How do I Present Pricing When Selling Personal Training? (Or Any Fitness Service)
I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had that really struggled with how to present pricing when selling personal training or fitness service.
It seems like so often we’re apprehensive to ask for money, I know at one time this was a problem for me too.
I was so passionate about fitness and working out I just wanted everyone to know what I knew; and I felt bad asking them for their money.
That sounds so stupid, even as I typed it, but totally the truth; and I suspect you might feel some of this too.
This video explains the exact process I used for years and years, it’s worked well for teaching others, giving them a guideline and method to follow that makes the conversation natural and authentic when presenting pricing for personal training or any fitness service.
It also (as you’ll learn in the video) creates something that can be given to the client to take home, and helps guide the spouse conversation that’s usually the roadblock to a decision today.
Give it a try, see if this helps you.
And here’s a sample of the pricing sheet you can access.
Sometimes the key to success ISN’T more revenue
As trainers we’re still people and as people we have certain behaviours that are consistent no matter what. First we live in an instant gratification world. Our clients are looking for a near instant solution and without immediate success coaching them becomes a lot more difficult. That need for instant gratification becomes a huge factor for trust with our clients.
I’ve learned that as entrepreneurs we’re much the same, and unfortunately for many entrepreneurs acknowledging this in an effort to keep it in balance can be their undoing.
You see most fitness professionals I talk to or begin coaching are always looking for that next big marketing idea, the one that will produce massive sales overnight. Even though this may be possible that immediate success, much like your fitness clients, has little bearing on long term success other than a sense of trust from mentor to client or a smile of satisfied instant gratification.
Much like the success of your fitness clients your success as an entrepreneur is about long-term sustainable practices that yield consistent and measurable results.
I know when I was still training clients I insisted that they weigh and measure their food and keep a food journal. I used to joke that we could diet on chicken and Froot Loops if we had to; but they had to measure and keep a journal. The point is that as trainers we know that consistency of behaviour is a key element to long-term fitness success for our clients, yet often we don’t adhere to the same logic within our businesses.
Since most immediately think of fitness marketing when we think of growing our businesses let’s start there. Every month you should have a consistency of behaviour when it comes to marketing, an example would be an online offer and an offline offer each month.
Your online offer might be a facebook campaign designed to generate new leads. That doesn’t mean it has to be the same offer each month. Specifically we’re discussing one online channel in which we can present an offer, though I do suggest focus on that one channel for a few consecutive months to be able to better measure the results. What I mean by that is it’s not enough to just run an offer, you must also be able to measure the results (just like fitness clients measuring their food.) I want to be able to determine how many people seen it, how many people interacted with it and ultimately how many people inquired further and/or bought something from me as a result.
Each month we have a goal of an average of 45 new qualified leads (20 is a good place to start for smaller operations) and we try to attain those through our online and offline efforts. Now if our goal for the month is 45 we try to attain 70% of that by mid-month so that if we’re behind we can spring into action to make up the difference with an immediate campaign, this is a great use for email marketing, and much like a short-term program change to stimulate a burst of results with a fitness client.
Most trainers I talk to tend to just be using this last component, realization dawns on them that they need to grow so they throw out a haphazard email campaign to make up an immediate shortfall. But think about what happens with your fitness clients that follow their nutrition plans really well until the weekend, on a larger scale this is much the same thing.
Long-term success in business is much more about consistency of behaviour than it is the next big sale. I believe this is why anyone can succeed, if you keep doing the same thing and measuring the results allowing you to fine tune for better and better performance (just like training) success is only a matter of time!
Tips to Achieving a 90% Close Ratio
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.
The Only 3 Ways to Make More Money
There are only 3 ways to make more money as a personal trainer. I explain what they are and how you can use them in this short video.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvayrrlM5ro[/youtube]
Don’t get stuck in the moment, always be looking forward.
Chasing your own tail will NOT make you a Profitable Personal Trainer
Our very nature sometimes has us chasing our own tails, now that you are aware, don’t. The other day I had a discussion with one of my key employees, he’s taking on a larger role in the company, a role he’s becoming very inspired and passionate about. Within this role he has really been striving hard to take steps to rapidly develop himself and its working.
Recently after returning from a personal development weekend he was eager to bring back what he had learned and apply it for the good of the company, unsure of how to do that he chose to discuss what he thought was a good plan with me. Now any time someone takes initiative it’s never a bad plan, Ready, Shoot, Aim is almost always the best answer. However our nature seems to be to chase our own tail, rather than looking forward to how we might develop the future we work backward and apply new knowledge to old problems often never really allow ourselves to take leaps and bounds forward.
By this I mean as you learn from this blog or within your work days many new ways to improve your business don’t get stuck in the trap of fixing and restructuring something that might be working ok in an effort to make it perfect. You are much better to look past that as to how you can continue to develop your system so that as you grow the problem is corrected forever more through growth and the application of that system. Failure to do this has you forever looking for perfection while the world speeds on by to which you will never keep up.
- Focus on your top 5% delegate and outsource the other 95% as much as possible, this is difficult but keep trying.
- Duplicate as soon as possible, find great people and begin to give them responsibilities. This can be a service trade or your first employee but two can accomplish much more than one, make it work for you.
- Schedule your time and always start with the hardest thing (or thing you least want to do) each day. You will get more done and look forward to each day as it only gets easier.
- If you’re a solo trainer think long term, you will never have the life you want always working IN the business, schedule time you need to work ON the business.
This website is full of champions, together we succeed. Share your comments push each other forward.
Raving Fans of a Facebook Personal Trainer
If you don’t have a Fanpage for your business you are missing out on a lot of potential customers. Facebook is so well populated with so many people spending so much time on Facebook the search and traffic volume is ridiculous. As such any new page create on Facebook is crawled and indexed by the search engines soon after. I talk about it a lot because I believe that using the internet is easily the least expensive with the highest rate of return strategy for attracting many new clients.
Go create a Fanpage right now but make sure you set it up right.
Your Fanpage name should begin with your dominant key words. (ie. Red Deer Personal Trainer – One-to-1 Fitness, Red Deer Fitness Boot Camp – FIT Camp by One-to-1 Fitness)
Make sure to complete all areas of your Fanpage, the more information the better. Next make sure you have all your Fanpages linked to your Twitter account, the more tweets you send the more people that are going to follow and pay attention to them, automating this process will save you massive amounts of time.
Now if you’ve been following my blog you know that it’s critical that you add new content to your website every week, in fact multiple times a week is preferred. Each time you add new content add the link to your Fanpage AND share that to your profile. You will soon find your Fanpage with a high listing on key word search engine searches and by sharing to your profile often you create more traffic to the page further enhancing its ranking.
Now you can also easily and quickly send a broadcast to all your fans, just use the edit page link on your Fanpage and on the subsequent screen on the right side you should find the option to send an update to fans. Content and regular communication builds a loyal group of listeners that will hear and respond to an offer when you are ready to present one.
Additionally once or twice a month suggest your Fanpages to all of your friends, not often or they’ll just ignore it.
Now for the icing on the cake, use the friend locater, find people with similar interests (fitness, personal training, weight loss, working out, boot camp, etc) and begin inviting all kinds of new friends. In my opinion this is the true power of Facebook it’s an advanced social network that the astute marketer can use to funnel new prospects to your services.
Delegation for the Sole-Proprietor
In our world of technology even a one man show can have a team or staff, even if their virtual. If you haven’t already I highly recommend you read one of my very favourite books, The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. Outsourcing taken to extremes, it’s a fun read and one of the most enjoyable and inspiring books on being an entrepreneur that I’ve ever read.
How could you benefit from outsourcing?
Well imagine the relief of having someone that can return calls, or perhaps clean and tidy your studio, respond to emails, writing content, optimizing your website, or creating opt-ins?
Some of my coaching clients have already faced the danger of burnout as they dive into supercharging the engine of their business to setup for explosive growth, the danger of course is running out of steam as you hit the launch phase. So how can you build a team if you have little resources or funds to do so?
Well if you’ve been paying attention the first thing you should have been doing is organizing and building your list. Not only is your list a source of new customers it’s a great place to look for part time colleagues. Offer service trades to delegate out your tasks to well suited people within your network. The best part of this is you can often easily turn these people into paying clients later, leverage your time and kick off your group programs with adaptable people, or even better they contribute so much that you hire them long term and leverage them to grow your business even faster.
Additionally check out websites like www.elance.com and www.odesk.com within this virtual world it’s amazing how easy it is to draft a quick description and hire someone to provide a number of functions seemingly overnight. This is an especially efficient way to tackle your content needs for your lead generating high conversion website, or to have true experts optimize and position you according to specific instructions all on a pay as you go basis.
The wealth of knowledge and talent available is staggering. If you’re not delegating and outsourcing you are stunting your ability to grow quickly. Check it out today!
How to Get on the Map!
Have you ever noticed that when you are looking for a business on the internet that Google usually pops up with a little map and all the similar businesses near your location?
It’s now easier than ever to get listed on this map and something you should do immediately today, it will almost guarantee you a first page top link in a matter of days.
Here’s how simple it is…
1) Goto Google.com
2) In the top right corner if you hover with your mouse you should see the option to sign in. Click here and if you haven’t already created an account do so now.
3) Once you have signed into your account the main page should have a number of links on it. Mid way down there should be a section titled “my products”. On the right hand side of this section there is a link for “Places” click here.
4) On this page you should see the option to Add a New Buisiness.
5) Complete all the details of your listing, once it’s complete and saved you will need to verify your listing with a PIN entry. This is now super easy as they will call or text you with the PIN. A quick entry and your listing is now complete and will begin appearing on Google Maps and local searches shortly.
6) When completing your listing take advantage of being able to list in 5 different categories, start typing your keywords and choose the best results accordingly.
Make sure when you write your description you use your primary key word, make it real easy for people to find you. Additionally I highly recommend you attach videos to your profile, the internet now is all about video people want to check you out long before they ever talk to you. Gain an edge over your competition by always having the best listings.
Special Guest: Steve Hochman “The Boot Camp Dominator”
My colleague and buddy the crazy Steve Hochman took the time to send me this video to amp you up to go get lot’s of new personal training and fitness boot camp clients. This is perfect timing for this, while you’re at it you may really want to check out Steve’s Boot Camp Formula 5 for more ways to take yout boot camp over the top!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqj5yEzgxMg[/youtube]
How to instantly earn an extra $5760 a year or more.
Today we had our monthly team meeting. Our discussion had a very important focus for everyone to consider, is it easier to attract new clients or retain the ones you have? You guessed it, keep the ones you have, but have you ever considered the math behind it?
In any given geographical area there are only so many people. Of those people it’s generally accepted that 8-13% of the total population will possibly be looking or using a service like ours. For easy numbers use 10%. Now list out all of your competition, it’s easy to see these numbers dwindle.
Now consider how many people are left for you to draw from and attract as personal training clients. People are going to come and go but the question becomes can you keep them longer? It may not seem like much to lose 1-3 clients a month but when you start to do the mat it can be pretty staggering. Let’s use the average of 2 per month. On average the majority of our clients see us 3 times per week for 30 minute sessions, let’s assume your training rates are the national average of about a $1/min. So each client lost is costing you about $360/month or a grand total of $8640 over the course of the year! ($30X3X2X12)
Now you won’t prevent everyone from quitting but let me tell you, and we know this from tracking within our facility, that only about 1/3 of people quit for reasons other than they are not getting enough value. Sure they may tell they can’t afford it or they are just ready to work on their own but in truth all they are saying is that your services are no longer providing enough value for them to justify the cost. A classic example of this is that thing you want so bad you scrimp, save, cut corners and get it anyways. We all do it, and we will all do it again.
Simple steps to retaining clients:
- Recognize their successes more often. Not just during their sessions, make a point to give them a quick call, send them an email, congratulate them on Facebook or make some kind of simple silly little award.
- Ask yourself can you feel 100% sincere and comfortable and believe that you deserve to mention at the end of every session, “great job today! By the way I am never too busy for referrals, I’d really like to train more people like you.” You might think it weird to say this all the time but in truth you need to because your clients are talking about you or thinking about what they are doing but many won’t actively think to refer if you don’t remind them.
- Deliver over the top service, the next time a client cancels suddenly just take 1/3 of the time you had planned to be with them to call, email, or Facebook them and other clients to tell them how great they are and how much you appreciate them. If you just invested these few precious minutes all the time you will be the busiest trainer in your area in no time.
- As my buddy Steve Hochman says go “APE” shit in every session with your clients. Appreciate them, be Passionate and Enthusiastic.
It’s really that simple, we always make things harder than they are. I see the numbers and the math behind our business every day; I know if you just work on these things and make them habit you will retain more clients longer. After all wouldn’t you like to instantly increase your earnings by $5760 a year? ($8460 less the 1/3 of client cancels for reasons beyond your control.)
YES! Contact me today to schedule a FREE no obligation consultation and trial workout.