Start with Why – How to Close New Fitness Clients

I was having a conversation with a Fit Pro the other day about his inability to close new fitness clients.  He is a very good trainer.  Excellent knowledge on program design, techniques, and he gets great results.  But when he has a new potential client in front of him, he struggles to get them to commit to the services they need to actually see success.  He knows how to talk about training, and the other services his facility offers, yet he is not making the money he deserves due to one simple thing.  He is failing to start with why.

“Start with Why” is a phenomenal book written by Simon Sinek.  In the book Sinek describes what he calls the Golden Circle.  In essence, The Golden Circle is the way in which our brains interpret information. There are three nested circles that describe the overall Golden Circle: Why in the center, How is the middle layer, and What is the outermost layer.

What most people do, Sinek explains, is speak from the outside in.  We talk about what we do and how we do it, but it is not until we describe why we do it that drives action.  When we reverse the order of the information, we tend to have a very different response to our message or recommendations.

For example, a conversation speaking from the outside in might sound like this.

“Mrs. Jones, based on what you are telling me I am going to recommend that you train with me 3 days per week for the next 12 weeks.  In that time we will work on correcting muscular imbalances, strengthening weak muscles, and I will design a cardio program that will get you to your goals.”

That may or may not inspire Mrs. Jones to act on your recommendations.  However, imagine if the conversation went like this.

“Mrs. Jones, your goal is to lose 30 lbs for your son’s wedding.  In order to maximize your results, I will design and guide you through a program that will help you to maximize your metabolism and burn the most amount of fat possible in each workout.  By making sure you are training at the right intensity will be sure to have you looking incredible for that wedding.”

That is a completely different conversation that is essentially recommending the same thing. I just reversed the order of the information and tied the recommendations not to what or how, but to her why.

When recommending personal training services, if we don’t connect the prospect’s why to what we are recommending, then all we are doing is talking about stuff.  It is when the prospect can truly connect their deeper why to the services we are recommending that we see much better success in the time we spend with them.

This article was written by Joshua Elsesser. The author’s opinions are their his own and  ELIVATE does not take responsibility for content, statements and opinions. You should seek expert counsel in evaluating opinions, treatments, products and services. For more info see our Editorial Policies.