Having a sales-educated personal training staff is crucial in building and maintaining a successful personal training business. This can be accomplished through the consistent development and redirection of your entire staff. This includes the trainers you currently have on board and the new hires you plan on making room for as part of your personal training team.
It is important to realize that the different personalities of your trainers are about as varied and dynamic as the new exercises they come up with on the resist-a-ball every week. Most managers and club owners agree that becoming aware of some of their individual personality traits will lead to an increased understanding of how to handle certain situations most effectively (and painlessly). After all, when it comes down to it, managing a personal training business inside your club is really just managing the different personalities you have on staff. How well you do that, will determine how successful your personal training program will be.
Let’s examine the first of the five types of personal trainers you will find in health clubs and gym establishments.
1. Veteran trainer.
The Good
• Knowledgeable and well-educatedThe Bad
• Can work harder and longer but won’tThe Ugly
• Easily persuade their clients to come with them if they leave
This type of trainer doesn’t necessarily have a full schedule of paying clients, nor do they plan on filling it up. They have their regular clientele and rarely take on new clients. Veteran trainers are usually the most knowledgeable trainers on your team, and it is often frustrating when you fail at pushing them to work a little longer and harder. These trainers already know how hard they can and will work, and there isn’t much you can do about it. However, what they do have every month is a constant renewal cycle which, as every manager knows, is the foundation of a healthy personal training business. Seventy to 80 percent of the clients that work with one of your veteran trainers should buy more sessions when their package is finished.
If you have veteran trainers on your staff who are not reaching these numbers, you might want to take a closer look at the situation. What you most likely have is a trainer who is working somewhere else or is planning on making a switch altogether. When their numbers (amount of clients who repurchase sessions) start to lower you will begin hearing excuses, “My client is on vacation” or “My client is going to wait until she gets her bonus to buy more sessions.” These are both valid reasons for holding off on purchasing more sessions, and are most likely the case. However, you will come across instances where this client is not on vacation, but rather just training at the personal training studio down the street with your veteran trainer.
You must determine if what your trainer told you is the real reason for why this client has not continued training. Another possible scenario, although not common with veteran trainers because of their strong relationship building skills, is the possibility that the client is unhappy or dissatisfied with their current trainer. This is a more consistent problem with new and bottom level trainers, but it can happen to anyone. As a manager, you should be making routine courtesy calls to all your paying clients to see if they are satisfied with their workouts. This will ensure nothing is going on behind the curtain of which you are not aware. Veteran trainers do have a great thing going for them that makes them a valuable part of your team. The strong relationships they have built with their long-term clients practically guarantee a certain amount of revenue each month from renewals (buying more sessions).
When you start to build a long-term relationship with these veterans, you can start to rely on them for certain tasks such as aiding in the development of your new trainers. As your business grows, you will find you keep on doing the same things, only more of them, which takes up more of your time. Having loyal veteran trainers to carry some of the load for you is a fortunate situation for any manager to be in.
Next month, we will explore parts of “The Top Performer” personal trainer.
Tim Tierney is the Founder and CEO of Personal Training Sales Institute. He can be contacted at 209.653.0130, or by email attim@ptsicertified.com.
