“It is very difficult to hit a target you cannot see”. It is with this quote in mind that I suggest that many Fitness Instructors and Personal Trainers do not have written business goals or a marketing plan. I would also guess that many of these Instructors also wonder why they do not earn as much income as they would like. It is a proven fact that those people who take the time to think, set goals and plan are much more likely to succeed than those who don’t. My challenge to you over the next 2 weeks is to set aside some time to think about how much income you would like to make on an ongoing basis and then put in place your own plan on how you are going to attract enough clients, classes, shifts, etc. to allow you to achieve that goal. It is amazing how much easier it is to take positive action towards your goals once you know exactly what they are.

1. Build a Database. My opinion is that the health of your business is directly proportional to the size of your database. In fact Ryan Lee who was one of the pioneers of internet marketing in the fitness industry has been quoted as saying words to the effect that “you could take my millions (of dollars) away from me tomorrow - just leave me my database and I would create financial independence again no time. Your database should include your current clients, past clients, people who you would like to be your clients, potential joint venture partners, family, friends - anyone who has even the slightest interest in health and fitness or seeing you succeed. Once you have established a database then communicate with them regularly via a monthly newsletter, weekly health tip, and/or special offers.

2. Personalise your service. This tip is all about adding value to current or potential clients whenever you can. It involves following up meetings or sessions with a personalised e-mail with an article attached. It could be sending a gift to a client’s place of work. The imagination is the limit with this tip.

3. Lead Boxes. This lead generation tool has been around for a long time, however sometimes some of the old school methods are the best. Approach other businesses who service your ideal client such as Health food stores, hair dresses, beauty therapists, etc. The most effective way of forming a relationship with owners of these businesses is to offer to train them and /or their partner for free as well as to feature their services in your newsletter. If you go in with an attitude of “what can I do for you “rather than the other way around then you give this strategy its best chance of success.

4. Referrals. IHRSA which is the largest Health Club membership body in the world suggest that 46% of new fitness business clients come from word of mouth referral. Now obviously doing a great job with you clients will drive a percentage of referral business, however to put this on steroids you will want to start driving traffic more directly. One idea that I love is giving cash to clients who refer, e.g. you might give clients who refer a client who signs up for one of your packages $100 cash. If you know the lifetime value of your clients then you will know how much you can afford, e.g. if your average client spends $200 per month with you and on average stays with you for 12 months then there lifetime value is $2,400. Now that you are armed with this information it is a no brainer to offer $100 at the point of sale to receive $2,400 in return.

5. Have a social element to your business. Having things such as client appreciation days will increase client loyalty which equates to more dollars for you. In addition social events can be a great lead in for inviting friends of clients to come along which is another obvious lead generation tactic.

6. Join an existing community. This could mean joining your local Business Networking International (BNI) Group, becoming involved with a local sporting club, etc. The more exposure you have within your local community the greater your chances of attracting new clients.

7. Have an online presence. It is the year 2010 and if you don’t have a website than I don’t believe that you are serious about having a business! You really want to have your online presence optimised so that when a potential client searches Personal Trainers in your suburb that you appear on the first page in the search engines. In addition having a blog is a great tool to engage with existing or potential clients.

8. The Power of 5. This is PT Plus speak for having joint partners. Ideally we believe you should have at least 5 other businesses that service your ideal client refer clients to you and vice versa. Typical businesses include allied health professionals such as Physio’s, GP’s, Massage Therapists, as well as other businesses like Health Food stores, Beauty Therapists, Sports Stores, etc.

9. Meetings. A Key Performance Indicator I use for Private Mentoring clients is to have 10 new business meeting per month. These meetings could be a no obligation health chat, through to a meeting with a potential Power of 5 joint venture partner. As mentioned above under the “personalise your service tip” follow up each of these meetings with an e-mail and an article or download. This follow up will add credibility and differentiate you from other Personal Trainers.

10. Talk to 5 People Every Day. This strategy is one of the most powerful things you can do for your business. You can draw these people from your existing database, gym floor, potential power of 5 partner, etc. The more you talk to people about your business the more it will grow. Try this tactic for 3 months and you will be blown away by the results.

11. Public Speaking. This is one of the fastest ways of growing your business. Health and Fitness is very topical and there are many community groups and work places that would love to have someone come and give them good quality information. Once you have completed your presentation make sure you have a special offer for your services as well as the ability to capture the contact details of all attendees who will go onto your database for ongoing communication - see tip 1.

I have sourced a thought provoking article from well know small business operator Peter Crocker. In the article Crocker discusses the merits of solo business operators.  I suggest that you read the article at least twice and absorb the points that Crocker makes as they might have some implications for the way you run your business.

“You stroll into your boss’ office, flick your resignation letter nonchalantly onto the desk and explain precisely what they can do with their stinking job. Then you swan out to the cheers of your workmates. Or so goes the fantasy.
Much of the appeal of working for yourself is escaping the annoying, incompetent and/or bullying bosses that make your life a misery. But when you leave employment to run your own show it’s not just those bosses that you leave behind.

What about the great bosses? The ones that motivate you, guide you, teach you all the tricks of the trade and swoop in if a project hits the fan.

In any large organisation there are plenty of genuine leaders whose role it is to develop talented employees. If you’re a standout company performer, your progress up the career ladder can become a natural progression.

As a soloist, it is great that there’s no one breathing down your neck telling you what to do. But there’s also no one patting you on the back, advising your next move and looking out for your career. No strategic roadmaps. No performance review. No career plans. No fast track programs.

So, what do soloists do when it’s time for a change? For me the end of each year brings a period of reassessment. Whether it’s looking for a clear direction or assessing opportunities, these are the times when I miss being able to book a meeting with the boss to map out a solid plan.

One great solution is to find an experienced business mentor who is willing to sit with you a few times a year and be your sounding board.”

I am such a huge advocate of business mentoring is that it has taken years off the time I originally needed to achieve my financial goals. It has helped me accelerate my business growth at a rapid rate as I have been able to learn from my mentor and not repeat his mistakes. Many business owners find it very difficult to stay up to date with both the changes in their industry and the endless innovations in sales, marketing, retention and management strategies. All this means that having a mentor is no longer a luxury but a necessity for outstanding performance. A mentor is like having a personal trainer for your business. They help you devise a specific Game Plan then keep you accountable to it, ensuring you take action every day towards achieving your aims.

This business tip is all about things you can do to WOW your clients. This WOW concept is about delivering a service that surprises and delights your clients to the extent that they say WOW! It is about over delivering value by being both attentive and responsive to the client’s needs. Some examples of this would include: being exceptionally well prepared for each and every Personal Training session or Group Exercise class session, following clients up between sessions, giving relevant educational handouts, sending thank you cards or gifts for referrals, giving written progress reports, remembering birthdays, rewarding and celebrating with a client when they achieve a stated goal, The bottom line is that the more you give in terms of service the more you will receive in return.

The Facts

Ask any business owner worth their salt and they will tell you that on average it costs 6 times more to get a client than to retain an existing one. The costs include all of the time and money you spend on marketing and promotion. Couple this with a statistic from IHRSA (International Health Racket and Sports Association) which says that 46% of new clients come as a result of word of mouth referral!

With these things in mind it still staggers me as to why most Personal Trainers don’t place a much bigger emphasis on retaining existing clients and giving them reasons to spread the “word of mouth virus” to more people. Perhaps it is because they either don’t understand the implication for profitability or simply don’t know what they can do to influence these factors. The purpose of this article is to remove the second of these excuses by giving you strategies that you can implement today.

7 Key Customer Service Strategies for Personal Trainers

1. Welcome Packs - clients are often spending a substantial sum of money up front, or are entering a direct debit contract on the basis of a result they are hoping to achieve in the future. As we live in an instant gratification society, my advice is to give clients something tangible at the point of sale to help positively reinforce their purchase decision. The simple act of giving a backpack containing some merchandise, educational articles or fitness equipment tends to reduce “buyers regret” and will separate you from personal trainers who don’t do this.

2. Confirmation calls - trainers that take the time to confirm appointments save themselves from a lot of cancellations. It also shows the client that you care about them.

3. Set Homework - many personal trainers make the mistake of delivering a great session once or twice a week but not following up with their clients outside these times. You are doing yourself and your clients a disservice if you don’t set homework or follow them up outside of session times. Homework should include specific exercise prescriptions - cardiovascular training, resistance training, flexibility exercises and group exercise classes that are appropriate to their training goals. Other homework tasks should include a focus on incidental exercise and diet.

4. Follow Up - whether this takes the form of a phone call, e-mail or SMS doesn’t really matter, but follow up contact is vital. For a new client this may be a call to reassure them that it’s normal to feel sore after their first workout and that this will get better as their body adapts to training. For an experienced client this may be to check that you have worked them hard enough.

5. Thank you cards - showing gratitude is one of the most powerful relationship building techniques you can use. It positions you as different from other Personal Trainers. Think about it, when was the last time someone you have purchased from took the time to send you a thank you card in the mail? My suggestion would be to send something physical in the post to your clients 4 times per year.

6. Monthly Newsletter - a regular newsletter builds you credibility with existing clients as well as any prospects you have. Some rules about newsletters are that they must be regular, i.e. don’t be the trainer who sends out their monthly newsletter every 6 months! They should also include relevant information that you clients can either use or directly relate to such as an exercise of the month, recipe of the month, success profile of one of you clients, quizzes, recognition of client birthdays or special achievements, etc.

7. Client Appreciation Days - the imagination is the limit as to what you could do here. You might have a day at the cricket or the football, a movie night, a bush walk, a picnic, etc. The key thing is to make the events something your client base would appreciate. Again a key thing here is that you are doing things that the average Personal Trainer does not and that is what will separate you in the eyes of you clients which in turn builds incredible loyalty.

Conclusion

There you have it, 7 useable strategies that if implemented will give you an edge in customer service over the great majority of your competition. Some of the strategies may sound simple, however please do not make the mistake of thinking that simple is not powerful.  If implemented, these strategies will make the world of difference to customer retention and referral which in turn will have a dramatic influence on your income.

It is my belief that you should spend at least as much time, money and effort on your internal marketing as you do on your external. Internal marketing is the process of continuing to educate and sell to your existing clients. Internal marketing is by far the most profitable marketing you will ever do as it is much easier to sell to an existing client than to sell to a new prospect. The reason is that your existing clients already know and like you and thus you have built up credibility with them that you cannot possibly have been able to do with a new prospect that is like a stranger to your business.

Examples of campaigns that you would promote “internally” to your current list of clients include new program offerings, i.e. starting a group program such as a bootcamp, a 6 week boxing course, or a 12 week body transformation program which can offer additional profit centres for you business. It might be that you start selling fitness related products or supplements, or you might introduce a “gold class” Personal Training service that has special benefits built in that is an upsell on your traditional services. The way you would spread the message about these new services would be through e-mail, traditional mailings, phone calls, text messages, flyers, etc.

The bottom line from a business perspective is that 20% of your clients will produce 80% of your revenue. The challenge is to continue to market to those who already believe in you and your service and provide them opportunities to upgrade to more product and service offerings. As long as you are delivering a quality product that your clients enjoy using then you have a win/win situation for all.

Many personal trainers find it challenging to grow their client base, but if you believe in something, then it should be easy to sell it, right? Here are a couple of tips to build your confidence with securing the sale and new clients.

Believe in yourself

As a personal trainer, the first thing you have to realise is that you have the ability to help someone. Obviously it is the client’s decision as to whether the service you offer is worth the money they need to invest to achieve their goals. The most important thing in the sales process is that you believe in yourself and the product you’re selling. If person has enquired about personal training, then this means they have a need that you can help them with. Adopt the philosophy that sales are merely the process of getting the client started on their goals and you may find your success rate increases. The bottom line to Personal Training sales is that you are helping someone improve their lifestyle and health. You need to remain focussed on the fact that it’s all about helping the person achieve their results. If a client is achieving results then they will remain a happy client. When clients are not achieving results they will begin to weigh up whether they are getting value for money, and whether they want to continue. If you are not confident in asking for the sale, role playing once or twice a week with amore senior trainer or a sales team member will help dramatically. Asking an experienced trainer to view one of their sessions with a regular client can also be beneficial in picking up additional tips.

Pain versus pleasure

In discussions with your prospective client, it is really important to weigh up the ‘pleasure versus pain’ scenario. You need to get your client to weigh up the benefit of personal training (pleasures) versus the cost of it (pain). If you can do this, then your client will take up personal training. Parting with the money, exercising and making the commitment are all things associated with pain forth client. For a successful sale, you have to ensure that you emphasise and create enough pleasure in achieving the results they desire, to be able to get them to start personal Training with you. People often don’t see value in something if there is no desire on their behalf. That is, if someone considers something as a high priority then they will usually pay any price to attain it. For example, for a potential Client who strives to be in better shape for their daughter’s wedding, ask them to rate the importance of this goal on a scale of 1 to 10. Create leverage by asking them how they would feel being at the wedding after achieving their goal (pleasure) as a result of working with you. Not achieving the goal can sometimes be enough pain to get the person motivated to begin with you, so ensure you find out how important it is for them to achieve the end result.

Asking for the business

If you don’t ask you won’t make the sale. This happens especially when complimentary personal training sessions are given and then the trainer simply says ‘I hope you enjoyed the session and if you would like to continue simply book in for another one’. This is not asking for the business and is not going to get a result for either you or the client. You must ask specifically for the sale. For example, you might say, ‘From what we’ve discussed the two best options are the “quick start” or “results” programs. The quick start program is one session a week for $70 a week and the results program is two sessions a week for $130. Which one suits you best?’Then stay silent. Let the customer have time to think and answer your question. Then when they have chosen their package, get them going with their paperwork and book them in for future sessions. If your customer asks a question, welcome it and try to solve it as best you can. Try not to let someone walk away saying they need to think about it.

Chances are they have been thinking about it for months, so now is the optimal time to take action. Respond gently. You might say, ‘I can understand that you would like to think about it, but may I just ask is it the program or the session schedule that you are concerned about?’ and start the process of solving their challenges. Remember, you ‘retrying to better their lifestyle; it’s not just your business that will benefit from the relationship; they actually have more to gain than anyone by working with you.

Many of you have heard the saying that business owners need to spend more time working “on” their business rather than “in” their business. To put this in perspective for a Personal Trainer working “in” the business is doing the hands on Personal Training sessions, while working “on” the business would be doing tasks such as business plans, marketing plans, sales calls, updating information on your website and blog, etc. Most business owners understand this concept intellectually however often do not put into action as “they are too busy”. In terms of a solution Scott Krywulycz from PT Plus suggests that you put 4 hours per week in your diary as forced isolation time where the critical work “on” your business tasks take place. Forced Isolation means turning your phone and e-mail alert off and locking yourself away from the rest of the world for that 4 hour block. If you have the discipline to implement this strategy you will find that you become so much more productive, in many cases you will get more meaningful work done in those 4 focused hours than you would typically do in a week or a fortnight. So my challenge to you if you are running a business or looking to start in the near future is to schedule a minimum of 4 hours of forced isolation to work on your business each week.

To be successful in business you must know exactly who your ideal client (target) is - because as the saying goes “it is very difficult to hit a target you cannot see” You want to know everything there is to know about your target, i.e. who they are, where do they live, and how much do they earn, as well as what motivates them to buy.

Effective businesses can empathise with their target as they know that being able to relate to their ideal client is the single most important element of the marketing process. To put this in perspective for the successful Personal Trainer it is not enough to target “overweight” individuals. You would be much better served targeting “females between the ages of 35-45, living in Richmond who want to lose between 5kg - 15kg, who are primarily motivated by vanity”.

The idea being that the more you know about your target market the better you will be able to communicate with them as you will know where to put your marketing messages (local paper, school newsletter, etc) and what to say in your message, i.e. your advertisement heading could scream “Ladies - who else wants to lose 10kg and get back their youthful looks?”.

Your action if you have not already done so is to think through the specifics of who your ideal client is, what message they want to hear about the benefits of your service, and then work out mediums that can communicate this message directly to them. If you put this process in place you will see demand for your service increase almost immediately.

One of the most important skills every Fitness Instructor should develop is that of time management. One of the reasons it is so important for fitness instructors is that it is very rare that 2 working weeks are ever the same. For example, a Personal Trainer may pick up new clients or lose existing clients from week to week, a Gym Instructor may cover another instructors shifts, a Group Exercise Instructor may cover classes for another Instructor, etc. My recommendation for a starting point towards developing your time management skills is to do the following:

1. Every Sunday night spend 30 - 60 minutes planning your week, i.e. what hours am I working this week? When am I going to fit my own workouts in? What am I going to do to continue to develop my technical skills, what do I need to do to get more clients? etc.
2. Every evening I would encourage you to list 3-5 tasks that must be initiated or completed the following day. Once this list has been established then prioritise which actions are most important. Your goal must be to initiate or complete at least 3 tasks each day without fail. It is this process that allows you to GET THINGS DONE and it is the doers that become successful.

These time management strategies may seem like common sense, however there is a world of difference between common sense and common practice! Start planning and start moving closer towards your goals.