The Only 3 Ways to Grow Your Personal Training Business

There are hundreds of strategies & tactics that can help you grow your personal training business – and throughout the pages of this blog you’ll find many of them. But the truth is, all of those business building strategies can be distilled down to these three concepts:

1. Increase the number of clients you serve
2. Increase the monthly value of each client, or
3. Increase the duration that a client remains working with you.

Now let’s take a look at each of these concepts in detail, and I’ll show you how you can double your personal training business just by manipulating these three factors just slightly.

Increasing Number Of Clients You Serve

This is what the majority of fitness pros focus on when they are trying to grow their personal training business. Getting new clients is the normal lifeblood of any personal training business. How do you get more clients? There must be hundreds, if not thousands of ways.

For now however, let’s make a very short list of some of the more popular ways in which trainers build their business.

Generating referrals from your current clients
Distributing Free Trials
Public Speaking
Facebook Ads
Lead Boxes
Forming JV’s with local businesses
Using Plastic Gift Cards
Making Offers On Deal of The Day Sites
Networking
Targeted Direct Mail
Etc.

There are dozens of other fitness marketing tactics you can use, but this list will get you started.

Increasing Average Monthly Client Value

This is one personal training business growth factor that few fitness pros pay enough attention to. Just by raising your fees slightly, you can dramatically increase the profitability of your business. Why?

Simple. Whether you charge $179 for a month of fitness bootcamp, or if you charge $199 a month, you are providing the same service. It takes the same of resources from you, in both money and time.

I know that many trainers are afraid to raise their prices for fear of losing clients. But in most cases, this fear is completely unfounded. In fact, raising your price has an added incentive of also raising your perceived value.

As strange as it may sound, not only will you make more money by raising your fees, but you may actually get more clients. You see, people, in general, tend to associate price with quality. So if your price is a little higher than everyone is, they assume that you are more qualified, and provide a higher quality.

It happened to me. When I first started, I tried to get clients by charging them $20 a session. And you know what? I couldn’t get anyone to hire me. I tried $30 dollars a session, and I still had the same problem. Then I gave $60, $70, and eventually $80+ an hour a try. It worked!

When I was trying to charge low fees, no one wanted me. They assumed that since I was much lower priced than the competition, I wasn’t in the same "league" as they were. After raising my price considerably, I now was in the price figure that they were accustomed to paying, and they felt that I was sufficiently qualified.

Of course the level of service, and my expertise, was still the same, but who cares! They felt more comfortable paying me a higher price, and I was doing them a disservice by charging them so low.

The same could also be true of you. If you are charging below the competition, then increase your price. Don’t go from $79 dollars a month for a fitness bootcamp to $299 a month, as you will lose many clients.

You need to raise your price by small increments. 2-5% at a time. Every six months or so, raise your price by another 2 to 5%, until you reach or even slightly exceed, the average per session fee in your area.

Raise your price slowly like this, and you will increase your profits and increase your perceived value while minimizing client turnover.

Offer your clients back-end products. Look, if your clients have been satisfied with the service that you have offered them, then they will be more than happy to purchase other products from you which can benefit them.

So what can you offer? How about supplements, equipment, workshops, nutritional coaching, or numerous other items that can help them reach their goals.

Don’t forget, your clients come to you expecting for you to offer them both products and services that will be of benefit to them. So as long as you offer a high quality, useful product, then not only will you make more money, but you will gain the appreciation of your clients for letting them know about this product which is of benefit to them.

Increasing The Duration Clients Work With You

The third way is to increase the duration that clients continue to train with you. Let’s assume on average, each client works with you for an average of 8 months. It wouldn’t take much effort to increase the number to say 10 or 12 months. But this slight improvement can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.

So how do you increase your client duration? Well, it’s different depending on how you run your business, but in general there are two basic ways. Offer some sort of maintenance program, or require clients to sign agreements for a specific duration in order for you to be willing to train them.

Simply say that reaching their goals will require commitment and you’re willing to commit to helping them as long as they are willing to make the necessary commitment.

Using These 3 Methods To Dramatically Increase Your Profits

Now that we know the 3 ways to grow your personal training business, let’s just play with these 3 variables, and see what we can do.

Let’s be conservative in our assumptions though. Let’s assume that right now you are making $60,000 dollars a year by training 40 clients. Let’s also assume that we decide to increase all of the 3 variables by 20%. I think we can both agree that this is manageable.

So let’s look at the numbers…

By increasing your new clients by 20% you go from 40 clients to 50.

By increasing what they pay you each month by 20%, their monthly investment goes from $125 to $150.

By increasing the amount of time they stay with you 20%, they go from 12 months to 14 (actually more, but we’ll round down.)

So if you add up the increase in your revenue by increasing these 3 factors by 20%, you would now earn $105,000 a year – an additional $45,000 a year in income for your personal training business!

So focus on these improving these 3 personal training business building components, and if you want more strategies and tactics, check out these posts:

17 Random Personal Training Business Tips

Building A Personal Training Business: The 10x Factor

My Favorite Way To Take A Personal Training Business Online

26 Problems Facing a Personal Training Business

3 Ways To Generate More Personal Training Business Fast!

Is Your Personal Training Business Dying?

Personal Training Business Motivators

Personal Training Business Books

Fast Way to Grow Your Personal Training Business

All You Need To Know About Personal Training Business Success

Three Tips For Personal Training Business Prosperity

A Lesson On Building A Personal Training Business