How To “Sample” Your Way To A Steady Flow Of New Personal Training Clients
By Eric Ruth
There are two schools of thought in the fitness industry about “Sampling” – or giving away a free trial of your services.
One school says don’t do it because it undermines your positioning in the marketplace.
The other school – mine – says that it’s a very solid strategy for allowing qualified prospects to EXPERIENCE your services.
It’s my belief that it is very difficult for a prospect to truly understand and appreciate the benefits of personal training without first experiencing it (and the education you will give them while they’re experiencing it).
Now, arguments can be made on the merits of both approaches. There’s rarely ever a black and white answer, and you really have to test different strategies to see which works best for you.
But I can tell you this with 100% certainty.
Sampling works.
I receive success stories pretty regularly from my 600+ Members and many of them illustrate the power of sampling.
Recently, two of my Members down in Alabama have been using sampling to generate 26 new clients for their personal training studio in the past couple months.
These aren’t 26 new free clients. These are paying clients. But they became paying clients because they had the opportunity to EXPERIENCE personal training free of charge prior to committing.
Sampling provides the prospect with a risk free way to not only experience personal training, but also to get to know you, like you and trust you.
Sampling is not some concept that I created. It’s been tested and proven in hundreds of different industries.
Obviously, you’ve heard of AOL.
I think they now have something like 30 million subscribers.
The next largest ISP is MSN with about 10 million.
Then comes Earthlink with about 7 million.
So, AOL is 300% bigger than it’s closest competitor.
That’s substantial.
How did they get so big, so fast?
One word: Sampling.
A couple years ago I was looking for a shopping cart service for my web sites. There was one that was recommended above all others: 1shoppingcart.com
I checked them out. For what I wanted, their services run about $60 per month.
But they offer a full trial of their services for the first month for just $3.95.
Why?
One word: Sampling.
On Brandy’s 30th birthday I took her out west to Virginia wine country. We visited some very nice wineries. They all offered complimentary tastings of their wines.
Why?
One word: Sampling.
I’m flipping through my local (Washington, DC metropolitan area) yellow pages looking for lawyers.
There are about 30 full-page ads for lawyers and 50% of them offer free initial consultations (but none of them are offering lead generation reports – big mistake – that’s a whole other story).
Why?
One word: Sampling.
The vast majority of the big fitness chains offer a free week’s pass or some other form of free offer to new prospects.
Why?
One word: Sampling.
One of the most successful dentists in my area recently sent out a personal letter to my neighborhood offering a free cleaning and oral check-up.
Why?
You know.
I was reading about Jay Leno recently and the biographer talked about how Jay used to offer free late night stand up shows to the cabbies in LA and Las Vegas. His strategy was brilliant because he knew that cabbies were on the front lines with many of the tourists who visited these cities and were constantly being asked “what show should I see while I’m here?” Of course the cabbies would give Jay a ringing endorsement because they’ve EXPERIENCED his show.
That’s a derivation of the sampling technique.
Look, if you’re a top-notch salesperson and have an effective lead generation system that’s bringing you lots and lots of qualified personal training prospects on a steady basis, then you probably do not need to sample.
You just close ‘em.
Power to you.
Most people can’t sell worth a snot. Not cause they’re lacking in talent – effective selling can and should be learned – but just because they’re philosophically predisposed against it.
Unfortunate, but true.
Selling is probably the single most important skill for any businessperson to master. Marketing is all about selling. And advertising is “salesmanship in print.”
But effective selling doesn’t have to be – in fact it shouldn’t be – a test of wills.
Most people don’t like to sell hard. It makes them uneasy.
And you know what? It makes most prospects uneasy, too.
Nobody wants to get pitched hard. Yeah, many will give in (lemmings!), but they will almost immediately experience something that can kill your business – buyer’s remorse.
And the relationship goes downhill from there.
I don’t want to get into a rant on selling right now, that’s not my intention, but I will say that EVERY businessperson can and should be well versed in emotional onion peeling – asking questions that logically lead to closing opportunities: SELLING.
But we should all avoid the “hard sell.”
It’s a dinosaur. A thing of the past.
Sampling is soft-selling. It’s saying, “Mr. Prospect, my service is exceptional and it is the best solution for you, but don’t take my word for it, try it and see for yourself.”
Sampling is how to get your best prospects to grant you two full hours to tangibly demonstrate to them exactly why they should utilize your services (this technique will have prospects eating out of your hand – and it’s directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal training sales).
Look, regardless of where you are financially, regardless of how small or unstable your business is right now, you should be POSITIONING yourself as the exclusive solution for discerning clients.
This type of positioning means that you command premium fees for your professional services.
Note: You may be substantially undervaluing and under-pricing your services. Raise your fees.
Proper positioning is critically important to your perception in the marketplace.
But some people in this industry will tell you that giving away a sample of your services undermines that positioning.
And they usually back up that premise with this question:
Does a doctor dispense free medical attention?
That’s the most common rebuttal I hear when I talk about sampling.
Listen, like it or not, you are NOT a doctor.
(Note: Plenty of doctors who offer elective surgery or therapy, i.e. chiropractors, plastic surgeon, etc., DO use sampling to attract new clients. One of the most successful plastic surgery promotions is offering a free botox treatment.)
People don’t NEED a personal trainer.
If somebody breaks their arm, they need a doctor.
If somebody’s obese and has diabetes, they don’t NEED a personal trainer.
Sure, what you offer is, arguably, as important as what a doctor offers (in some cases).
But that’s YOUR perception and the perception of anyone who really understands the underlying causes of many diseases and dysfunctions.
BUT IT’S NOT THE PERCEPTION OF YOUR MARKET.
It’s just not.
So get over it.
There’s diets, wiz-bang machines, serotonin therapy, pills, potions, powders – and now, a weight loss patch – all are potential solutions in the eye of the prospect.
And in marketing, the only thing that matters is what your market PERCEIVES to be true.
It doesn’t matter what REALLY is true.
Don’t delude yourself about this, my friend.
It’s not a socio-economic issue.
Yes, in general, smarter, wealthier people have a better understanding of the importance of exercise.
But they are still looking for the quick fix, just like the six-pack-swilling, potato-chip-munching, dog-kicking construction worker.
**So you’ve got to present them with a COMPELLING reason to let you prove to them that you can deliver the solution they want.**
That’s where sampling comes in.
In my view, sampling only undermines your positioning if you go around yelling “FREE, FREE, FREE” without any explanation of why you are offering a trial of your services for free.
You must use what we call “reason why” marketing.
When you give a logical reason why you’re doing what you’re doing, people will understand and appreciate your offer.
And they will avail themselves of it.
Jay Abraham, one of the truly great direct marketers of all time, talks about his Icy Hot promotion as one that really put him on the map.
If you don’t know, Icy Hot is like BenGay.
Jay took over the marketing of Icy Hot back when they were a tiny little company struggling to make a buck.
His breakthrough promotion included offering a free jar of Icy Hot to anyone responding to the radio commercial PLUS he paid the radio stations 50 cents for each person responding (in lieu of paying a flat advertising rate).
This strategy enabled him to build a huge list of people who sampled Icy Hot very quickly. And he then simply went after them every 21 days or so (approximately how long a jar lasts) to buy more.
The company jumped from $500,000 in sales to $10 million in sales in less than 2 years.
The whole promotion was based on SAMPLING. He knew that when people tried Icy Hot, they’d love it, and would buy more.
Let’s look at sampling logically.
Joe, a systems administrator for a fortune 500, has spent the last 20 years since college graduation eating fast food, ice cream and drinking Killians on the weekend. He’s got two kids, a mortgage, a high-pressure job and a couple buddies.
He has very little “free” time.
He’s 30 pounds overweight.
His dad has diabetes.
That scares him.
His doctor tells him to get control over his diet and start exercising.
Great.
He’s a perfect prospect for your services.
But now that Joe is “in tune” to fitness solutions, he begins seeing weight loss pitches all over the place (kinda like when you buy a new burgundy Jetta and then you start seeing burgundy Jettas everywhere – we notice what we’re in tune to).
Joe can:
- Join a gym.
- Buy a treadmill.
- Buy John Basedow’s Fitness Made Simple videos (I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick of seeing this guy at every commercial break – he’s selling a boatload of videos and you could be doing the same, with GOOD information!
- Join Weight Watchers
- Get sucked into one of those silly fat loss infomercials
- Atkins or some other diet
- Weight loss patch
- Etc, etc, etc.
One of the last things Joe may consider is hiring a personal trainer – unless you hit him at the right time with the right message.
And, in my opinion, the right message is:
FREE COMPLETE FITNESS CONSULTATION PLUS TWO FREE PERSONAL TRAINING SESSIONS
(Obviously, there’s lots more to the message than that, but that’s the bottom line offer.)
Because if your offer is $60 for a consult and $60 per session, and Joe, being your average guy, knows little about the real VALUE of personal training because he’s never EXPERIENCED it, will just say to himself, “hmm, this guy wants me to train with him 3 times a week. That’s $180 a week and I have no idea how long it’ll take me to lose this weight. I can just get this video for $20.”
Like 99% of the people who buy the video, he’ll watch about fifteen minutes of it while he eats some Doritos and French onion dip, then stuff it in a drawer and never see it again.
Bottom line is this: if you’ve got a mature, stable business that is growing through referral-only (the best kind of business to have, but almost no one has it), then yeah, you may not want to give away free samples of your services. (Although I’d still suggest you TEST it because it just makes sense to always be looking for ways to improve your client acquisition.)
But if you’re struggling to add new clients, or just want to grow really fast, there is no better way that I know of than allowing qualified prospects to sample your services.
Because when they sample – THEY EXPERIENCE.
And if someone’s never exercised before (or it’s been a long time), they can’t appreciate how great it feels to work out unless you give them the opportunity.
Most people will NOT pay $60 for that opportunity. And frankly, it’s not so much the $60 that stands in the way, but rather the perception that personal training is an ongoing, nebulous process, when what they’re searching for is a specific, concrete event that will solve their problems.
The only way people can truly understand and appreciate that being healthy and fit is a lifestyle, not an event, is for you to educate them. And, generally speaking, the best way to educate them is to have them experience your services through sampling.
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