In this interview segment of the Getting Raw series, host Richard Toutounji talks with fitness industry expert Marisa Street about seven essential criteria for selecting and hiring effective team members, especially in fitness and small‑business contexts. The seven strategies are: (1) Service – the specific value a team member delivers to clients; (2) Delivery – how consistently and promptly that service is communicated and executed; (3) Sales – confidence and skill in selling the product or service without sounding scripted; (4) Knowledge – ongoing learning and expertise in health, fitness, or sales; (5) Personality – assessed via DISC profiling to match team dynamics; (6) Processes – the ability to follow and innovate structured workflows, illustrated with client consultation steps; and (7) Productivity – goal‑setting, planning, and sustaining performance over short‑ and long‑term horizons. Marisa also introduces a practical tool called WIFFL (What I Feel Like) for regular, judgment‑free sharing within teams to keep goals visible. The conversation is informal, with repeated confirmations, and emphasizes that these criteria are largely “in‑built” traits that can be identified and nurtured during hiring.
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Okay, it's Richard, Mark Toutounji back at Getting Raw, and from the first part of this series, I heard something say about 7 key strategies to find good staff.
Absolutely.
So the people that I guess do not want to go through the recruitment process at this stage can use your knowledge and your experience to find these staff. So what are the 7 keys? Tell me number 1.
Okay, I think number 1 is definitely the service.
Okay.
What is that particular team member Rather than staff member, team member going to offer your client. What type of service? How are they going to offer that service? How are they going to speak to your client as well is really important. And I think by having some type of unique type of service as well is definitely beneficial to your business.
Okay, service.
Service. Service is number 1.
Great. Number 2?
Number 2 is delivery. So again, that comes off from service. So the customer service communication skills. How to answer the phone correctly, you know, right from that point to how to close maybe on a sale depending on the type of role that they're in, how to keep that relationship ongoing, you know, little things like making sure that you call them 3 days later. You know, if you don't call within those 3 days or those 48 hours, then people sort of tend to forget what you've done or what type of service you're offering them. So I think that's really important, what type of delivery that that team member is going to offer.
And delivery, we're meaning delivery as in that's actually in their mindset, or we have to train that delivery? Is that what you're talking about? We have to train that person to— how to deliver properly?
Yeah, absolutely. I think initially you've got to learn the product of what you're trying to offer. But the delivery is something that—
It's inbuilt, isn't it?
Absolutely. It's like your personality.
Great. Okay. That's a good one to throw up. Number 3?
Number 3 is sales. So, in terms of sales, how confident are they in skills that they're trying to relay about the product? You know, how much can they obtain about the product knowledge and be able to sell that in a way that is not so textbook?
Okay. Alright. So, again, having that already experienced there. Absolutely. Inbuilt. That's right. I love the inbuilt stuff. It's good.
That's right. Number 4 is really important. It's knowledge. How much knowledge are you retaining? How much are you willing to do that extra little bit? You know, for me myself, I have a non-negotiable standard. Every day I learn something in health and fitness that is going to benefit my clients and myself. So how much knowledge do they have? Can they experience or tell you about further education? Is that something you're interested in?
Depending, obviously, knowledge if they're sales or knowledge if they're a personal trainer. Absolutely.
You know, you've got you've got fitness knowledge as well, and and then you've got the sales knowledge.
Excellent. Excellent. What I'm going to grab you now?
Number five.
Five.
Okay. Number five is personality. Yeah. Personality is also inbuilt, obviously. But we do a distal personality profile. So we have a look at what type of personality you're dealing with. That's right. The high D, the I, the influencer, the whole leader, the whole type of thing. Absolutely. Because what it does at the end of the day, it it tells you what you're dealing with. What how you can relate to that person. You know, personality is absolutely important. And it's a bit like life skills.
How do you get— how do you do that DISC profile? Where do you find that? Can you Google that sort of stuff? Yeah, of course.
You've got free DISC personality profiles online, or you can go through right to the full reports and pay.
But you guys, in your service, you offer that sort of stuff? That's right.
We do all that for you.
That's very interesting. I love the DISC. Okay, number 7?
Number 7?
Sorry, number 6. 6. I can't count. Number 6, processes.
So we want to see the processes in action. That's really important as well. What are their strengths? What can they bring to your business? And how creative are they? How creative are they in their process? Everything has a process to it and it leads you to the end result.
Okay. Give me another example about that though.
I guess when you're going through adapting another client. So from my background, personal training, so the first process that I would do is sit down and have a half an hour conversation with them, a consultation, get to know them. You know, yet that is part of the sales process, but it's also another process of how you're going to retain that client as well. Setting up some goals with it too is really important. Alright, that's good.
I like that one. I never thought of that one. That's good.
And the last one, productivity.
The big one.
Productivity, that's right. How do you plan? How do you program? How do you get your clients and yourself in your environment to be able to achieve your goals? You know, you don't train your client just for that half an hour or that hour session that you're doing. What's past that? You know, what's your 3-month goal? What's your short, medium, and long-term goal for them? And what's it for yourself and your business?
Okay, it's their goals as well.
Absolutely. Yeah, that's right.
I think goals are a big thing. If your staff are coming into business, then they've got all the 6 and they don't have the 7th one, and next week they want to have a baby or something, or they want to go overseas, it's all gone.
That's right.
Okay, excellent. Very good. Any other tips you got there?
We actually do something called a WIFFL.
Yeah.
So what that is, is what do I feel like expressing? I love that. What I feel like sharing. And it's really important because it is part of your goals as well, you know, and if you're in a team environment, it's something that you could get your staff teams to do, whether it's a monthly meeting or something, and it could be professionally, it could be personally. And it's something that you have free to say, that you don't have to sort of, you have no judgment on it, and it's really about your goals. So you can sort of keep up to date of what someone is trying to achieve without sort of being, I guess, too direct in the whole process of goals as well.
Awesome. What have you got? 7? 7 steps, 7 strategies, 7 key strategies to get the right staff for your team. If it's personal trainer, sales, CEO, you can use those. Otherwise, they can give you a contact. But thanks a lot.
