Ep89: Why Most PTs Blow Their Consults in 5 Minutes (Do This Instead)
30 Sept 2025 · 13 min
Matt Dart breaks down why most PTs lose clients in the first five minutes of a consultation. He shares exact scripts for setting expectations upfront, building rapport fast, and closing with either two options or a single prescribed package. His method follows a diagnose-prescribe-decide framework that converts more prospects into paying clients.
Questions this episode answers
Around 80%.
Matt: 'well over a million dollars' personally; his clients: 'over $2.2 million' (figure noted as likely higher since not updated in ~6 months).
All right, everyone, Matt here from the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle show. We're going to talk about how you think you can become a authority during your consultation process. So it's been a little while since I've done a podcast because I actually batch recorded about four or five about a month ago. So good to be back getting into the swing of things because I usually do them, literally record them each week. So a little life update from me. Not too much, to be honest. Now, we actually had a cricket tournament a couple weeks back on the Gold coast, which was nice. Took a few days off, which is epic. And we actually booked a trip to Japan as well for February next year. Turned out we'll be away for my birthday, which is epic. So very much looking forward to that trip. Do a bit of snowboarding as well, because our daughter, when we took her snowboarding in Queenstown, she loved it. So super keen to go back on the slopes and rush to bring. Bringing Jess's mum over as well. So a bit of a babysitter while we're over there and also her sister. So anyway, we're gonna go through how to become an authority, specifically in your consultation. So I did a really detailed training on how to become an authority in your whole business for my clients, but I thought I'd give you a little bit of a sneak peek into what we went through. And obviously if you do wanna become a client, then obviously you get access to the whole thing. So sitting on the fence right now, then send us a message and we'll see if we can. We can help. So firstly, why is this actually important? So if you don't set yourself up to win during the consult, it's. It's going to significantly reduce the chances of you getting that client across the. Across the line. So the way that you actually set up the console and also how you book it in as well, is a big thing to how successful you become in. In the sales process. So let me tell you what usually happens. Usually what pts do is. Sorry, excuse me. Usually they'll. They'll just get straight into. Well, firstly, to be honest, usually the. The standard PTE process is they'll spend five minutes asking about someone's goals, then they'll go on the gym floor and show them exactly what they need to do. And then the members like, oh, cool, you've already told me everything I need today. I'll go do it. Thanks so much. That's the usual sales process for a pt. I'm going to specifically focus on the start of the consult. Today, if you want more detail on the rest of the consult, I've got other podcast episodes on the full consultation process, but of course you can obviously work with us as well to get that. So, yeah, most PTs just kind of go straight into it and they kind of just wing it. So they don't set people up for success, they don't set expectations, they don't set it up in a way that's going to help them close the sale. So I'm going to go through the specific framework, the exact wording that we use or that I've used over the last five to six years to close well over a million dollars in PT sales and my clients to make over $2.2 million in sales. And I think that's, that's only, that's only. I haven't actually updated that for like six months or so, so it's probably close to 3 million now. But yeah, it works really, really well. So my conversion rate over the last five or six years has been around 80% for personal training. So I'm going to show you how to set it up for success. So I've got a couple of notes here that I'll, that I'll go through to kind of keep me, keep me on track. Um, but if you have any other questions after this training, make sure you send me a, send me a DM as well. So let's get into it. So why authority matters? So you could lose a sale in the first five minutes. So if you're not having authority, people leave the conversation with, I'll think about it. If you have authority, they'll have trust, they'll like you and the conversion will most likely happen. So there's one thing that you can do like the pre call positioning. So after you book in the console, we, we call them a health assessment. You can call them a, I don't know, you can call it consult, whatever. What you're going to do, you're going to basically set the expectation for what you're going to do in that session. Everyone knows that they're going to be sold to. Okay. But once they kind of know how it's going to run, they're going to bring their walls down a little bit. So once you've booked in the consult, there's a couple of things that you can do. You can do some pre qualification questions mean like, cool, John, just so I can prepare for the health assessment, I've just got a couple of questions ask firstly, what are your goals for your health and fitness? Cool. Why do you want to achieve these goals and what are you struggling with to achieve them? They can be like your pre qualification questions and then you can be like, john, awesome, my friend. So we'll get you booked in for 11 o' clock on Monday, just to give you a bit of an idea of what we're going to go through. The first step is going to be we're going to do a health assessment so we can identify if we can even help and what help you actually need. Then we're going to do what we call a movement assessment. So we're going to test your mobility and your technique to again see how much help you need. Once we've got that information, then I'll give you a recommendation on how to fast track your results. Does that sound good to you? Boom. Yes, of course it does, Matt. So that is how you, let's say you position yourself as the authority when you book in the call. And funny thing is, you're going to do exactly the same thing when you start the consultation. So of course, like when you first sit down with someone, you want to build a little bit of rapport, get to know them a little bit, get to know, you know, what they've been doing for the day. You want to spend a couple of minutes just getting them to bring their walls down because again, they're going to be nervous. They know they're going to get sold to. Okay. They know they're going to get sold to. They're just trying to pinpoint where and, and how hard it's going to be because some pitches do a pretty hard sell. Right. So you're going to make them feel pretty, you want to make them feel pretty comfortable before you get into all that stuff. So spend a couple of minutes building some rapport. Cool. How was your day at work today? Oh, yeah, good, good, good. What do you do for work? Oh, nice. You've been doing that for long. Oh, cool, cool, cool, cool. You just want to spend between two to five minutes building some rapport and you say cool. Jenny, I'm really excited to have a conversation with you today. The first thing that we're going to do, we're going to do the health assessment. So the health assessment is going to take between 15 to 20 minutes. We're going to get super clear on exactly what you want with your health and fitness. We're going to go through why you want it and what are the roadblocks kind of stopping you from achieving that goal. We want to get super clear on that once we're on the health assessment, we're going to go into the gym floor and we're going to do some movements to test your technique. I'm going to give you some feedback on your technique and then we're going to also do some mobility stuff as well. We just want to see how you move and to make sure or to understand where you're at with technique as well. Once we've done that, I'll have a very good understanding of what you need help with. Then we're going to come back here and we'll sit down. I'm going to show you how we can fast track your result as well. Does that sound good to you, Jenny? Beautiful. Perfect. Now you have complete control of the conversation. You're the leader. You removes the awkwardness and the set sets the expectations of a decision at the end. Now, if you want people to, if you want to go a step further and get people in a mindset to make a decision, this is how you would end that conversation. You're going to say you're going to the health assessment, you're going to do the movement assessment and you say, cool. We're going to sit down. I'm going to show you how we can fast track your results. I'm going to give you a couple of options on which one you want to do to fast track your results and then you can decide which one you want to do. Does that sound fair enough? Right there? You're preempting them to decide on something today. So you're never going to get. I just need to think about it. I need to think about and talk to my partner. It's just not gonna, it's not gonna come up. You've set the expectation that they're gonna make a decision today. Okay. That is how you become an authority. During the consultation, you have complete control of how that consult goes. Okay? The obvious, the other stuff that we can always talk about at a later episode is how to get people into an emotional mindset. Because, remember, people don't buy off logic for health and fitness, they buy off emotion. PT is personal. Training is a luxury. It's not a necessity like a gym membership. Well, not so much a necessity, but it's not something that people just have. It's, you know, for a lot of people, it's, it's an optional expense that they choose to take. So you need to get them into the emotional mindset. And, you know, if you want further details on how to do that, send me a DM and ask me for my consultation. Framework and my roadmap. Because if you're not getting people in that emotional mindset, then you're just not going to close the sale. Because people don't think logically. It's not a logical decision for them a lot of the time. So they need to buy for motion. So once you do that as well, you could diagnose, prescribe and decide. So if you think about it like the doctor analogy, right, what do you go to a doctor for? You tell your doctor what's happening, what's wrong, what you want to achieve. Cool. I'm sick, I want to get better. And they listen to what's happening. They do, they do a diagnostic. So they ask you a bunch of questions. They'll do your heart rate, for example, or they'll check your temperature, you know, whatever it is. And then they'll prescribe, say, cool. Based on the information you've given me, you need to take this tablet, this tablet, this tablet, whatever it is. And you can do the same thing for personal training. So you're going to diagnose, prescribe, and then they decide. Yeah, based on what you told me to fast track your results, you're going to need to do, blah, blah, blah. That sound good to you? Okay, that's it. Full of value today, team. Nice and short. Short and sweet, actually. Now we'll go through, we'll go through that last part a little bit, little more. So just on, just on the diagnose prescribed, decide. So there's a couple different options that you can do for closing someone. Right. So what we've tested in the past and we've tried multiple ways, what we tested in the past is giving people two options. So you can be like, cool, you can do this one or you can do this one, which one would you prefer? So obviously they have control of which one they choose. Majority of the time they just choose the cheaper option of the two just because it's cheaper. Okay. They don't really understand the difference. Okay. What we're testing at the moment, and that's working quite well, is actually prescribing a very, a very certain or very specific package for them. Okay. So it's more you diagnose and then you prescribe a certain option for them. So it's a bit more, it's a bit more of an authoritative close. But both of these work quite well. So you can interchange these depending on the individual person. If you, if you know someone's quite. Maybe their walls up are still this. They've got their walls up still. You Might go more of the optional. The optional one. So you could do this one or you could do this one. Which one would you prefer? But if you feel like you've got a lot of control and you, you know, this person needs a very specific. Or they definitely need the help, you can literally, this, this could be like a close for you. So you could be like, cool. Based on what we've gone through today, you're going to need to work with me at least two times a week. So if we look at the two times a week here, this is going to give you the best structure and accountability. You can obviously still do your own stuff at home, which I'll do the program up for you as well. It's going to cost you $150 a week. Should we go with that one? Or you can say cool. Based on what you've said here, we need to do at least two sessions a week. So we'll get you started on the two sessions and then, you know, we'll see. We'll see how things go. So that's basically assuming the sale. Okay. Very authoritative. Okay. That's the last thing I wanted to talk about. Talk about today. So if you have value from this episode, I do love hearing from you guys. So make sure you send me a message if you got value. I just, I do always want to get feedback on which. Which episodes appeal the most to people. So that's it for today. See you next week. Have an epic day. Bye. Bye.

