Have you ever heard of the puppy dog close in the world of sales? It is where you give the prospect (potential client) the puppy to take home for a week to fall in love with. After the week you go and collect payment and 90% of the time the prospect will not be willing to part with the puppy. So how does this relate to selling Personal Training? Providing a sample of two complimentary Personal Training sessions is a variation of the puppy dog close. If you offer first class service and deliver great value during these complimentary sessions you should be able to convert a very high percentage of prospects to full fee paying clients as these clients have experienced a service that they don’t want taken away from them. I highly recommend the strategy of offering complimentary sessions while your Personal Training business is in it’s infancy and believe you should consider the time spent in these sessions as part of your marketing budget.

Once you start to establish a list of paying clients you should start to see the magic of referral business kick in provided you deliver a great service, and have learnt how to ask for referrals and can effectively sell. According to IHRSA (the largest health club body in the world) 46% of new business for Personal Trainers comes from word of mouth referral. When this happens you will find that you don’t need to do many or any complimentary sessions as these clients are often “pre-sold” by their friends. However, until you get to that point you will find offering complimentary sessions or as I call them a “test drive” and effective business building strategy.

As the saying goes if we fail to plan then we plan to fail. With this in mind the importance of an Annual Strategy for a business becomes vital as it really is a road map for success which gives direction to the efforts of the business owner.

The way to start developing your annual strategy is to imagine it is Christmas Eve 2010 and to picture what it is that you have achieved in your business? This means visualising how much money you have earned? Making a list of the things you want in your business i.e. a new website, 2 corporate clients, deliver 5 workshops, have 10 outdoor group sessions, and 20 one on one clients each week. The more measurable these things are the better. This process of starting with the end in mind is called reverse engineering.

Once you have 5-6 key measurables for the year then ask yourself why is it important to reach these goals? This means asking yourself what will it mean to earn X dollars? What does it represent to you? Keep going to the why? Eventually we want to come up with a single word. For example, hitting my financial goals each year is represented by the word CHOICE. The reason being that having a good income means that there are more choices available to me in terms of products or services I can purchase, the length and destination of holidays I can choose from, etc. What I am getting at here is that money is a lot like weight loss, in that I don’t believe that people are motivated by actually losing weight - rather it is the benefits that losing weight represents like being more attractive, being able to play with kids, finding a partner, or fitting back into an old pair of jeans. 

The next piece of the Annual Strategy puzzle is to brainstorm a meaningful reward to give yourself once you reach your goal and to visualise the satisfaction that comes with achievement. For example, when I hit my financial goals this year I will be taking my family on a 2 week holiday to Queensland and I will be well satisfied with my efforts for the year as I know that for me to achieve my goals I will have helped a number of fitness leaders achieve theirs.

One of the reasons that it is important to go through the whole Annual Strategy process is that when the inevitable ups and downs of the business occur you can refer back to what drives you and the rewards that hitting your business goals will bring. I recommend spending up to an hour each day around planning your time and efforts and then give each day your best effort. Look after your health and understand more is not always better in terms of hours spent working. You can be just as effective in 2 hours as 10 if you have the drive. Finally review each day and look at what was good, great and what can you do better. Using a journal is a great way to do this.

Once you have written up your Annual Strategy you should hang up in your office so that you see it everyday. I advise that you should read it everyday as it will slowly morph into your subconscious so that you live and breathe it.

Once the outcome of the Annual Strategy is determined then it should be broken down into bite size pieces. What this means is to set a quarterly strategy and then to break this down into monthly strategies and finally daily actions. You should develop strategies around income, expenditure, product development, and personal development. It is really important to know your numbers and to track these ideally through a scorecard system and to keep the personal development process occurring as up skilling can remove potential barriers to success. A really good example of a monthly strategy would be as follows:

This month I will earn $10,450. I will do this by completing 84 world-class PT sessions @ $100 per session and having enjoyable fun in testing my outdoor group participants and delivering 12 sessions @ $150 per session. I will sell my e-book and audio download for $50 to 5 people this month. By earning this money this month I will serve my mission of creating a healthier population plus help to build one step closer to my annual goal. I will work hard on my sales skills by reading ‘Killing the Sale’ by Todd Duncan. Further to this I am avoiding being broke and not having money to do what I want when I want. This will be a great month of business.

The Annual Strategy is then broken down into the monthly tactics which is where the rubber hits the road and you nail down specific outcomes that need to occur each month. Monthly tactics would be having 2-5 specific tactics for each revenue bucket and specific personal development actions.

Having coached so many fitness professionals through the Annual Strategy process I know it to be the most effective way of achieving what you are after from your business in 2010, so if you don’t have a written Annual Strategy in place I implore you to start working on one today.   

This edited article from Mike Mahler gives an excellent description of some of the most common mistakes people make in relation to weight training.

Mistake #1: Not Keeping A Training Journal

Imagine running a business without keeping any records. You just keep working and hope that you are making more than you are spending. You have no way of knowing for sure if you are even making a profit and no way of knowing for sure if you are improving each month. Without proper accounting, a business is doomed. Training is no different. When you keep a training journal you keep yourself accountable. You learn what works and what does not work. You learn how lack of sleep affects training and how stress in your life affects training. An honest training journal allows you to avoid having the illusion that you are making progress when you not making any progress at all. Do not just write down what you did at each workout.

Write down other things that are going on in your life. If you had a great workout think about what happened to result in a great workout that day.

Did you sleep well the night before? What did you eat before the session?

Were you in a good mood that day? Did you take a new pre-workout supplement? The more you know, the more you are likely to repeat the same feeling at another workout. On the other hand, if you had a terrible workout, think about the factors that may have contributed to that and see if you can avoid them in the future.

Another reason to keep a training journal is that there is a natural human drive to want to improve. If you know what the number is, you will want to beat it at the next workout. If you have no idea what you are doing at each workout, how will you know if you are moving forward or not.

Mistake #2: Training For The Stimulus Rather For Results

Go to any gym and you will see trainees that have been doing the same workout for many years. They are doing the same exercises; same weights;same workout order, and enjoy the same lack of results. As the saying goes expecting different results from the same actions is a form of insanity. Many trainees become process oriented in which they just go through the motions at each workout. Now, do not get me wrong, going through the motions is better than not doing anything at all. Moreover, training for the stimulus is not necessarily a negative thing. If the stimulus of training makes you feel better then your time is not wasted completely at the workout. However, if you want to make progress, you have to be results oriented rather than process oriented or attached to the stimulus. Your discipline will be rewarded with progress in training rather than stagnation in training.

Getting more reps in a workout, using more weight, getting more done in less time, are all forms of progress measurement. In addition to being focused on the results, you want to be focused on the most efficient path to the result. If you can achieve a goal in three weeks with three workouts per week rather than six, why do six? Why do more, if you are not going to get improved results? Sure, the extra work is worth applying for an improved outcome, but not for the same outcome or worse yet an inferior outcome. Focus on achieving results and measuring your work and you will have no doubt that you are moving forward.

Mistake #3: Lack Of Focus

Ever get excited about one thing, and then two minutes later, forget about it and get excited about something else? Sure, all of us probably have at somepoint. Regardless, to get good at something you have to put in some time. People that get bored easily are most likely people that fail often. Staying on course takes focus and discipline and the ability to manage boredom. I think that failing at everything is more boring than getting good at a few things. Now when it comes to training programs, there are a lot of options and it can be difficult to pick one. Regardless, it is critical that you do exactly that and stick with one program for at least three weeks. Just make sure that you have a clear idea of what the program that you pick entails. If you are going to start a high volume-training regimen, make sure that you do it at a time in your life in which you are sleeping well, have time to eat well, and have time to train consistently. If you have a lot of stress in your life and an erratic schedule, pick a program that is more appropriate for that situation. Once you get started, stick with the program for a while. Pick one goal, accomplish it and then move on. You should know exactly what you are going to do at 90% of your workouts and what the end result is. Going to a job and punching in hours might work for nine to fivers, but will not work for training. Do not start a workout without knowing what you are trying to accomplish. Do not start a set, without knowing how many reps you are going for. Just remember that lack of focus and lack of discipline will equal lack of results. Imagine opening a bike shop and then closing it the next day and deciding to sell lampshades instead. Then a week later, you decide that you want to be a personal trainer. Chances are high that you will fail at everything that you try, as you do not have the focus and discipline to finish what you start. If you change your mind every two minutes in business, you inevitably go under. It will not be a question of if, but a question of when.

Training is not any different. Know the target and go after it until it is achieved. Then switch gears. Remember that it is easy to start a project and much harder to finish what you start.

Mistake #4: Assuming Training Has To Be Complicated To Be Effective

Strength training is not rocket science. Your program does not have to involve what is the equivalent of a calculus equation to be effective. In fact, the more complicated a program is, the more likely it is to fail.

Develop a strong foundation in the basics and focus on exercises that will give you the most bang for your buck. Forget about tons of exercises for your arms when you can only bench press 185 and squat 155. Forget about bicep specialization programs when you cannot even do a pull-up. I often get emails from trainees that are beginners that train six days per week in which they designate a day for each body part. Such programs may be fine for experienced trainees that have a solid foundation. However, for beginners it is far from the best path to take. Full body workouts with a focus on compound exercises such as the: Deadlift, Barbell Squat, Bench Press, Military Press, Bent-over Row, and Pull-up is a great place to start.

Get your bench press up to 300lbs, Military Press up to 200lbs and Deadlift up to 400lbs before you think about complicated routines.

Mistake #5: Training With Maximum Intensity Too Often

No doubt that productive weight training takes lots of hard work. Regardless with the exception of money and sex, too much of anything is not always the most productive path to take. Training with maximum intensity too frequently will fry your central nervous system. Once that happens you will become sluggish mentally and your body will follow accordingly. In other words, everything will feel heavy in the gym and you will feel out of sync. The harder you train the less frequently you can train. However, training infrequently is not ideal either. Training is a skill and like playing the piano or learning a new language, it is something that has to be practiced often.

The more you do something without burning out the better you will get and the more efficient you will become. If you are on a program in which you do the Military Press once every two weeks and are not doing any exercises that are similar to the Military press in between each session, each time you execute the Military Press it will feel like you are doing it for the first time.

Take some advice from top strength coach Pavel Tsatsouline and treat the majority of your workouts as practices. Every once in a while do a maximum effort such as every 10-14 days to see how you are progressing and to keep you excited about training.

Mistake #6: Not Having A Life Outside Of Training

 Real strength goes far beyond what you can do physically. If someone can bench press 500lbs but is weak mentally and morally, then that person does not have complete strength. One of the greatest benefits of physical training is the confidence and strength you build in that arena can be carried over to other areas of your life. The confidence that you build with productive strength training should be carried over to other areas of your life. If the gym is the only place in which you feel comfortable and confident, then you have missed out on the major benefits of training.

Visual Coaching Pro Software Version 1.0.2.0

Tips

Start with the feet or shins on the stability ball with the body in a straight position.

The supporting hand should be under the shoulder with the shoulder blades flat against the ribs.

Raise the arm to the side until it is approximately in line with the shoulder then return it to the start position. Keep the rest of the body stationary as the arm is raised.

Cautions

Maintain a rigid torso & keep the neck in line with the spine.

Do not allow the spine to sag while in a horizontal position.

“I’m not a sales person by nature.”Something I used to tell myself all the time. I know as fitness professional that high-pressure sales tactics don’t come naturally to us. That is a good thing. But a lot of us hold the belief that a sales person is supposed to be someone who is pushy. I’ve come to learn that selling has absolutely nothing to do with pressuring people. Nor should you place any pressure on yourself. Selling your services requires nothing more than having a conversation with fitness prospect.

If you can’t hold a conversation with a person then you are probably in the wrong industry in the first place. During the time you are talking you will find out whether or not you and that person are a good fit for one another. If you are, great! If you aren’t, it’s no big deal. There will be more prospects, right? In case, you haven’t noticed the majority of people need your help! Thanks to the fast-food business, even China is becoming obese. In a selling situation you always get back what you put out. Meaning, however you are acting is how the prospect you are communicating with will respond. If you are acting a little nervous the prospect will sense it and may begin to get nervous about hiring you. If you are acting a little pushy your prospect will sense it and begin to push back. Just relax and talk to the person. Your prospective client should be doing the vast majority of the talking. Sales are about them, not about you. It’s natural for any person to want to rant and rave about the terrific services they provide and all the wonderful things they can do for that person.

But it’s even harder for us as fitness professionals because we have the ability to help people like few other professions can. However, you have to do it. You must listen to what they want. It’s not your money, yet, it’s their money. If you want to get a new client you’d better listen for what it will take to get them as a client. It really is incredible what happens when you listen to your fitness prospects. They will tell you exactly what it is they want from you. By simply repeating back to them that you will provide them (assuming you can) with the exact results they are looking for, you’ll probably have a new client.

The following article from one of my favorite authors in Alwyn Cosgrove is a very thought provoking one on the merits of doing a lot of isolation exercise for hypertrophy goals. Just about every young man and woman who want to increase their muscle mass think it is a crime not to do bicep curls and direct triceps work. However as anyone who has ever done a Certificate III or IV in Fitness course with me would know, is that when a person does compound exercises like Chin Ups and Bench Presses to muscular failure the weakest link in the chain is always either Biceps or Triceps. What does this mean - you do not need to go anywhere near isolated arm exercises until you have gotten very strong on the compound exercises first. I will let Alwyn take up the story …

“All the talk about body part training versus full body routines, isolation exercise versus compound exercise etc is based upon a fundamentally flawed concept - that hypertrophy is somehow completely regionally specific.

Here’s a study that examines this in a bit more detail:

Rogers et al
The Effect of Supplemental Isolated Weight-Training Exercises on Upper-Arm Size and Upper-Body Strength
Human Performance Laboratory, Ball State University, Muncie, IN.
NSCA Conference Abstract (2000)

The researchers compared the effects of a weight training program on 5RM strength and arm circumference and divided the subjects into two groups.

Group One performed four compound upper body exercises

Group Two used the same program but included bicep curls and triceps extension

The results showed that both groups significantly increased strength and arm size

However - the addition of direct arm training to group two produced no additional effect on strength or arm circumference after 10 weeks of training. The additional localised training did not result in anything that the bigger compound exercises didn’t provide.

Let me present a hypothetical example:

Twin brothers eating the same diet, working at the same job. Three times a week for the next 52 weeks - both brothers undertake a progressive resistance training program - each adding weight, sets or reps in a logical manner over the whole year.

One difference the first brother does deadlifts only. The second brother does arm curls only.

After a year - who do you think will be bigger overall? Including bigger arms? Obviously it will be the first brother - who put more overall stress and load through his system. Even though he didn’t bend his elbow at all.

Charles Poliquin is fond of quoting that - in order to gain an inch on your arm - you’d have to gain 10lbs of muscle mass. If that’s true - it will happen a lot sooner with an exercise like the deadlift than it will with the dumbbell curl.

Bottom line is that muscle growth is a systemic issue - not a localized one. If I put a stress on the forearm only — it would grow of course — but there would be a limit to that as the systemic load is small. But if you did deadlifts - the systemic load would be so big - everything would grow.

And when we think about anabolics or anything that can enhance muscle growth - they are injected or consumed into the system. You don’t inject steroids in equal amounts into every muscle group. You don’t rub Surge or another post workout recovery drink on your arms - increased protein synthesis is a systemic phenomenon.

Therefore why not develop training strategies that target the entire system at once if hypertrophy is what we want?”

Visual Coaching Pro Software Version 1.0.2.0

Tips

Starting with the dumbbells in the shoulder carry position, step sideways off the box then press the hands towards the feet. Push firmly back to the start position & repeat the movements to both sides.

A medicine ball or weights plate may be used as an alternative form of resistance.

Either maintain neutral curves in the spine or allow the spine to flex slightly. If a slight amount of spinal flexion is adopted, it should be prescribed & supervised by an exercise professional.

Cautions

Ensure that the box is stable.

If you have a history of spinal injury or other spinal pathologies, seek professional advice prior to commencing this exercise.

One of the biggest challenges confronting Personal Trainers is self-belief. There is a saying that best sums up self belief “whether you think you can or you think you can’t you are probably right”.  I know many trainers who would either like to start up a business or take their current business to the next level but there always seems to be something stopping them. More often than not that “something” is a limiting self belief. Thinking you might not achieve your goals or that you are not worthy of success will ultimately lead to failure unless you can turn those thoughts around.

My background in sport and fitness instructing has taught me that one of the easiest things in life is to spot a fault, however it is a far harder thing to correct. This same philosophy translated into business and in understanding that limiting thinking is probably the cause of why many are not achieving as much from life as they would like the question becomes - what can you do about suffering from low self belief?

The first step is to define what success is for you? For me in a business sense it is about achieving a level of financial independence where I can do what I want, with who I want, whenever I want. Coupled with this are goals around maintaining an optimal level of health & fitness, being the best husband and father I can be, as well as a commitment to lifelong learning, and then passing my experience to other through teaching, coaching and mentoring.

Once you have an understanding of what you goals really are it is like having a fog lifted from your life and you are able to see clearly and take positive steps in the direction you want your life to move in on a daily basis. The great business coach Zig Ziglar is famous for saying “the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is that a millionaire reads his/her goals once a day while a billionaire reads his/her goals twice a day”. The key learning point from this quote is about having clarity in what you want to achieve.

Another great tactic for developing a greater self belief is to ask yourself better questions, i.e. when you see someone doing something that you would like to do or achieving a result that you would like to achieve, ask yourself “What would I have to do or change to make that happen for me?” When you ask yourself better questions a magic thing happens - you get better answers and uncertainty about whether or not you will achieve your stated goals will often start to disappear.

Your beliefs can create your reality, so forming positive beliefs is the first step to achieving positive outcomes. An example of this philosophy in practice would be to look at a statistic that says 90% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years. Someone with a positive belief system would focus on the 10% of business that do succeed and would ask themselves good quality questions about what those 10% of businesses are doing and then modelling a number of their business practices.

One of the ways I have changed my beliefs is to constantly look at people who are doing things better than me and to learn from them. There is real power in associating with people who have achieved what you would like to achieve.

If you have the desire to start your own business and are lacking belief, then the Business Bootcamp will have you learning from other successful personal trainers on how to build a business. Starting on the 17^th February, this 6 week program will have you ready to take on 2010 with a book full of clients. http://www.ptplus.com.au/workshops/BBC.html