Get More Personal Training Sales by Using a “Sales Funnel/Pipeline” within your Sales Process!

Are you sick and tired of seeing the same opportunities listed in your personal trainer's forecasts and pipelines? How many of the opportunities have been stalled at the same step in the sales cycle for days…or weeks?

You should know and have a sales process for personal training and a funnel/pipeline of steps throughout that process and be able to view each stage and where each member is at in the sales process no matter what size gym you operate (100 members or 10,000 members).

You have absolute visibility to what goes in the front end (sales leads). You have absolute visibility to what comes out the back end (closed sales). OR MAYBE NOT (if not…you’d better). The million-dollar question is, "What's going on in the middle?"

There are many reasons why you don't have visibility to what is going on in the middle of your fitness center's “sales pipeline”

Here are five reasons that are especially important:

Do any of these five reasons sound like they apply to your fitness center? If any one of them applies…just one…then you have absolutely no view of what's going on in the middle of your sales pipeline, even if you talk to your personal trainers every day!

The 5 Simple Sales Truths
The competitive realities of today's marketplace are making selling personal training more difficult than ever. Here are five simple sales truths that face all personal trainers today:

Truth #1: Our clients are leaving
A basic reality of the current business climate is that client relationships go away. This happens for the following reasons:
• The hand’s on, physical style was void and strong client visualizations were not used during each client’s session as motivation to create an endorphin rush.
• Trainers who do not go beyond the clients expectations during each training session and periodically show up late for sessions or no show for clients.
• Value is driven downward by “group” training taking the special one-on-one attention, focus and energy away. Cost sensitive buyers may now take on group training, while management/company does not realize that the same individuals who would have purchased one-on-one training are now in the group training at the reduced rate.

Every personal trainer loves renewal revenue, which is income derived from past sales and/or repeated client purchases. However, it is possible that the percentage of a trainer's production from renewal revenue can be too high. What will happen when some of that business (inevitably) goes away?

Truly successful personal trainers and personal training managers continuously consider the following questions:
• What percentage of our annual/monthly revenue is renewal revenue?
• What is the underlying motivation to working out of each of our members, and why is this important?
• What are the visualizations of each of our clients, and why is this important?
• How much emphasis is being placed on securing NEW clients?

It is critical for your fitness center to provide superior client support to your client base.
After all, it is your client’s who pay your fitness centers bills, and significant opportunities for incremental sales to those clients still exist. In time, however, factors that may be entirely out of your fitness center's control could cause each of your current clients to stop buying!
The only way to compensate for this first Simple Sales Truth is to consistently win NEW clients. Long-term success requires balancing activities that are designed to generate revenue from both EXISTING and NEW clients…50/50 ratio.

Truth #2: Most new contacts will not always buy
With our system your trainer’s will pull almost everyone off the training floor and through the sales process. They will have everyone they come in contact with, ultimately leave with a dynamic and rewarding experience they could never duplicate on their own. They will bring your member penetration from less than 1% to as high as 20% as a result of this prospecting. But because they penetrate so many members a personal trainer cannot expect to close a large percentage of the opportunities they pursue.
Successful personal trainers understand the multiple of opportunities required for each closed piece of business. This multiple will be different for every personal trainer based upon the personal trainer's experience, talents and skills, etc.

Personal trainers frequently get into a dangerous pattern.
They prospect on the training floor for several weeks and generate a workable base of member leads. Then they spend the next several weeks trying to close business from this base. Some of the opportunities will close; most will not. When the personal trainers finally realize their client base is dangerously low, they begin the process over again. This behavior of inconsistent prospecting directly correlates to inconsistent sales results in subsequent months! It gets too low for too long…trainer leaves fitness center.

Personal trainers must compensate for this fact by CONTINUALLY adding enough new leads to their pipelines to replace the losses that can be predicted by their multiples.
Personal trainers cannot wait for sales to happen to refill their pipelines! The number of members required by their multiples usually means that prospecting activities must occur both BEFORE and AFTER any sale. In other words, prospecting is a function that must be performed constantly (even during personal training sessions).
NOTE: It is actually possible to have too high of a closing ratio. If a personal trainer wins business from most of the people with whom they come in contact, it generally means they are not meeting enough new people! Or better yet, only having the “for sure” buyers put into their sales process or pipeline.

Truth #3: If they don't call us, they don't think they need us
Most personal trainers can point to clients who "walked up to the desk and asked about personal training." These clients recognized needs within themselves (self-actualized members account for less than 5% of the population) and talked to one or more of your trainers in an attempt to fill those needs. Unfortunately, there are rarely (if ever) enough of these clients to enable personal trainers to meet their quotas or more importantly, their personal needs.
One of your personal trainer's biggest competitors is “the status quo”. Status quo is not to buy personal training. The industry average is 1-5% of the membership base actually purchases one-on-one personal training.
When prospecting, your personal trainers must realize that any members they reach will most likely NOT recognize a need for your fitness center's products or services when the dialogue begins. After all, if they DID recognize a need, they would already be doing something about it, wouldn't they?
Remember, people buy when they cannot do it on their own, and they buy from people they like!
How will your personal trainers overcome the status quo? How will they grab members' attention and convince them to schedule time for a chance to showcase what your trainer can do for the member? How will you track and inspect the quantity and quality of your personal trainers's activities in this critical area? At Alter Ego Fitness Group we know how!

Truth #4: Time is not on our side
It is a simple fact that the longer a sale takes, the less likely it is to happen.
Every product or service has a "sales cycle" that measures the average length of time required to close a typical client. The longer a potential sale extends beyond the normal sales cycle, the more its chances fade. Why? Here are several reasons:

Many personal trainers do not understand the ramifications of time.
If too much time is allowed to pass between meetings, much of what was felt kinesthetically through the sales process can be lost or forgotten. Plus, if key dialogue is not designed to advance sales cycles, they are probably less productive than they should be.

Time is the most precious commodity a personal trainer has.
Individual success is dependent upon where a personal trainer chooses to spend his or her time. Successful personal trainers understand the normal sales cycle lengths (about a week) for their products or services and strive to close business within these time frames. Opportunities that extend beyond normal sales cycles must be analyzed and prioritized appropriately.
This does not suggest that "deadlines" should be imposed upon members. However, the fact of the matter is that personal trainers cannot count on those opportunities that have extended beyond normal sales cycles nearly as much as they can on opportunities that currently fall within normal sales cycles. In choosing where to spend their time, personal trainers are best served by concentrating their efforts on the opportunities that are most likely to close, i.e., the opportunities that are still within normal sales cycles.

Truth #5: We're only as good as our next step
No sale can be counted upon unless the member is actively engaged in the sales cycle. What does it mean to be "actively engaged"? This is defined by the member's willingness to commit to another appointment (a workout with the trainer-no charge and a follow up appointment-charged).

What is a valid next step?
It is a specific, scheduled appointment with an agenda designed to move the sale closer to "purchase". The follow up appointment must be on the MEMBER'S calendar, and must be followed up by the manager. Plus, the personal trainer must have an agenda to advance the sale, not merely check the status of the member's decision process. In other words, the purpose of the follow up appointment cannot be to schedule a future discussion, handle objections or concerns.
While there is no guarantee that an opportunity that meets these conditions will close, the chances of securing revenue from an actively engaged member are far greater than the chances of securing revenue from a member that refuses to commit to a next step. Furthermore, the chances greatly increase even more so with steps by the manager to follow up on the appointments.

Personal trainers can use this simple rule to validate whether or not a member is truly "hot":

At the end of every sales process with a member, the personal trainer should always book the next appointment!
If the member cannot schedule a concrete time and date, the personal trainer should attempt to tentatively schedule the next appointment BEFORE advancing the sales process.

This approach has two advantages:
1. If a member is truly interested in moving forward, he or she will readily grant the personal trainer more time and schedule it in his or her own calendar. If the member does NOT want to continue the sale, he or she will hesitate to schedule more time.

Too often a member will say, "Call me next week to schedule our next appointment." Or better “I will call you.” This is often used as a way to become uncommitted to the personal trainer. Every personal trainer has experienced members saying these very words, then not returning telephone calls the following week.
Some personal trainers are reluctant to ask for a next step for fear that the answer is going to be "no". These personal trainers are only creating false hopes, which do NOT generate sales.

2. Putting a next appointment or “Follow-Up Session” on the calendar before the current meeting ends ensures it can take place in a timely manner.
Why is this important? Schedules can fill up, even if the follow-up scheduling call takes place just a few days later. By scheduling the next appointment before leaving the current appointment, a personal trainer can come back to the member in the shortest possible time. The benefit of this is shorter sales cycles.

It is also important to note that the PERSONAL TRAINING SALES PROCESS is a MULTI-STEP and NOT A SINGLE-STEP. Do not rush and try to “close” the member at the first meeting. But on the other hand it should not be longer than a week to week and a half for the entire process to unfold and yield the greatest results.
It is important to emphasize that next steps need to be structured to productively advance a sale.
A scheduled visit to have a member "ask questions" or to "see if they are thinking about it" is NOT a valid next step!

Additionally, any scheduled next step must be within the normal sales cycle. A member that agrees to receive a call on a date outside the normal sales cycle cannot be seen to be actively working toward a purchase (though of course these members DO get follow-up calls every 3-4 weeks and thrown back in the “funnel”).

When the "Sales Process and Follow Up Step" rules are followed exactly, it is not unusual to see that members the trainers would have never been approached and gone through the sales process to finally purchase.
This is entirely intentional! The simple truth is that members for which valid sales process and follow up steps have been scheduled have a much greater likelihood of purchasing. These are the "real" opportunities. Tracking the number of "real" opportunities in each phase of the sales cycle will tell managers whether personal trainers have enough potential business in their current pipelines to ensure future success.

By categorizing opportunities in this manner:
• Personal trainers and managers will be able to separate reality from fiction and opinions from fact
• Managers will be able to assist personal trainers with the members that want further assistance themselves
• Managers will be able to set personal trainer prospecting activity expectations at a level that will ensure sufficient concurrent "live" members to produce consistent success
• Personal trainers and managers will be able to provide more accurate forecasts of personal training sales a week at a glance.

Remember, the days of the old prospecting techniques, orientations, fitness assessments and consultations are over. A new technology has taken over that is more productive, more efficient and more successful.

The five simple sales truths cannot be avoided
However, they CAN be compensated for. Wouldn't it be great if your personal trainers and personal training managers had an interactive tool that enabled them to determine whether the quantity and quality of current activity is sufficient for them to be successful? Wouldn't it be great if this tool indicated specific actions they could take to improve their chances of achieving success on the training floor?

There is such a tool, and it is highlighted in our Personal Training System
The Alter Ego’s SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT materials & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT crm software teaches you a sales activity management system that brings an innovative, process-based approach to your fitness center's personal training sales activities. This NEW and RENEWAL BUSINESS activity driver will focus your personal training team on specific activities for increasing sales.

The ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE™ was designed to address these common personal training sales and management challenges:

Measurement & Reporting
• You can't see what is going on in the middle of the sales process. With our system you will now be able to see all the leads going in the front end, through the middle and coming out the back end.
• You can't tell if your company will meet its sales goals. Now be able to project renewal business and track all new business each and every hour with ease.
• You don't know the true length of the sales cycle for your personal training purchases to take place. Now you will be able to see and give immediate input as to the prospecting, sales processes being booked and follow up sessions scheduled each day.
• Your personal trainers have trouble accurately forecasting future sales. Now truly be able to help them with their business.
• Your personal trainers provide unrealistic forecasts of opportunity closing potential ("rose colored glasses"). You will be able to pinpoint any development that is in need be knowing what happens throughout the entire process.

Management Time
• You don't have enough time to follow up and shadow with all of your personal trainers. Now be shown the most effective and efficient way to interject yourself into the sales processes of your trainers.
• You don't have time to talk to each personal trainer about all of his or her opportunities. Now be taught how to track every sales process and new and renewal business sale with ease and have the confidence of knowing what is REALLY going on at your fitness center.
• You don't spend enough time with the personal trainers who need your help. Now learn the most effective use of your time and how and when to develop your personal trainers. They will enter the rock tumbler rough and come out polished and better than most of the top trainers in your area. Be able to continue their development with advanced trainings to only increase their success.

Personal trainer Time
• Your personal trainers claim they are too busy to prospect. Maybe they are too AFRAID! Now teach them how to utilize their time/confidence and prospect even while with a client…sounds impossible…we will show you how.
• Your personal trainers claim they are too busy to keep management informed of their activities or other forms you have them use. Now we keep it simple in this unstructured workforce, still keeping structure.
• Your personal trainers don't know how to best allocate their time. Now to keep an “In Demand Business”, we will let you in on some proven practices that only the top personal training fitness centers are utilizing.

Management Effectiveness
• You have no way of knowing about sales processes "going south" unless your personal trainers bring them to your attention
• You learn about lost opportunities too late to have any chance of saving them
• You don't have accurate information about why business is being lost
• You spend most of your time being reactive because you don't have the information you need to be proactive
• You have difficulty predicting whether a new personal trainer will "make it"
• You are unaware of lapses in personal trainer effort and motivation
• You have difficulty figuring out how hard each personal trainer is working or whether they are working on the right activities
• You can't pinpoint individual personal trainer strengths and weaknesses
• You can't pinpoint training and development needs
• You have difficulty determining how much impact a personal trainer is having at your fitness center
• Your personal trainers are not focused on the activities that will yield the most revenue or profit potential

Personal trainer Effectiveness
• Your personal trainers are not prospecting effectively or enough
• Your personal trainers are doing too much "farming" or renewal business and not enough "hunting" or new business
• Your personal trainers spend too much time working on unlikely opportunities
• Your personal trainers have difficulty separating buyers from information seekers
• Your personal trainers don't understand how to come out of “one space” selling (informational/facts)
• Your personal trainers don't utilize the “two space” selling (emotional)
• Your personal trainers don't know when to ask for the personal training manager’s help with their business
• Closing ratios are too low
• Sales Processes are incorrectly matched for the product you are selling
• Your personal trainers don't know how to avoid steep hills and valleys in sales performance (equilibrium)

The ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE™ is much more than a system that contains a sales process.

It challenges personal trainers to look at their opportunities and activities differently. Plus, it enhances the tactical and strategic effectiveness of personal training team (sales) meetings.

The ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE™ examines personal trainer's sales activities and provides personal training managers with:
• Personalized coaching recommendations to improve the quantity and quality of personal trainer activity
• Identification of specific roadblocks that are preventing personal trainers from moving opportunities forward
• A comprehensive series of alerts that direct managers toward opportunities and personal trainers that are in need of immediate managerial attention
• An array of proven tracking and logging tools that were developed to provide a realistic assessment of personal trainer team and individual sales performance

The ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE is also designed to allow you to embed your sales training principles into the system. This keeps learned concepts "top of mind" for personal trainers and sales managers, which helps ensure the ongoing utilization of skills taught during any sales training program in which your company has invested. Even though all of the principles and the philosophy are proven and have recorded over $300,000 in one month at one fitness center with a little over 2,500 members, it is also important that we want you to integrate what you want into the system or use the entire thing.

The ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE™ will help your personal trainers:
• Separate the buyers from the information seekers, enabling your personal trainers to devote appropriate attention to the members that are most likely to buy
• Understand what "real" sales cycle progress means (this will get them to remove their "rosey colored glasses")
• Plan appropriate next steps that will advance sales cycles
• Know when to walk away from "no potential" members, providing more time to find new, "good" members
• Shorten sales cycles
• Avoid valleys in performance

How does the ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE™ differ from “In House” systems or systems “pieced together” by past employee’s who gathered knowledge from previous fitness centers they had been employed
“In House” systems may be poor, average, good or great! Lets measure apples to oranges. Say your fitness center has an “In House” system and does $100,000 a month in personal training with an affluent member base of 7000 members and penetrates 3% of their membership base. Is this poor, average, good or great? Consider the fitness center that has 3000 members in a middle class area and does $75,000 a month in personal training and penetrating 14% of their membership base. Is this poor, average, good or great?
The point is that an “In House” system could be poor, average, good or great…which one are you!
The primary benefit of a system that is “pieced together” is that some things may be good. However, some things may not, and those may be the most important things. If you are running a system that is “pieced together”, chances are you do not know what is going on because the “pieces” do not compliment one and the other.

These systems are valuable if you have nothing in place; however, most do little to help management accomplish the following important tasks:
• Accurately track and follow up on the quality of the sales process
• Accurately forecast new and renewal business
• Determine whether personal trainers are investing enough time in prospecting for NEW sales opportunities
• Determine the quality of personal trainer's prospecting activities

In summary, ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE™ drives:
• Increased and consistent prospecting, and advanced methods
• Highly effective Sales Process management
• Higher closing ratios
• Greater sales force effort and effectiveness
• Management focus on revenue-generating activities

ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE™ helps Personal Training managers:
• Monitor personal trainer effort
• Distinguish hunting vs. farming activities
• Pinpoint personal trainer strengths and weaknesses for development
• Predict results
• Establish manageable expectations
• Objectively justify termination decisions
• Measure members' progress through sales process
• Identify hidden difficulties
• Intervene in a timely manner to influence outcomes
• Be proactive

ALTER EGO’S SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATERIALS & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT CRM SOFTWARE ™ helps personal trainers:
• Prospecting for today’s trainer and fitness center
• Understand members and their emotional needs
• Plan prospecting, sales process to follow up sessions
• Utilize a highly effective sales process
• Learn how to keep a client for life

What's the bottom line?
The bottom line is increased revenue and profitability through a more productive personal training sales business!

What's the next step?
Do you want to demonstrate to your personal trainers that you are more interested in substance than style, in facts rather than opinions, in results instead of promises? Then order the Alter Ego’s SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT materials & WORKOUT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT crm software today! Together we will explore how you can gain complete control of your personal training sales operation and focus the efforts of your personal trainers and personal training manager in the areas that ensure consistent success.

Do what is right is not only right for your member’s, trainer’s and manager, but also for you!

-Brett Johnston, Alter Ego Fitness Group