You’re working hard – really hard at your fitness training business but you’re still not quite there when it comes to how much you’re earning. You’ve cut a few costs here and there, but the fitness business strategies you are using are no showing much of an improvement.  You can’t work any more hours than you do, your marketing budget is lean and effective (is it?) and you certainly don’t want to cut down the hours that other staff members work. All that means is more work for you.

So what’s the solution?

There are 4 things you can do to get above that earnings ceiling that are simple to implement and which won’t cost you a lot of additional work.

10% Better Retention

What is your fitness business retention ratio? In other words, what is the percentage of your regular paying clients that leave every month? If that number is higher than 5% you have a problem. You might have months where that number spikes but you should aim for a 5% average across the board. How to fix it? SERVICE! This is the the rubber meets the road. If you are not delivering results and an overall great experience for your clients exceeding their expectations you need to start now. A great way to show and highlight to your clients the  results they are getting is to have monthly physical assessments where you weight and measure your clients and see how their are moving towards their goals. What happens when their reach their goals? SET NEW ONES!

10% Better Lead Generation

Monitoring in any business is vitally important. You must know your conversion rate and it’s also essential you know how many leads you’re getting and from which sources. By knowing this you can concentrate your marketing budget in areas that work. You’ll also be able to dump marketing campaigns that don’t offer a good return on investment (ROI). It’s simple to do the math. If you spend $500 a month on newspaper and magazine ads and you get 200 responses, but only 10 convert, each lead has cost you $50. Again it’s back to conversion and there’s probably room for improvement.

By monitoring everything you do to promote your business you’ll have a better perception of what’s working. You’ll then be able to use your marketing dollar more effectively and by improving your conversion skills and raising your prices only 10% you will quickly improve your profitability.

10% Better Closing

People in the fitness industry don’t perceive themselves as being salespeople and the one thing they dread is closing – the process of turning an inquiry into a paying client. Lead generation is time consuming and expensive because of the cost of advertising and marketing. If you monitor and know the cost of each lead you get, it’s a great incentive to master the art of selling fitness.

Hopefully by now you have discovered the best source(s) of new leads. It could be newspaper advertising locally, or inquiries coming through your website. These leads all cost money and if you can’t convert the majority of those leads into paying clients, you’re just going to have to learn some more effective closing techniques.

Have you taken the time to figure out your conversion rate? If you have no idea, then it’s time to start monitoring what you do and taking notes.  You have to monitor everything so you’ll always be aware of areas that need improvement. Let’s say you had 50 inquiries last month but only converted 2 into paying clients. The truth is you need to improve your closing techniques. How do you do that?

Think hard about what you did to close those two people and then follow that formula. Write yourself a script if necessary – you don’t have to sound like a parrot, just make sure you cover key points that seem to work. It’s pointless telling a prospect that “I’m the best trainer you’ll find around here”. That’s all about you – what she needs is results! Show her photographs and testimonials of your most successful clients as evidence.

Closing is all about the prospect.

Your job as head salesman is not to talk about how successful you are – it’s to tell her how successful she will be. In other words, listen and quit yapping. Successful salespeople are listeners and they know exactly what questions to ask. Questions that require long and thoughtful answers from your prospect, that way you’ll discover her pain. When you’ve learned the right questions, you’ll be surprised how many prospects close themselves.

Don’t worry about the money. Part of  the closing process will be to let her know the value of your services and not how much they cost. There’s a big difference. People don’t mind paying if they know they’re going to get results.

Raise your Fees by 10%

Many trainers fear that raising their fees will deter clients, but in many cases that fear is unfounded. By raising your prices you’ll actually increase the perceived value of your services.

Most people understand that a good trainer will charge higher fees; it’s not like grocery shopping where the consumer compares the price of a bag of sugar at 3 different supermarkets. With fitness training they know they’re going to get a better product if paying more - and that product is YOU.

If you charge $149 for fitness bootcamp membership, raise your price to $169.  Adding that $20 can greatly increase the profitability of your business, and you may also find it increases membership – it’s that perceived value again.

Selling your services too cheap may actually be detrimental – it’s that you get what you pay for idea. He’s cheap, so he can’t be much good. By charging more, people will think you’re better qualified and your services are going to be worth those extra few bucks.

How about session prices? In the beginning many fitness trainers think they’ll attract more clients by offering their services for say $20 to $40 an hour.  If someone is comparison-shopping for fitness trainers they’ll probably not give you much consideration.

Charge $70 an hour, and again you have that perceived added value. Wow – he charges a lot, he must be good! So find out what the “top” trainers are charging in your area and again, you may be surprised by getting more sign-ups than working for next to nothing. It’s much better for you to have two clients pay $70 an hour than seven clients paying $20 an hour! Get three of those $70 clients daily and you’ll have time left over to concentrate on other areas of your business. You could even add another bootcamp!

If you charge $149 a month for your fitness boot camp, don’t go too crazy by putting the price up to $299. That’ll be a good way to lose clients. Start with a reasonable increase that puts your services in line with those who are considered the “best” in your area. Raise your prices incrementally, perhaps 5% every six months to reach that 10% goal. You won’t scare away clients and you’ll increase your profitability.

This entry was posted on November 28, 2012 at 12:36 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Boot Camp Business, Boot Camp Marketing, Boot Camp Strategies by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet