You know what a rut is? It’s a grave with the ends kicked out.”

Fear is natural; fear prevents us from action, the number one rule of success in business: Continue to take action. It’s true, and if you doubt it for a second look at your client success stories, the biggest successes come from frequent repeat action.

As Jim Collins talks about in his book Good to Great, it’s all about continually pushing on the flywheel; inevitably momentum occurs and swiftly carries you forward. I’m off to Vegas to share the tale of the wonderful momentum we are now experiencing after months of trying to correct a few little problems, the inspiration carries and I know they will provide tonnes of new ideas that will continue to carry us all forward.

Forget your fears, push them aside, take action today. Right now make a list what are the 5 SPECIFIC things you need to complete in the next 7 days to push on the flywheel of your own business? Don’t be afraid it’s never the right time!

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Three Words That Will Make You a Tonne of Money

Published by on September 28, 2010 | Leave a response

This morning I received an email from one of my subscribers explaining the classic collections situation that occurs within the big box gyms. You know the one I am referring to, member signs up, member doesn’t use membership, either credit card expires or other billing situation occurs, gym calls member and threatens to send member to collections. Pretty standard since most big box gyms have iron clad member contracts that you cannot get out of.

Another situation that was told to me recently, long term active gym members cancelled their membership at their local gym. The owner believed the cancelled their membership because of a conversation between employees, as it turns out their cancellation was due to being frustrated that the gym was always publically acknowledging the progress and achievements of all the athletes that train there but not the achievements of the every day people.

This brings me to the three little words that will make you a tonne of money as a personal trainer…

Appreciate your customers.

It’s that simple, as personal trainers we have an amazing opportunity and our industry is rapidly growing and here’s why. The classic gym is failed to realize what many personal trainers have, we are most profitable when people actually use our services and get full value for them. They then refer and send many others to use or services, it’s that simple. Our whole process of tracking goals and providing accountability is the very thing that could greatly increase revenues of any public gym but it seems far from their attention.

Here are7 ways to appreciate your clients:

1)      Create a Facebook fanpage and acknowledge achievements frequently.

2)      Send a thank you card to anyone that signs up. (Even better is to include a value add to really make them feel appreciated.)

3)      If they cancel or miss an appointment always call and follow up and see how they are doing. In fact just do this seemingly randomly to really go over the top.

4)      Send regular text messages or emails to acknowledge their efforts and thank them for their business.

5)      Provide automatic, unpublished rewards for referrals.

6)      Acknowledge your mistakes and give them extra value if you need to  solve a problem.

7)      Never let them miss more than 1-2 sessions without substantial follow up to make sure they are satisfied with their programming.

This may sound like a lot of extra work but the truth is it’s far less expensive and far more valuable to keep the customers you have than it is to find new ones. And the best part is if you work more on keeping them happy they will find new customers for you and everybody wins!

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The Personal Trainer Technician

Published by on September 23, 2010 | Leave a response

I want you to look at your schedule today and for the next few weeks and I want you to schedule a few hours each week to work on the most critical project for your business, your business plan. I would say the majority of personal trainers I’ve met as well as other entrepreneurs don’t have a functional business plan. I think the reason for this is that we are all (as Michael Gerber says in his book the E-Myth) technicians at heart. We are very good at doing the work but in the transition to entrepreneur we struggle to duplicate ourselves or grasp the idea of repeat systems as opposed to just doing it ourselves because we will do it right.

Many people feel that if they are not looking for funding of some sort that they don’t really need to spend time drafting a length and in depth proposal. If this applies to you it’s time to shift your mindset. Though after three years of operating One-to-1 Fitness I’ve rarely referred to our business plan I can assure you that plan has been a strong contributor to our success.

Writing a business plan will identify many problems before you face them, before they cost you thousands of dollars. The budgeting and financial projections provide clear and concise goals and allow you to answer the question, “is this business viable and worthwhile?” You will begin to generate ideas about systems and marketing based on sales projections as you can’t help but think, “how will I handle that many people?” or “if we grow this fast I can’t possibly handle it all who will I need to hire? How am I going to hire them?”

Even if your business is already up and running you need to write your business plan, the value of being able to look at present and future is a critical component of your system for long term success as a Profitable Personal Trainer, fitness marketer, and entrepreneur.

Some of the resources I’ve found valuable for writing my business plan were:

  1. Business Plan Pro a small piece of software that helps you get out of the gate by simply completing the blanks and forming the base structure of your business plan.
  2. A simple spreadsheet to being estimating revenues and expenses. If you’d like my current budgeting spreadsheet I am happy to share it with you simply contact me with ‘Budget Spreadsheet’ in the subject line.
  3. A book called Building a Dream (actually a textbook from a college class) by Walter S. Good
  4. And another book called Business for Beginners by Frances McGuckin
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Local Personal Trainer Dominates Real Estate in a Depressed Market

Published by on September 20, 2010 | Leave a response

At least this is what I believe the headline would be if I ever decided to sell real estate. Right now my wife are building our one-off-the-dreamhome-home and are in the process of selling our current home in a very depressed real estate market. We’ve been fortunate, since we purchased our very first home we have always worked closely with an office known to be Red Deer’s top real estate team. What has been interesting is talking with our real estate agent about marketing and comparing that with our own successful fitness marketing strategies. There are many similarities. I believe, in many ways, selling a $3000-$5000 personal training program is similar to selling a half million dollar home. The tools and steps needed to be successful in real estate, in my opinion, are quite similar to sucessful fitness marketing in our own depressed market.

1)      Identify, enhance and affirm prospect emotions – Both personal training and buying a home are incredibly emotional decisions. In either case you must listen and communicate effectively with your prospect. Identify their needs allow them to get in touch with their pain or fears of the decision that they face and provide the correct affirmations that allow them to decide your solution is THEIR answer. This doesn’t mean you should be insincere or manipulative, in fact quite the opposite the more honest and transparent you are the more effective your fitness marketing will be.

2)      Provide value when none is expected – Every week I continually share content with my faithful subscribers, every week I share that same content with people on Facebook, Twitter and in person. People have come to know me as an expert within the fitness field, in many cases, long before they ever considered ever using any services that I’ve offered. (Needless to say when they did discover they needed those services they came to me.) You can advertise to create top of mind awareness or you can earn it by being the person that always GIVES the answers to the questions you didn’t even know you were asking.

3)      Form strategic alliances – If you want quality leads and customers get them from people with similar quality lists. By being the person that gives the answers via content you earn influence over your readers who will trust your suggestions of other services. Imagine if other similar businesses were comfortable suggesting you to thier lists? Of course there is instant credibility and opportunity for business growth for both. 

Let’s face it generally personal trainers are still many years behind when it comes to effective fitness marketing. I truly believe if I moved from personal training to another service or sales industry I could be just as successful in record time, no matter the market conditions, just by using the same steps, systems and concepts. So can you!

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Relationship Building, Team Building, Community Support

Relationship Building, Team Building, Community Support

Published by on September 16, 2010 | Leave a response

September 25, 2010 from 10-2 PM at 4343 78st Crescent, Red Deer

September 25, 2010 from 10-2 PM at 4343 78st Crescent, Red Deer

Right now we are getting close to our 2nd annual fundraiser and I am very excited about it. You see it’s always been part of our business plan to get involved in the community and find our own little way to make a notable contribution. (This should be in your plan too.)

The organization we decided to support is the Food Bank. Last year in particular the Food Bank took quite a hit with the onset of economic recession. So we did what you would expect and designated a day for free services in exchange for donations, nothing fancy there. Additionally we organized what we called the Client Revenge Trainer Challenge, where all of our trainers squared off against each other in a fitness challenge and our clients got to watch, holler, ridicule, count (terribly like we do) and generally enjoy the shoe on the other foot so to speak.

We were pleased, in just over three weeks we raised over 800lbs of food for the Food Bank and a few thousand dollars. We never expected the additional rewards that came unknowingly with something like this.

There is no doubt that it feels great to give back to the community what had never occurred to us was how incredible this event would become in terms of team building and the relationship with our customers. That enhanced relationship has produced dozens of new prospects and referrals. In all, this effort to say thank you to our community and lend a helping hand also turned out to be one of the most efficient and cost effective marketing campaigns we’ve ever ran. It also built a stronger bond amongst our team members than any other activity to date.

To organize your own winning charitable activity there is only one major ingredient or hurdle you need to tackle. Create a closed loop fundraiser, meaning one that can’t fail. The key ingredient to the success of last year’s event was relieving the “what if it doesn’t work?” early. All we did was specify that if people didn’t donate on the services by donation day we would simply donate a portion of the regular fees associated to their sessions that day and for the trainer challenge each person participated simply contributed 10 items, so there was no way the event could fail. Those couple little things were all it took for us to pull the trigger with peace of mind and the rest is history.

This year a new idea has made it even bigger, we’re now inviting others to prepare teams for a community fitness challenge against the Fire Department, we’ve moved it offsite we’re attracting many businesses and local media. We’ve made it clear that we don’t need any special acknowledgment or recognition as much as we just need people to take the idea and make it their own and come out. I have no doubt that the event will be a success and the potential for it to rapidly grow to a recognizable annual event is tremendous. From a purely marketing standpoint we don’t need special recognition for the event because it will simply happen regardless if people like the event and the lack of pressure or focus for any specific result will continue to make it the best company culture development tool you could ever hope to accidentally plan.

 If you’d like to join us you too are more than welcome, you will find all the details here: Fitness vs Fire Event Page

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There’s Plenty To Go Around

Published by on September 13, 2010 | Leave a response

It may be hard to believe but I think you should get to know not just the complimentary businesses in your area but also your competitors. (The in-direct ones anyways and  even the direct ones that you feel have the same level of integrity and commitment to our industry as you do.)

I remember way back when I first began personal training I was always nervous when a new trainer popped up. Truth is though, the more trainers there are the more awareness there is to personal training and ultimately the more targeted, warm prospects there are. When we opened our studio I recall having that same feeling of butterflies when our first competitor appeared, but well three years and many competitors later here we are and our business is still growing out of control like the clover was in my yard earlier this year.

flintstone_carSince forming my mastermind group and getting to know my coaching clients I see even more value of having a business relationship where there is nothing to fear in sharing your trade secrets. When I first decided to offer coaching I swore I’d never take coaching clients in my own market (currently I have 2). However even that worry was for nothing, I am watching them poise for success and by supporting and endorsing each other it’s just making all of us grow faster.

Meet the other businesses in your area, offer them value and work together to increase the volume of your marketing funnel. There’s plenty to go around and the moral of the story is that speed is required for success and a flintstone car goes better with more than one set of feet.

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The Power of a Coach and a Mastermind

Published by on August 31, 2010 | 9 Responses

This post is maybe a little different than my other posts but I feel it is as important to the topic of fitness marketing and selling personal training than any of the other content I’ve posted.

Fitness Marketing ChairThis last weekend marked the first mastermind meeting for my elite fitness marketing coaching clients. We all met at my facility in Red Deer in an unofficial sort of board of directors meeting. The power of many like minds in the same room (individuals with bigger businesses, smaller businesses, those just starting out or those rapidly growing) every single person had something valuable to share to each other as we all discussed the ‘next step’ or ‘major obstacles’ within our individual businesses. The best part is just when you thought you were a solo entrepreneur going it alone you realize you have an amazingly qualified team at your fingertips. Some of our group are even competitors within their respective markets but the power and synergism of forming relationship ensures that every individual reaches new heights, greater success, and further insulations from changing economic conditions. In this industry of fitness marketing and selling personal trainer I am sure every single person in that room would agree that what we can do together ensures the typical fears every solo entrepreneur faces are pretty much now absent from our respective businesses.

If all the great fitness marketing, ideas, tools and resources that were shared amongst the group weren’t enough North America’s top fitness marketer Bedros Keuilian (and the head of the 7-figure mastermind I’ve been a part of for some time) was also here in Red Deer. In addition to Bedros boot camp superstar and info marketer Shawna Kaminski (www.FemaleFatLossOver40.com) was also here to share some of the top fitness marketing strategies that have allowed her business to continually grow with break neck speed.

The moral of this story…

1)      We sell personal training to people who want to look and feel better about themselves. They have a goal and we know we can provide value and can help them reach it easier and faster. Why would you think running a successful business (big or small) would be any different? Get a coach or support network!

2)      You can guard your ideas with the fears of your competitors catching on or you can share and trade them with other quality people. Working together as a group it doesn’t take much to realize there is no way a competitor can ever keep up all they are left with is desperation to follow and copy rather than lead.

3)      Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy; it’s damn hard and often feels like a pretty lonely road. Surrounding yourself with others provides the emotional fortitude that I am sure is found inside Fortune 500 board rooms.

On a closing note it would only make sense to add a shameless plug for my fitness marketing coaching program. I would like to expand it slightly with just a couple more key individuals. I’m not looking for just anyone but if you think you have what it takes (as in you are a serious action taker determined to reach 6 or even 7 figures in the next 1-2 years) submit your request for an application on the contact page.

Additionally I’m just nearing the end of Jim Collins book, Good to Great, I highly recommend you add it your reading list.

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Tips to Achieving a 90% Close Ratio

Published by on August 24, 2010 | 2 Responses

Let’s face it, most personal trainers are not great salespeople, and they don’t want to be. I understand that and I’ve been annoyed the same way you have by numerous pushy salespeople. But the truth is if you are meeting new prospective clients and 9 out of 10 are not signing up you’re working really hard but not nearly maximizing your profitability. Trust me one of your competitors may be doing a better job, but you don’t have to let that happen.

Anyone you have met with, are about to meet with or who is currently your customer is much more likely to purchase something else from you than a new person that you haven’t met or is brand new to your list. This is why it’s critical to not let them get away and to ensure you close as many deals as possible. By striving for that 90% consistent close ratio you don’t have to do any more sales than necessary to enjoy the best your business has to offer.

Now rather than write about how to sell I’m specifically going to focus on the situations at the end of the consult where a client either says no, they’re not interested, or they have purchased a much smaller package than you felt they needed or would have licked.

When a client says no…

What this really means is you haven’t earned their trust enough by listening to their fears and reflecting the necessary info to allow them to determine they can overcome their fears with your services. Try reinforcing them with sincere questions; if they don’t do this how will they overcome <insert> fear? If you can keep them connected within this conversation you may then earn the opportunity to present another offer.

The Secondary Pitch…

At some point a client will always say no, if you are able to continue to discuss with them you may get the chance to present a second offer. If not by email, phone or mail a few days later (is not as good as live but) can also be a great opportunity to provide them another offer. The reason this may work is if you have earned their trust they may still have said no because the offer didn’t appear or convince them it contained enough value. These secondary offers need to be quite aggressive and show lot’s of obvious value. Things like: 2 weeks of personal training for $2, 21 day free bootcamp, 1 month of semi-private training for $47, etc. Pour on the value; make it impossible for them to say no. The point is you know once they try your service and feel the difference they are going to say, so what are you willing to do to attract customers? (This is why it’s also important to raise your rates so you can factor in these kind of deep discounts at times, but that’s another post.)

The Add-on…

Another common situation is people come in with an idea in their head about how much your service should cost. You may go through the whole process smoothly to discover what you feel they need to reach your goals costs more than what they were committed to spending. If presented the right way to show the value you may be able to add-on extra items to the package for a few dollars more moving closer to the target you had hoped for. Even beyond the first appointment it’s good to make a few notes of what you feel would be best for the client to reach their goals and after a couple of sessions you may present a couple of package add-ons to them and find them more receptive. Trust and value are the two key limiting items when it comes to purchases. You up both of these and people will respond.

By using secondary offers and add-ons you can easily hit your 90% close ratio, the extra investment you make is easily worth it when you consider how costly and difficult it is to continually attract new fresh targeted leads.

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