There is one vital and often ignored area of lead generation within a gym. This under utilised tool is in fact one of the most powerful tools you have in building a strong client base. What is this tool you might be asking well it is the sales/membership team. These are the guys that meet and know everyone in the gym, they know what peoples goals are, their disposable income and are the key people who can start the thought process to move gym members towards buying personal training.

The key stumbling point with the sales team is that selling personal training is not what helps them meet their targets or impacts them in any way, this makes it a low priority on their list!

This makes it key that you devise a way in which the sales team receive some form of incentive for mentioning your product range. Many gyms will not allow you to offer monetary based commissions to the sales team in exchange for leads they (if they do allow it this is the easiest way to incentivize the sales team). So you will need to be a little more creative in how you reward them for any leads that they pass to you.

Some of the ways in which the sales team can help you with lead generation, include:-

Follow-up calls

Many gyms will allow you to cold call the membership, this can be done as a follow-up to the initial interaction they had with staff when they joined the gym. Maybe after approximately 2-4 weeks, you could offer to call member’s to see how they are settling into the gym. When you call you should take the approach of seeing if you can help the member get more from their membership, as opposed to a hard sell of personal training. One of the offers you can put to them is that you can give them a free personal training taster session to help get them rolling in the gym. This taster session can then be used to try to sell the member on the benefits of regular personal training sessions to help them meet and exceed their goals! As the sales team have access to the membership database they can be a key tool in facilitating this process.

Being part of the sales teams pitch

Getting the sales team to mention the fact that personal training is available to new sign ups can be a great source of leads. Especially if you ask the sales guys to hand out free taster session vouchers to new members, this can drive a regular source of new personal training clients. The effectiveness of this can be improved by asking the sales team to only give the vouchers who hit your qualification criteria and that meets your client profile. This can save you a great deal of time carrying out personal training taster sessions for clients who may not have an interest in or the ability to pay for personal training sessions.

Getting other staff members talking about you

Other members of staff within a gym can help to drive leads for your personal training business. Everyone from the cleaners to managers should be aware of what you have to offer so they can help to promote your personal training service to the membership. The first step in getting staff talking about you is to help them understand what you do, there is no better way then allowing them to try your service or offering a reduced rate for staff on personal training sessions.

ACTION POINTS

  • Come up with a way to work with the sales team so they can introduce your personal training products to prospective members.
  • Get yourself into the sales office (don ’t go empty-handed, take them down a coffee) and introduce yourself, talk to them about what your USP (unique selling point) is as a personal trainer. Most importantly ask them to start making referrals to you where they feel it is appropriate.
  • Keep the sales guys and girls happy!

Please feel free to comment and ask questions below!