by cabelmcelderry | Sep 27, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips
Ever feel like you get shiny object syndrome? You know what I mean, where this new idea comes along and you jump at it, and then another idea so you jump over there.
It sort of seems to me that a lot of the fitness professionals I’ve met seem to organize their fitness marketing this way. Heck, even I’ve been guilty of this.
If you’re going to make a career in this industry I hope this will help you both acknowledge a flaw in your fitness marketing strategy as well as give you some direction on how to correct it.
Nearly five years ago now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I started to meet, read and follow some of the most successful marketers in the fitness industry. I learned a lot from them especially about building lists and using email marketing with tools like iContact, 1shoppingcart and FitPro Newsletter (which after failing to keep a newsletter consistently on track for longer than a month I am so thankful for FitPro and it’s done-for-you content.)
Soon email marketing became a really prominent part of my overall fitness marketing strategy, and it was incredibly successful, but ultimately it’s very flawed. You see, most commonly fitness professionals get stuck in what I call the “desperation loop.” The desperation loop is where you realize you need clients (generally because you might be financially strapped or seeing your income decline) so you scramble to create some sort of aggressive, lowcost promotion to attract clients.
If things go well you attract a bunch of clients and life is good, you’re busy so your attention to future marketing wanes and you carry on until again you realize, due to financial distress, you need more clients.
Now, in a city, a solo trainer could likely do this for years. In fact I did. But why would you if you only knew better? Your fitness marketing strategy needs to become just as regimented, calculated and methodical as the training and nutritional habits you are teaching your clients, and for the same reason, synergism.
There is no doubt that when you utilize basic forms of marketing on an ongoing basis (things like classifieds, lead boxes, strategic partnerships, business cards, brochures, posters) and combine that with your focused efforts (high value email, direct mail, addressed mail offers at periodical times) and then wrap them together with branding and awareness efforts (like black signs, sandwich boards, lawn signs, radio campaigns, bus benches and so on) you have a system that generates a predictable, sustainable, profitable, long term business.
Now I know if you’re a solo trainer or perhaps even have a small team or studio the challenges of managing a fitness marketing budget, it’s easy to spend thousands of dollars with little to no return, so start small. If you do a little searching you may find that large corporations will often spend 8-10% of total revenues on marketing, we’ve never done this with One-to-1, and likely never will, however this might give you a place to start, you might set a goal of setting 5% of total revenue aside for marketing.
Start with what costs the least and build a foundation, set a target to create custom lead boxes for your business and have 30 or more placed within your community. This can provide a slow steady trickle of leads to your business as well provide a very inexpensive method of branding.
Use online classified like kijiji or craigslist and just make it a habit to consistently post ads on certain days of the week.
Leave cards and brochures with trusted colleagues and then utilize all this extra awareness with targeted email and addressed mail campaigns. When you can deliver someone an offer that also is exposed to your name and image sometime and somewhere else during their day you increase the chance of them buying, this is what synergistic marketing is all about.
Start small and as revenues grow so will your marketing budget allowing you to utilize more expensive mediums and for a greater overlap of campaigns. Just pull out a calendar and start blocking of days and weeks for ideas that you can run now, this is way easier than you think (it just feels intimidating so don’t think, do.)
by cabelmcelderry | Sep 20, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Success Mindset
This post on very viable personal trainer marketing might raise a few eyebrows and ruffle a few feathers.
Recently I learned of an amazing new strategy of adding 100s of new contacts to my list in minutes using Facebook and Yahoo. The prospect of this could potentially generate thousands of dollars of revenue instantly for anyone ready to run an email campaign for gaining clients or selling an information or internet product.
Naturally I was instantly thrilled and excited about this, afterall, having an edge, an opportunity to dramatically grow your business is always exciting. So I’m going to share it with you.
If you goto Yahoo.com and set up a new email address there is an option that will allow you to import your contacts, one of the ways you can do this is to import all of your friends from Facebook. Once that’s done there is an option to export all of your contacts to a spreadsheet, from there they could be added to your favourite email marketing software like Aweber, iContact or what I use; FitPro Newsletter.
Presto, you could add as much as 5000 new contacts in just minutes.
But wait a minute…
Is this ethical? How will these contacts respond? If they respond negatively will they still buy?
Truth is I started to listen to the reports of others that have done this, some were bad, some were really bad, some were not so bad, but very few were extremely positive.
None the less, any diligent marketer knows you’re going to face a few haters along the road to success, so what.
But…
The more I began to think about it the less I liked it, maybe it’s because I’ve been so immersed in Books like Delivering Happiness and Pour Your Heart Into It that talk about company culture, core values and beliefs that I just really didn’t feel comfortable with the idea exploiting what Facebook was originally intended to do…socially connect people.
Everything I’ve learned about effective marketing really comes down to a basic fundamental that I continually try to stand by, treat others I as I hope to be treated, and always try to over deliver.
Ultimately I just didn’t feel this strategy fit my core values for marketing, and it really got me thinking about all the crazy marketing things I have tried and the marketing that we presently offer and will offer in the future.
As things continue to move at lightspeed, and as service seems to fall lower and lower on the list of large corporate values I think this becomes an even bigger opportunity for the small entrepreneur. It’s easy to be distracted and dissuaded from your core values, it’s easy to walk on or cross over the line at times so I urge you to review, assess and re-evaluate often your own practices.
I’d love to hear your comments.
by cabelmcelderry | Aug 30, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing
Does this ever sound familiar?
You learn something new about your business, something you didn’t think was possible, or something that seems so simple you can’t believe you didn’t think of it sooner. You make a plan, you dive right in, you work, work, work and achieve massive results.
At some point you determine you need a break, maybe a day or two of down time, perhaps a short vacation. When you return you find it hard to get going again, you feel distracted, discouraged, frustrated and begin to feel the weight of self-doubt.
I think if you’re an entrepreneur this is inevitable.
Part of what makes you an entrepreneur is that the spark of inspiration can grip you, it can take you places you never thought possible allow you to work long hours and just be engaged in something with absolute passion. Quickly though the scales of burnout can shift leaving you feeling overwhelmed to just plain uninterested.
In an effort to avoid this burnout (or at least deal with it as quickly as possible) here’s what I recommend you do.
1) Set defined work hours, when the end of the day comes try to truly make it the end of the day go do something that get’s your mind off work.
2) Each evening before going to sleep try to set a priority list for the next day, I recommend using a small scrap of paper and writing down 3 things to get done. No more than 3 or procrastination and indecision can become a problem. As long as you get something crossed off your list each day you will often still retain a sense of accomplishment or that the work day had value.
3) Plan frequent getaways, even just a weekend. Most importantly avoid the urge to “just take a nice relaxing weekend at home.” Believe me this is one of my favourite things to do and we have a beautiful home but if you’re an entrepreneur you likely do some work at home and by Sunday afternoon (or sooner) you’ve already begun to think about the work week ahead. A relaxing weekend at home is never as fulfilling as being away seeing or doing something out of the norm and truly leaving your work week environment behind.
4) Set defined times for personal development. For me I start my weekend early and try to engage in personal development every Friday afternoon. The more continually you keep learning the more you will find yourself inspired with new ideas and a sense of new energy for whatever you are passionate about (hopefully growing your business.)
5) Get an assistant, seriously. I was resistant to hiring an assistant but the moment you have one you realize just how valuable they are. Your job changes, you have a responsibility to yourself to find things for them to do, you have a responsibility to them to keep their role valuable and engaging. I think as creative people entrepreneurs more often than not struggle with implementation having someone I can trust and delegate to has massively improved my speed of implementation and the amount of work I can complete with far less stress.
Remember times of burnout or disinterest are normal its how quickly you can get past them that will have a dramatic impact on your continual success. I hope you’ve found this helpful and I’d love to hear your comments.
by cabelmcelderry | Aug 23, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Success Mindset
So last week I ran an email referral contest to generate new names and leads for my mailing list. I’d avoided this contest for months because I didn’t like the greyness of it in association to privacy (something I take very seriously.)
Now ultimately I opted to run this contest because of the success of colleagues in other areas, some have gained thousands of emails in just a week. It is a given that a number of the emails received won’t be viable customers but even if 10% are, it’s often a very winning venture.
I do and have tracked just about everything in any way I possibly can. A number of things I’ve overcomplicated because of my hunger for understanding and information (and have now eliminated once I’ve gained that understanding.) At one point I could tell exactly how much it cost on average to generate an email address from a radio, newspaper, online classified or a Facebook PPC ad in my area. Without a doubt I can tell you that the results typically achieved with the email referral campaign would be the equivalent of spending thousands of dollars in these other mediums.
Anyways…
I’ve felt August to be an especially great time to run an email referral campaign, often sales are a little better than July but still not up to par with the school months where everyone has regular schedules. Leading into September it only makes sense to expand your list in an effort to have a wider audience to educate in the fall and hopefully if enough value is provided turn them into paying customers.
Now additionally a few of my coaching clients have been running this same contest at the same time. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, I always find it interesting when I have a heavy week of emailing, or a campaign that some people don’t like the reaction you sometimes get. You know what I mean the….
STOP %$^KING EMAILING ME
When all they had to do was click the unsubscribe link at the bottom. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t enjoy negative feedback from my audience, for more than seven years I’ve written countless articles for newspapers, websites, blogs, etc trying to educate people to lead a longer, healthier happier life. I receive many great comments like…
“Cabel You continue to selflessly provide some of the best info to your clients and friends. Once again, Thankyou for your e-mails.”
Yet still just like you the occasional hatemail seems to make me doubt it all. Mid way through the contest, I think after my 3rd broadcast for the week (low by internet marketing standards) I’d received about three such hatemails, it honestly made me apprehensive about sending the fourth, I felt bad.
I’ve had coaching clients that shut down promos because one person on a list of a thousand replied with something negatively, or others contact me in worry and question their current marketing objective because of the reaction of a couple of people out of hundreds.
Remember it’s about the numbers, negative constructive feedback is very valuable but negative general feedback is just a distraction don’t let it weaken you. Marketing is about behaviours, we can never really predict them so all we can do is quantify them, if you are ever doubting your initiative check your math to see if your doubts are simply an emotional reaction, if so get over it as quickly as possible and move on.
NOTE: I’m not an expert on privacy laws so I’m not sure where this falls in relation, but I truly believe in being very transparent so if you run a similar contest it’s critical to utilize good practice and send all the emails a welcome email explaining how you received their information and giving them a fair opportunity to opt-out immediately. Additionally bring real value to people, if you are asking for referrals you must truly believe in what you are providing. Recently I offered advice to someone that potentially saved them from a serious health concern, so much so their doctor made a point to thank me, these are the reasons you should be wanting these referrals so you can bring real value to the people that are referred to enrich their life whether they ever buy from you or not.
Below are the exact emails I sent, feel free to use them if you’d like to run a similar contest.
EMAIL #1: Mon
Subject line: hey…
Title: Win an IPAD2 this Friday!
(Consider adding pic of iPad at store with clerk, caption win an iPad this Friday all the details in this email)
Hey, this is Cabel at One-to-1 Fitness, your local fitness expert
You’re getting this because you subscribed to my newsletter that I send out twice a month so you are either a client or a local resident. What I am looking to do is help more local residents get in the best
shape of their life. I realized my One-to1 Fitness Newsletter does that because of the feedback I’ve received from you.
So what I would like to do is help more Red Deer residents have access to my healthy articles, fitness tips and tasty recipes. So I’ve decided to hold a contest; what I want you to do is send me the email addresses of all your local friends, family and co-workers so that I can add them to my newsletter. Twice a month they can get awesome tips to looking and feeling great via their email. Oh, and don’t worry, I don’t ever share anyone’s email addresse, promote bs stuff or fill up their inboxes with junk. This is the same content rich newsletter that you get twice a month. As always, they can unsubscribe with a single click at any time.
Now to make this contest more interesting, I set the end date for this coming Friday, (Insert date) and I’m giving away 2 prizes – to the first and second place winners.
Prize one is an Ipad2 to the person that sends me the most email addresses.
Prize two is 3 months of free group personal training and if you are an existing client we are going to add 3 months to your current Group PT program.
So here’s what I want you to do now. Go to your email contacts, hit reply to this email and send those emails on over to me and I’ll be keeping track to let you know if you win by this Friday.
Thank you so much,
Cabel
Email #2: (Wed)
subject line: Urgent Update!! (Notice the two exclamation marks 🙂
(Consider photo of Ipad again, top caption, Win an iPad this Friday, bottom details in this email, and the top 5 worst Starbucks drinks to order!)
Hey it’s Cabel again,
Wow! It’s been an overwhelming response & a very tight race with about 30 people contributing. Who’s it gonna be? Contest Ends: Friday @ Midnight!
Just wanted to let you know I spent a few minutes on the Starbucks website and I found the top five drinks that have the highest calories and here’s what they are.
1.Peppermint White Hot Chocolate 720 Cal
2.Iced Peppermint White Mocha 700 Cal
3. Mint Chocolatly Chip Frappucino 680 Cal
4.Tazoa Green Tea Frappucino 650 Cal
5. Eggnog Latte 630Cal
And because it should never be all bad news here are the 5 drinks with the lowest number of calories. J
1. Skinny Caramel Macchiato 140 Calories
2. Skinny Latte 130 Calories
3. Caffè Misto 110Cal
4. Frappuccino Light Blended Beverages 110 Cal
5. Unsweetened Brewed Coffee or Tazo Tea 0-5 Cal
If you go to Starbucks (like I know many of you do) you probably want to know if the drinks you choose are in the top fatty ones or the top low calorie ones.
And oh by the way…… Remember I am running that contest for referral emails because I want to help more Red Deer residents. Seriously we get so many positive comments about our free fitness newsletter and our new fitness magazine we know it helps people, please help us reach as many people as possible.
“Keep those emails coming, the best information I’ve seen anywhere and it all makes sense.” -Bob Fournier
So far it’s been overwhelming; a lot of people are sending me emails…the race for the IPad and the 3 months of Group PT is a tight race with about 30 people participating and I bet you are one of them. So if you want to be sure you win the first place iPad, just keep replying to this email and send me the email addresses of local friends, family and co-workers.
Remember to do before midnight on Friday. That’s when I turn into a pumpkin…err I mean is the deadline. I’m keeping score and will let you know who won the IPad and who won the 3 months of boot camp.
Have a great day everyone!
Yours in health,
Cabel McElderry
Director, One-to-1 Fitness
2009 Finalist for Small Business of the Year
Email #3 Thurs
subject line – I screwed up…(but am making good, time sensitive.)
Hey this is Cabel again,
I screwed up and I failed to let you know that I decided to make it 4 months of free Group PT for second place in the referral contest and not three. I made that decision on Wednesday due to the overwhelming response (we just really wanted to say thank you) when I emailed you but I failed to tell you. I raised the stakes from 3 months to 4 months for the second place prize. (We really want to help a lot of Red Deerians (is that even a word?) get access to newsletter for fitness
tips, recipes etc)
Remember they can unsubscribe anytime they want to and the more local residents you can help me reach, the more local residents will get in the best shape of their lives…and by the way it may ensure Red Deer stays of the Men’s Health Magazine’s list of top 10 fattest cities.
Did you know that statistically as many as 3 of 10 people in Alberta are considered obese and Alberta’s obesity rate is almost 20% higher than the national average?
So, here’s what you want to do, hit reply to this email and start helping your local friends and family stay in the 7 of 10 rather than the obese 3 of 10 in our population our totally free newsletter is a great place to start, that and the 100s of articles we publish and send out are really making a difference for some people.
Don’t worry we’ll send them a welcome email and they can unsubscribe with a single click anytime they choose, you have until tomorrow at midnight to do this to win the iPad and Group PT. Help us help Red Deer.
Yours in health,
Cabel McElderry
One-to-1 Fitness
Email #4. (Friday early)
subject line: Holy cow…
Do you love Booster Juice as much as I do? Unfortunately their smoothies can still be loaded with sugar, here are my top 4 personal rules when ordering a smoothie @booster juice below:
1. Ask for No Sorbet
2. Ask for No Fruit Juice
3. Ask for No regular yogurt
4. DO ask for extra berries, water, ice, milk, and maybe an extra
boost (i.e extra protein/energy)
Hope this helps:
100% Committed to your success!
Hey, I also just wanted to give you a heads up, tonight at midnight, Friday, the contest ends. There are over 10 people in the running for first place to win the IPad2 and about 8 people in the second place running to win the 4 months free Group PT. I want to help more Red Deer residents get in the best shape of their life. I want to add your friends, family and co-workers that are local to my fitness newsletter. So please send those email addresses to me and I will let you know this weekend once I do the math (it’s crazy hard when I run out of fingers…and toes…and toothpicks, to count that high 😛 You know personal trainers don’t count so well right?) who won the IPad2 and who won the 4 weeks of Group PT.
Yours in health
Cabel
PS. 1st and 4th place are only separated by 50 emails.
Friday #2)
re. Hey…a welcome email to your referrals
Hey, I had just a couple people raise concerns about sharing their friends emails with us, and you know i understand the way the world is today, so I wanted to send this to you so you know just how polite we are about people’s privacy.
Here’s what your friends and family will receive.
Subject line: Welcome (action required)
Hey, I’m Cabel McElderry from One-to-1 Fitness, Red Deer’s Top Fitness Expert.
You are getting this email because your friend, family or co-worker is either a client or a subscriber of our free fitness newsletter and magazine and cared enough that they suggested we send it to you also. Our newsletter and magazine is bi-monthly and is packed with healthy recipes, fitness tips, and cool fitness articles.
Now we totally respect your privacy which is why I’m sending this welcome email. For whatever reason you decide you don’t want to get this newsletter at the very bottom of this email, and all the emails I send
to you, is an unsubscribe button, just click it and you will never get this email from me again.
Otherwise, enjoy the emails that I send you, I think you’ll find the content very valuable in fact right below,
here is the first one.
Hope this helps you and many others in Red Deer look and feel amazing!
Cabel McElderry
Director, One-to-1 Fitness
by cabelmcelderry | Aug 9, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Selling Personal Training
Ok we’re now into August, that means that September is a hop, skip and a jump away and we all know what that means. Kids back to school, parents in regular routines, time to act on those fitness goals, it’s the beginning of the peak season for the fitness industry. Today I have a gift for you, I’m going to share with you a tried, true, totally effective personal trainer marketing campaign that has been used by myself and my coaching clients in multiple markets.
This promotion uses the following proven marketing strategies, I’m going to share with you exactly what I did AND tell you blankly what I would do next time to make it even better.
- A visual direct mail advertising piece.
- An opt-in to ensure you are growing your mailing list.
- A hot button questionnaire to qualify your prospect.
- A placement fee (deposit) conditioning the prospect to feel comfortable spending money with you.
- Scarcity in volume and deadline.
- Risk reversal with a money back guarantee and the deposit being refundable, increasing the “know, like, trust” factor with the prospect.
Ok the following is a sample of the exact ad I ran in a local coupon book. We selected the coupon book because it is well known here, inexpensive and could be completed easily on short notice, next time I would use a standalone piece now that I have evaluated the results.
Though this coupon was effective it could be improved, see below for details.
Even though this coupon was effective it could be greatly improved as a stand alone piece. Because at the time it was untested we wanted to ensure we received enough value from this ad to cover it’s cost, which is why we opted for the very low barrier “Win an iPad” offer to grow our list.
Your version of the 3 week promotion should include an emotional, questioning headline, something like “Can you believe this? or Does this sound like you?”
You should then use social proof to wow the prospect with a strong before and after photo and a compelling one sentence testimonial outlining their results.
Free or not to be free, depending on the response you are looking for you may opt not to advertise it as a free program. Free generally will produce more people to the next step, but then these people are less qualified and can at times be more problematic. If you do list a price point ensure that it translates to a heck of a deal that is justified with scarcity in terms of limited availability and a deadline. In this case this ad is a poor example, as “Limited spots” is not sufficient enough, define the number, and the deadline was missed altogether. (This was my bad as I was in a rush to get this to approval and realized after i had missed the expiry date.)
Now the offer was compelling enough to lead people to check out our website, which is all the offline ad was really supposed to do. Our website (www.PersonalTrainingRedDeer.com) as you can see represents high value to the visitor, with lot’s of social proof and valuable information immediately available, this ensures that most people will stay a few minutes or return when they have time to look around. Having a big website is not the suggestion here, having rich, valuable, compelling content is.
Where the consult form now resides the following web form was positioned for the duration of the promo.
This form served as an opt-in for anyone interested in the promotion, they could not find out any further details about the program unless they entered their email or called us directly. You could argue this would turn some people away but honestly, they’ll never be your customer if you don’t get to contact them at some point in the process, so it becomes your first filter. Once they complete the form you have a number of ways to convert them. Either they:
a) continue the process and buy into the promotion.
b) Navigate away in which case you can have an autoresponder that sends itself within 24-48 hours indicating perhaps there was a website error and make them the same or slightly different offer in a effort to convert them.
c) continue to indoctrinate them with regular valuable content such as that from your newsletter eventually leading them to contact you about your services.
Once they clicked through the opt-in they were met with the real magic behind this promotion, the emotional hot button qualifier that helped them decide to move forward. You can see this final element below:
Click to view full size image.
You can see in this final step the line of questioning is to serve one purpose, to validate with the reader why they have went this far, confirm that this is the solution for what they have been thinking and direct them to buy risk and worry free.
Now depending where you are in the world you may or may not want them to purchase online, we sometimes find in our community that people still disconnect at the point of actually making an online purchase, so you may want the submission to simply be a step where they give you their phone number so you can contact them and handle it directly (this generally works better for us) but if people in your community are conditioned to buy online then you can fully automated this process making it inexpensive, easy, repeatable and easy to evaluate. It could work with direct mail, addressed mail, email marketing, or PPC such as Facebook advertising, all viable options.
As a final note, we never execute a promotion without pre-determined conversion offers to long term programs which I’ve details in my “3 Point Conversion” post. I can tell you that a high percentage of our long term conversion occurs on day one, most people know at that time they will need something longer to reach their goals, with enough value and solid risk reversal many people will make that step on the very first day, this is good for you and good for them.
Now take this strategy and apply it in your own business, I’d love to hear about your experiences and results.
by cabelmcelderry | Aug 2, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing
July has finally ended! Most would agree that July is likely the slowest month of the year in the fitness industry. This is the time for many of us to slow down, wind down, relax and rejuvenate, but it’s also the time to be working on the systems of your business.
The reason many personal trainers continue to struggle week after week, month after month is that they never really take the time to develop the systems that run their business for them, rather than just making decisions or working to solve the same problems over and over and over. I’m sure you know what I mean and likely agree that your career as a personal trainer is a bit of a rollercoaster; you go from being busy to realizing you need more clients, to finding ways to attract those clients, to being busy, to needing more clients. You might say sometimes it’s like feast or famine.
Since we opened One-to-1 Fitness in 2007 I’m continually amazed by how much has changed, I can’t even imagine being the solo personal trainer I was a few years ago, and the times I find myself reminiscing I usually end up wondering how on earth I ever managed to stick it out? I mean we all strive for our lifestyle of choice which usually includes a healthy dose of financial security in one fashion or another. So my question to you today is; is your business on the road to delivering the lifestyle you want it to? If not, why?
If you answered no consider the following:
1) Are you selling sessions or results? (You might rephrase this as do you count reps or do you actually train people?) You see the truth is the idea of selling someone 10, 20 or 30 training sessions really implies that what you do has limited or short term value, that it’s a casual endeavour, and to me the idea of “buying a few personal training sessions” equates to, “I’m bored of my exercise plan and I’m too lazy to look at the latest issue of Muscle & Fitness for new ideas.”
The truth is someone looking to lose weight, feel better, improve health or overall well being is never going to achieve any of these things with a package of sessions. We’re usually talking about a major overhaul of lifestyle habits and this can only be achieved by a long period of accountability. So why would you confuse this issue by suggesting someone buy a handful of sessions? Sell the lifestyle, explain the importance of long term accountability, and stress that there is no such thing as a diet or exercise “program,” your body’s very adaptive nature requires the continual evolution of your nutrition and exercise habits to be continually effective.
2) EFT/Continuity, the foundation of your security. Now that you understand that sessions by nature are ineffective in delivering the results your clients are seeking; you need to be reminded of the importance of using an automated billing process. Continuity is both critical to their success and yours. By conditioning your clients to understand the importance of being committed to an ongoing monthly program you will improve their results by continually reinforcing the idea of accountability as well as ease your stress with the financial security of predictable and repeatable revenues. We could argue all day about the frustration of the bank fees that go along with but at the end of the day there is still no doubt having an automated (electronic funds transfer) billing program will be the cornerstone of your business.
3) Go with a giving hand. The thing trainers struggle with the most is gaining the initial momentum of their business; you know the ability to go from zero clients to not only a reasonably full schedule and a steady stream of new clients beyond. Let me ask you something, if you regularly attended a health club where 2 trainers worked, appeared to have the same credentials, experience, were equally personable and charged the same rate. The only difference you could see is that one was there with clients 7 hours a day while the other you only seen for an hour or so a couple times of week, which one would you naturally lean toward contacting or hiring? If you said the busy trainer than you would be part of the majority, but what you don’t know is that the busy trainer was training the majority of those clients at a deep discount and some even potentially for free! My point is there is some truth to the old adage of, “fake it until you make it.” Now I’m not saying it’s ok to pretend you have more knowledge than what you do, but what I am saying is that in our free market economy the consumer always has a choice and will usually choose the item or service that is: the most trusted, been on the market the longest, appears to be liked or valued by others.
Obviously when you are new to the industry it can be difficult to gain this credibility if this is the general attitude of your most likely customers, so your opportunity is to go with a giving hand and often invest more of your time for less compensation and in exchange they provide the credibility you need to quickly attract more customers.
4) The art of retention. Once you’ve gained the trust and loyalty of paying clients, how long can you keep them? It seems like this is a huge fatal flaw amongst new trainers entering the industry. Go stand in front of a mirror and think about the last really big purchase you made in your life, maybe you bought a brand new car, a house or something else that required serious thought and attention because it was going to have a long term financial impact on your life. As you think back to that transaction begin to speak out loud about anything that was really positive or negative about your experience in terms of dealing with the sales people that helped you along the way. Go a step further and begin to think and speak out loud your expectations if you were to make another similar purchase.
My point is in most major transactions these days, in our fast paced society, it seems like our expectations are often never met. In my opinion one of the major reasons customer service seems to be on the decline is because we’re all constantly so distracted by so many other things.
Don’t forget the little things:
- Confirming your client’s next appointment at the end of every session.
- Acknowledging their achievement past and even of that very workout.
- Making an effort to call, email or text them randomly to tell them how great they are doing.
- Send thank you and birth day cards.
- Acknowledge their successes publicly (yet carefully as not everyone feels comfortable with this.)
If any of this seems weird please revisit the mirror and repeat the exercise above, what you should start to notice is most often our most positive experiences are the ones where we felt: valued, appreciated, respected or a sense of achievement that was noticed by others.
