Personal Training: Teach Your Trainers How to Sell

One of the biggest challenges I’ve found through my years of being fitness co-director at Baptist Health/Milestone Wellness center in Louisville is helping my employees learn how to sell personal training. Most trainers have a grasp on how to write a program, but they have no idea how to sell themselves or their products. Through Trainer University, our in-house training and development program for our trainers, we teach our trainers what to say in order to close the deal 80 to 90 percent of the time.

We start with teaching the trainers how to change their own mindsets about selling. If the trainers think the product is too expensive or are not confident that they are worth what they’re asking, they will not be as assertive in recommending sessions to potential clients. Here are some simple strategies we teach our trainers in order to help them overcome their own barriers:

• Remember that people need your help to accomplish their goals — if they could have done it on their own, they would have!
• Add value and truly have a burning desire to help people.
• Make your potential clients as comfortable and confident about their choices as possible. They will not be confident if you are not!
• Help the potential clients realize that investing now in a personal trainer will potentially save them a tremendous amount of money and inconvenience, from medical bills and low levels of energy.
• From the moment you shake the potential client’s hand, view yourself as their trainer. Speak to them as their trainer and assume they will need you and want you to be their ongoing trainer.
• You must know exactly how your service can benefit your clients.
• Say the right things on a continual basis. Stick to the truth, what you’ve experienced and the facts. You may be the only voice speaking fitness truth into their heads.
• Practice what to say and how to say it!

One of the most important factors for trainers picking up clients is presenting themselves as professionals. As the co-director of the fitness department, I have found that personal trainers lack the knowledge of how to conduct themselves as professionals on a regular basis.

Confidence is the biggest component of professionalism because if the trainers are positive that they can help clients, it will show through when they make recommendations. Following are the things we stress about presenting yourself as a professional:

1. Help your potential client set reasonable and measureable goals. Cast a vision of how their lives can change and improve!
2. Show them a long-term plan marked with short-term goals. Know the answers to their questions and help them deal with hurdles and barriers.
3. Show confidence. Do not hesitate when telling them the cost (don’t apologize).

Stay tuned to next month’s blog for exact verbiage to teach your trainers to use when selling personal training to potential clients.

Lisa Jo Groft, BS, ACSM-HFS, is the co-director of fitness at Baptist East Milestone Wellness Center in Louisville, Kentucky.