I often get asked about personal training sales – how to sign up new clients. And for good reason… It’s essential for building your business.
In the first article of this series, I talked about the best ways to enroll clients without being pushy or scummy. In this article, I explain some more advanced tools for enrolling new clients.
Personal Trainer Sales Tool 1 – Courage
I Assume you’ve asked the right questions. You can tell your potential new client really wants training … but maybe they’re hesitating… they tell you, “I think I’ll try it on my own for a while and see what happens.”
They will never come back to sign up with you.
You need to have the courage to tell them why they need your expertise and give them the final nudge they need to commit to training with you.
I remember how discouraged I got when this happened to me.
Finally, I thought, “If they’re not going to train with me anyway, I might as well tell them the truth and be direct. I have nothing to lose.”
I said, “If you try to go on your own, you’re only going to get frustrated and neither of us will be happy. I can tell this is really important to you and it’s working with me is the right way to get started. You’ll get the results you want and learn how to stay on track.”
About 2 out of 3 client will sign up with this extra push… and they’re always happy they do because they admit they wouldn’t have been able to get the results on their own.
Personal Trainer Sales Tool 2 – Sample Session(s)
In some cases, a potential client will hesitate because they have a bad experience with a poor trainer. It happens.
In this case, you can offer them a sample session or two.
I personally charge them for the session with the option to use that money as a credit if and when they decide to sign up for one of my packages. I just don’t believe in giving your services away for free… it cheapens you.
A session or two will set your client back around $100 instead of $500 for a package. Most people will try a session. If you wow them, that’s all they need to commit to training with you.
As far as a free session… I don’t advise this. After all, you probably don’t want to work so hard for a client that’s probably more maintenance than they’re worth. In my experience, clients that are cheap often try to squeeze as much free stuff out of you as possible and they aren’t loyal.
Personal Trainer Sales Tool 3 – Walking Away
Every once in a while, there’s a potential client that’s just not a good fit. You need to know when to walk away.
I’ve run into prospects that I should have walked away from. Inevitably, I spent a lot of time and effort enrolling them only to find out my instincts were right. They were really high maintenance and I ended up firing them because it was so miserable working with them.
Now I walk away early so I don’t waste my time and energy, and so they don’t have a bad experience. Here are the typical signs you should walk away:
- They try to tell you how to train or do nutrition planning
- They have no idea what they want
- They’re condescending and/or rude
- They’re unwilling to listen (they want to do it their way even though they say they want help)
In any case, these flags are a big deal. These types of clients are often the most difficult to enroll and the hardest to work with. They end up distracting you from valuable time you could be spending to build your business.
Sales is a vital part of training, and you really do need to understand how to enroll new clients. The most important thing you can do is make sure you’re the best. Believe in yourself. When you develop the confidence of being one of the best, clients will want to work with you and you’ll feel good about enrolling new clients.
Practice makes perfect!