Personal Trainer Business Tips
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Institute of Personal Trainers
 Well designed online personal training packages will not only help you earn more money for your business but they’ll also help your clients get better results and in turn, make them happier to pay you. More money means more investments in client retention and marketing to help even more people. It’s a win win. But most personal trainers get it wrong. Here’s why. Personal trainer are hooked on selling sessions. Yep, even to this day, PT’s still regularly ask “how much should I charge per session?”. But charging per session is bad for your business and bad for you clients. You don’t get a steady stream of cash for your business and clients don’t get clearly defined results. I’m pretty sure the whole concept of single sessions came from larger corporate gyms that have monthly numbers to meet, trainers that will work for nothing and gym members with little or no knowledge about setting long term fitness goals. Because let’s be honest, you can’t sell an outcome or transformation. Which neatly takes us back to creating online personal training packages.
1. Create an Outcome The first thing any online personal training plan should have, like all good plans, is an outcome. Why? Because if you have an outcome both you and the client are accountable to the outcome. This is a beautiful thing because it means that a client is much less likely to cancel sessions. Cancelling sessions is easy to do when the session has no real outcome for them (no value). But cancelling on a long term goal that you have agreed to accomplish with someone else is much harder to do. Sell an outcome and you have a more guaranteed income, a more engaged client and massively better odds that your client will actually achieve the goals. How do we create an outcome? A good outcome is a specific goal achieved in a specific time frame. The outcome you choose will depend on your niche and your ability as a trainer to set goals with clients and achieve them. Example outcomes include:
2. Build Your Feature List The number one rule for creating online (or face to face) personal training packages is this: Include everything your client needs to achieve their goal in the lowest tiered package. So many trainers make the mistake of limiting the first tier of their packages by excluding nutrition or support. But if someone signs up to that package and they ask you a nutrition question… ya know, because they need nutritional support… do you say “sorry, you have to upgrade for that info”. No. You give it to them because you want them to succeed and carry on paying you. Your lowest tier package must include everything the client needs to succeed. If you don’t provide them with all the tools to succeed, you’ll have a walking billboard that when asked whether your company is any good, will say “no, it didn’t work for me”.  The first thing to consider for your features is how your clients want to consume your service? This is worth thinking about because a footballer thrives in a team whereas a sprinter thrives on their own. Some ways in which your clients might want to consume your online personal training services are:
If you know how your ideal clients want to consume your service, you can start to easily build features around that format. What might a features list look like?
A couple of things to think about when listing your features are:
You and I both know that self discipline and consistency are the main drivers of success when it comes to weight loss and/or muscle gain, but you can’t sell that. Well, you could try but you might not get very far. What you sell needs to be a compromise between what you know the client needs and what the client thinks they need. But isn’t that unethical? Maybe, but we all try to persuade our kids that Santa’s, Ghosts and Gods exist because we think it does them good.
3. Build Your Online Training Package Now that we have an outcome and a list of features that: a) you know your clients need and b) your clients think they need to achieve their goals, We need to make the package look fit for consumption. In other words, we need to present it. The most common question I get asked about presenting packages is whether you should list features or benefits. The answer is that it depends (sorry). It depends on how much knowledge your clients have of the service you’re offering. Here’s why: If a technologically challenged 50 year old man walks in to a computer store and asks about a computer and the salesman starts to list the features…  “It has 3.4GHz quad‑core Intel Core i5 processor, 1TB Fusion Drive, and 4GB Radeon Pro 570 graphics…” The customer is going to be completely confused and overwhelmed. No sale. If the salesman lists the benefits of those features… “It’s very easy to use and has a very simple interface that’s perfect for beginners” The customer is going to be delighted and the chances of a sale are much higher. On the flip side, if a 16 year old gamer comes in to the computer store and the salesman tells him… “It’s very fast and easy to use” The 16 year old gamer is going to want to know about the features, not the benefits. So you have to ask yourself and your clients how much they know about your service, how it benefits them and if so, what features they need to be presented with in order to increase the chances of a sale. Online personal training is pretty new so my advice would be to list both. At My Personal Trainer Website, we encourage our clients to list their packages in the following way:
Here’s how it might look… Example Online Personal Training Packages Tobias Young Fitness by IFBB pro, Tobias Young makes pricing (1), who it's for (2) and a list of features (3) extremely clear so that website visitors can quickly compare plans.  While DeMetz Online Training offer more goal specific training right from their navigation menu so website visitors can read more goal specific advice about how the company can help them achieve their goals.  Finally, Up Fitness utlised a comparison chart to convey value. While I don't necessarily agree with the blanket statements in the table, I imagine that it's quite effective when combined with the testimonials they have on their website.  Whatever features, pricing and benefits you decide to adopt when you build your online personal training packages, remember that it's OK to change them later. The main thing right now is to take action. Get something up and running that you can present to prospective clients and get feedback from every potential client you talk to. Use that feedback to make tweaks and eventually you'll end up with the perfect online personal training packages for your business.
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3/22/2018
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