Personal Training Consultation: Guide, Examples & Scripts (2024)

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Watch our Video on how to do a Personal Training Consultation the right way or if you prefer, we have put the script below for you to read.

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Firstly, let’s clarify what a Personal Trainer Consultation actually is:

Personal Training consultations are like glorified sales pitches utilised to get new clients.  They are your opportunity to demonstrate how you can help a client achieve their goals and build rapport which can ultimately convert them into a new paying customer and help you make money as a personal trainer.

But, is there a skill to a Personal Training Consultation?... Absolutely!

All forms of sales require skill and the best part is that it can be learnt!

This is what a Personal Training Consultation sales funnel looks like. It’s a simple six step process, starting with generating enquiries, and finishing with you closing the sale. Use the jump links below if you wish to jump to a particular section of the article:

1. Generate Enquiries

2. Build Rapport

3. Needs Analysis

4. Price Present

5. Close the sale

We’re going to break down each step bit by bit, so you know exactly how to execute a great Personal Training Consultation.

Let’s jump in!

STEP 1 -Getting Prospective Clients to Book Personal Training Consultations

Many Personal Trainers think they know what is a personal training consultation, but the reality can be very different to what you may think!

Personal Training Consultations are soft forms of enquiry with no obligation to buy, and there are a few ways you can generate these types of enquiry.

Get Personal Trainer Consultations from your Website

Your website is a great place to generate PT consultations. 

See here how MBPT Fitness has placed a “request a FREE consultation” on their website:

Or here… how Embody Fitness are using their enquiry page for booking consultations

Getting PT Consultations from Social Media

You can promote your FREE PT Consultation through social media, see here, Trainers and gyms in the UK are doing that right now on Instagram:

this is bridge street gym promoting consultations to their member base:

And here, a promotion from Good Condition Personal Training in Lincoln:

Getting PT Consultations from the Gym Floor

If you’re a trainer that operates in a gym-based facility or National chain, you can create posters, flyers, approach people on the gym floor, or jump on the tannoy every few hours to promote your Personal training consultation.

Incentivise Other Staff Members to book your PT consultations

You can incentivise other staff members to do the hard work for you!  

Depending on the gym, there might be receptionists, sales or operational staff. 

Incentivise them financially to book your appointments by giving them a reward for each time one of those consultations converts into a new paying client. 

Receptionists and sales staff in particular get approached directly about Personal Training all the time and will get asked which trainer to go with. 

You want to ensure they are sending them in your direction as opposed to the other 8 trainers in the gym, so make sure you make their incentive worthwhile.

These types of referrals are some of the best leads you can get as a third party, being the receptionist or sales staff is endorsing you as the “go to trainer”.

Use Inductions 

Individuals who book inductions are normally people who want your help the most, they tend to not be that gym familiar or have hardly stepped foot in one previously. 

Change your view on inductions from being a chore, to being an avenue you can use to converting them into new paying clients. 

Use Classes

At the end of each class, let members know they can get a free no obligation, personal trainer consultation to discuss their goals and to book one with you on the way out of the class.

There are literally loads of different ways to get clients booked in for a PT consultation.

STEP 2 – BUILDING RAPPORT 

Now we have holistically given you a few ways you can easily generate Personal Training Consultations, let’s move onto rapport building as a personal trainer.

But first, we need to ensure we are conducting our PT consultation in the right environment. 

When performing a personal training consultation, ensure you have selected a place that is fairly quiet, private and has no distractions.

Perfect places for your fitness consultations are:

Do NOT do a PT consultation on the gym floor! 

Ensure you are sitting next to your client, not opposite them, this is not an interview.

Rapport is the “key” to getting PT clients to convert!

Here is why rapport is so important:

• People only buy off people they like and trust, almost irrespective of how “good” the product or service is.
• This becomes even more prevalent when selling as a Personal Trainer as you are selling yourself!

So, this begs the question, how can we make a client like us? 

We can manipulate our personality to suit the person we’re talking to, and we can do this by fitting people into a type of persona. 

This is a pie chart of the 4 personality types that we need to categorise people into:

You have red for someone who is direct, and to the point. Blue who is someone who is analytical, concise, writes every detail down, yellow, who is someone who is enthusiastic and bubbly and then green, who is someone who is quiet and softly spoken. 

We’re actually all a mix of all 4 of these personality types, just on different levels and percentages. We tend to be one of these colours primarily with a second colour as a backup.

Ask yourself which prime colours are you? 

Your job as a Personal Trainer is to identify which prime colour your client is and then to mirror that personality type. This is called mirror image selling!

The reason this is important, is sociable, outgoing people, i.e. ‘Yellow’, like other sociable people, as we like people similar to ourselves.

So, if you’re naturally a ‘blue’, you would need to add energy into the way you talk.  

If you didn’t change the way you spoke, the chance of you closing the client would drastically reduce, before you have even told them about the great services you can provide. 

This mirror image selling also extends to the speed of which you talk and the tone of which you speak. Ever found it annoying when someone takes too long to finish a sentence, or talks really slowly

Believe it or not, they find you talking to quickly irritating too! 

Even by slowing down or speeding up the way you talk to a prospective client can get them more engaged with you. Tone matters! Adjust your tone to match your clients.  

Do you talk differently to your friends, as you do to your boss or your parents’ friends? Almost definitely! This is you organically adjusting your tone to get someone to endear to you. 

You should repeat the exact same process with your prospective clients. 

Now that we have set the precedence for how we talk to clients for our Personal trainer consultations, what do we actually talk about? 

Creating Initial Rapport during your Personal Training Consultation 

After we have shaken hands and sat down, maybe asked them how their day is going, or what should we do first?

How can we establish rapport right away? After all, first impressions count.

Talk about neutral topics!

Neural topics are just topics that are relevant to us all, regardless of background that we all share.

Neutral topics are things like: 

• The weather
• Day of the week
• Time of the Year
• What they got up to on the weekend
• What are they getting up to this weekend
• The Traffic
• Holidays

PRO TIP: Do not talk about topics that can be perceived to being controversial, such as religion or politics as they might not align with your beliefs or perception. 

Here’s an example of how using the weather can be used to establish rapport:

Personal Trainer Consultation Script for Initial Rapport:

YOU: How are you today? 

CLIENT: Yes, good thanks, how are you?

YOU:

Sunny: Yes great thanks, looks lovely out there, have you managed to get out in the sunshine?

Windy: Yes great thanks, is it still really windy out there? Hopefully It blows over by the weekend, what plans do you have for this weekend?

Rainy: Yes great thanks, is it still raining out there? Hopefully it clears up by the weekend, what plans do you have for this weekend?

Or if you want to use day of the week, which is my favourite and just slightly adapt what you say for each day of the week: 

• Monday: “I’m doing good thanks, even for a Monday, what did you get up to over the weekend?”
• Tuesday: “I’m doing good thanks, at least we have got Monday out of the way, what did you get up to over the weekend?”
• Wednesday: “I’m doing good thanks, we’re halfway to the weekend, what plans have you got for the weekend?”
• Thursday: “I’m doing good thanks, it’s almost Friday after all, what plans have you got for the weekend?”
• Friday: I’m doing good thanks, its Friday after all, what plans have you got for the weekend?”
• Saturday: I’m doing good thanks, its Saturday after all, what plans have you got for the rest of your weekend?”

These initial rapport questions are a great way to break the ice, show you have a personality and generate dialogue around topics aside from you selling Personal Training sessions to them. 

Your objective during the rapport phase is to try and keep the conversation flowing for as long as possible, before moving onto the next step in the Personal training consultation.

This is your time to get them to like you as an individual as much as possible, which is achieved through a combination of mirror imaging (that we discussed earlier in this article) and you showing a genuine interest in their life, hobbies and passions.

To keep the conversation going, use open questions which begin with:

Open questions prevent “Yes” or ”No” answers and allow the prospective client to open up and really get a genuine conversation going.  

Here are some follow-up questions you could ask using open questions:

• How has your week gone so far?
• What plans do you have this weekend?
• What holidays do you have planned this year?
• Where do you live in relation to the gym?
• How long does it take you to get to the gym?
• What do you make of the new gym equipment upstairs?

Building rapport with clients from different backgrounds and interests that differ from your own is a difficult skill, but it’s imperative to the overall sales process.

Memorising a couple of go to open end questions that you feel comfortable asking gives you a good starting point to get the conversation flowing and then you can ask further open ended spin off questions based on their answer to build rapport and show interest in your client's life.

- - - - 

Like this article? Go and check out some of our other articles:

• How to Create Personal Training Packages
• How to Give The Ultimate Personal Training Price Presentation
• How To Sell As A Personal Trainer: Untapped Secrets

STEP 3 – Personal Trainer Consultation Questions (Needs Analysis)

Once you have exhausted rapport-based topics, it’s now time to move onto the next step in the Personal Training Consultation process, the Needs Analysis. 

A Needs Analysis is the part of the sales process where you understand your prospective client’s needs, goals and motives for wanting Personal Training through using open ended questions.  

When a needs analysis is done right, it will help you close new clients and overcome objections before they even come up. 

When performing a needs analysis, we are going to ask questions about their past, present and future. This is called timeline selling, and it works great for selling Personal Training. 

With timeline selling we always start at the past – "where they once were", moving to the present, "where they are right now", and then forward to "where they want to be" – their goals

This is because there are two things that drives people to take action:

• Pain – The pain we feel when there is something we should do 
• Pleasure - How good we will feel when we take a positive action

We’re going to use open questions to identify the prospective client’s pain and pleasure points, from their past and present, to then show them what they can get from Personal Training to solve their “pain” - i.e what their future looks like once they hit their fitness goals with the aid of Personal Training. 

We’re going to start with questions pertaining to their past to find pleasure points using open ended questions.  

Try to make these questions flow as organically as possible and ensure you’re writing the answers down as you go.

Personal Training Consultation Questions: PAST

• Can you give me a time in your past when you looked and felt great?
• How long ago was that?
• Where were you training?
• How often were you training?
• What type of training were you doing?
• What made you stop training?
• If you had to score how you felt from 1 to  10, what number would you give it?

Firstly, notice how all the questions are open ended apart from the last one? This is because we want them to quantify their feelings into a tangible score as we're going to refer back to it later. 

These core questions are integral, as they allow you to identify their pleasure point, how long ago that was, frequency they were training, obstacles that stopped them training and most importantly how it made them feel when they were hitting their goals. 

This is why asking "what days and times a client is training" is really important during the present part of the needs analysis.

Additionally, by again asking "how they feel" and asking them to score their feelings out of 10, we can identify their pain point and quantify how they feel about where they are right now compared to where they want to be.

These needs analysis questions must form the core of your questions.

This is how this could look with a prospective client based on a real example:

Personal Trainer Consultation Template: PAST EXAMPLE

YOU: Can you give me a time in your past when you looked and felt great?

CLIENT: Yes, probably a few years ago before I had the kids, I was a 32 regular and going to the gym regularly.

YOU: How long ago was that?

CLIENT: Probably 4 years ago now.

YOU: Where were you training?

CLIENT: I was training at Pure Gym down the road from here.

YOU: How often were you training?

CLIENT: I was going 3 or 4 times a week at the time

YOU: What type of training were you doing?

CLIENT: I was doing some cardio on the machines, the odd outside run and some weights. 

YOU: What made you stop training?

CLIENT: I had stuff going on with work and just fell out of the habit.

YOU: If you had to score how you felt out of 10 when you did look and feel great, what number would you give it?

CLIENT: Probably a 9 to be honest!

Use these questions as your core questions. You can add questions or adapt these ones, but keep them open and ensure you ask how they feel and to put a number on it. By asking how they felt allows us to identify their pleasure points, which in this case was a few years ago,

as they were training regularly, felt a 9 out of 10 and were a couple of stone lighter.

Now we have covered their past, let’s jump to where they are right now, the present, where we want to identify their pain points.

PT Consultation Questions: PRESENT

The objective of the present is to find their pain point. What can Personal Training solve to relieve their pain?

• How long have you been a member here for?
• What type of training are you doing right now?
• How many times per week are you training?
• What days and times are you training?
• How do you feel about your health and fitness right now?
• If you had to give a mark out of 10 compared to where you were… what would you rate yourself now?

With the present questions, not only are we finding out what type of training they are doing and how often, but very importantly, we get to establish the exact days they are training, so we know when they can have 1-2-1 PT sessions, which we can use to overcome "time" as an objection later.

Again adapt these questions based on responses, but ensure to ask how they feel and to score those feelings out of 10.

Here’s how these answers could look:

Personal Training Consultation Template: PRESENT EXAMPLE

YOU: How long have you been a member here for?

CLIENT:Only for about a month or so.

YOU: What type of training are you doing right now?

CLIENT: I have just been trying what I used to do, a bit of cardio on the machines and trying some weight training.

YOU: How many times per week are you training?

CLIENT:I have been trying to do 3 times per week, but struggling to stick to it. 

YOU: What days and times are you training?

CLIENT:I usually have Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, so I train then and on a Saturday morning.

YOU: How do you feel about your health and fitness right now?

CLIENT:Not great right now as I have put on a couple of stone and I’m just getting back into the swing of things, but I’m struggling with a bit of motivation.

YOU: If you had to give a mark out of 10 compared to where you were?

CLIENT: Probably a 5 or so!

Our clients' pain point is that they are lacking motivation, struggling for consistency, have gained some weight and rate their health and fitness at just 5/10.

Also, as they said they are training Tuesday and Wednesday evenings with Saturday mornings, I know they are available to train during those times 

Now we have covered past and present, you can then move into their future goals, where do they want to be? 

Personal Trainer Consultation Questions: FUTURE

• What is it you want to achieve?
• What timeline are you looking to achieve your goals by?
• Why is hitting these goals important to you?
• How supportive are your friends and family to you reaching your fitness goals?
• How do you think you will feel if you hit these goals?
• If you had to score out of 10 if I could help you hit those goals by that timeframe how would you feel?

These questions establish goals, timeframes and pleasure points. Additionally, notice the question regarding support from friends and family?

This question allows your client to tell you how supportive people that matter to them have been, whilst helping you later to overcome the "I need to check with friends and family'' objection. 

Personal Trainer Consultation Template: FUTURE EXAMPLE

Here’s what future questions could look like with a client:

YOU: What is it you want to achieve?

CLIENT: I would love to lose a couple of stone that I have put on over the past few years and tone up a little.  

YOU: What timeline are you looking to achieve your goals by?

CLIENT: I have a holiday with the family in June, so would love to have lost that couple of stone by then.

YOU: Why is hitting these goals important to you?

CLIENT: I just want to feel good when I go away and be proud of how I look in photos and wear clothes comfortably again.  

YOU: How supportive are your friends and family to you reaching your fitness goals?

CLIENT: My partner is really supportive and she looks after the kids when I have been coming to the gym over the past month, so very supportive. 

YOU: How do you think you will feel if you hit these goals?

CLIENT: I’d feel amazing

YOU: If you had to score out of 10 if I could help you hit those goals by that timeframe how would you feel?

CLIENT: Probably a 9 or 10! That would be awesome!

With future goals, we’re showing the client how we can solve their pain, and getting them to visualise their future when those goals have been hit within their timeframe.

In our example, the client wanted to have lost the weight gained by June, be proud of their body so they can wear clothes comfortably for their family holiday, and said they would feel a 9 or 10 if they could achieve this.

Once you have covered the future goals you have finished your needs analysis. 

You have established a timeline of events, identified pain and pleasure points and understood their objectives of what they want to achieve and motives for why they want to achieve it.

- - - -

Before moving on, go check out our other top rated videos on our YouTube channel here:

• Best Personal Training Advertising Strategies
• Personal Training Career Options

STEP 4 – Fitness Consultation: The Summary

The next step is the summary, and this part is critical for helping to close the sale and overcome objections before they are raised.

Remember we said to write answers down during your needs analysis, this is because you are going to summarise your notes back to the prospective client. 

In the summary you are going to be asking closed questions only.

Closed questions are simply questions where the answer contains a “yes” or a “no”. Questions that start with “are”, “is” or “do you” result in closed answers.  

You’re going to summarise the key points of their fitness timeline back to them. We’re also using the summary to reiterate why they are here.

Using our example, it looks something like this:

Personal Consultation Training Script: Summary

YOU: Thanks for providing all that information, just so I’m clear, I’m just going to double check what I have here is correct

PAST:  

YOU: So, around 4 years ago you were exercising regularly, 3 or 4 times a week and you said you felt great at the time probably a 9 out of 10. Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah, that’s right.

 

PRESENT:

YOU: Right now, you said you are feeling a 5 out of 10, have put on a couple of stone, but have been back at the gym training for a month on 3 times per week on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, as well as a Saturday morning, so you have that time free for Personal Training, is that all correct? 

CLIENT: That’s correct.

 

FUTURE: 

YOU: To confirm, you want to lose a couple of stone and tone up and would love to hit these goals by that family holiday in June. Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah, I’d love to lose a couple of stone and to tone up as well would be great! 

YOU: Fantastic, it’s great that you have the time on those Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, Saturday mornings, and that your partner supports you getting a Personal Trainer to get to where you want to be. Now, let’s go through some prices!

By adding this little line at the bottom, you are re-iterating time is not a problem and that their partner is fully behind them getting a Personal Trainer.

This is done to remove the time and family objection before it comes up, which you may be familiar with:

• Family - “I need to check with my partner”
• Time - “I’ve got a lot on at work, I’m not sure I’ll have the time to do this”

We’ll come to the other two big objections like “cost” and “I have to think about it” and how we can overcome those objections shortly. 

But by including questions such as

"How supportive are your friends and family to you reaching your fitness goals?"

And…

"What days and times are you training?"

Including these questions into your Needs Analysis, reinforcing the answers in your summary.

This helps minimise these objections coming up for when you go through prices. 

Now we are ready to price present.

STEP 5 - Personal Training Client Consultation: Price Presenting

The next step in the process is to price present our Personal Training Packages.

Before we jump into price presenting, make sure you go check out our video on how to create Personal Training Packages below, as it explains how you should create monthly packages to maximise sales and revenue:

CLICK THE LINK TO SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE PERSONAL TRAINING BUSINESS TIPS 

When we price present, we should only price present a couple of options, which should be our top end packages. 

Heres why:

• Presenting just two options keeps the personal training selling process really simple for the client to understand. Complicated tables with loads of options of if you buy X number of sessions for X number of weeks gives the client something to genuinely go away and think about.
• By only presenting our higher end packages exclusively (with more sessions per week included), it’s not surprising that it will result in higher revenue sales. 
• Use lower end packages to drop to, which might be your one session per week if the client price objects, which we’ll cover how to handle shortly.

Here is an example of how what your Personal Training packages could look like:

Now, let’s move onto personal training price presentation and show you a few sale techniques we can use to close the sale right here and now.  

Closing your Personal Training Consultations first time is very important, and you should be aiming for a conversion to sale rate of 80% or 8/10.  

This is because this is your best chance. As soon as they walk out that door without signing up, other life priorities come back into play and the probability of them signing up vastly reduces. 

When we price present a good idea, it is to have your two package options printed out with the hourly rate for each option visible on there, such as seen below:

Notice how the hourly rate decreases and we don’t show the total price either. This is because we want them to pick our higher revenue, 3 sessions per week option, which although is less per hour, is worth far more to us monthly. 

Additionally, you may also notice that the amounts listed do not have the pound sign in front of them? 

This may seem really meticulous, but when we see pound signs, we automatically associate it with spending money, and it distracts focus from deciding on which package they should choose. 

This technique is actually used very frequently by high end restaurants when they want you to focus on what you want to eat, not how much it's going to cost you.

Another aspect to note is you will see it states “6-months”.

This is because you should contract your clients. In virtually every industry there are contracts in exchange for services, like your mobile or gym contracts, Personal Training should be no different. 

Contracts help to guarantee your income, it keeps clients paying, and gives you job security.

Lastly, there is a 10% discount if you pay in full, this is to encourage paid in full sales as revenue in the bank is important. The more paid in full sales the better.

Before we give you the script for closing clients, you need to create an offer which you can leverage as a special promotion to generate urgency. 

An “offer” is where you add value to your packages, that the client would benefit from and has high perceived monetary worth. 

Here’s some examples:

These all add value to your client, but don’t influence the price or the amount of money they are going to give you.

Add at least one of these value items to your highest end package, and a further value item to your highest end paid in full option. We’ll come back to how we push people onto our paid in full options shortly.  

This is going to be your “offer” and you’re going to use it to generate urgency. 

Now we have our packages set-up right, let’s move onto the price presenting script.

You’re simply going to break down the two options, but really emphasising how much better the 3 sessions per week option is, whilst relating back to where they are right now and where they want to be. We’re also going to use our offer to create urgency to get them to sign up right here and now.

PT Consultation Template: Price Presenting 

YOU: “You have a couple of good options and I have a great offer right now which ends today. So your timing coming in today is perfect.

Your first option is the Silver package, which is 2 sessions per week and works out at just £27 per hour. The second and most popular option my clients tend to go for is my Gold Package, which is 3 sessions per week. 

If you're determined to lose that 2 stone and change from that 5 out of 10 feeling and want to look and feel great for your family holiday, this is the one I would strongly recommend, and my other clients have had amazing results with.

Also, as part of today’s offer if you go for the 3 sessions per week option you will also get a free nutrition plan worth £150 to keep you on track towards your goals."

"Which option do you feel would suit you best?”

Notice when price presenting it has:

• Urgency – “I have a great offer on right now which ends today so your timing coming in today could not be better”
• Relates back to their goals – “If you’re determined to lose that 2 stone and change from that 5 out of 10 feeling and want to look and feel great for your family holiday”
• Creates conformity – “The second and most popular option my clients tend to go for is” and “my other clients have had amazing results with”.

Adds value to my higher end packages – “you will also get a free nutrition plan to keep you on track towards your goals”.

To get inspired for your own packages, check out our article on 'Personal Training Package Ideas & Inspiration'.

STEP 6 - Closing Personal Training Consultations

Now we have our packages set-up right and price presented our personal training packages the right way, now let’s close the sale.

Part 1 - Alternate Closing:

Alternate closing is simply removing the option to say “No” out of the equation.  

For example, many trainers default to saying phrases like this:

Instead of starting your sentence with “do”, “is” or “are”, we’re going to start with the word “WHICH” and we’re simply going to ask them WHICH option suits them best.

It is this simple and looks like this:

“Which option do you feel would suit you best?”

This is removing the “No” option out of the equation. 

Part 2 - Silent Assassin Technique

Now that we have used our alternate close, our next task is the simplest, say and do absolutely nothing! This is called the silent assassin technique. 

There is a rule with the silent assassin technique, the first one to speak loses.

This is because at this stage of selling personal training there should be nothing else to say! 

You should have built up rapport with them, conducted a thorough needs analysis, summarised and shown them the cost. There is nothing else you should be saying at this point and you want them to focus on the question at hand, “which option suits you best?”. 

Most prospective clients will speak right away, however some will say nothing for 30 seconds or even a minute, which feels like a lifetime when you're just sitting there, but you should still say absolutely nothing until they do speak. 

Part 3 – Confirming the Sale

Now, prospective clients will give you different levels of assertiveness and enthusiasm when answering the question “which one do you feel suits you best”? Here are some examples: 

• I think the Silver package is perfect for me
• The gold package looks good
• The silver package seems to suit me more
• If I had to say I would probably side with the gold package I think
• The Silver package sounds ok
• I’m really unsure…..maybe the silver package

The level of enthusiasm or package they lean towards is actually irrespective to the sales process, as long as the prospective client indicates even slightly towards one Personal trainer package over the other and your response will always be same.

“I completely agree with you, I think that’s the perfect option for you.”

This is you confirming their choice as a correct one and ultimately confirming the sale. You will say this irrespective of which package they choose and irrespective of their level of enthusiasm. 

Part 4 – Assumptive Closing

Once you have confirmed the sale and their choice as being a great one, you now need to assumptively start the signing up process – this is what is called assumptive closing.

Assumptive closing is the intentional assumption that the prospect or in this case the client has already agreed to buy, and you to start the onboarding process. 

The assumptive close, makes it very difficult for the prospect to interrupt and stop the sales process from starting. 

Additionally, by following it up with a soft, unrelated sales question that they have to answer moves the client to even further along the onboarding phase, making it even harder for them to say “No”. 

An effective assumptive close after you have confirmed the sale like this:

Confirming the Sale - "I agree, I think that the gold package is the perfect option for you.”

Assumptive Close - “Great then, what WE WILL do is, we’ll get you booked in for your first session, I just need to get some details from you, I have your full name, what’s your date of birth?”

Notice how the last time the client spoke was to answer “which option they felt suited them” and the next time they speak is when the onboarding has started, almost without them realising when they're answering the question such as in this example “what’s your date of birth”. They feel like they have already signed up and are now committed. 

Closing Rules

Never leave prospective clients unattended until they have paid and actually become a client.

• Always book your client’s first session with them, this gets them motivated and committed.
• Never leave clients filling in forms such as exercise questionnaires – this gives them time to build up the courage to pull out of the sale or create an excuse.
• Always take payment & process the contract Last – this is because you want them fully bought into the onboarding process first and we want to push them to pay in full. 

But what happens if the client has an objection? Let’s cover that now.

Personal Trainer Consultation Objections 

Before we show you can push clients to pay in full over monthly instalments, let's cover some potential objections.

PT Consultation Objection: Cost

The most common objection when selling Personal Training is always price, after all it's not cheap and is a luxury service. 

This is where you should have created another package which consists of just 1 session per week, which is far cheaper monthly but works out more per hour.

Keeping this package in your back pocket helps twofold:

• It pushes clients to pick from the options they have available, your higher priced 2 sessions per week and 3 sessions per week
• It allows you to supposedly price drop when monetary objections occur. 

We’re now going to present the cheaper 1 session per week:

It goes something like this.

PT Consultation Template: 

CLIENT: I like the sound of the Silver package, but I just can’t afford that monthly price.

YOU: “I completely understand (always show empathy). What I can do to get that monthly fee down is show you the bronze package, which is just once per week and reduces the cost to just £120 a month, which is £96 a month less.

Now which would suit you best, the bronze or the silver package? 

CLIENT: Yes, I think the bronze option is good for me.

See how it links back into alternate close, again so the prospective client is choosing which option as opposed to saying “Yes” or “No”.

If the client strongly price objects again, you should walk away from the sale as you should never de-value your service and can lead to further problems, which we highlight in our creating PT packages video. 

PT Consultation Objection: I need to think about it!

When people say, “I need to think about it”, its normally actually and objection about one of the aspects we have already covered or a combination of:

• Cost
• Family / Friends
• Time

You just need to find out what objection it is and we're going to use one last, very powerful technique called the “now or never” technique to try and close the sale. 

The Now or Never Close

The now or never closing sales technique should be your last-ditch attempt, before cooling off any pressure to close the sale right here and now.  

The now or Never close works really well for selling Personal Training as it reiterates what makes us buy, pleasure and pain!

What you’re going to do is show the prospective clients their timeline and show them where they once were, where they are right now and what will happen if they do not take action.

Then follow it up with getting them to visualise what they would feel like if they did hit their goals. 

Using our example client, it looks something like this:

Personal Trainer Consultation Script:

YOU: Which option do you feel suits you best?

CLIENT: I think I just need to go away and think about it?

YOU: I understand where your coming from, do you mind me asking which aspect do you need to think about? 

CLIENT: It’s just whether or not I have the time and money available really.

YOU: I completely understand!

YOU: But let me show you something, this is your fitness timeline.....

• So a few years ago when you looked and felt great you said you were going to the gym regularly and were feeling a 9/10, but for a few reasons you mentioned you stopped going the gym and now you said you feel like a 5/10 and really struggling for motivation for getting to the gym.
• Now you said you want to look and feel great for that holiday and potentially beyond and that if you hit those goals you would feel amazing.
• But guess what will happen if you don’t take action?.....Nothing!
• You will still feel like the 5/10 that you have felt for the past few years, which then begs the question, how much time is needed and how bad will you need to feel until you do take action? How many years need to pass?
• I want you to visualise how great you will feel if you did hit those goals and you were on the beach, two stone lighter, toned and feeling fantastic!
• Ask yourself which future you would prefer?
• Now, if I can help with price and we just substitute out one of your current gym days, either Tuesday or Wednesday evenings that you are currently training and you train with me instead, could we get you up and running today?

CLIENT: Yes, I see your point, yes if you could help with the price then yes I would like to get started.

Now present the Bronze package with the Silver with an alternate close and you’re set.

This may seem like a lot to say, but it’s incredibly effective. Let’s break down the “Now or Never” close. 

PAST – Show them where they once were.

“So a few years ago when you looked and felt great you said you were going the gym regularly and were a feeling like a 9/10”

PRESENT – Show them where they’re right now

“but for a few reasons you mentioned you stopped going to the gym and now you said you feel like a 5/10 and really struggling for motivation to go to the gym.”

FUTURE 1– Show them their future If no action is taken

“But guess what will happen if you don’t take action?.....Nothing! 

You will still feel like the 5/10 that you have felt for the past few years, which then begs the question, how much time is needed and how bad will you need to feel until you do take action? How many years need to pass?”

FUTURE 2– Show them their future If action is taken

"I want you to visualise how great you will feel if you did hit those goals and you were on the beach, two stone lighter, toned and feeling fantastic!"

Close the Objection

“Now, if I can help with price and we just substitute out one of your current gym days, either Tuesday or Wednesday evenings that you are currently training and you train with me instead, could we get you up and running today?” 

Once you have alternate closed, progress the sale (as mentioned earlier in this article) by confirming the sale and then assumptively closing and start the onboarding process.

Before we wrap up this article, let’s show you how you can encourage more paid in full sales. 

Taking Payment & Getting More Paid in Full Sales

A sale is never a sale until the money is taken, or in this case a prospect is never a client until they have paid.

You need to take the payment right here and now. Don’t let clients leave without taking payment unless you absolutely can’t help it.

Now to take payments you need a card terminal. You can use Worldpay or Sage for your deposits or taking paid in full sales. And for your monthly direct debits, we recommend using Go Cardless.

Don’t allow for standing orders, Direct debits is far better as you can retry payments if someone’s misses a payment and Go Cardless will notify you if anyone cancels their mandate or if they mis a payment, which standing orders will not do.

Now, remember our alternate close of “which option do you feel suits you best?” -  Well, we’re going to use this technique again when asking how they would like to pay and add extra value into the paid in full option.

It looks something like this:

YOU: “Now - would you like to pay the higher monthly amount or pay in Full and get a 10% discount and a free protein tub? WHICH would you prefer?” 

The extra little discount and value item (in this case a protein tub) encourages paid in full sales and if you get a paid in full sale on 3 sessions per week for 6 months even with a 10% discount and a £40 protein tub, this works out at them paying you £1,515.20.

Not bad from one client!

Again, notice how the alternate close is asking them “WHICH would you prefer”, and it places emphasis on the benefits of the paid in full option. 

Before You Go!

As you can see there is an art to performing an optimal personal training consultation and it takes practice. Continue advancing your career and the services you offer clients with our Level 4 Fitness Courses, especially our Sports Nutrition qualification.

Find out more by getting in touch with our team today or download our course prospectus here.