The 5 key things you NEED to know to be a successful Fitness Professional
1 – Provide value
The most important thing to understand when building a business, whether it be a coaching business or any other, is that your ultimate goal is to provide value to your clients.
This is the core of the service you’re providing and the reason a client would be willing to part ways with their hard-earned cash and invest in you.
Of course, you know that you’re selling a service. You can provide a service by, say, helping them achieve their weight loss goal. But the value you provide extends far beyond this. Value is in everything you do. It’s in the way you interact with your client and add to their lives.
You you can provide value by making your clients feel like friends rather than customers, by making them feel great about themselves after each training session. You can provide value in what you give to your clients when you’re not with them – perhaps that means texting them to check up on their progress or sending them educational/inspiration material. It could mean creating an online community for them to join and ask questions.
There are countless ways to provide more value to your clients with very little extra effort or expenses incurred on your part, and, by providing strong value, your clients will feel much more confident about their investment in you, keeping them coming back and spreading word of mouth.
2 – Find a niche
“Jack of all trades – master of none”
Almost any successful business reached that point by identifying a very specific need and specialising in meeting it.
Very rarely is a prospective client just looking to improve their general fitness or learn a general set of skills. More likely they will be looking to address a specific aspect of their health and fitness. Perhaps they are looking to improve their cardiovascular fitness, alter their body composition or learn a new, exciting skill to make their workouts more interesting. In any case, specialising in an area instantly places you above the crowd.
It’s okay if you don’t know what your niche is when first getting started. As you gain experience, take note of where you excel and which area you’re most passionate about. Whether your niche is performance for a particular sport, weight loss or boxing/kickboxing fitness, having a niche will help you attract clients and grow your coaching business.
3 – Practice what you preach
This matters to clients!
Being a coach means being a leader. That means your role is not just to tell, but to show.
By practicing the things you teach, you are achieving two things. You are showing your clients that these things are attainable, providing them with motivation and inspiration. But just as importantly, by practicing what you preach, you are providing them with piece of mind that their investment was well placed – that they are being coached by someone who genuinely understand what they’re doing.
Clients notice, and care, if there coach is doesn’t live up to the values and practices that they teach. Invest in yourself, and your prospective clients will be more willing to invest in you too.
4 – Variety
One of the quickest ways to lose clients is to give them the same old routine day in, day out.
All too often you see Fitness Professionals with a lot of potential but finding their clients losing interest after a couple of sessions. If you want to build a successful coaching business and increase your client retention, you need to add variety to your coaching sessions. There is more than one way to help your clients reach their goals.
One great way to ensure your clients remain interested is to include skill development. By giving your clients the chance to learn a new skill while also improving their fitness, you take them out of the grind and give them a constantly moving goal to strive for.
One of the most popular, and most effective, skills a Fitness Professional can learn is boxing padholding. A workout on the pads is unlike any other. It develops both your client’s aerobic and anaerobic energy system, builds muscle and explosiveness, balance and core strength and keeps their mind engaged and active throughout the session.
Add variety to your session to keep your clients interested and coming back.
5 – Be in it for the long term
Lastly, be in it for the long term.
A key to growing a successful coaching business is patience. If you start your business expecting to be an overnight sensation within the fitness industry, you’re going to be left disappointed.
Rome wasn’t built in a day – and your business won’t be either. If you want to build a successful business you have to accept that it’s going to take time.
Focus on taking small steps. Set your big, long-term goals and break them down into smaller, weekly and daily goals. So long as you’re following tip no. 1 and provide real, genuine value to your clients, then you’re on the right track.
Want to expand your qualifications, learn new skills and provide more value for your clients? Check out our courses.