A problem a lot of personal trainers face when setting up an online coaching business is a struggle to sell to prospect because their offer is very complicated. If your programme has multiple elements that are difficult to explain on the sales call or in direct messages. It leaves closing deals feeling uncertain, unclear, and unstructured.
Instead, you can try having one core offer that solves one specific problem for a particular type of client avatar using one method of making the sale. That will be your primary, flagship offer that can have the most significant impact for your clients, and allows you to charge a premium for it. It also allows you to streamline your online personal training services so you're delivering the same core components to your clients even if the individual elements will be individualised. Let's dig into the steps to creating your core offer!
Step 1. Market to One Type of Client
Marketing to your ideal client avatar is something that gets spoken about a lot among personal training circles. You have probably come across a lot of guidance on how to write compelling copy for that one ideal client, or performing market research on the language they would use to talk about their problem.It's useful to focus on one type of client so the marketing assets you create will speak to them directly. If you're focused on general population clients that want to lose a bit of weight, using highly technical language in your posts might put them off, however, if working with physique competitors they may love the technical side of things. It gets tricky when you have more than one type of client, so ideally, focus your efforts on the one kind of person that you enjoy coaching.
If you've never done this exercise before, it can be helpful to use a real person to make this more concrete. Consider your favourite client. The one you love working with that gets incredible results. Then imagine what their day is like from start to finish; the conversations they have, the type of work they do - even the music they like. The goal is to get as complete a picture as possible so that you can get clear about the sort of problem that you're trying to solve for that person in the next step.
Step 2. Solve One Problem
Solving only one problem very well makes you a specialist, not a generalist. That gives you scope to do an exceptional job for the client that needs that support, taking additional and related courses to help understand the primary, secondary and tertiary reasons that problem exists and to charge a premium fee for that.If you're supporting weight loss clients, you might specialise in women over 45 that are perimenopausal. If you're helping young men that want to gain muscle, you might specialise in putting an inch on their biceps in a set time frame.
These both are different problems that you solve. It means that you're no longer competing in a marketplace of thousands of other online personal trainers that are offering that same thing. You've been able to distinguish your services quite naturally by simply being much more specific.
Many personal trainers and online coaches worry that this is going to turn away potential clients and exclude people from wanting to work with you. It should do that. Not everyone that sees your marketing efforts should want to buy what you're selling. It's crucial to polarise your audience in as far as those people that do want to buy will be that much more convinced that your service is the right one for them.
Step 3. One Method of Selling
There are multiple ways to sell your services. You can use a sales page on your website (probably more suitable for automated packages than bespoke services), you can make a sale in the direct messages of your social media accounts, or on a phone call. Using one method of selling to prospects keeps things more straight forward for you. It also allows you to get incredibly good at it, because this is how you'll practice.There's no one right answer here as to which is the best method of selling but as a general rule, the more expensive your solution, the better it will be to do your selling over the phone. This will give you the chance to handle objections effectively and answer questions in real-time about how your service is delivered. It also will provide you with an opportunity to secure an immediate payment while your prospect is on the phone, and to present pay in full or split payment options. There's no need to push a sale if a prospective client needs time to evaluate their choices, but others who want to commit straight away will like the smooth transitioning.
Step 4. Your Unique Solution
You can then position your online coaching options as the unique solution to the problem. Once you have a clear idea of who you help, what services you provide and how you handle objections and make the sale, you can explain the aspects of your service which are of the most interest to your prospect. You may not need to present all elements to all enquiries.While your solution doesn't change, how you frame it concerning the prospect's specific and individual needs may vary. For example, you may provide workouts to all your clients, but if your sales call has identified that your prospect is short on time, you might emphasise that you can design a programme that takes no more than 30 minutes 3 times a week out of their schedule and still be very effective.
Optional Step: Upselling & Downselling
Upselling is about selling additional products and services to your clients after they've bought from you. This could be physical products like merchandise or supplements, or it could be digital products like manuals and e-books. It could even be additional services, like booking extra accountability sessions or adding a face to face hybrid training element.Down selling might happen after a fixed period has passed. Rather than keeping your client on a premium level of one to one service that they may no longer need, you might offer them a lower level of coaching (e.g. group coaching) for a lower ongoing fee. This keeps people in your programme for longer and provides them with an extra value from a coach and community that they have come to trust already.
