As a personal trainer you have a virtually untapped market of potential clients at your fingertips. The medical exercise and post-rehabilitation markets offer a vast pool of referrals from physicians and healthcare providers that, with the right technical skills and business savvy, any trainer can take advantage of to grow his or her business to new heights.
Working to position yourself so that providers pass your name along to their patients is well worth the effort, and all that is required is a little creativity on your part.
So who are these people? Most trainers are familiar with the standard ?post rehab? client, but they never widen their view of all the others that could benefit from their services. The medical exercise demographic is often overlooked. These individuals can have one or more conditions, including: neurological (such as balance issues or multiple sclerosis), metabolic (such as diabetes or obesity), pulmonary (emphysema, asthma), cardiovascular (such as hypertension or heart disease) and many, many more.
Put simply, anyone who regularly visits or interacts with a treating health professional or who has been discharged within the past 6 months could use you. That's a lot of people.
Think about it: every time that individual interacts with their health care provider, that provider is in the best position to pass your name along to their patient. They want what's best for their patient, and if you can make the provider understand the benefits of using your services you'll start getting referrals. Lots of them.
Many providers don't truly understand the benefits a personal trainer could offer their clients. It's your job to make them see the light.
With Baby Boomers aging with each day that goes by, this market has the potential to grow amazingly fast. Boomers especially want to stay strong and independent as long as possible, and are more than willing to spend their money on ?alternative medicine? that will enable them to do that. They realize that health insurance is not the ?healing umbrella? that it used to be, and if they see value in your service they'll put their money your way.
Once they see you as a valuable member of their healthcare team you'll be well placed for a long, healthy relationship. Positioning yourself as a valuable resource with healthcare providers and their patients can offer big returns in the years to come.
(C) 2007 Anthony Carey, Function First
A simple question but its one that has major impact on how well you can market your services and training to potential clients.
We all have different representations and ways of modeling information we receive in our daily lives. As Jay Conrad Levinson and Paul Haney put it in the groundbreaking marketing book Guerrilla Marketing, we all have different blue elephants. Or a more relevant example for the fitness industry, what I see as being fit, what you see as being fit and, most importantly, what your clients see as being fit will all be different. You can split the representational systems into three primary categories, the visual, the auditory and the kinesthetic. We all use these to some degree in how we represent our view of the world and typically one aspect will dominate over the others.
As marketers we can use these categories to model how we describe the benefits offered to our clients. Find out which representational model dominates and tailor your response to cater for it. This will create greater rapport as you've taken the time to understand the client and makes it easier to accept the benefits you bring.
Here's a common problem we'll be using as an example on how you can use representation modeling to change someones perspective.
Weight training is one of the best forms of exercise available, especially for women who are at risk from osteoporosis in their later years. However, the majority of women shun weight training in the (misguided) belief it will make them "bulk up"
Imagine that you are Trainer X and you have a female client looking to get into shape. If you start off by telling them they'll be on a regime of heavy deadlifts and squats, power cleans and whatnot, the likely outcome will be that they run away very fast. You may have inadvertently gotten them to start exercising but unfortunately you won't get paid for it.
Disheartened, you stumble across this blog entry and try out some of the representation techniques. After an initial chat with your client, you feel that they'll respond best to kinesthetic stimulus so you'll tell them how much better they'll feel when they take up weight training, how they'll stop aching so much, how they'll feel stronger, more energetic. You can see how this helps move your prospect into a frame of mind where they'll be more receptive to your plans for them and how they'll be more inclined to agree rather than the first approach.
There's a lot more on this subject which we'll go into at a further date.
Ken Liu is a director of the UK's top kettlebell company, www. londonkettlebells.com and is an independent fitness marketing consultant and can be contacted through his website www.kenliu.co.uk
Both Anthony Carey, M.a., Cscs & Ken Liu are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Anthony Carey, M.a., Cscs has sinced written about articles on various topics from Health, Fitness and Health. Anthony Carey is the author of , and ?The Pain-Free Pro. Anthony Carey, M.a., Cscs's top article generates over 2900 views. to your Favourites.
Ken Liu has sinced written about articles on various topics from Health. Director of London Kettlebells, and independent fitness marketing consultant,. Ken Liu's top article generates over 590 views. to your Favourites.