"Personal Trainer Renewals"

Renewal & Summer Success: Personal Trainer Renewals

Worried about Personal Trainer renewals? Summer can be a scary time for Personal Trainers who are new to the fitness industry. We often worry about the loss of sessions and income because of client vacations, the lack of members in the gym, and a decrease in new membership sales. To help you avoid the Personal Trainers’ Summer Blues and to generate renewal business, we’ve provided a list of key areas to focus on now.

Getting Results

The first and most important method of ensuring your Summer, Personal Trainer renewals, and overall success as a Personal Trainer is making sure that your clients are seeing, feeling, and experiencing results. We live in a society addicted to instant gratification, but we work in a setting where results take time.

If this is an area of concern for you, it may be time to review your fitness program design for each of your clients. Focus on your periodization and variables impacting intensity (sets, reps, load, rest periods, etc.). If you are at a loss for new ideas, we’ll introduce you to your Continuing Education options later in this article.

Tracking Results for Personal Trainer Renewals

Many clients look in the mirror everyday and often don’t see the significant changes that you are helping to create. This may be the case even if their friends and family are making positive comments on their fitness successes. You may find that verbal feedback is not enough for many of your clients.

To continue to support your clients effectively, you’ll want to track their progress effectively. A good number of our clients work in industries where numbers dictate success. This is the language they may understand best. The more valuable information that you can track with numbers, the better your chances of ensuring Personal Trainer renewals will be. It is up to you, whether you decide to print graphs, pie charts, or other visuals to communicate their progress.

Here are some of the variables that you should be tracking to ensure Personal Trainer renewals success:

• Body Composition
• Flexibility
• Girth Measurements
• BMI (Body Mass Index)
• FMS (Functional Movement Screen) Scoring

Asking for Personal Trainer Renewals through Referrals

Gathering referrals for your Personal Training business can be much easier than you might think. If you find it hard to communicate your need for new business in a face-to-face fashion, there are other avenues to explore.

Email – Considering your busy schedule and your clients’ busy schedules, email can be an effective means of communication for scheduling, promotions, and motivational updates. To ensure your continued success in this industry, it is imperative that you keep current lists of the following:

• Active Clients
• Inactive Clients
• Prospective Clients

If you don’t already have up-to-date listings of each of these, now is the time to get them. It will be a good “excuse” to contact everyone. Hopefully, you’ll be able to bring back “Missing in Action” clients as you gather your email lists.

Postcards or Letters – Do you remember the last time you received an unexpected, handwritten card in the mail? This is an often overlooked tool that will grab the attention of the recipient. Design a few friendly and professional paragraphs that provide an update for the reader and also let them know how they can help. We’ll be offering samples in the future, but if you write your own now, be sure to have friends, family, or coworkers proofread your letters before you send them.

Business Planning for Personal Trainer Renewals

Remember, your Personal Trainer Business Plan is not just something you set up at the beginning of the year and then forget about. You should be updating and adjusting your individual plan weekly if not daily.

Communicate with your clients about their summer plans. The further in advance you find out about June, July, and August from each of them, the easier it will be for you to renew your sessions goals, new client goals, expected sales, and expected revenue.

IMPORTANT: Depending upon your clients’ plans, you may decide that the summer months will be the right time for you to schedule your own vacation.

We often dwell on the loss of sessions during these months, but don’t forget that for some of your clients, their summer schedules may be much more flexible. Teachers, for example, whether they train with you with once a week or five times each week, can make up for many lost sessions.

Communicating Promotions & Discounts

Generally, we frown upon discounting your services too often. Whether you decide to do this in your business or not, your communication of any promotions or discounts is of prime importance.

In the health club setting I’ve seen Personal Trainer teams lose over $10,000 in Personal Trainer Renewals sales in a single month because they failed to notify their clients effectively. Don’t decide ahead of time that your client doesn’t want to take advantage of a promotion even if they’ve got tons of sessions left. Always keep them informed. Let them make the decision.

Continuing Education

Considering that the summer months may slow down for you (Remember, they don’t have to!), it may be a great opportunity for you to continue your education. There are several ways to improve your skill set and they don’t all have to be specific to Personal Training.

Dissect your business. Find not only your weaknesses, but something you are actually interested in learning more about. This could include but is not limited to:

• Program Design
• Communication Skills and Public Speaking
• Sales Techniques
• Networking
• Specialty Certifications
• Or something completely outside of the fitness realm

One of our favorite providers of fitness education is Perform Better. They offer several different formats through all regions of the country, with some of the most highly respected names in the fitness industry counted among their presenters. Check their schedule at www.performbetter.com for seminar/workshop availability near you.

If you’re interested in improvements in areas outside of the fitness industry, we recommend that you check your local adult education courses and vocational classes.

New Business Ventures

In the health club setting, it’s important to maintain and improve communication with the men and women bringing the new members into your gym. Since their main focus is on generating their business and closing their sale, you’ll want to be careful not to disrupt their presentation.

Improve your rapport with the membership team by taking each one through a fitness orientation or Personal Training session. This will improve their comfort level in bringing you in on their tours and will also improve the chances that they’ll recommend your services having experienced them firsthand.

Personal Trainer Renewals: Homework

Write down your “Tour Script” for when you are invited into a presentation by a Membership Consultant, and the “Sales Script” you’ll use for your one-to-one fitness orientation presentations. Seeing your words, rather than just hearing them, will often open your eyes to any weaknesses in your wording. As with the Personal Trainer Renewal postcards and letters, have your coworkers proofread and provide constructive criticism.

Return to: Personal Trainer Article Index