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irst and foremost, the web is a tool for communication. Everything we’ve talked about in this section has been about forming new relationships with new people. The web makes communication faster and easier, which benefits you in many ways.Keeping In Touch With Lost Prospects
Over the course of your marketing, you’ll get many leads which you for whatever reason can’t convert immediately. However, you’ll still want to keep these indi- viduals in your sales-funnel, especially if you you’re using a time-leveraging tech- nique like the Super-Trainer System that makes every new client a pure source of profit. Using the Internet makes staying in touch with these people very easy.
The research shows that in a sale, it takes five contacts with a potential cli- ent before they decide to buy. I never believed this until I tested it: after putting a program in place with my practice where I tracked how many times I contacted lost prospects, I was shocked by what I found. Many people that weren’t ready to train with me initially eventually came around; in fact there were many times that my new client actually signed up for their training the fifth time I contacted them! And these weren’t people that just opted for three sessions and that’s it; they were major, multi-thousand dollar clients. Many others have signed up on the third or fourth time I’ve contacted them. I was running the Super-Trainer Sys- tem at the time, so every new client I got represented thousands of more dollars without any addition time on my part. This should show you the importance of being persistent.
Back to the subject of the Internet, nothing makes it easier to keep in touch with the people on your list that you’ve lost touch with than email. You can let
them to check where they stand and make sure they’re on their way to reaching their fitness goals. Just make sure these emails are personalized to each client in particular, and not just a stock message you send to everyone - that’s spam. But if you’re genuinely interested in how these people you’ve come in contact with are doing and how you can serve them, they’ll appreciate it. Although your first five attempts to contact the prospect should be over the phone, you can maintain a longer relationship throughout with e-mail.
E-mail also makes it easy to stay in touch with old clients. You can contact them easily and find out how they’re doing and what they’ve been up to. I’ve formed deep friendships with almost every single person I’ve ever trained. For the ones that for whatever reason have stopped training, I still love to stay in touch with them; I keep them up to date on things going on with me and my train- ing practice, and also keep tabs on what’s happening with them. Through this process, I’ve had many contact me to train again. E-mail is a simple and unobtru- sive way to stay in contact with your old clients that can lead to more business.
Research
O
f course, it goes without saying that the Internet is the absolute best way to stay on top of this industry. Just an hour of research a week will keep you up to date and on top of your business. Training conferences are great places to net- work and stay in touch with other people, but there’s no better way to get relevant information than just simple searching on the web. If you’re depending on maga- zines or even courses to give you the latest info, you’re really going to fall behind. There are so many blogs and articles on training out there today with good infor- mation that you won’t have the time to read it all. At times it can turn into an in- formation addiction; I’m in recovery myself. If you want to broaden your hori- zons in this business, you should get into the same habit of frequently researching on the web too.T
his has turned into a very long chapter, but learning the techniques to be a Top- Level Trainer without giving you the methods to build an overflowing client list would be unfair. And there’s no better or cheaper way to build a client list than the Internet. As you progress as a trainer, you’ll find the web serving you in dif- ferent ways to accumulate clients and bring you new business opportunities. But for now, the techniques I’ve outlined are the best to help you start getting clients immediately.Furthermore, using the web is also one of the most valuable skills you can learn. Anything you seek to do in your future will involve the web, whether it’s advertising for your new training studio, promoting a training conference you’re holding, or selling your e-book. That’s why learning the basic skills I’ve outlined will be highly valuable to you in the future.
It’s time do some critical thinking about probably the most important topic in your career, and it doesn’t have anything to do with your career at all:
Your Lifestyle
This is the purpose of everything we do as Personal Trainers. Don’t think for a second that it’s selfish for you to think about creating your ideal lifestyle: no one else is going to do it for you! On the contrary, the majority of people are going to have an absolute disregard for your lifestyle; they’ll try to exploit you to help them achieve their own ends and. This is regardless of what you want for your- self, what’s good for you, or what makes you happy. This goes for everyone: your parents, friends, and customers. Sorry to be the one to break this to you, but now that you know you can take back control.
Many of the problems we see today in our society are due to the fact that people pay absolutely no attention to the type of lives they want. As the saying goes, they get working in their lives and not on their lives. They chose their ca-
reers and friends almost arbitrarily and just let things continue on autopilot for years on end. Then one day they wake up and realize things aren’t the way they wanted them. It then takes drugs, alcohol, or prescription medication to help them cope. It’s really sad but for probably the majority of people, this is reality.
I’ve already devoted a chapter talking about how Personal Training is the world’s greatest job so I’m not going to get into that again. But what this career affords you is the real ability to carefully plan your own destiny. You can shape it into the type of career that’ll work for you. Do you only want to work evenings, mornings, or weekends? There’s an easily executable business model that will make each of those scenarios possible.
Lifestyle is what we’re working for as trainers. The primary allure for a career in Personal Training is not income per se. Personal Training will not make you rich, at least not in the beginning. For example, this book is not a program on how to get rich; it’s a blueprint for earning a $100,000 income in about 25 hours a week. And after that, to set up a training business that can pay you the same amount or more without you doing the direct training yourself. Compared to other programs or business seminars out there promising hundreds of thousands of dollars on autopilot, 100K doesn’t sound like much at all.
But I don’t think you picked up this series because you were attracted to just the income potential; there’s more to this job than just that. It’s not just the money, but that you can earn it doing a job which you know to be fun and reward- ing. If you can add a method to create a steady stream of clients on top of that, you have one of those mythical things that all people are looking for: a well- paying job with zero stress!
Just to review, here are some of the benefits this career affords you:
• Chose your own knowledge base. • Hand-pick your customers.
• Set your own salary. • Set your own schedule.
really pays off; not just in initial salary, but through the intangibles, the piece of mind you have in shaping your life in whatever direction you want. It’s this type of person who’s in a position to make a real difference in the world. These are the kinds of people that others like to be around and help to succeed even more; they tend to attract more opportunities for advancement and success.