Personal Training: It’s All About the Right Numbers

As personal training managers, we can get caught up in focusing on monthly personal training revenue numbers. Sometimes, we get so caught up that we forget to check other metrics related to our business. This article will list and explain five top metrics that personal training managers should look at on a regular basis that relate to their department:

1. Retention rate per trainer / per department

Take your trainers’ current client lists and compare them to their client lists from six months to a year ago. What did you find? Are your trainers holding onto clients, or are they losing all the clients they had from the first sampling? How is your department doing? Retention says a lot about your business, including whether or not it provides the results and experience clients are looking for. You should be looking for a retention rate of up to 85 percent if your trainer has been with your club for a year or longer.

2. Conversion rate for initial packages to regular training

This speaks volumes on how well your trainers can build rapport, show clients their value and sell their services without discounting. Most new members will take advantage of personal training when it is sold at a discounted rate, to see whether they like it or not without having to pay full price. After that package is used, the trainer should convert them over to regular training. A reasonable conversion rate goal is 75-85 percent.

3. New member consultation appointments

This number details a trainer’s ability to get new members to meet with them for a basic consultation. In addition, it showcases their ability to sell from a cold call. This is probably the most difficult appointment to sell since there is no rapport building (unless the member picks up the phone). A good goal is about 50-60 percent of all called, new members showing up to first appointments.

4. Dollar per session charged

This number may vary from club to club, but the basic metric is the same; what is the average dollar your trainers are charging per session? This is a great number to look at when considering increases in gross revenue. Given the way your club charges for personal training, this number might fluctuate greatly.

Take the overall gross revenue for a trainer for a week and divide that into the amount of hours worked (not sessions performed, but hours actually worked training). This number will let you see if a trainer is constantly selling larger packages for a discount, if they are training multiple people in groups, or are doing one-on-one sessions only. To have a higher gross revenue, this number should be at least 15 percent higher than your single-session cost. This would mean that not only are your trainers charging the correct amount, but they are also training in groups.

5. Profitability

For any business, this is a necessary benchmark. Look at the amount of commission you are paying a trainer and divide that by their total gross revenue. Make sure your profitability then also includes payroll tax and any other paid-out bonuses or allowances. For most businesses, a net profitability of about 35 percent is desirable.

Sales training should continue for every trainer and should be an ongoing topic for trainer meetings or individual reviews. Sales training is very similar to the personal training field — there is always something new to learn.

By Vic Spatola, the director of personal training at Greenwood Athletic & Tennis Club via Club Solutions

A Guide to Selling Personal Training in Your Facility

Hiring the right personal trainer for your training department is a large part of any fitness manager’s duties. Finding the right mix of personality and technical knowledge to meet your club’s needs is a cumbersome and sometimes lengthy process. So once you decide on the right fit for your needs, the next step is coaching the trainer on how to sell their services to your members. Regardless of previous sales experience, it is the responsibility of the fitness manager to teach every new trainer how they are expected to sell in your facility.

Initial Training — The First Two Weeks

The first step in hiring a trainer is the most critical in determining the success of that employee. When you hire a new trainer, you should set up a training program and progression that educates that trainer on how you (the fitness manager) expect that trainer to sell. Whether it is initially laying out sales quotas/expectations, or an actual specified sales presentation, the trainer needs to learn specifically how your club expects them to perform and how they should conduct themselves during a sale.

Whatever your expectations, you need to educate your trainers thoroughly on how they should sell. This is important because setting initial expectations in terms of sales is not enough without telling trainers how you want them to sell. Every club has a different perspective on sales, so regardless of a trainer’s previous sales experience, you need to educate them on how you want them to sell. Do you want trainers approaching and selling to clients on the weight room floor while members are working out? Or do you want them performing special services for free (i.e. body compositions, postural screenings, fitness testing, etc.)? In either case, the trainer needs to know how to sell in your club.

This will also eliminate problems down the road if clear expectations are set. If the trainer has a particular method of selling or presenting training, the fitness manager needs to be taken through that process to ensure it fits the philosophy of the club. All this should be performed in the first two weeks after hire, or after your initial employee orientation.

Personalized Sales Training

Once the new trainer has been given sales goals and taken through how the club wants personal training to be presented to members, the next step is helping the trainer develop a sales presentation that works for them. Being comfortable and confident is half the obstacle most trainers face when selling personal training.

This is why personalizing the sales presentation for each trainer is important. The manager needs to sit with each trainer and discover the personal strengths of each trainer, and then find a method of selling that plays to that strength. If you have a trainer that is a functional training wizard, but who has difficulty selling training when sitting down with a new member, find a way to put that trainer on the floor and let them demonstrate their proficiency in action. Sometimes the standard sales pitch does not work for all trainers, so the manager needs to find ways to capitalize on the strengths that trainers possess.

Sales – The First 30 Days and Beyond

“What is expected should be inspected.” This is a common rule of employee management and nowhere is it more important than in sales training. Since the initial sales expectations were set up upon the initial two weeks, and the fitness manager has helped develop an individualized sales presentation for that trainer, the responsibility is now on the trainer to perform. That performance must be checked and reviewed on a regular basis. Beginning with the first 30 days, sales performance should be checked and reviewed with that trainer every 30 days to ensure that expectations are being met, and the proper corrective actions are being taken.

This gives the trainer enough time to act on any areas of improvement as noted by the fitness manager and enough time to begin to develop a comfortable pattern of sales. Depending on the number of memberships your club sells per month, it may take up to 30 days for a trainer to close a sale on a new member package. This review cycle should typically continue for the first 120 days of employment, allowing the manager time to decide if progress is being made, or if the trainer is not a fit for that department.

Sales training should continue for every trainer and should be an ongoing topic for trainer meetings or individual reviews. Sales training is very similar to the personal training field — there is always something new to learn.

By Vic Spatola, the director of personal training at Greenwood Athletic & Tennis Club via Club Solutions