The 5 Biggest Personal Training Sales Mistakes That You Want To Avoid

Hello, Mark Ottobre here for personaltrainermentoring.com, and in this video I'm going to be telling you the 5 biggest personal training sales mistakes that you want to avoid. So let's start with the first one: not understanding the client's needs first and foremost. So what do trainers do? They usually come in and they don't ask questions around the client. So a sales mistake is they go straight in to presenting the program. They might say, well, this is my personal training and it's $50 an hour, it's $100 an hour, it's $150 an hour, and this is what we do. I'm going to train you using this. The first thing you need to do, and probably one of the biggest mistakes that I see personal trainers make, is not starting with this fundamental process. You want to find out before giving any advice, you want to find out who the client is, why they are in front of you, and not just why, but why now. And that is a crucial question to ask a client. Why now? Because most clients, what will happen is they've been struggling for weight loss maybe for 12 months, 2 years, 3 3 years, 4 years, maybe their whole life. If someone has struggled with something their whole life, why have they decided now to reach out and ask you for help? What happened in their life? And through going through that process with the client, that's where you're gonna get a lot of the gems of why they're actually here and why it's important to them. So you always need to start with who is the client? Why are they in front of you? What do they want to achieve? Because an integral part of the sales process is not just taking someone's money. It's actually finding out if you're a fit for that service. Let's say, for example, you specialize in training elite athletes, right? And then what you find out is someone is a beginner. Well, your style of training is not gonna work for a beginner. Or on the flip side, what you specialize is in weight loss and someone comes to see you who wants to build a gigantic amount of muscle. Well, obviously there's gonna be conflict in that relationship or at least tension because one thing, one person wants one thing and the other person wants a different thing. Or it could even overlap in terms of attitudes and beliefs. Maybe your attitudes around certain things are very different to that client and maybe you're thinking that client is not ready for your service. First and most fundamental thing to start with in all sales processes, questions. Ask lots of questions to the client. Why are you here? Why now? What do you want to achieve in 12 months for this to be the most valuable thing that you've ever purchased? What has to happen as a result of us working together? What a fantastic question. They might say, well, I want to lose 12 kilos. And you know, or they might say something like ridiculous, like I want to lose 60 kilos in 12 weeks. Now you can then say, well, that's not achievable. You're not gonna lose 60 kilos in 12 weeks. What we aim for is X, Y, and Z. And also in that questioning, how hard do you wanna work? How many days a week do you have access to this? Are you willing to make dietary changes? Are you willing to train on your own? How many days a week can you invest in this? What type of level of nutritional changes can you change? Out of a scale of 1 to 10, where are you on that scale of invested towards this goal? If they say a 4 or a 5, maybe you say this isn't right for you. This isn't going to work. I need you at least a 9, uh, to really get some results. So that's the first point. The second mistake that trainers must avoid in the sales process is giving the price with no value. So often at the start of the sales process, clients will say, or trainers will say to the client or potential client, it's $50 a session, or it's $100 a session, or midway through it's whatever, it's this is the program, and as soon as they ask the price. So you never present price until you've established value and actually that client is actually your client. So this is here again related to point 1 is you want to establish the value first of why the client is there. Well, not even that. You want to understand why the client is there, then you want to establish value, then you're able to present the price once the price means something. Because if I just said to you, let's go on a holiday and it's, uh, $10,000, right? You might be thinking that holiday is super expensive. But if I said, you know, this is a first-class ticket all around the world 5-star hotels, nothing but 5-star hotels. And you're gonna meet all these famous people. You're gonna meet Arnold Schwarzenegger. You're gonna meet all the presidents of the United States. You're gonna drive a Ferrari, Lamborghini while you're there. And the trip, you know, all expenses, basically everything is included for that $10,000. You're also gonna get a designer suit or a designer dress valued at 10 grand as well just for joining. Now all of a sudden that $10,000 actually doesn't really seem like that much for that holiday because now there's so much value in what that holiday could bring in terms of the people you can meet and the celebrities and all this kind of stuff. So it's the same thing, same concept here for your personal training. It's not just, oh, it's whatever it is an hour, it's you wanna sell an outcome. So instead of thinking about it just by the session, think about it by the outcome. And in doing that, you don't just give price, you establish value, establish needs, and then you present the price. The third mistake that trainers must avoid is not handling objections. Now objections are a completely normal part of the sales process. And I would say especially true in personal training, because again, if someone's been struggling with their weight or their body composition for over 12 months, there's going to be objections towards new advice because they've been trying, and usually they've been trying in their model, in their dimensional boxes of their thinking that they currently have to try and solve this problem. So once you come in and you present a different solution, there might or may be some tension or resistance towards trying something new because they legitimately feel like they have already tried this. So handling objections or Objections coming up during as part of the sales process is completely normal, so don't get freaked out. You have to handle the objections, and a simple way to handle the objections is to start with an active listen. Thank you. So basically what I hear you say is that it's too much money, or whatever they say. So if they say it's, I don't have the time, or I don't have the money, or I'm not sure about this, let's just go with time. You say, okay, so what you're saying is, what I hear you say is that it's too much money. Let me thank you for telling me that. So you thank them for the objection. And then you can go on to solving the objection. So you might say something like, look, if money wasn't an issue, would you still want to go ahead? Gauge where they're at. No, I don't actually trust you. I don't want to go ahead. Or yes, absolutely. If money wasn't an issue, I would still love to go ahead and do this personal training. Okay, fantastic. So really, you might say, there's a couple of ways this can work. You know, if you don't do anything right now, you're probably going to go back into those old behaviors where nothing really changes. Or we can put a plan together. You can start with, I don't know, depending on what business you have and models, you might say you can start with X amount of sessions, which might be smaller, it might be a downsell for you to taste what we're all about and get a trial, and then we can see if this is a fit both for us, both for you, and then we can go from there. How does that sound? Oh, actually, that sounds reasonable. Okay, great. Let's go with that. So again, objections is a normal part of the process and you have to handle it. Come up with solutions. You might even say something like, leave it ambiguous. How would you want to go ahead? How do you see this working? If they say, I need to think about it, okay, what I hear you say is you need to think about it. To make sure I know that I've done my job right, What exactly did you need to think about or what did you need to think on? Because I just want to make sure that I've given you all the information today so I can help you and you can make an accurate decision based on what you want to do going forward. Because what you said before again is that you need this and you need to change your life. So again, this also relates to point number 1. We need to ask a lot of questions about who that client is. The 4th biggest mistake personal trainers make in selling is they sell with absolutely zero authority. So the 2 most powerful thoughts, forces in sales is authority and empathy. So empathy You wanna understand where the client is, feel their pain, but don't jump in the burning boat, so to speak. Have that helicopter view. And the reason why you have a helicopter view is to be the authority on solving the problems that they actually have. So if a client comes to me and says, you know, Mark, I'm gonna train, I wanna lose 20 kilos in 20 weeks, and I'm gonna train every fortnight with you, and I'm gonna check in once a month, I'm gonna say, hey, look, have you ever achieved this? And they're gonna say no. Well, what makes you think your plan and your strategy is going to achieve your outcome? Because I'm here to tell you, I've done this thousands of times, and if you think that's the way it's going to work, I'm just going to tell you it's not going to work that way. This is the way it's going to work. You're going to see me as a minimum twice a week. Our check-ins are weekly. You need to follow the diet. You need to send me online reviews and emails of how it's going every single week. You need 100% accountability because, as you said before, this has been a problem for you for over 12 months. So this is how we're going to work at it. And if you're not willing to work within these parameters, it's not going to work for me. And I'm not going to work for me is that it's not going to work to get that result. And really what I'm dedicated to is getting results. And if you don't want to get results, then I'm probably not the right trainer for you. So again, in that small example that I just gave you, then I'm telling them that like, I'm not being disrespectful. I'm just saying like, I'm the authority on this. You're coming to me because I know how to get results. So if I'm— if you want to come to me and tell me how to do my job, well, then I have a problem with that. Because I know how to do my job and this is how you do my job. This is how it actually works. So anything less than what I demand is unacceptable. And what you usually find is, is clients are quite relieved to hear that. And you give that authoritarian language of this is how my process works. This is everything that you need to know. And this is how many times I need to see you. These are the programs. These are the foods. This is the diet. And this is how we're going to go forward. So you've got to make sure that you maintain an authority position. And if clients start to say, well, you know, I'm only going to train with you you once a fortnight, like I don't accept clients once a fortnight because fundamentally I can't get them the best results. And the reason why they're coming to me is to get results because everyone else has failed them, so to speak, right? So that's point number 4. And the 5th and final biggest mistake that trainers need to avoid in the sales process is discounting. Don't discount, period. Why? It will piss all your existing clients off. And also you don't need to discount your prices. Fundamentally, discounting does not work. It is a race to the bottom where no one wins. And I always explain to trainers that the more you get paid for your service, more likelihood of the better job you're gonna do. You don't wanna discount your service where you're feeling that the client doesn't value you or you don't feel like working hard for that client. Like let's just say for example, your current rate is $100 an hour, right? And then someone comes along and says, I'm gonna pay you $300 an hour. Now I can probably guarantee what's gonna happen if someone pays you $300 an hour when your normal rate is $100. Is you're going to work harder for that person. You're going to come early, you're going to do extra work, you're going to stay later, you're going to make sure that client is really serviced and serviced well. Likewise, if someone comes along and says, well, I'm only going to pay you $50 an hour and you accept it when your normal rate is $100 an hour, you're probably going to come late, you're probably going to leave early, the programs aren't going to be on time, you're going to see their text message, maybe not get back to them. You might say no, it's the same for all clients. However, the likelihood of doing your best work is going to increase when you're paid what you're worth. So set your prices, be firm on your prices. If someone asks for a discount, I usually cheekily say, no, sorry, I'm not familiar with discounts. We don't do that. Or say something cheeky like, you know, it's not Bali, we don't do haggling, or it's not Thailand and this kind of stuff and have a bit of a joke of it. But in all seriousness, we don't discount. And the reason why we don't discount is we don't discount our service, everyone. And we make sure that it's fair for everyone. These are our prices. This is how we work. We'd love to have you on board. We can add value. And what we do is we try and make this— well, we don't try, we make this service as valuable as absolutely possible. And it also helps if you have your prices written down so clients can actually see it and say, right, these are the packages, these are the structures. And say, if I gave you a discount, the fact is that my other clients have already paid this rate and paid the rate without question. It would obviously— I mean, how would you feel if you came into my business and all these people are paying X rate and now I've just given you this rate. Well, you probably wouldn't feel pretty good seeing that you've already spent a lot of money with me and I've given you— and I don't— I've never trained you— a discount. So that's the reason why we don't discount. And it's also we, we pride ourselves on having a good service, and I wouldn't want to discount my service to you because I want you to get results. So that's the fifth mistake. Thank you so much for watching this video. And in the comments just below, I want you to tell me what tip tips you would like me to cover next. And while you're at it, make sure you subscribe and ring that bell for all future updates. And if you haven't already, do check out personaltrainermentoring.com for your free $500 personal trainer transformation pack. All that and more at personaltrainermentoring.com. Till next time, let's keep raising the standard of personal training worldwide.