This week I’ve been talking to some awesome personal trainers from all over the world. One in particular, Keith from Singapore, brought up a problem that comes up time and time again.
This is the story of why I think you should call yourself a personal trainer and not things like “life coach” and “movement specialist” because you want to be different.
I’ll be telling you how I doubled my face to face personal trainer consultation sign ups, about the mistakes I made so you don’t make them and you’ll learn the very very simple strategy I used to increase sales.
The Back Story
When I first started my PT business and wanted to help people, I used my one hour consultation time to preach to the client about how stomach exercises and "diets" wouldn't get you sexy, flat and toned abs. After all, I had been reading everything I could get my hands on about health and fitness long before I even signed up for my PT Level 3 course! I knew my sh*t!!
However, trying to use my one hour to completely undo years of "diet mentality” was spent in vain!
My sign up rate was poor. Why? Because people were coming to me for sit ups and diets.
Sure, training big muscles with compound exercises and High Intensity Interval Training would get them to their goals faster but my almost-client had seen a TV program about how squats are bad for you or read an article on the 5 Best Exercises for beach ready abs and they just KNEW that would work if they paid someone to stand next to them while they did it!
It’s not your clients fault. If you were fed misleading information over and over again by celebrities and respected members of the fitness community you would start to question your own beliefs.
So, it became clear to me, my language was all wrong. I wasn’t telling them what they wanted to hear. I needed some knowledge bombs if I were to explode in to the 30-hours-of-PT target I had set myself (Not a massive goal but coming from a family of drug dealers and prison inmates I felt I was doing OK by simply having a goal!).
I turned to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Not because I knew this was a sure fire way of communicating better with my clients… But more because I just so happened to stumble upon a web page about NLP and a course that promised I would establish more rapport with my clients, improve my communication skills and basically read minds (well… that’s what I thought was going to happen… I was young… it was late… you know how these things go).
I bought it. And I loved it!
I felt empowered, and like the son of Derren Brown and Xavier from X-Men (who, in this scenario, are in a same sex marriage).
The NLP course for personal trainers talked about establishing rapport. Enough rapport was needed before I could teach new things to clients and they would actually believe me.
I read the course over and over again until I REALLY got it.
However, trying to use my one hour to completely undo years of "diet mentality” was spent in vain!
My sign up rate was poor. Why? Because people were coming to me for sit ups and diets.
Sure, training big muscles with compound exercises and High Intensity Interval Training would get them to their goals faster but my almost-client had seen a TV program about how squats are bad for you or read an article on the 5 Best Exercises for beach ready abs and they just KNEW that would work if they paid someone to stand next to them while they did it!
It’s not your clients fault. If you were fed misleading information over and over again by celebrities and respected members of the fitness community you would start to question your own beliefs.
So, it became clear to me, my language was all wrong. I wasn’t telling them what they wanted to hear. I needed some knowledge bombs if I were to explode in to the 30-hours-of-PT target I had set myself (Not a massive goal but coming from a family of drug dealers and prison inmates I felt I was doing OK by simply having a goal!).
I turned to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Not because I knew this was a sure fire way of communicating better with my clients… But more because I just so happened to stumble upon a web page about NLP and a course that promised I would establish more rapport with my clients, improve my communication skills and basically read minds (well… that’s what I thought was going to happen… I was young… it was late… you know how these things go).
I bought it. And I loved it!
I felt empowered, and like the son of Derren Brown and Xavier from X-Men (who, in this scenario, are in a same sex marriage).
The NLP course for personal trainers talked about establishing rapport. Enough rapport was needed before I could teach new things to clients and they would actually believe me.
I read the course over and over again until I REALLY got it.
How I Doubled My Face To Face Sales
So, to get more sign ups I started promising sit ups and diets. Yep. Sounds stupid, right? Why would I do that?
Because I had no rapport. It’s impossible to access someones learning potential in just one hour having just met them. I neither agreed nor disagreed with their less than accurate ideas about fitness for the time being (And simply nodded politely while I secretly laughed in my head like Dr Evil from Austin Powers because I had a grand plan).
Then when I finally got them in the gym for their training sessions I trained legs and fixed anatomical issues for 40 mins, spent 10 mins on abs and 10 mins making one tweak to their existing eating habits... They left feeling sore in the abs and enlightened by my one piece of nutritional advice. While I had given them enough of the RIGHT exercises to actually make progress. Win win.
3 months in to training, after getting to know them, their habits, how they think and feel about exercise, hearing stories, sharing stories and getting great results I could say to them "crunches don't do sh*t!" and they believed me.
Because I had no rapport. It’s impossible to access someones learning potential in just one hour having just met them. I neither agreed nor disagreed with their less than accurate ideas about fitness for the time being (And simply nodded politely while I secretly laughed in my head like Dr Evil from Austin Powers because I had a grand plan).
Then when I finally got them in the gym for their training sessions I trained legs and fixed anatomical issues for 40 mins, spent 10 mins on abs and 10 mins making one tweak to their existing eating habits... They left feeling sore in the abs and enlightened by my one piece of nutritional advice. While I had given them enough of the RIGHT exercises to actually make progress. Win win.
3 months in to training, after getting to know them, their habits, how they think and feel about exercise, hearing stories, sharing stories and getting great results I could say to them "crunches don't do sh*t!" and they believed me.
Moral Of The Story
The moral of this story is that clients come to you for a specific service. In their minds, they have a problem and they believe that a PERSONAL TRAINER is the solution to the problem.
You can call yourself a life coach, a movement specialist, a Telly Tubby for all I care, but a new client is searching for a personal trainer because that’s what they think will solve their problem right now!
A client will almost always think:
“I’m fat, I need a personal trainer”
Or:
"My workouts aren’t working, I need a personal trainer”
Not
“I’m fat, I need an Exercise a Movement Therapist”
So if a client in your area searches the internet for a personal trainer (which your ideal client will), they find your website on page 1 of Google (which they should and if it’s not, click here), they land on your page and see anything OTHER than personal trainer, they’re probably going to click the back button.
And then when they see your personal trainer website design is actually quite nice, clean and trustworthy (which it should be), then click on your services tab, they should see some services that they can relate to.
Either familiar packages like Bronze, Sliver and Gold (<— ideally not).
Or solution specific packages like Muscle and Size, Weight loss For Women or Fit For Life (<— steal those names for yourself if you like. They worked a treat for me).
But that’s not original…
That’s so boring…
It’s been done before…
I want something SPECIAL…
A website that hasn’t been done before...
It should be considered that non original design conventions work well because they’ve already been introduced and tested for usability. Since the users know them well, you don’t need any explanation or instruction manual. As users appreciate familiarity and usability over novelties.
If you know of a personal trainer who might find this useful, forward it to them, share it with them on Facebook, print it and slap them in the face with it.
You can call yourself a life coach, a movement specialist, a Telly Tubby for all I care, but a new client is searching for a personal trainer because that’s what they think will solve their problem right now!
A client will almost always think:
“I’m fat, I need a personal trainer”
Or:
"My workouts aren’t working, I need a personal trainer”
Not
“I’m fat, I need an Exercise a Movement Therapist”
So if a client in your area searches the internet for a personal trainer (which your ideal client will), they find your website on page 1 of Google (which they should and if it’s not, click here), they land on your page and see anything OTHER than personal trainer, they’re probably going to click the back button.
And then when they see your personal trainer website design is actually quite nice, clean and trustworthy (which it should be), then click on your services tab, they should see some services that they can relate to.
Either familiar packages like Bronze, Sliver and Gold (<— ideally not).
Or solution specific packages like Muscle and Size, Weight loss For Women or Fit For Life (<— steal those names for yourself if you like. They worked a treat for me).
But that’s not original…
That’s so boring…
It’s been done before…
I want something SPECIAL…
A website that hasn’t been done before...
It should be considered that non original design conventions work well because they’ve already been introduced and tested for usability. Since the users know them well, you don’t need any explanation or instruction manual. As users appreciate familiarity and usability over novelties.
If you know of a personal trainer who might find this useful, forward it to them, share it with them on Facebook, print it and slap them in the face with it.
