Selling Personal Training: How to Sell Personal Training on the Gym Floor
When considering how to sell personal training on the gym floor, you’ll experience more competition with your team of trainers. You will also see more opportunities to generate leads and actually sell more sessions with clients. In a gym setting, the pool of potential clients is literally right in front of you! Through good observation and effective communication skills, trainers in a gym setting have ample opportunity to snag clients right and left.
So let’s go over the trials, tribulations, and benefits of selling personal training in a gym. When selling your personal training services in a gym, you must take into account multiple different environmental factors. These include the gym itself and the people who inhabit the gym. Being analytical about your surroundings and meshing that with your awesome sales skills can help you to better understand how to sell personal training in a gym. So here we go!
Selling Personal Training Sessions
First, to get you brushed up let’s go over a few basics of selling personal training sessions. Honing in on your sales skills before you test your luck on the gym floor can benefit you in many ways. You save yourself wasted time on failed sales conversations, you land more clients, and your fellow trainers will bow down to your success, and you will go home each week with more money in your pockets.
How do I achieve these benefits, you may ask? Simple.
- Gauge the client’s mood and adjust your energy.
- Build a connection first, then make the sale.
- Upsell when possible and build your value.
- Read this guide for tips for selling more personal training sessions.
Building a connection with the client first is imperative. You need to establish trust and establish the reasons they want to hire a personal trainer. Meeting clients at their needs is the best way to solidify the value of your training. Inherently, the clients will find themselves more persuaded by the very specific ways you can help them reach their goals.
How do I sell myself as a personal trainer?
To be able to sell personal training sessions on the gym floor, you will need to sell yourself. The person already has a membership at the gym. They most likely need help getting started at the gym or are becoming frustrated with their lack of progress on their own accord. Whatever the case may be, you have about 2 minutes to get a read on what needs you can help potential clients meet.
Once you get a grasp on what they are lacking, then you can sell yourself by meeting them at their point of need and quick response with the steps you would take to help them reach their goals. This is not the point at which they need to hear all your qualifications, but you can highlight your specializations if it involves an issue they have mentioned.
How do I upsell as a personal trainer?
First, what is upselling? Upselling is when you can persuade a client to purchase more from you because it will add value to their training. A good example of this outside of the industry is when grocery stores offer discounts for buying multiple items of the same product.
Consumers find more value in getting more for their money when they can purchase multiple of the same items for a reduced cost. This concept applies to any sales but can be particularly useful in personal training sales.
As a client, a small investment may seem better on the wallet. Though, to get lasting results they need to put an extended amount of time into the training. Upselling personal training packages can be as simple as throwing in a bonus session per month if they sign up for a 9-month training package instead of 6 months.
Maybe the potential client is not yet a member of the gym. When you upsell a membership, you have to be aware of how the value of the next tier of membership will help them. Items included in that next membership tier could help them reach their goals or give them some relief after their workouts like access to the saunas, massages, or pools.
How do I sell more personal training sessions?
- Create a sense of urgency
- Map out how much more logical it would be to spend time with a trainer
- Make the sale seem exclusive
What kind of qualifications and specializations do you have? Do you have really great testimonials and results form former or current clients?
The answers to these questions will be your way in for creating value around you and establishing your credibility. We covered this in the “how to sell yourself as a personal trainer section,” but it’s important to reiterate how your credibility will help you sell more personal training sessions.
Environmental Factors to Consider
When selling personal training in a gym, you have some environmental factors to consider. First off, the gym is noisy! This is a major barrier to effective communication thus a barrier to effectively making sales. Other barriers in the environment include other trainers and gym members speaking with you and other trainers pining for the same clients.
Headphones and gym equipment tend to occupy clients, so trainers in gyms have to stay constantly aware of gym member’s actions and interactions. Guage a potential client’s mood by their actions or the manner in which they are training. Are they exercising aggressively or calm and collected?
In a gym, your potential client base will find themselves most occupied with their workout routine. The best experience in a gym is one where you can get in, grind out the workout without any distractions and at your own pace, and head to where you need to be next.
So… here’s how to sell personal training on the gym floor
Getting the attention you want will be a bit difficult when you are interrupting a person’s gym routine. Therefore, you have to spark up a conversation with a person without making it feel like an interruption to their time. Walk up to them, not with the intention to make a sale on the spot, but to make a connection with that person.
Compliment them on their form or correct them on their form and let the conversation flow from there. Ask them about their specific goals, how they’re reaching them, and why they decided to join this gym in particular. This will give you information about their proximity, availability, and how you can sell them by reaching them at their point of need.
Now you do not have to make the sale on the spot or get them to sign any paperwork right then and there. They probably want to finish their routine and then stop to think about the prospect. Give the person your number or card or tell them to come find you at whatever specific location in the gym after they have finished with their workout.
Selling personal training on the gym floor requires a watchful eye and good conversation starters. Many gyms have sales teams that lead clients right to you, but others leave the acquisition and sales entirely up to the trainer. Nonetheless, it will always be up to the trainer to make the conversions.
Adding Value to Your Training in a Gym
When selling sessions to clients in the gym, you already have them there at the gym. They recognized some value in purchasing a membership at your gym, so you have their attendance covered. From there, they need to understand how you can make their attendance at your gym a more rewarding experience.
Progression takes a strong understanding of how to add variety to regular workouts and diets. Often, the average gymgoer does not have the knowledge or insights to be able to reach the goals they have set in the time they want to. You, as the trainer, have all the knowledge they need to start making real gains on their goals and even help them to set their goals higher.
Therefore, your presence is valuable and it’s especially an added value to the gym itself. After all you have something to prove to your employer as well as the clients you train.
How much do personal trainers at the gym make?
When selling personal training on the gym floor, you can expect to make a commission on the sessions you land. Hourly pay often hovers around minimum wage for personal trainers working for big box gyms.
Pay is often determined by the amount of education that the trainer has. Therefore, you should make sure to continue educating yourself and adding more certifications and qualifications to your collection. Often, gyms will even pay for your continued education! Your knowledge and capacity for growth directly relate to your success and your success reflects on the overall success of the gym.
In Summary
Training in a gym setting can open the doors for generating plenty of leads, but converting them to paying clients is the tricky part. Its up to your skills in communication, sales, and analyzing the environment around you to understand the best way to reach potential clients at their point of need.
