Many personal trainers find their sales skills a part of the job that they'd like to improve. Often even the thought of having a sales call can send us into a cold sweat, but the reality is that sales can be the lifeblood of your business. It's how you make the income you need to support your family and impact people looking for help with their health and fitness.
Even if you have an excellent routine for these sales calls, you still might find calling up people you haven't met before can be stressful if you're focused on the sales. A slight mindset shift in thinking about the sales call more like a consultation call can help. Especially during times when your prospects are just as much hit by the COVID situation as you are.
What looks promising is that many people realised how much their fitness impacts their health and want to do something about it. In today's article, we'll discuss three key phrases that can make the difference in your sales calls' success rate during the pandemic. First, let's get something fundamental clear, though.
Attitude Before The Call
You know that you're an incredible coach, and you can get people genuinely transformational results. You can extend lives and improve the quality of life people live. When you get on the initial consultation call, instead of thinking of it like a sales call, think about it as a fitness and lifestyle assessment or even an interview.You are interviewing people so that you have a better understanding of:
- What they want to achieve, the goal in both the short and long term. Aim to connect in a meaningful way with why the goal is essential to them. In a lockdown, this positive focus is more critical than ever.
- Why they haven't achieved it yet, and what they perceive are the obstacles stopping them from reaching their potential. There could be more issues during a lockdown than usual around childcare, or available time, or gym closures.
- Why now is the right time to seek your help? Take the time to congratulate the prospect. Sincerely. Recognising that they're ready - even when conditions aren't ideal-will be a vital step in building that belief that they are capable.
The purpose of the call is not to sell anyone and everyone into your programme, but rather to assess if they are a good fit for your programme. The questions above put you into a curious, inquisitive state rather than seeming sales orientated. It'll feel like a collaboration, as you listen carefully to what they tell you.
There are then three main questions you can ask to build rapport and quickly establish how appropriate a prospect is for your online coaching program.
Question 1: Establish Current Lifestyle Habits
Ask your prospect "what's lockdown life like for you?"This question is specifically about the lockdown and selling online coaching during COVID. For most people, every day will be feeling the same at the moment. They likely lack a positive focus, waking up 10 minutes before their zoom meeting and feeling as though their working day and their time with their family are all merging into one unstructured haze. This lack of focus can be a source of significant stress, and for some people - even a sense that they've lost an essential part of themselves.
Reassure your prospect that how they're feeling is incredibly common. Mention you've had several conversations recently that have listed the lockdown lifestyle as a personal challenge for people. And identify the value of routines and habits for your current clients.
Question 2: Establish How Their Lifestyle Changed
Ask your prospect "What were your routines like before lockdown happened?"The purpose of this question is to understand how solid their habits and routines were before COVID-19, and the lockdowns disrupted them. If they already have behaviour patterns in place for good practices which need re-establishing and recommitting to, or if it's something you're building together for the first time.
This is an opportunity to showcase the holistic support, which is made possible with online coaching. There is a wide range of habit trackers and performance-based assessments on PT Distinction, which are perfect for this lifestyle support level.
Question 3: Establish The State Of Their Spirit
Ask your prospect: "What have you got to look forward to at the moment?"The purpose of this question is to assess whether they have a positive focus in their immediate short term futures. That can often be what's lacking when they seek support from a trainer for their health and fitness. They want you to help provide them with a positive focus since they are currently unable to train in a gym environment with their friends, can't eat out in restaurants, and probably have nothing to look forward to in the way of socialising - not the same way as before at least.
This is an opportunity to emphasise that online training isn't just deprivation and weight loss. It's also a positive focus in their lives, giving them a reason to get out of the house each day and provide achievable targets. It's a way to socialise with other members of your coaching community and belong to something bigger than themselves.
Conclusion
By treating these questions on the call with an attitude of genuine curiosity, you relax a little about actually making the sale. You ask better quality questions that can probe to the heart of the challenges your prospect is facing and can help you understand what they've done to try to fix these problems themselves in the past. It removes the sense that you're trying to sell people on your coaching - where you are likely to talk too much about the logistics and features of what you do.Instead, it holds space for your prospect to feel listened to, heard, and for them to appreciate that you've taken time to understand their unique situation that they're living through right now during COVID. Coaching is about building relationships. One of the most fundamental things you can do for another adult is to ask great questions and listen to their answers. The call should never feel like a "hard sell" with these questions because you're collaborating on the best possible solution - which may, or may not - be your coaching. And if you are a newly qualified personal trainer trying to establish a career during the pandemic, you still have plenty of tools and skills you can use the get started.
