Selling Personal Training

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.

Effective fitness marketing doesn't require you to be a crappy car salesman.

Ok last week we talked about how we all get sucked into running awareness, branding type advertising campaigns because that’s what we’re constantly exposed to by big business. We also discussed why a low barrier of entry list building ad can be far more effective and how easy it is to measure it.

This week we’re going to talk about the other major campaign structure, and that’s the one that instantly creates sales. All of your campaigns revolve around one critical component, solving a major problem face by your most likely customer. Your marketing should reflect that. It’s not about you or the name of your business nearly as much as it is about educating, you earn their interest, trust and loyalty and they will be looking to learn who you are and remember it. Far longer than any flash in the pan branding campaign you or I could afford to do.

If you want to sell from an ad you must always provide an irresistible offer, each ad at best is a short flash in the pan. You are banking on the people seeing your ads are actually looking and ready to buy your services. On that note you have to do everything possible to move as many people to action as possible. If you previously missed it you should read this blog post:

http://www.profitablepersonaltrainer.com/2010/05/03/2-step-marketing-get-rich-by-first-giving-it-away/

The free session doesn’t cut it; the 10% discount is garbage. You have to give something today that shows so much value that I would literally be stupid and remorseful to pass it up.

Find ways to give high value trials of 2 weeks or longer, package them with value add services from strategic business relationships to up the ante even more value without costing you anything.

Now if you’re like most you are resistant or hesitant to give so much away for the fear of working for free forever. If you are afraid of this you don’t yet understand the process or you’re not very good at delivering results to you clients. If it’s the later then stop reading and pull out the classifieds, it’s time for you to get a different job.

For those of you that are afraid to give away so much service, understand it’s never free it’s a deferred payment plan. Your goal is to overwhelm your new client in their trial with tonnes of value and then provide multiple offers throughout the trial to encourage them to stay. This is far more effective than trying to sell a package in your ad for the simple reason that there are 2 primary reasons prospects don’t buy immediately:

1)      Not enough perceived value. In an ad they will judge you and your value before they ever meet you, if it’s not enough value they quickly move on. Within an extended trial you can provide multiple offers stacking the value to find the point which offers enough value for your prospect to instantly convert. Which leads to the second point.

2)      Lack of trust. The only other reason they don’t convert is that they don’t trust you yet, but within an extended trial you have an extended opportunity to win their trust and loyalty.

Tracking and evaluation of the campaign is easy, again all responses to the ad will come by phone, email or website. You can get a special number for people to call and track the number of calls versus the number of people that actually commit to the trial and then how many of those commit to a long term package. You could from that calculate your cost per lead, your ad conversion, and ultimately sales conversion down to the exact dollar to compare to the cost of the campaign. By setting up a separate email you could easily do this by email, or by using a dedicated web landing page you can go further to track how many landed on the page, inquired, signed up for the trial and then converted.

There you have it, the easy way to analyze any marketing campaign. This is just a very small fragment of the systems and analysis that can be accessed in our licensing program. If you’d like to no more check it out on the Business Essentials page.

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.

Looking for a new way to attract more personal training clients? One of the strategies I used for quickly recruiting more personal training clients early in my career was the local lunch and learn. Not only is this a fast way to fill your schedule but it will also quickly builds your reputation in the community as the local expert.

It doesn’t take much, 4-6 slides is enough to fill 20-40 minutes of speaking time, don’t forget to always leave time for questions and answers. Now I know what many of you might be thinking, “I don’t know what to speak about.” Truth is you perform these same presentations over and over again every week. Just about every new client you meet always needs the same basic information when they begin.

Topic ideas:

• Boosting your metabolism with frequent eating.
• The best time to perform cardio for fat loss and why.
• The 10 top stretches for people who work in an office.
• The three best exercises for better posture.

And so on, and so on…

Make a list of businesses in your area. Keep in mind this is a numbers game, you are going get 8 no’s for every 2 yes’s, so to book 10 presentations you will need to visit 50 businesses. Try to approach businesses with at least 10 employees or more.

To increase your chances of success keep these tips in mind:

1)      Business owners are solicited all the time, they are prepared to deflect you and say no. Surprise them by not telling them what they can do for you but rather how great they are to their customers. “Hello Mr. X, I just wanted to stop by because so many of my clients have said how great your business is and how well they have been treated here, I just had to see it for myself.”

2)      Body language will show you when they relax, by first complementing them they will let their guard, this is when you prepare to strike ask by complimenting again and setting the stage. “Mr. X, because I know how hard you guys work to keep your customers happy I’d like to do something for you in return…”

3)      Now deliver your pitch. “…I really like to share what I am passionate about with great and deserving people. I’d like to provide a free lunch and learn for you and your team. I just share with people great knowledge about their most common weight loss questions.”

4)      Seal the deal and justify why you would do this for nothing in return. “…there is no charge at all for this and don’t worry at no point am I going to try to sell you or anyone here anything. I do this because it creates awareness, I want to be associated with good businesses and ultimately that brings me more good customers too.”

Now you are wondering, “How do I get clients out of this?” By speaking to the group you earn their trust and credibility, at the end of the lecture before you answer any questions simply state you have two really good articles (which you find on Google) related to what you have spoke about today that you would like to send them. Additionally tell them that people always have questions after you are gone so if they think of any they can simply respond to this email and ask their question. You have just provided additional value that should earn you most of their contacts.

Collect all the emails, you’ve now just added them to your contact list and should begin sending them regular content and offers. (In fact I suggest an immediate series of content and offers to bring them in for a consult right away.)

It really is that simple, and if you are not already using it, this link is the ideal tool to provide content, automatic emails and regular done-for-you-relationship-building content on a regular basis.