Last Updated on January 22, 2024
Regular Programs & Incentives Can Help Your Trainer Become Better At Selling & Renewing Personal Training Contract.
Trainers don’t intentionally sell their services poorly, nor are they lazy. They just need education and training. Following are examples of activities that encourage trainers to get out of their comfort zone and ask for business, and that create a team approach rather than pit trainers against each other.
When leading these activities or performing them for the first time, reward effort, and remember, any new exercise requires practice. How many times have you invested adverting pesos to promote personal training only to be frustrated by the lack of return? To add to your frustration, trainers often neglect the best, most economical, and most obvious form of marketing when they fail to promote themselves.
TRAINER CONTRACT
The Club Manager should sign an agreement with each of the personal trainers requiring them to set goals based on the number of contracts they will make each day or month. The Club Manager should coach trainers to commit to their goals and track their progress, but they should not set some arbitrary number for trainers. This way, it is the responsibility of the trainers to reach their goals and ask for support when needed. (At this point, there is a clear measure of whether the trainer is a good fit for the job during the review).
The agreement should include the number of sessions per week the trainer will have, the number of new contacts they’ll make daily, and the number of follow-up calls made to inactive clients. Strive for 50 to 70 percent renewal rates & 50 to 70 percent minimum new business leads generated by the trainers. Those numbers will be the result of trainers making daily calls and approaches.
Meet with new staff members every day for three weeks and check to be sure they are in the habit of using this new procedure. Then continue daily self-tracking, but cut back on one on one meetings to a weekly basis for nine more weeks, by their 90day review, trainers will have habits that lead them to success.
SPECIAL PROMOTIONS
Another trainer incentive is to offer a Very Important Promotion (VIP). For example, a “One Day Only” special can be offered from open to close. Trainers shouldn’t be informed of the promotion until close the night before, so there is no risk of pre-selling or upsetting members unable to take advantage of the sale, Personal Training fees are dropped to your largest package rate, regardless of how many are purchased. The offer is good for new clients only, and payment has to be collected before closing that day. The urgency created by the offer motivates trainers to follow up on their referrals or leads. It gives them a specific reason to talk to people that day.
It is possible to generate four times your typical revenue on that day. Use the program’s success as an example of how much trainers could get done if they repeated those habits every day.
LONG TERM CONTEST
Many trainers enjoy little healthy competition. Incentive contests give them a reason to pull out the stop at what might be slower times of the year, like holidays or religious seasons. To make the incentive appeal to everybody, equally weight of activities. If you awarded points for only new business or the number of sales in a period, it wouldn’t accurately reflect contributions made by all staff members. Trainers earn points for the number of sessions conducted, new business, renewed contracts, participating in marketing events, testimonials collected, etc.
Trainers enjoy seeing scores accumulate weekly during the month-long contest, so post a graph in your break room. The cash prize of Php 15,000 is awarded to the winning trainer at the staff meeting. The cost to you is the cash prize and minimal time spent recording numbers you should track already. The excitement and additional effort by the trainer result in everyone’s winning with their increased business that month.
If you hope to involve trainers in becoming their own best source of new business, provide regular and consistent opportunities for repetition until it becomes a set of daily habits for your staff. Training for sales can be made more fun and team-oriented, and less isolating, and individual successes can motivate the group. Consistency in flexing the right muscles will build your personal training business to its full strength.
