When using the 10 step consultation method What should you do next after discussing the clients personal preferences?

Client consultations are not only a legal requirement before treatment, but also an opportunity to discover what your client wants, along with possible contraindications, and achieve the perfect end result. Even regular clients need a consultation as hair, nails and skin condition can change over time. Read on to learn how to get the most from each consultation.

Ask questions and listen carefully to ensure you understand the client’s desires and requirements. Use open questions that require more than a yes or no answer. Give the client confidence that you are dedicated to giving them a fantastic service and make recommendations accordingly. Repeat key information back to the client. For example, showing them how much hair you will cut. Before you start working on the client, always check they have no more questions.

Analyse

Check over the area you will be performing the treatment on, such as hair, skin or nails. Tailor your ideas to their specific desire, concern or problem. Discuss findings with the client and, again, make recommendations.

Keep a Record

Recording information about each of your clients allows you to build a deeper understanding of their needs. Record information from consultations. Should their regular hairdresser or therapist be away, someone else can read their record to familiarise themselves with the client. Allergies, conditions and sensitivities must be noted. Keeping records up to date also allows you to identify other treatments or retail products that clients may be interested in.

Inspiration

Have hair or beauty magazines and pictures of your work available for the client to look through. Also, direct them to Instagram and Pinterest for further inspiration on current looks and trends. This may help clients who lack confidence or are unsure about the look they want. Use the client’s language, not industry jargon they may not understand.

Building Relationships

Consultations offer hair and beauty professionals a chance to develop a rapport with clients. Be positive and friendly from the start, putting the client at ease. Be aware of your body language, sit at their level, smile and avoid folding your arms. Get to know your clients - Every client is different; some will have very strong views of what they want, others will be looking for inspiration and suggestions. Some may prefer a questionnaire, other may prefer only face-to-face questions. Read their records to remind yourself of key information and previous treatments before the client returns for their next appointment.

Confidentiality

Be aware that the client has trusted you with private, often sensitive, information. Store carefully and adhere to the Data Protection Act.

Meet Clients Expectations

Clients will be seeking expert advice from a professional they can trust. Give them tailored ideas and tips to suit their skin tone, hair colour, condition, face shape etc. Manage their expectations. Ask them questions about their job, hobbies and family life. Would a high maintenance hairstyle fit in with your client’s lifestyle? Read their body language. Are they saying yes but shrugging their shoulders or seeming non-committal? Politely check and double check what they want. Also, discuss after care and retail products.

Opportunities to Upsell

Don’t be afraid to suggest additional services or ancillary products to clients during the consultation.If they are in for a manicure, you could discuss gel polish or nail art. If they are in for a cut and re-style, you could discuss colour options. If they decide upon your upsell, make sure they are aware of and happy about the cost.

Retail

Establish what your client’s concerns or problems are with, for example, their hair, skin or nails. Suggest retail products they might like that could help with after care.

Complaints

If your client returns to you unhappy after the treatment, the consultation form can provide a handy paper trail for you to check what was discussed and agreed, as well as any existing allergies or conditions. Read our blog on How To Deal With Client Complaints.

Imagery sourced from Pinterest.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published April 2017 and has recently been updated and revised for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

You check your watch. It’s almost 9 a.m. You have a prospective client coming to the gym or your personal training studio for an initial consultation. You check your watch again. You play out the initial consultation process in your head and wonder how it’s going to go. Sound familiar?

Whether you’re new to personal training or have already done a lot of consultations with prospective clients, there’s still a hint of nervousness before that first meeting. Before that interested client walks through the door, it’s pretty common to start asking yourself a list of rapid-fire questions like:

Will you be able to connect with the client?
Is the person ready to commit to working out and eating healthy?
Will you understand what the client wants to accomplish by working with you?
Do you have the skills to help this person achieve his or her health and fitness goals?
Will the client sign on for one of your personal training packages?

As a personal trainer, your best skill set is developing workout plans, making nutrition recommendations, demonstrating correct form, adapting exercises for clients as needed, tracking progress, and providing motivation and encouragement.

But you won’t be booked with clients if you don’t develop your consultation skills too. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to nail the initial personal training consultation with a new client.

Plan Ahead

This starts before the prospective client walks through the door. When someone has an interest in hiring you to be his or her personal trainer, have him or her complete a questionnaire first. You can email him or her a list of questions or create a basic form using free software like Google Forms.

You’ll be able to gather important information about goals, lifestyle habits, fitness level, current diet, and any limitations that your client may have to help you begin thinking about how you can help him or her. Collecting this information ahead of time can also help guide a personal training consultation, help you ask questions specific to your client, and build the trainer/client relationship.

Break the Ice

When your prospective client walks through the door, say hello and take him or her to an open area where you can sit and visit. If you’re training in a gym, you might have a lounge or lobby where you can meet, versus a private office. It’s a simple way to help your client feel more comfortable and less nervous about hearing a pitch about personal training services.

Once you’ve greeted the client and found a place to chat, break the ice. Ask about what else he or she has going on with family, work, school, hobbies, etc. Doing this helps build trust, and you’ll also get a sense of what kind of time the client can commit to working out.

Now is also a good time to have your client fill out any additional paperwork like a consent and liability waiver, physical activity readiness questionnaire, and any other intake paperwork. You may also consider requiring these documents to be completed before your first meeting.

Discuss Challenges and Goals

After spending a few minutes getting to know your client better, you can transition the conversation to talking about his or her health and fitness challenges and goals. This is a good opportunity to mention specific details the client shared in his or her questionnaire. Here are a couple of examples of how to guide this part of the conversation:

“In your questionnaire, you mentioned that you’ve tried a lot of different diet pills and workout programs but never got very good results. Tell me a little more about that.”
“When you were exercising a lot, what did your workouts and training look like?”
“It looks like you want to reach your goal weight in three months. What’s your motivation for doing this? And what will it mean to you to shed those extra pounds?”
“How can I help you achieve your goal?”

When you ask questions specific to the client based on his or her questionnaire and other information he or she has shared earlier, it shows you’re listening, you care about the client, and you want to help him or her. It’s a great way to build trust and show the client you’ll be creating a customized training plan unique to his or her starting point and goals.

Spending time on this part of the process can also help make talking about personal training packages and pricing and asking for his or her business a lot easier later on.

Workout/Assessment

Once you’ve had a chance to review the questionnaire with your client and ask follow-up questions, put your client through an assessment or mini-workout. Here are some ways you can do this:

Get basic measurements: Height, weight, waist circumference, body fat percentage. You may also want to grab your tape measure and record starting measurements for the neck, shoulders, chest, biceps, hips, and thighs. As you take measurements, explain why the data is useful. For example, “This information provides a starting point to help measure your progress.”
Measure cardiovascular fitness: There’s more than one way to do this, but the Step Test and One-Mile Walk Test are both effective ways to measure cardiovascular fitness. This will help you identify the client’s starting point for cardio-related programming. If your client has a hard time with the assessment, reassure him or her that your programming will help improve his or her cardiovascular health.
Measure flexibility: Walk your client through a series of basic movements to evaluate flexibility and range of motion like lunges, squats, and overhead arm extensions. This information will help you identify any issues you need to be aware of when you write your client’s exercise program. Demonstrate each movement using correct form and full range of motion. Talk your client through each movement, point out any issues you notice and recommend adjustments, and explain how your training will help improve flexibility and range of motion.
Assess strength: There’s more than one way to assess strength. Some personal trainers use a one-rep max, five-rep max, or 10-rep max for various exercises liked barbell squats, bench press, or leg press to measure strength. The Push-Up Test is another effective way to measure upper-body strength and endurance. When you assess strength, demonstrate each exercise with correct form. Then walk your client through the exercise and explain the movement and muscles worked and how your training plan can help your client make strength gains.

The assessment process is a great opportunity to see what your client’s strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to exercise, building rapport, and establishing yourself as an expert. (Here’s another way to wow your client: Give your client a fresh bottle of water and clean towel before you start the assessment.) As you work through each phase of the assessment process, talk about programming strategies that will help the client achieve his or her goals.

Ask for the Sale

Once you’ve completed the mini-workout or assessment, head back to the open area where you started the meeting. Review your client’s assessment results, goals, and recommendations to achieve them.

Then present some personal training package options, like this:

“Based on your goals and the results of your assessment, a couple of different options will work to help you get the results you want.”

Show the client three different pricing options with various levels of personal training sessions. (Note: Have these pricing options ready to present before the client meeting begins.)

Then ask: “Which option makes the most sense for you?” And wait for the client to answer.

If you’ve done a good job from start to finish, it’s easy for a client to say yes.

Follow-Up

If you don’t get a yes when you ask for the sale, that’s OK. Many people want to take time to make a buying decision that could cost a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. Follow up in about a week after a personal training consultation with a phone call or email. Ask a question like “Have you made a decision about personal training yet?” or “What’s your next step to achieving your health and fitness goals?”

The Process of Landing New Personal Training Clients

If you want to nail the initial consultation with a new personal training client, there’s more to it than knowing how to design a strength training program or how to help someone lose weight. Take time to get to know your client. Find out what his or her health and fitness challenges and goals are. Get measurements and assess his or her cardiovascular health, flexibility, and muscle strength. And provide value throughout the entire process to educate and encourage your client. When it’s time to ask for the sale, your client will be ready for you to help him or her.

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Establishing a thriving personal training business requires a consistent flow of both new and ongoing clients. If you’re a new personal trainer or don’t have as many clients as you’d like, focusing on getting more clients is likely a top priority.

Well, thanks to the interconnected world we now live in, landing clients for your personal training business is easier now than ever before. Here are our top 12 tips for growing your personal training client list.

Social media is fantastic for attracting more clients to your personal training business. But there’s a right and wrong way to approach online social media marketing. Many people assume that posting a picture of their physique every once in a while will help them gain more traction with their online presence.

Leveraging social media correctly will help establish your brand as an expert personal trainer as well as building trust with future prospects. Here are a few of the most effective strategies you can implement to skyrocket your social media efforts:

Provide value. Make it a habit to show your followers you’re highly educated. This can be done by giving them daily tips or tidbits of information in your caption under pictures, as a status update, or an instructional video.
Post regularly. Frequency is crucial on social media. If you want to grow a loyal fan base, you must stay top of mind by consistently posting informational, conversational, or entertaining content every day.
Have strong opinions. People resonate with others who are willing to stand for what they believe in. If you don’t agree with a specific fitness ideology, talk about why your methods are better and back it up with science or proof.

Stick to One or Two Platforms at a Time

Between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, you may feel like there’s never enough time to publish regularly on social media.

Instead of spreading your efforts thin by posting on all social media platforms, sticking to just one or two at a time will help you grow a larger following of people who know, trust, and like what you say and post.

As a personal trainer, Facebook and Instagram are a great place to start. Find the one or two platforms that resonate with your audience most, publish frequently, and ignore the rest until you’ve successfully built a community on that platform.

2. Gather an Email List and Write to Them Regularly

Many personal trainers tend to neglect one of their most valuable assets, their email list. Many successful business owners no matter what industry, will tell you the money is in the list.

Email is known as one of the most personal mediums that acts as a one-to-one conversation with your client or prospect.

If you aren’t yet building an email list, the best time to start is now. A great way to start is by creating a free download in exchange for their email. For example, you can give them a free one-week meal plan or workout regimen in a PDF format.

Once you have their email, start sending regular broadcast emails and when done correctly, you can promote your services in each email as long as they are receiving some form of value or entertainment in each email.

Using an email software like Aweber, MailChimp, or Active Campaign will allow you to send out emails to your entire list at once.

3. Publish Blog Posts and Helpful Articles

Every person who reads an article written by you is a potential client. The more value people get out of your articles, the more they see you as an authority in the health and fitness space.

One of the best ways to demonstrate your expertise to potential clients is by regularly publishing helpful articles on your own blog. Having a content marketing plan set in place for your own brand and posting frequently will prove to potential clients that you’re an expert in the industry.

4. Submit Guest Posts to Other Blogs in Your Industry

If your website doesn’t have any traffic yet, consider reaching out to other authorities in your specific niche and requesting to do a guest post. Having your article published on someone else’s blog allows you to tap into their audience which leads to more traffic to your own website.

Spend some time researching other personal trainers with an online presence in your niche and establish a mutually beneficial relationship.

Many personal training bloggers are more than happy to publish your article on their website because they benefit from showing their audience new content that they didn’t have to spend time writing themselves or money hiring a writer.

5. Use Video

Video is now the most engaging type of medium on the internet. When people see you providing value through video, it’s much easier to gain their trust over any other kind of post.

If you’re focusing your marketing efforts on Facebook, regularly streaming a live video of yourself answering questions is a great way to provide valuable information to your potential clients. Eventually, people will start recommending your page and you’ll have a steady stream of prospects tuning into your live streams where you can promote your services at the end.

Uploading videos of exercises and instructional videos on Youtube is also a great idea.

When you’re talking to a potential client, referring them to your Youtube videos will not only educate them on proper movements, but it also shows you care about getting them results, which could make them want to hire you as a trainer.

6. Brand Your Personal Training Approach

If you have a unique approach to fitness, consider packaging it up, naming it, and marketing it in a way that resonates with your target audience.

The most successful personal trainers have a unique twist and have branded their exercise strategies. For example, instead of telling your busy office worker clients that you’re putting them on a full-body workout program 3 times a week, tell them about your “Full Body Fat Burner” workout program instead.

When done correctly, people will start referring others to your branded fitness program which could skyrocket your personal training business.

7. Get Hyper-Specific on a Targeted Niche

It may seem like a good idea to work with anyone and everyone when you don’t have many clients. But by narrowing down your fitness niche and focusing on a smaller subset of people, it’s much easier to grow your client list.

Most people who are just getting into health and fitness usually have a specific interest, goal, or lifestyle that they’re after.

Telling others that you can help them lose weight by holding them accountable with a consistent workout regimen is too general. Instead, hone in on a laser-targeted audience. For example, you could brand yourself as the go-to personal trainer for older adults who are new to fitness and want to lose weight without having to leave their home.

It’s much easier to get known as an expert in the field if you have specialized knowledge in a smaller fitness niche rather than trying to be known as the personal trainer who just helps people lose weight.

8. Strategically Receive Referrals

Referral marketing is extremely popular in the personal training business. Word-of-mouth referrals are an extremely effective source of ongoing clients but relying on others to recommend your services may feel like something you have no control over.

Going above and beyond to get clients the results they’re after and having a fantastic experience working with you will increase the chances that your existing clients will tell their friends and family about you.

In addition, you can also network with other independent gyms, studios, and health clubs to see if they’re willing to refer leads to you. If you are just starting out and don’t have many connections, consider offering these business owners a monetary reward for each client you land as an incentive.

9. Advertise a Free Session

If you’re a brand new personal trainer, advertise free sessions at your local gym. Once you’ve demonstrated your expertise, you can begin to charge them after your free session if they like working with you.

If you already have existing clients, offer a one-time “bring a friend free” session for each of your clients. Adding a specific deadline to the “bring a friend free” pass is also a great idea. This will give your existing clients a sense of urgency and the chances they have someone tag along increases.

Your clients will be more than happy to bring their friends in and it’s your job to give them an experience so good they’ll want to work with you long-term.

10. Partner with Health and Wellness Businesses

Establishing new relationships in the health and fitness industry isn’t limited to your local gym. Think outside the box and consider partnering with other health and wellness businesses in your area.

For example, if your target audience consists of millennials who are health conscious, reach out to coffee shops, yoga studios, or juice bars and ask them if they’d be interested in having you come in once a week to host a donation-only fitness class on the weekend.

This will help attract more customers to the business owner’s store while at the same time allowing you to make relationships with potential clients.

11. Always Stay Ahead of the Education Curve

The health and fitness industry is constantly evolving. It’s your job as a personal trainer to stay up to date with the latest science and trends to ensure that your clients are getting their money’s worth.

Most personal training certifications also require continuing education to stay certified. Maintaining your certification makes you a more valuable personal trainer and demonstrates you’re an expert in the eyes of potential clients.

It’s also a great idea to further your education with specialized credentials. If you’re already a personal trainer, graduating in a specialized program such as core training, back injury, or strength and conditioning will help you gain an even larger client list.

12. Deliver Results

Helping your clients get the results they’re looking for should be your number one priority.

Not only will they want to continue working with you, but it will increase the chances that they refer your services to their friends and family.

Additionally, always speak to your client with the sole purpose of delivering results. People hire personal trainers to help them achieve a specific goal. Keep your communications as clear, concise, specific and simple as possible inside and outside of the gym.

For example, tell them exactly how many sessions they should be working with you per week to get the results they’re after and offer to lay out an entire month’s schedule with dates and times so you’re always on the same page.

During your actual training sessions, start off by explaining to them what exercises you’ll be covering and why. Help them feel comfortable and confident that your regimen is right for them. Try not to get too heavy on the fitness jargon and guide them into doing the workout correctly without getting into exercise terminology they may not know about.

Grow Your Client List With a Widespread Approach

Growing your client list is the key to establishing a successful personal training business.

If you’re a new personal trainer with little to no clients, the majority of your time should be spent on marketing your services. Choosing a few of the strategies explained above and implementing them into your business on a consistent basis will help you land more clients in no time.

Instead of relying on just one strategy, consider casting a wider net with your marketing plan by choosing three to four of the tips we laid out and work on it every day.

You’ll have peace of mind knowing you have multiple sources of leads coming your way without relying on just one prospecting method. This way, you’ll always have a constant source of potential clients from various platforms and mediums.