Ultimate Guide To Upselling Your Personal Trainer Services

If you want to increase your revenue and grow your business fast as a personal trainer, focus on selling more services to your existing customers. It’s a simpler, more effective alternative to what most personal trainers do.
 
Many personal trainers rely on finding and selling to new customers to increase revenue. But this strategy has a lower success rate (about 5 – 20%) than selling to existing customers (60 – 70%).
 
One powerful technique you can use to sell more services to your existing personal training clients is upselling. 
 
What is upselling, and how do you apply this approach to your fitness business? Read on to learn more about this concept. You’ll also find a step-by-step process you can implement to effectively upsell your personal training services and start making more money.  

What Is Upselling?

Upselling, unlike cross selling, is a strategic sales process where you (the seller) encourage customers to purchase a high-end, more expensive version of a product they’re already familiar with. 

Say you have a client you’ve been working with for some time. Initially, they purchased a four-week body training package. 
 
After the four weeks, your client may have seen great results. But they’re not as shredded as they’d wish to be and are ready to purchase more sessions. You can offer them a premium version of their original purchase to help them boost their results. The new offer could be an eight or unlimited training package with add-ons like nutrition coaching. This guarantees a more profitable sale, leading to more revenue.
 
When done correctly, upselling not only leads to higher revenue but also:

• Better customer relationships. You can offer more personalized services and help your clients achieve their desired results faster.
• Higher customer lifetime value. Because clients get the results they’re after, they trust your services more, stay with you longer, and buy more from you. As a result, the average amount they spend throughout their commitment as your customer increases. 

 
When done incorrectly, however, upselling can reduce customer satisfaction. This may drive an existing customer to your competitors, leading to a loss of revenue. 
 
It’s worth noting upselling differs from cross-selling, although both are potent sales techniques that yield rapid returns. Understanding this difference is essential to creating an effective upselling marketing strategy for your fitness business. 

Upselling vs Cross-selling

Most people use these terms interchangeably, but this can be misleading, especially when implementing each sales technique in your personal training business. 
 
Upselling techniques focus on added value in terms of what existing customers get from working with you and how much you make in a single product purchase. By offering an improved version of a specific package at a higher cost, your client gets more value from the premium service, and the profit you make per sale increases simultaneously.

On the other hand, cross-selling techniques focus on increasing sales by promoting a range of related or complementary items to an existing purchase. 
 
Using the example we discussed earlier, effective cross-selling can be selling water bottles, fitness apparel, or other additional products your client can use throughout their training period. With cross-selling, you make more revenue by increasing the number of sales as opposed to earning more from one sale.
 
You can combine upselling and cross-selling to enhance customer experience, maximize transactions, and ensure your business flourishes long-term. 

How To Effectively Upsell Your Personal Training Services

Here are four steps you can follow to upsell your training services effectively:

1. Understand Client Needs and Goals

Successful upselling in the fitness industry heavily depends on how well you know your client’s needs and goals. 
 
To lay the foundation for effective upselling in your business, take your time to understand your customers’ specific goals, pain points, and fitness aspirations. You’ll notice patterns and gaps you can use to identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
 
Two things you can do to assess your customer’s current fitness status, needs, and goals include:

• Conduct thorough assessments and one-on-one consultations to collect relevant information on their fitness levels, desired outcomes, and preferences. Consider creating a personal training client assessment questionnaire for this purpose. It will help you connect with your clients deeply and gain valuable insight to improve customer satisfaction.
• Listen actively when your clients discuss their concerns, interests, and motivations during fitness sessions.

2. Customize Training Services or Packages

If you get the first step right, this second step should be a breeze. You’ll have all the information you need to create customized upsell products that align with your customers’ current goals and preferences. 

​Divide your customer base into segments and identify what every segment can use or afford. Then create various tiers of your upsell products or services. This way, you’ll cater to your clients' varying commitment and budget levels.

For example, you could sell extra weekly sessions as an alternative upsell for the 4-week training customers who may not have the resources to commit to the eight or 12-week training package upsell.

3. Provide Value-Added Offerings and Incentives 

Clients won’t know that a premium product or service that can help them get better results exists unless you tell them. This third step is all about marketing and selling your premium offers. There are a few things to consider at this stage for your upselling efforts to be successful.

​Communicate the Benefits
​How you communicate about your upsell offers matters a lot. It determines whether your customers will be receptive or hesitant to commit to your offers. We recommend using the feature-benefits approach to communicate effectively and offer a compelling value proposition. 

FEATURE

Weekly check ins

Nutrition coaching

Custom exercise program

BENEFIT

Accountability from a coach

Make sustainable diet changes

Reach fitness goals faster

Lead with the benefits so your customers can see that the premium product or service will help them solve a specific challenge. Then, use the features to demonstrate how the product will solve the problem. 

Making the sale becomes effortless this way because your upsell becomes a must-have solution for a specific challenge instead of being a sales technique for increasing revenue.

Timing it Right
Knowing when to present your premium offers is critical to successful upselling. If you get the timing wrong, you might seem too salesy and will likely push your customers away. 

The best time to present your upsells in the fitness industry is after working with a client for some time on a shorter training package. Usually, clients will have seen some progress and established enough trust to consider repeat purchases after the training.
 
In contrast, the best time to offer cross-sells is during training sessions following your client’s lead. For example, your client may ask about breathable workout pants during a session, and you happen to sell them.
 
You could also provide incentives to help your customers decide to purchase a premium product faster. Some upselling techniques you can use to do this include:

• Offering discounts. Providing a premium product at a discounted price when clients want to make a repeat purchase can help them go for the improved version.
• Limited-time deals. Upselling under a limited-time deal creates a sense of urgency, which might motivate customers to get the premium services before time runs out.
• Creating social pressure also works well to direct your customers towards your premium offers. This upselling and cross-selling technique works best with other marketing strategies. Have pop-up messages on your website or fitness app with images of customers who’ve successfully achieved their fitness goals with the premium version on offer.

4. Maintain Client Relationships 

Upselling doesn’t end once you’ve made the sale. It’s a continuous process that requires you to nurture customer relationships throughout their time with you. 
 
Aim to provide exceptional customer service to enrich customer experience and exceed their expectations in every interaction. Be supportive, responsive, and attentive to your customers’ fitness needs so you can maintain their trust and loyalty while identifying more upselling opportunities.

Final Thoughts 

​Upselling is a powerful strategy for generating more income continuously and setting up your business to succeed. But it has to be a two-way street for it to work. Your customers must experience more value from the premium products for you to earn more money, loyalty, and trust from them.
 
The best upsells should occur naturally as a way of solving a problem your customer is facing. Focus on your customer’s current and future fitness goals to make the right upsell recommendations for different clients.