Selling is an Important Aspect of the Fitness Business
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By Sal | July 21, 2010
At GAIN 2010 Kelvin Giles, CEO of Movement Dynamics, made the point that it doesn’t matter what we call ourselves, as long as we do our jobs correctly.
In principle I agree, however, the reality is that in the “retail” fitness world there is a need to market and sell ourselves. I define “retail fitness” as working outside the comfy confines of organized sport where a fitness development coach needs to attract/recruit clients, whether they are couch potatoes, weekend warriors, or team sport athletes of any level or age. Athletic development coaches at the Division 1, professional and International/Olympic level work with a captive audience, so to speak, and don’t have to concern themselves with getting clients. So for these folks, Kelvin is right in that a rose by any other name…Was anyone expecting a Shakespeare reference?
Hearing what fellow GAINers thought of personal trainers, was the final nail in the coffin and spurred me to come up with a better, more descriptive title. How many coaches out there would send an athlete to a personal trainer? I wouldn’t.
Let Jillian Michaels be the image of the personal trainer, I want to stake out the territory of legitimacy for the new wave of fitness development coaches to compliment the work being done by athletic development coaches, physical therapists and athletic trainers. A proper network of fitness and athletic development coaches outside the confines of organized sports can improve a wide-range of people, athlete and non-athlete alike.
Too many fitness professionals are uncomfortable with the business aspects of our job and the idea of “selling themselves;” this is nonsense! We cannot cede ground and stay silent when charlatans pass off garbage as training. When sub-par certifying organizations, franchised speed clinics, television fitness gurus, Internet-based strength and conditioning “experts” to set the agenda we make our job more difficult and doom more people to follow the wrong path.
We have to sell ourselves.
Whether or not you realize it, we all sell what we do. The athletic trainer sells his protocols to his kids at his high school, the swim coach sells his approach to his athletes, the training staffs at Division 1 schools sell what they do to the athletes, sports coaching staffs, and some of them sell to the athletic development world via books and DVDs. By the way, good selling is why successful fitness professionals are so successful. Good selling doesn’t mean everyone always says, “Yes,” to you, but it does mean that people will know exactly what you are all about when they make their decision. When someone says, "No," to you your response to yourself should be, "Their loss," and not, "Gee I wish they had said yes."
One of the presenters at GAIN 2010, Tracey Fober of IronMaven.com, did a great job of selling the bona fides of the Olympic lifts. She was just as clear that the sport hasn’t been properly sold to the public, which is why so many people know so little about weightlifting. Good selling versus bad – or no – selling. P-90X, good selling; USA Weightlifting, bad selling.
Effective sales, marketing and advertising techniques are used successfully to promote garbage; we need to use these same tools to promote the functional path, even in our own little corners of the world.
Stop thinking of “selling” in the context of a used car salesman, or in any other negative context, and start thinking about it as a way to clearly express your goals and mission as a coach.
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Topics: Personal Trainer Coaching, Sales and Marketing | No Comments »
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