Gym Marketing and personal training sales is a lot easier than you may think. Especially, when you have a proven sales in place.
Personal Training Sales is mostly about connecting the dots for your prospect so that they see the value in your training program and how it can help solve their problem. If your approach to selling personal training is mostly highlighting your credentials as a trainer or more focused on you, your gym and what you do…then you’re doing it wrong.
It’s your role as the salesperson to make sure you know how to best help this client and learn about what they value and need from a coach. The only way to get that information is to ask a lot of questions.
The questions you ask in your sales consultation will help you discover the potential new client’s biggest fears, challenges, objections, and desires. Armed with that information, you’ll be able to clearly lay out a plan to help them reach even their biggest goals.
These open-ended questions for personal training sales serve as a starting point to helping understand the prospect. It’s important that you don’t take their answers at face value and use the 5 Whys Method. After each answer, ask “why?” to get the client to open up a bit more and go deeper into their answer. Here are 13 questions you need to ask in your sales conversation to quickly develop rapport with your prospect. Once you understand these questions and get used to using them your sales stress just might disappear. Let’s jump in!
13 Must Ask Personal Trainer Sales Consultation Questions
1. What is it that you hope to accomplish by hiring a personal trainer/joining a gym?
This question will build trust with your prospect and show them that you’re actually interested in solving their problem. Plus, don’t you need to know their goals if you are going to help them? This question helps anchor the whole conversation. Meaning, that at the end of the personal training sales conversation, you can remind them of their goals if they are confused about whether or not to move forward.
2. Tell me how you decided to meet with me today? What was the one thing that made you call us?
This is a great question. Similar to the first question. But this helps them just open up to you about what they may be frustrated by. They could say “I’ve just been struggling with my weight for so long and I decided that I needed expert help.” or “I’ve been training at ABC gym and I’m just not getting results.” That gives you a lot of context for their motivations.
3. Have you tried any other fitness programs or gyms out? If so, what did you like about them? What worked?
You need to know your prospect’s preferences when it comes to getting them into the right program. Plus, this could show you what hasn’t worked for them in the past so you don’t make the same mistake with them.
4. It looks like you’ve tried a lot of things, why do you think they didn’t work for you or the results didn’t stick?
They might not be professionals when it comes to fitness but they will have a lot of valuable information in their answer to this question. Use this question to learn more about them. Additionally, this question shows your curiosity and let’s them know that you are interested in solving this problem for them.
5. You’d like to [lose weight, get fit, tone, build strength, be healthy]. How do you feel about not being that now?
Push into their feelings. You want them to vocalize how they feel about their current state. Make sure you mirror back what they say so they can feel understood. You can use the answer to this question later on to frame your offer. “Do you think it would relieve your frustration around losing weight if we started you with X Program?”
6. What do you think you are giving up by not being [end result/goal]?
This question pushes deeper into their feeling state and helps them draw deeper conclusions. Typically, a prospect will start to connect the dots. They will notice how this impacts the entirety of their life. They can easily see how their lack of activity could affect their sleep which affects their mental/emotional states which then impacts their work or even relationships. This gets them thinking how your solution could solve more than just their original issue.
7. Tell me how you feel when you wake up in the morning or when you look in the mirror?
You don’t have to ask this one if you don’t feel comfortable or if you’ve already gotten this information in the answer to a previous question. But this question will certainly bring out the depth of frustration and pain your prospect has around their body image.
8. Who do you feel like supports you? Who’s holding you back?
This will help your prospect start to evaluate the entirety of their life, including their relationships. This is where they can start to form a deeper respect for you and what you do. You are truly showing them how interested you are in their success. This information can also help you address the common sales objection: “I just need to talk to my husband/wife/significant other before I can commit.”
9. Where do you want to be in 6 months…a year? What do you look like, feel like, do, etc.?
This is when you start the painting the picture of their future-self. You start to help them to create their ideal vision of the future and how different it is from the present. After digging into their pain, this will be a welcome relief for you and the client both. You will start to see them shift and get excited about what’s possible!
10. Tell me how you think you’ll feel when you’re finally [end result/goal]?
Similar to how the earlier questions pushed into the prospect’s pain. You want to equally dive into this future vision with them. Asking them how they ideally want to feel will have them start to connect the dots they drew earlier. “If I feel better about myself, then I’ll be happier, and my relationships will get better.” Now, you’re showing them that the impact of getting fit is more than just physical.
11. What are the biggest obstacles that have kept you from [reaching goal, losing weight, etc.] on your own already?
This question will help the prospect vocalize their obstacles. It may be the first time they’ve evaluated these obstacles for themselves. Give them some time on this one. Once they get it out, you will know what you’re up against!
12. What are you hoping that I can help you with most?
Clarity. This question is all about getting clear on their number one problem that they want to be solved. At this point, you will know if you can help them or not.
13. What do you need from us to succeed?
Every client is different. They might ask for something to keep them accountable or something else specific they need to succeed. This is a good opportunity to make sure you can provide everything they need. No surprises for anyone down the road.
Other Tools for Gym Marketing and Personal Training Sales
These are the baseline personal training sales consultation questions that will start to get your prospect to open up and give you the information you need to build value in the next part of our 5-step sales process. It’s important to know that using a repeatable, reliable process to sell your services is the best way to predictably grow your business. Not only will it improve your conversion rates but it will allow you to train other members of your team to sell for you, giving you the freedom you need to focus on growing your business.
