If you can’t get fitness clients and it’s keeping you from pursuing your passion, this is for you. Whether this is post-or mid pandemic or it’s after, you’re going to have to generate sales to have customers to grow a business.
On the other end of the phone, the biochemist who wants to teach others how to cook healthy said,
“I’ve never been good at self-promotion or being pushy”
Stop right there. In two minutes of our 20-minute session this health coach wanna-be had told me more than he knew. If even 2 of these are true for you, I’ve got an episode you need to hear:
- You believe that you’re being self-promoting
- You probably are
- You believe you’re being pushy
- You probably are
It’s your belief and your own relationship with sales, salespeople, marketing and marketers that puts you in a position where you can’t get fitness clients. It may be your relationship with the title of personal trainer or health coach. Do you have a “real job” now and believe that this thing you want to do doesn’t qualify or you can’t make money doing it?
No Fitness Pro Learned How to Market and Sell from a Degree or a Certification
I’ve worked with countless fitness pros who said this was their passion but it’s not what they went to school for. They’d say, I’m passionate about this, but they were passionate about their own fitness not necessarily teaching it to others. If you’re listening to this podcast and you’re confident you’re here to inspire, educate, motivate others to a healthier lifestyle then I believe you can.
You just may need to do some work first on yourself. Deal with your own beliefs, develop the skills necessary not just to teach exercise, or cooking or meal planning, but to persuade, and market and influence someone to actually spend time, money, and energy changing… something that we all resist. Change is one of the hardest things we do. The easiest first step is deciding to change. The rest is uphill.
- What is marketing?
- What is fitness marketing?
- Do you become someone different when you’re marketing?
- Or do you become more you, an individual who helps others, adds value and transforms lives?
Questions to ask when you can’t get fitness clients:
- Do you believe that you can help people?
- Why you?
- Why now?
- What transformation do you give them?
- What problem do you solve?
- Why you and no one else?
- How do you connect with them?
- How do customers find you?
- One instance of being in a group and not getting any sales does not mean you’re not good at it.
If you never asked, you never told someone this is what you do, did you even give them an opportunity to say yes.
Here’s what we often do and don’t even realize… you’re doing personal training, health coaching, or teaching cooking classes as a side hustle. When someone in the group asks what you do you tell them you’re a biochemist, or an engineer, or a legal assistant. They don’t even know you ARE a health or fitness coach. Because you didn’t share it. To them this is just a hobby for you. Until you talk about It first, you’re not even taking it seriously. Why should they?
Or you fall back on something else to boost your confidence. You mention your spouse and what they do. You mention the country club or look for ways to put yourself in a different
Do the personal work.
- Identify why you have a negative association with money or asking for money.
- Do you have a hard time telling people you’re a health coach or trainer?
- Do you know how you transform them?
- What examples do you have?
- Do you have a story of your own? How did your own life change?
- Are you your own ideal avatar?
- Are there more of you?
Steve had no idea that he didn’t ever ask anyone to become a client. He said he spent an hour with each of them. But he never really had a plan when he spent that time with them. He likely showed them how to cook, talked about cooking. But he didn’t talk about a specific system or method that he uses. He didn’t have a specific plan for the session he had with them to discover why the person would want his coaching or even if they were qualified as a customer.
These kinds of sessions are called breakthrough sessions. But if you don’t know what is going to happen during that session, first and second and in the middle and last, it’s not going to be a very effective session.
My Own “I Can’t Get Fitness Clients” Mistakes
I’ve made this mistake before. I was so confident that I was a good listener and that I could help anyone by answering questions that I just let them run the session. I didn’t structure it. That meant that some of those appointments turned into clients and a lot of them did not.
It was random. For the most part, the people that became clients already had their minds made up they wanted to start before we met. The consult was just a waste of time.
When I gave structure to that consultation it became far more than a waste of time.
- I added a step before it ever happened so that I had qualified people on the call.
I wanted to know they were serious about continuing, they had to do something before they got there.
They had to go through a 10-day challenge participating every day, or they had to be a part of an audience where they were in a 10,000 coaching program or where they were being sold one.
They also fill out a 5-question form before they get on the call. The questions I ask make sure that they know this call is about deciding which package is the best next step.
- I knew exactly what I was going to say during those first two minutes
- I knew how I was going to plant seeds and specifically say words throughout the call
- I knew what I was going to say in the last few minutes
That’s called a breakthrough call and it’s something I teach my marketing fitness today coaching mastermind.
In order to do that:
- You have to have a system, process, or method that is uniquely yours.
- You have to know exactly who you want to help.
- You have to have confidence in the transformation you provide.
- You have to know that this is something your ideal customer wants and is looking for.
There’s no celebrity to this. You’re not a Kardashian promoting a watch-me, look-at-me channel. You have to legitimately have something that you believe will help people and improve the quality of their lives. They need to be looking for answers.
If you can’t get fitness clients right now:
- Look at your process of getting them. Are you even asking?
- In a logical, sequential way?
- Have you qualified the people you’re asking?
- Have you looked at your own relationship with selling and marketing?
- Are you experiencing imposter syndrome?
- Can you get rid of baggage around your old beliefs?
Answer these questions and you’ll get fitness clients.
Helpful? Leave a rating in iTunes!
Want clients who are looking, willing to pay, and will tell all their friends? Join the movement.
