What do you do if you're a Fitness Consultant or Personal Trainer and membership sales are down, it's the summer time and it's difficult to get members to come in for re-assessments, and you're having a problem achieving your monthly goals in terms of number of completed consultations?
First of all, I would make sure your Membership Reps and Club Manager are doing everything possible to market to as many different groups as possible at all times. My business consulting team wrote a series of marketing articles for Fitness Business Canada called "Who Are You Marketing To?", and you can access them at www.edgefitnessconsulting.com if you click on About Us and Edge Articles. There are so many examples of low cost marketing programs that will immediately have an impact on increasing membership sales.
At the same time I would never just depend on the Membership Department for leads and consultations. As a Fitness Business Consultant I have worked with over 60 fitness club organizations in the USA and Canada. Fitness Business Consulting 101 will teach you that one of the most effective ways to market your club is through your fitness department. The best message for a prospect to receive involves weight loss and guaranteed fitness and wellness results. Market your fitness centers and Fitness Consultants similar to a weight loss center or nutritional clinic and you'll see the difference in terms of the quality of prospect that walks through your door. With this kind of marketing, prospects have their initial club experience through the Fitness Consultation office and not a Membership Sales office. In many cases clients will end up purchasing assessment packages and personal training prior to the membership. That's only if your club's vision involves selling education, results and knowledge not just facilities and memberships.
Personal Trainers and Fitness Consultants have a lot of down time when you consider client cancellations and no shows. In order to increase personal training sales we have to better utilize our fitness professionals and keep them accountable for the business side of the relationship. In all of my years of presenting at fitness conferences and speaking with thousands of Personal Trainers, I've always empahsized the importance of being a well rounded fitness business professional not just technician or Trainer. 80% of any Personal Trainer's success will come from skills in human engineering (communication, listening, personality, energy, integrity) with only 15% coming from skills in technical engineering. Yet we spend so much time and energy on certifications and more and more technical learning. Any of our PFP Clients can request a video on my NEHRSA key note presentation on 'the Successful Qualities and not Qalifications of a Successful Personal Trainer' by emailing a request to our Administrator through this web site.
If you're an existing PFP client I want you to contact your Fitness Business Consutant today to discuss our new 5 step marketing plan to generate leads and personal training sales from your personal training department. These are low cost, highly effective programs that will allow you to exceed your summer sales targets and keep pace with many of our top PFP locations that are generating between $70,000 -$160,000 per month in pt sales through these supposed slower periods.
Jeff Russo / President
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