14 Simple Ways To Make Your Fitness Business Better

There are so many ways that you can make your fitness business better that it would be impossible to list them all – but I wanted to give you several that are easy to implement and all yield BIG results.  Here are 14 you can start using today:

1. Increase Your Prices – Just do it, add 5% to all your prices today. A small percentage of clients will object but the extra profit from the other clients that don’t care and are happy to pay the slight increase will more than cover this. Sell by adding value and selling the benefits. Making your service unique so by doing this there is no other product or service to compare it to.

You have very little to lose and a massive amount to gain… so increase your prices by 5% today.

2. Offer Package Deals – Like McDonald’s (and you wonder why our county is fat) offering the customer a #1, #2 or #3 (and probably a half-dozen other package options), how about having a package deal where everything your client needs to be successful is included for a discount of $X.

You can offer training, nutritional coaching, supplements and even a foam roller and training journal – a complete package to guarantee the client’s success. Even if the client starts thinking that they don’t really need everything, the package deal is so good they’ll take it.

This is a great strategy to get clients to try things they might not normally have been interested in – like supplements or nutritional coaching.

3. Offering Cross Sell and Up Sell – There are always other add on products or services you can sell your clients like the McDonald’s approach of ‘would you like fries with that?’

If you only offer training sessions, you need to find other products or services to offer as cross sells or up sells. It may mean creating a deluxe version in which you give provide six nutritional during the first six weeks of your clients program to lay the groundwork for their long term success. It may be selling them nutritional products to help them recover from workouts and increase the likelihood of them complying with your nutritional recommendations. You might even form a strategic alliance and sell someone else’s complimentary services, like a dietician or massage therapist, if you don’t have anything else to sell your clients initially.

Often in the sale process it is easy to get caught up in the sale and to forget to cross sell or up sell. I suggest you make a checklist so you and your staff remember to offer the cross sells and up sells at the point of sale – every sale.

5. Having Payment Terms – Having payment terms to allow the client to make bigger purchases can dramatically increase what a client is willing to spend. We recommend all fitness pros use EFT billing for everything so clients can break their investment into monthly payments, just like their mortgage or car payment. With this approach a client that might not have been able to invest a lump sum of several thousand dollars can get the services and products they want and only have a monthly investment of a couple of hundred dollars.

6. Serve More Clients Per Hour - To see more clients per hour, means you’re generating more revenue per work hour. You do this by either offering semi-private training, switching from 60 minute sessions to 30 minute sessions or provide large group stuff like bootcamps or group weight management.

This seems obvious since everyone is doing bootcamps, but what about during non-peak hours?  Can you work with 6 people instead of 3?

An underappreciated benefit of any of these approaches is that it increases your ability to handle a greater number of clients during the hours that are most popular.

If you could double or triple the number of people that you work with during peak hours and non-peak – your profits will skyrocket.

7. Increase Value Per Client Hour – You increase value per client by having more niche offerings and becoming better at getting results and improving your trainer’s sales skills.

If you can position yours staff as experts’ for a particular target market by working with a specific group of people and a track record of getting results – you’ll be able to charge significantly more.

Needless to say – if you improve your trainer’s sales skills you’ll be able to charge
more per hour as well.

8. Ask for Referrals - Sometimes even when a trainer is providing great service, they face another stumbling block to getting personal training referrals: They don’t ask for them. Asking is the simplest and the easiest way to get referrals, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. If you feel you simply need to get more systematic about how and when you ask, keep the following points in mind:

- One of the best times to ask for a referral is the moment a prospect becomes a client. This is a moment of maximum confidence in your abilities and your character.

- Ask for referrals throughout the relationship. Clients can sometimes forget about the importance of referrals—you can remind clients how they came aboard as the result of a referral.

- Remind clients how receiving high-quality referrals means you can spend more of your time serving their needs rather than marketing your services.

- Referrals require an enriched relationship. People need to feel a strong personal connection before they’re comfortable giving referrals. So be a people person. Learn about the friends and family of your clients. For all of your contacts, get to know their interests, hobbies, and where and with whom they spend their leisure or business time.

9. Ask for Testimonials - One subtle referral tactic is to ask for a testimonial instead of a referral. Once clients have written a testimonial for you, they should feel more comfortable talking about you with close friends and family. In fact, since you have a copy of what they’re saying about you, it becomes easy to simply ask them to repeat those words to other like-minded people they come across.

10. Be Able To Define What Makes You Different – You have to let prospects know EXACTLY why they should do business with you instead of the trainer at 24 Hour Fitness, join Curves, enroll in Weight Watchers or buy the Ab Lounger. Saying you get results isn’t enough. Do you think your competitors say they don’t?

11. Have Social Proof - If you have a studio, put up a ‘Wall of Fame.’ If you run a bootcamp or work in a club or in homes, put testimonials on your webiste. Use testimonials in your marketing so prospects are pre-sold. Help people feel confident that you are the solution to their problem(s) by showing them you were already the solution to other people problems that might have been similar.

12. Use a Script - Once you find the best way to sell, why change it? You don’t necessarily have to say the same thing word for word – prospects are all different. But have a scripted format that you follow with a logical sequence of questions that get the prospect talking.

13. Incentivize – If you typically have clients that choose to work with you twice a week and would like to ‘sway’ them to training three times per week, offer an incentive for only those clients training with you three sessions per week. Something like this: ‘If you choose to work with me three times per week, you also receive our 6 Week Nutrition Coaching Program free. If your cost to deliver the nutrition coaching program is reasonable, this is a great way to get someone in the habit of training with you more frequently long term.

14. Focus on A-Grade Clients -A-grade clients are the ones that don’t complain, pay full price, tell you how wonderful you are, give you great feedback and then tell al their friends (who likely will be A-grade clients as well) how great you are. Identify those clients and nurture them like your own family. Provide them with exceptional service and make sure they are the first to know about any new offers or programs, any new deals… they will love it and purchase more often.

So here’s your plan – pick 3 and get them implemented before the end of the month. That’s all you need to do to start seeing more profit – implement.  Tell me which 3 you plan on implementing in your fitness business below.

Dedicated to your success,

Pat

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2. Fitness Business Mistakes: 12 You Don’t Want To Make
3. Fitness Referral Strategies: 5 Guaranteed Ways To Bring In Clients
4. 11 Ways To Explode Your Fitness Business
5. 3 Ways To Generate More Personal Training Business Fast!