Now is the time to increase your personal training business. This time of year personal trainers get excited! In the Northern Hemisphere where I’ve lived for 54 years at least, when the weather changes and outdoor activity is a little more limited, people turn to gyms and trainers.
No matter what time of year it is, if you run a fitness business or you’re a trainer, you ALWAYS want to increase your personal training business in some way.
Answer these three simple questions to decide what your next steps are:
- Do you need more people to market to?
- Do you need to have more services to sell?
- Do you need to sell more?
Your answer to these 3 questions should determine where you focus your energy.
If you answer “yes” to more than one, your first job is to determine which one is most important.
You Have One
Decide the ONE most important focus for your personal training business.
One of these profit activators is definitely more important than the others for you right now.
(Hint: If you don’t know which of these is really the problem, THAT should be your primary focus: tracking the right numbers so you know at a glance how you’re doing.) Just in case you don’t have those tracking numbers at your fingertips let’s make it easy.
For instance, if you have a lot of programs but very few people in them you need to sell more.
If you sell a high percent of the people you market a specific program to, then (only assuming that you are getting yourself in front of them and sending emails regularly about the problem your service solves), you need to market to more people. Does your email list need to grow? What are you doing to do that?
Don’t go on and read the rest of this post until you really nail down which ONE of these things YOU need most right now. Without the answer to that the rest of this post will just be too overwhelming and then you won’t take any action.
What I want for you is to take a few key action items from this post so you can get yourself ready in the next few months for huge and consistent growth in the next year.
The Time Is Now
While I’m writing this it’s the last quarter of 2018. This content is always important but it’s REALLY important when you have the New Year to capitalize on. We all know people will be looking for options to get healthier at the beginning of the year.
The time to start launching in order to increase your personal training business and be the one they turn to is now. About 90 days or three months is perfect timing for planning a launch, creating the steps you need to take and getting it done.
So let’s do this. You’ve decided with one of those three questions is most important to you right now. Start diving into that ONE. You can always come back to the others. To increase your personal training business you have to focus.
If You Need More People to Market To
Start creating attractive content that your ideal customers love.
Start posting and writing to the person who is struggling right now and is looking for answers from Google searches.
Avoid posting to the person who already is using your services.
Understand that posting to a prospect is VERY different than posting to a customer who is already drinking your Kool-Aid (or green smoothie).
If You Need More Services to Sell
Start a list of the biggest problems your ideal customers HAD before they started with you.
Review all the interviews you’ve done with new prospects and look for common denominators about the myths they still believed or the confusion they had.
From the list and review begin making notes about potential program titles and content.
Focus on the transformation that prospects want.
Build a program by starting with an outline.
Complete the program design with logistics like frequency of meetings length of sessions, extras that will provide success.
If You Need to Sell More
Start with a look at the number of times you’ve asked someone to buy in the last week.
Record the number of times you’ve asked one person at a time (a consult) and the number of times you’ve asked a group of people (presentation, email blast, current program > upsell).
Decide how you’ll increase those numbers.
Brainstorm on other ways you can increase direct promotions (asking for the sale), including affiliate marketing, and co-promotions.
When you begin tracking the number of times you ASK and the number of times you SELL, you’ll also know if you need to get more skilled at selling. The average closing rate is 40%. If you want to be average, shoot for that. If you want to be better than average, get training, rehearse. If you’ve heard someone is just a “natural salesperson” its really because they studied, practiced, and continued to get better.
Increase your personal training business consciously.
If you simply dial up the advertising budget and you don’t have good programs or you can’t get to “yes” you’ll be wasting your money.
If you simply create more programs but they aren’t based on what your prospects are willing to spend money on it won’t change your business, or lives.
If you simply “buy” likes and fans you won’t necessarily increase your email list. Even if you increase your email list, if you don’t get specific about who you’re talking to and what they want, and ask them to buy a program that gives them just that, you won’t get results.
Get clear on which of those three questions is most important to you and then you can increase your personal training business consciously.
