Don’t Under Sell Yourself

As a personal trainer and co-owner of a personal training business I provide personal training services to clients looking to make a change, reach goals and discover a healthy and active lifestyle. I also motivate and train my team in the end goal of getting clients from where they are now to where they want to be in a realistic time frame. This is a service which CAN NOT be scaled to huge amount of clients, and not for any reason other than this is the type of business we provide. We provide HIGH value to FEW clients, a service person will always be in this service category, that’s just how it is. Therefore our biggest asset is time. This is a post for personal trainers or anyone really that provides a service and for clients or customers of those providing these high value services. The first thing you will want to do is set a price for your service usually by time but not always, this price is crucial. Set it too low and you don’t make any money, set it too high and you risk not gaining enough clients to continue your service. Here is an example! You are a newly qualified personal training and you are keen to gain new clients and get them in the door. You advertise your new service on Facebook and Twitter for £15 per hour. You have some kit you use to workout yourself and a car to get to clients. Almost immediately you get some enquires from interested clients. Great, you sell your service at £15 an hour and on a conman package of 10 sessions that’s £150. Now to start out this sounds great right, you have some clients, you are getting field experience and you have started to provide this high value to your clients. However there are some things to consider;

I see trainers advertise £15 PT all the time on twitter, Facebook and through word of mouth, this is not just for an offer, that’s there price! So yes a massive undercut of almost every personal trainer. The industry average  I would say is £25-35 per hour, now offering personal training at £15 for a taster session is fine and that is conman and decent practice for attracting new prospects.

If very cheap personal training is offered by a mobile personal trainer it won’t be long before they realise it’s unsustainable and if they believe it is sustainable, quality is going to suffer and they are likely to burn out. This results in low quality “sweat sessions” not a long term well planned programme of training to get the client to their goals. I call them sweat sessions as they require no thought, no planning just an ability to pick some exercises that will make their client sweat for an hour (not really a high vale service a client would expect). There are situations within a gym or health club where offering personal training services as a form of added value where the trainer is employed by the facility, this works as the trainer has a guaranteed income. This can also work if the trainer is self employed and pays a rent but it’s going to be hard work ans they are likely to burn out.

Price your services right

Price your services accordingly, if you under price your services, you will have to work more hours, more unsociable times to get the same income, your service will reduce in quality and this will affect your retention and future income.

Get it right from the start and don’t be afraid to increase you price if you need too, if your worth it, if your good, your clients won’t have an issue paying the extra. It’s likely if you are already a self employed mobile personal trainer you are good, you are passionate so avoid burnout, work less hours and get your service quality on top.