Personal training careers 1 | Page 22

are definitely in the best career path possible. Keep in mind that while you may give someone a workout suggestion, or a towel or a bottle of water a few times, it might be weeks or months before they want to train with you. Even after giving someone a free workout, they may let you know how much they loved it, but not buy training right away. It is extremely important to not feel discouraged. People buy training packages on their own time. If you have done your sales pitch and have given them a demonstration, sometimes that is all you can do at that time. When the potential client is ready, they will purchase the package. That said, be sure that you do not fall off their radar. Ask them how their workouts are doing. If they struggled with an exercise during your free workout, ask if they have tried it again. Staying in front of them is a great way to keep communication open and create potential business. Group Training and Group Classes A great way to network is to offer group training. Whether it is a husband and wife doing a couples session or an entire 3rd floor accounting department, when you expand your services and offer group training, you will be successful. You will find that some people do group training once a week and then want to train one-on-one with you later in the week too. This is the same for teaching group classes such as boot camps or specialty cardio or strength training classes. People tend to stick with group training and classes longer because they feel accountable to the other people in the class. The social aspects of the class as well as the competition encourages people to work hard and stick with it. When they see results from the class, they will want to do solo training with you. These types of groups and classes are great for your schedule book because they pay well and make the most of your time. When you train one-on-one if they cancel, than your hour is shot, but in a group training session if a person does not show up, the class still goes on and you still get paid. Similarly, current class members will invite friends to join the class. If they like you and the class they will join or train with you. You didn’t have to do any extra marketing or outreach at all. This type of word of mouth marketing is priceless. Facebook and other Social Media for Networking Using social media as a networking tool is a fantastic way to market your business and gain potential clients. The ability to post or tweet a message is certainly more cost effective than running a paid ad, doing direct marketing or even running your own website. You don’t have to pay graphic designers to design a website or flyer for you because you can post real pictures and videos of your own directly to your followers. And, both Facebook and Twitter offer advertising tools for a nominal cost to help you market your business. You can get the best bang for your marketing dollar on places where people already spend a great deal of their online time.