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Referrals Made Easy

May 2, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

A Post On Getting Referrals By Pat Rigsby

As fitness business owner we all want more referrals. They’re the easiest prospects to sell, they are more likely to refer others and they’ll stay longer and pay more while they’re clients.

Unfortunately, referrals aren’t as easy to come by as they used to be. In years gone by all you had to do was offer up a prize or reward and your current clients would line up to send you new clients for a chance to win what you were offering or a crisp $50 bill.

It’s not quite that easy any more.

You can still be a referral driven business, but you need to set the stage to make that happen. Here’s a primer to get you started.

Personal Training Sales: The Value Capture Solution

April 15, 2012 By admin 2 Comments

A Post on Personal Training Sales By Pat Rigsby

dreamstime xs 20291426 300x199 Personal Training Sales: The Value Capture Solution

For the typical entrepreneurial personal trainer sales is a hot topic.

They want to know how to sell more.

How to close more deals.

But in my mind, this view is a small part of a much bigger picture.

The Client Value Capture picture.

So I wanted to explain my take on Client Value Capture and how it can explode your personal training sales.

Generating Instant Income For Your Fitness Business

February 22, 2012 By admin 6 Comments

A Post On Fitness Business Income Generation By Pat Rigsby

dreamstime xs 23272249 Generating Instant Income For Your Fitness Business

Since I’ve been on the business coaching and franchising side of things for fitness business owners, nothing has surprised me more than the number of business owners who fail to maximize the value of their personal network and their client base.

This is amazing to me because those same fitness business owners will spend piles of money to market to people that they have no prior relationship with.

The truth is, the biggest opportunity for an influx of income into your fitness business is right in your own database. When you make an offer to members of your personal network or existing and past clients, it’s not only easier to sell them something (versus new prospects off the street), but your business actually become more profitable because you don’t have nearly the cost of client acquisition.

The other benefit to this is that it really is providing a better, more complete solution for your existing clients and it’s helping those people in your network achieve their health and fitness goals.

Personal Training Sales Increase By Growing The Back End

October 4, 2011 By admin 6 Comments

Here’s something for you to think about with your personal training sales.

The Front End: the amount of money someone spends with you on their first transaction.

Back End: the amount of money they spend with you over their lifetime as a client.

Which is larger? The back end.

But which does the typical fitness professional focus most of their efforts on? The front end. Big mistake.

If you want to build your business to that $20,000 or more per month level, there must be a focus on building the back end.

As you know by now from reading this blog, there are only three ways you can possibly grow your business.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Personal Trainer Sales Tagged With: personal training sales

Are YOU Committing Fitness Malpractice?

July 7, 2011 By admin 5 Comments

A Guest Post By Paul Reddick

Last month I spoke at Uncle Mike Stehle’s certification at The World Famous Training Room in Avon, NJ. It’s always an awesome event.

But something strange happens every time I speak about business with fitness professionals. It’s what I call fitness malpractice.

There seems to be a big old road block when it comes to selling.

Most trainers have a problem selling more services to their clients cause they didn’t want to appear to be a “salesman” or looking like all you care about is the money.

So I posed this question to the group…

What would someone need in order to lose 50lbs.?

Top 10 Traits Of A Successful Fitness Professional

May 16, 2011 By Pat Rigsby 21 Comments

The other day someone asked me what the top 10 traits of a successful fitness professional are. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to answer. There are so many things that go into being a top flight personal trainer – I had trouble narrowing it to 10. Below is what I came up with – but I’d really like to hear your thoughts. So review my Top 10 and then let me know what traits I missed in the comments area below.

Education: The fitness pro’s education is not only extremely important, but it should be continual. Great personal trainers and coaches keep learning because they have a passion for knowledge, are driven to help the people they work with and want to stay ahead of the competition.
Integrity: Integrity is vital for the fitness pro. Integrity is a concept of consistency of values, actions, methods, expectations, outcomes and principles. It’s sense of one’s truthfulness and honesty in relationship to one’s motives and actions. Without integrity you really don’t have anything.

Screen shot 2011 05 16 at 10.05.27 PM 300x208 Top 10 Traits Of A Successful Fitness Professional

The Truth About Personal Training Sales

March 20, 2011 By Pat Rigsby 15 Comments

A Post On Personal Training Sales By Pat Rigsby

Sometimes becoming better at personal training sales is not about the presentation. Sometimes it’s not about the offer. Sometimes it’s about you.

When I first left coaching and took over running a personal training department, I didn’t instantly start closing deals at a high rate.

Actually, I was pretty pathetic at closing and only generated any sales at all by being willing to get in front of more people than anyone else did.

I remember that during my first pay period, my closing percentage was 12%. Yep – 12%.

And honestly, it was just a mental thing with me. My own personal hang ups about money. I’d never made more than $30,000 in a year and the thought of someone investing $300 or $400 a month on personal training seemed pretty extreme to me.

I tried to sell in spite of this hang up – but I’m sure that it showed in the way that I presented our programs and in my lack of confidence.

But then after reading a couple sales books and going back through Think and Grow Rich, it finally hit me: selling should be easy. You’re just helping people get what they want. I was getting caught up on dollars, but I’d spent the previous 7 years convincing parents to spend tens of thousands of dollars to come play baseball under my guidance at a school they’d never even heard of before I started recruiting them.

If people really want something they’ll find a way to make it happen.

As soon as I got that through my head, personal training sales became easy. I instantly went from a 12% closer to a 60-70% closer. Once I lost the head trash I was able to sell to anyone. In fact, though I wouldn’t recommend them as your target market, I’ve sold training to people that were unemployed, cashiers at McDonalds and any number of other people that I’d have never guessed could or would be willing to invest in training.

But if people want something bad enough, they’ll often find a way. So don’t let your hang ups about money prevent them from getting what they want.

Once you’ve gotten out of your own way when it comes to personal training sales, here are a few other tips that will help you sell more:

What Do You Need Help With In Your Fitness Business?

January 16, 2011 By Pat Rigsby 41 Comments

Right now there are probably just one or two things that you feel are standing between you and that multiple six-figure fitness business you’re building.

Well I’m here to help, so tell me what that thing or two you need help with is and I’ll do my best to help with it in an upcoming post or newsletter.

So do you want more help with:

Offline fitness marketing
Online fitness marketing
Closing sales
Running bootcamps or large groups
Integrating semi-private or small groups
Creating multiple streams of income
Developing an infoproduct
Opening a facility
Public speaking
Publicity
Anything else…

Whatever you feel like you need help with – let me know. Just post it in the comments section below and I’ll add it to the content schedule.

13 Random Fitness Business Insights

October 3, 2010 By admin 22 Comments

A Post On Fitness Business Insights By Pat Rigsby

06 repetition 300x231 13 Random Fitness Business Insights

Over the weekend I read a lot – and when I read I usually make notes. So here are 13 random insights – in no particular order – to help you improve your fitness business:

1. Success Habits happen through repetition, NOT all at once. If you do something like call members of your network on Monday, don’t skip Tuesday and Wednesday – then make a few more calls Thursday.

It will never happen on Thursday.

Better to make 2 calls a day every day and be consistent instead of 10 calls once a week.

2. Every week you should be spending at least 15 minutes just brainstorming how to make your business better. Write down what you come up with. If you can get 2% better each week, you’re 104% better in a year.

3. The question that you ALWAYS have to ask is “Am I getting the MOST impact out of EVERYTHING I do?”

4. Write down the 3 highest compliments you’d like to hear from each client… then figure out what you can do to start GETTING those compliments from every client.

5. Be sure to have the right definition of what you actually are. Don’t narrowly define yourself as just a personal trainer. What’s the real benefit the client wants? If you thought of yourself as ‘only’ a personal trainer that provided one on one sessions, when the market shifted to more group training, bootcamps and semi-private you probably got left behind.

It’s kind of like railroads at turn of the century. They saw themselves as being in the railroad business, NOT the transportation business. So when other transportation options became more popular they almost were driven out of business.

So maybe you’re in the Fat Loss business. Maybe it’s the Lifestyle Improvement business. How you get people where they want is simply the vehicle – and you should always be looking toimprove the vehicle.

6. The fastest way to grow your fitness business is to ACTIVELY PURSUE your ideal clients. It makes sense, but almost nobody does it.

7. You need to put a HUGE value on EVERY lead that comes in to your business. Every lead that comes in needs to be followed up with at least 3 more times. Phone calls, personal emails, cards – If you aren’t following up you’re THROWING AWAY a TON of business.

8. Lifetime value of a client is a HUGE concept. That’s why the Deal of the Day type sites like Groupon and Living Social can be so powerful. Maybe you break even for the first short term offer, but if you keep the clients for 6, 12 or maybe even 18 months – these can be a business changer.

9. We all do it in sports, but rarely in sales – are you training for your fitness sales presentation? If you’re not practicing every week you’re leaving money on the table.

10. A member is somebody who joins a program or facility to gain access to a service or certain resources. A client, on the other hand, is somebody who is under the care, guidance and protection of an expert in the field. Treat your people as clients.

11. Get some high visibility or high influence people (celebrities, local business owners/politicians, etc) to be your client – even if you have to give it to them for free. This is great social proof anytime you need to get your foot in the door with someone.

12. Remember, you’re the expert. It’s your fitness business. You know much better than your client what you can offer them, what they need if they’re going to reach their goals. If you just take their money and give them whatever they want, without educating them as to what they need to do or invest in to reach their goals, you’re not living up to your end of the bargain. Even if the things you recommend are things you don’t offer (yet), it’s your job to educate them and make sure they’re getting it, so they can reach their goals.

13. Multitasking is terrible for productivity. Try to do 5 things at once and you’ll do none of them well. Use my 25 minute time block strategy and focus on one thing for each block.

Pick out a couple and take action on them. And do me a favor and tell me which insight you thought was most valuable to your fitness business below…

Filed Under: Fitness Business Success, Personal Trainer Sales Tagged With: Fitness Business, fitness sales, Personal Training

Personal Training Profits: Done For You

June 14, 2010 By admin 8 Comments

Personal Training Profits. A post by Pat Rigsby

In general, people are willing to pay more for anything just to give in to their convenience.

The old Chinese Proverb goes like this:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

But most people don’t want to learn to fish.

They want you to catch the fish, clean it, cook it and serve it.

The more you do for them – the happier they are.

They don’t want to make decisions. They are busy. They’re bombarded with information and choices, so the simpler you make it and the more you do for them – the better your business will be.

Done For You can be as small as Lunchables at the grocery store or as big as a franchise like Athletic Revolution.

But the one thing in common is that it’s designed to make things easier for the customer or client.

So how can you integrate Done For You into your personal training business for more profits?

Here are a few ideas: