By, Yvette Nevrkla, author of the PT Business Gym

If you’re a personal trainer with a strong desire for more clients but an equally strong dislike of sales and marketing, then you must pay attention to this strategy.

The usual approach used by personal trainers to getting clients is to use the one-step sales strategy. This relies on complete strangers becoming full paying clients in just one step which is a risky strategy. It results in lots of rejections and a lot of wasted time doing free consultations and sessions without converting them into paying clients. This strategy also requires you to be a highly accomplished sales person. Let’s face it, the majority of personal trainers don’t relish the sales aspect of their profession and few would describe themselves as sales masters.

When it comes to marketing and promoting your services the normal approach involves printing business cards and leaflets and handing them out in the hope that you will get called. Increasingly trainers are developing websites too but these tend to be simply biographical sites where the information is all about the trainer instead of the client. The majority of PT websites look lovely but fail to generate clients or income making them a costly but ineffective strategy for achieving a steady stream of clients.

So what’s the answer?

I want to share a simple strategy with you. It’s a strategy that means no more hard sales and no more chasing clients. It’s really a very simple strategy that will completely change the way you approach the challenge of getting yourself fully booked.

Here are the Five Steps:

Step 1. Introduce Yourself to Your Market

Think about where you’ll find the kind of clients you most want to work with. If you work within the gym environment, then get thinking about how you can actually introduce yourself to them. It might be as simple as just approaching members and holding a short conversation to introduce yourself and what you do. Your Club might hold events giving you an opportunity to meet and chat to members. It might be a referral you’ve been given.

If you operate outside of the gym environment then you need to be more creative and proactive in seeking out your potential clients. Do your clients attend specific events? Who else works with your clients? Where do they hang out? You’re looking for opportunities to introduce yourself to people who could be your kind of clients or to people who can put you in touch with your ideal clients.

Step 2. Give Your Potential Clients Some Valuable Information

Once you’ve introduced yourself to a potential client, they are looking for just one thing from you. They are looking for more information. They want more information about you and about what you do. Most importantly they want to know what it will do for them and how you might be right for them. It’s about increasing your credibility and authority as a professional PT. So, instead of just giving out a business card or leaflet like every other PT, and waiting for interested clients to call you, you’re going to offer them something of real value. You need to get creative because you’ll need to create something of value that you can give away for free. This might be an article or a short report you’ve written which addresses the issues or challenges that your clients are facing. The content you provide here will help your clients to get to know you and what you do a little better, and help them to work out whether you are someone that could help them.

If you have a website then you can start directing potential clients there to download the free report or article. In this way your site progresses from being all about you to offering something valuable plus you start to build up your database of future clients.

Step 3. Follow Up

Following up is so important. You can’t just sit back and wait for people to take action because invariably they don’t. It’s not necessarily because they don’t want to. Things just get in the way. It’s your job to follow up, not to ask for a sale, but to offer further information and value. You might follow up to see how they found your article and get their feedback and answer any questions it raised for them. If you’ve made a good connection with these individuals during your first meeting and through your article, then they’ll generally be happy to speak with you. You don’t have to give away free training sessions at this point. Instead you’re holding a form of consultation to get to know them better, to find out more about their situation and what their challenges are.

This conversation might lead quite naturally into a sales conversation because some people are ready to take action and make buying decisions more easily. But they may not be ready yet. If, during this conversation you establish that they really are the right kind of client for you, then you might want to give them the opportunity to experience your service. You could offer them an initial personal training consultation which, if they agree, will then become your sales opportunity. Pitch the consultation as an opportunity to answer the questions the individual has so that it’s providing them with additional value. Those who are serious about doing the thing they say they want to do will be the ones who’ll take this small step towards actually getting started.

Step 4: Convert Your Prospect into a Paying Client

By this stage these people are no longer strangers. They are getting familiar with you and with what you do. They are getting a good sense of whether you’re the right person for them to work with. This sales conversation then becomes about helping them to focus on their goal and on the benefits achieving this goal will bring. It’s about getting them firmly connected with their goal and associating the achievement of that goal with you.

There is no need for hard selling here. You have a relationship with this person so now it’s about asking good questions so that your prospect can think about what they want and what they need to achieve what they want so they can make the right decision.

Tip – Be clear about what you’re offering. What is your programme? What are the options? If you know the kind of clients you want to work with, it’s easy to tailor your offers and your programmes to meet your market. If you’ve done this effectively, then the numbers of clients saying yes will grow.

Now I said there were five steps and for me the fifth step is the most important. Without doing this you make achieving the other four steps far more difficult for yourself.  Step Five is really the first step.

Step 5. Make Some Key Decisions About Your PT Business

Decide who you want to work with. The more specific you can be about this the better. This is your target market.

Decide exactly what you want to do with this target market, the service you want to offer, what you want to focus on. It’s more specific than just offering personal training services. This is your niche.

Decide exactly who your ideal clients are. Within your target market there will be a whole range of individuals with different character traits and qualities. Who is right for you? What kind of person will get the best results from working with you and will bring out the best in you.

If you can make these decisions about your PT business early on, you’ll find that you’re able to follow through on your marketing with relative ease. You’ll know where to find them, how to communicate with them. You’ll be able to research and get to know your target market in depth which will increase your ability to provide real value. Making these decisions as a personal trainer can make the difference between an empty diary and a steady stream of clients who are perfect for you.

Yvette Nevrkla – accomplished business coach, author of the book, The PT Business Gym, and founder of The PT Business Gym which offers business coaching and mentoring support and resources specifically for personal trainers. If you’re a personal trainer with aspirations and big plans for your business, then visit www.theptbusinessgym.com where you can download a FREE chapter of The PT Business Gym book.

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By, Alan Jackson, Weight Management Practitioner and Director of Weight Management Centre and Discovery Learning

So here I am, with fifteen or so parents in this small room, all of their children are overweight or obese (mainly obese) and most, if not all, of the parents are likewise. I can tell by their belligerent stares and negative body language that they will be a tough crowd.  I’m there to put it to them that the reason that their children are overweight is due mainly to the job that they are doing as parents.  Their children’s weight won’t reduce just because the wind changes and, as the saying goes: ‘If you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got!’

I cast an eye around the room and pick out the ones that I know are spoiling for a fight. The mum with the unruly four year old that has not stopped whinging and carrying on since we arrived is a dead cert.  I can read their minds: “Look at old lanky, here no doubt to bring me another pious lecture about how to bring up my kids. Probably some health & fitness freak with a cabbage obsession, living in a mews house in Kensington.  Well I’ll let him know what being a single mum bringing up three kids on a council estate in Mitcham teaches you, and that is that you get your revenge in first!”

Feebly and with breathtaking insincerity I introduce myself; I know now for sure they can see straight through it.  These guys are street wise, they are first class honours graduates of the University of Hard Knocks; I don’t stand a chance!  The silence is deafening, it lasts forever; meanwhile, their stares turn to scowls.  Just as I contemplate feigning a seizure, the silence is shattered by the crashing of a flinging door.  In blusters the obligatory late comer, complete with flailing umbrella and soaking coat.  Cursing the traffic, and furious at the inconvenience of being dragged along to another pointless nanny state social project.  Her entrance further agitates the by now palpably hostile audience.

It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it I tell myself!

As usual it’s all in my head, and of course they are a great bunch of people, mums and dads just like anyone else, trying to make headway against a strong opposing tide.  We have a laugh, get acquainted and each of them talks about their experiences and the challenges that they face. We share ideas and exchange snippets on how to outsmart the kids, how to draw upon our knowledge and resolve when the going gets tough, and hopefully how to make a few better choices for ourselves on route.

As always they come up with great solutions to the recurring themes, and realise that they are not alone in their struggle to rear healthy weight children in modern Britain.  I too as always learn a few more tips from them for the next programme.  Following a really productive 30 minutes, everyone is really motivated and I can feel their renewed enthusiasm for tackling the many challenges that they face.

We move next door to where the fitness team is working with the children.  As always I am genuinely moved to see these young children, who despite in some cases their severe obesity, exude the vitality and exuberance that is innate in every child.  The children and the staff inspire me; together they remind me why I love this job so much.

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