How to Secure Monthly Income as a Fitness Professional

Man. So many fitness professionals love to live life on the edge…and they don’t even know it.

They structure their fitness businesses around selling short term membership packages, which sound awesome on the surface. After all, who wouldn’t want to sign up for a few months of workouts, then see whether they want to stay with you or leave?

Here’s where that gets those fitness pros in trouble:

Let’s say Bob is training Betty on a one month agreement, 3 sessions per week. He begins to build rapport with her, and she starts to see him as a coach AND a friend.

Then she hits the the end of the month. Her agreement expires.

Now, he’s got to sell her AGAIN. Not only is that stressful, but it makes her constantly question whether the training is really worth it.

Most of all, it means that Bob is playing with fire. If Betty decides not to extend her membership, that’s a big chunk of monthly income that he’s about to lose out on.

Bottom line: Bob didn’t sell her hard enough at the beginning!

Guaranteed income—I’ll call it recurring income—is what separates the stable, expanding businesses from the erratic, contracting ones.

That’s how businesses build the capital needed to grow. You might have all kinds of excellent ideas for how to grow your business and get more clients, but if you don’t have the money to implement those ideas then they can’t help you.

You have to find a way to lock your clients into contracts that GUARANTEE you money at the beginning of every month. No more stressing about how to to convince Betty to sign a new membership contract.

Want the secret to secure monthly income? It starts by offering ONLY two types of membership deals…

 

Why You Should Sell 12-Month Memberships

Straight up, the 12-month membership deal is your ticket to financial stability in fitness.

You’re gonna offer this yearlong program to any leads you try to close. Why?

Well for one, you’re actually signing them to a program that’s much longer than 12 months. In fact, this program never ends!

More on that in a sec…

For you, you’re locking down an entire year of recurring income. For 12 months, you’ll know that money is coming straight to your bank account, no questions asked.

Boy, that’s a great feeling.

For the client, they get 12 months of training and nutritional advice from you. That’s more than enough time to permanently transform their eating and workout habits.

It’s easy for clients to follow a strict regimen for 2-3 months. When that time period ends, though, they often have no idea how to continue losing weight on their own. They fall back into those bad habits they swore off when they started training with you.

It takes months and months for people to break those bad habits and grasp the healthy lifestyle. Offering them 12-month programs will help them do just that…

Now, I told you that these programs actually run forever. How is that possible, and why is that important?

You know what happens when you sign up for a service like Netflix? You give them your credit card information, they charge you every month, and that’s it.

They never ask you whether you want to keep using Netflix or not. You have to be the one to end your subscription.

That’s the concept you want to bake into your membership offers.

At the end of the 12 months, you’d normally have to try and resell your clients on another year’s worth of training. But why go through that hassle?

Instead, just put them on a month-to-month plan after their 12 months is up. That’s it!

You’ll want to grandfather them into the price they paid for their 12-month offer. They won’t have to deal with any surprise fees, and you’ll have gained a long-term client.

Now, you CAN offer month-to-month programs, but there’s a way to capitalize on those through your pricing model.

How exactly do you do that?

 

Charge the Right Price  

12-month memberships vs. monthly memberships. Personal training vs. group training. You’ve gotta price each of these the right way!

I want to sell my clients on paying for 12-month paid-in-full memberships. When they pay me upfront, that’s a year’s worth of money that I don’t have to worry about collecting (or losing out to cancellations).

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Let’s start off with 1-on-1 training. First, set your price point for your 12-month program. Once you’ve determined that number, add $10 to it. This will be your monthly membership price.

Why is it more expensive than your 12-month plan? Simple: your clients are paying a premium for the ability to cancel their plan without penalty.

It’s not like they can’t cancel their 12-month plan in the middle. Rather, they’ll pay for the remainder of the 12 months prorated (the difference between your monthly and annual membership prices).

Now what happens if you specialize in group training instead? You’re gonna follow the same exact structure EXCEPT for one thing…when they sign up for your monthly deal, you’re going to raise the price by $50/month instead of $10/session. Your group training program could be for unlimited sessions per week, but with that $50/month increase.

Kapeesh? Not bad, right

Remember, we want to get your clients to pay-in-full. So how can you sweeten that 12-month deal to get them to jump at it?

Here’s what I do: I offer them 10% off the normal 12-month price if they pay in full. I’ll even throw in, say, an extra workout per week for the first month. So, if they pay for 3 workouts per week, you’ll give them 4 workouts per week during their first month.

You’re rewarding them for paying-in-full, and you’re still making a great profit.

By the way, it’s really easy to scale your price depending on the number of workouts per week you want to offer. Just keep this rule in mind: the more sessions per week you offer them, the cheaper that membership plan price should be.

 

How To Track Your Memberships

With all this money coming in, it’s gonna be really hard to keep track of everything, right?

What if you could automate the process of getting paid so you wouldn’t have to play accountant/tax collector 24/7?

 

Good news: there’s a way to do that!

All you need is a strong EFT or auto debit processing system.

 

That way, you’re not hunting down clients, asking them to pay their overdue monthly fees in cash or through PayPal (yikes).

eftptpower-f16fIr.jpg When you get the hang of this, you’ll notice that some of those credit cards won’t go through. Again, you need a handy system in place to track all of these missed payments, or delinquencies.

Get your team on board with this. Maybe the issue is that their credit card expired, or they switched credit card without notifying you first. At this point, you (or one of your team members) contacts these delinquents to try to see what’s holding up their payments.

That’s how you don’t let money slip through the cracks.

That’s how you secure recurring income for your business.

THAT’S how your business grows and grows and grows…

By the way, you might have more questions about the closing process in general. I’ve got your back! Check out http://closeclients.com/ to learn how to become the master of closing sales.

Committed to your success,

Bedros