10 possible reasons that your fitness business is failing

1.        You are reliant on “pay as you go” rather than monthly billing

2.       You are embarrassed to ask for money

3.       You don’t have systems in place for marketing and sales that you stick to

4.       You don’t look for clients outside the gym

5.       You don’t run group training sessions

6.       You’re  not that competent trainer that you can guarantee results

7.       You take yourself too seriously

8.       You’re not professional enough

9.       You work too much on the wrong things

10.   You don’t know where to start when it comes to marketing and selling your services

 Any more?

The 4 Ps of an effective salesperson (in any industry)

Prospecting

Knowing how to get the product out there in front of potentially interested parties, in our case, we can do this by speaking with people on the gym floor, making cold calls, posting ads, networking etc.

Presentation Skills

It’s no good being the best personal trainer in the world if you can’t verbalise what you do and explain it in clear, benefit laced concise terms to potential clients, this is where a script comes in handy to begin with

Product Knowledge

You have to know your onions, in fitness terms, business terms and marketing terms

Personal Development

You need to read books that develop you, we know that eating too much fast food makes us fat (I hope we do anyway!) but reading too much tabloid nonsense is the same for the brain, I recommend books such as “the elephant and the twig” by Geoff Thompson and any of the Guerilla marketing series by jay Conrad Levinstein

Keeping your venue costs down

Personal Training and fitness instruction has got a fairly low initial financial layout.  One of the main costs is rent, whether it be gym rent or fitness studio/hall rent get this wrong and you could end up making less money than you planned.  So here are a few guidelines to help you along the way

-          Do sessions outside or at the clients home wherever possible, thereby eliminating rent altogether, make sure that your insurance covers this

-          Avoid the sports centre halls for your fitness classes and bootcamp’s, opt for church halls and scout halls.  I halved my rent with this strategy

-          Never take the first price offered to you by hall contacts

-          Don’t hire a bigger space than you need

And for Gym Rent

-          Don’t take the first price quoted by the gym

-          Offer to teach classes or work as a gym instructor in exchange for a reduced or non existing rent, this is a double edged sword as it gets you in front of potential clients, just make sure that this type of arrangement does not clash with prime PT time

-          If you are just starting off, see if you can get a Pay as you Go deal with the gym, where I am, the going rate is £10 per client if you can find a gym that will do this.  By paying for 20 sessions up front, I got it for £5 per client so explore this with the owner

Love to hear your comments