I remember when I first started out as a personal trainer 10 years ago
At he first club that I worked at in Sheffield some of the other trainers used to joke that some of the things I said and did with members and clients were “salesy”.
They’d listen to what I’d say to a member and joke afterwards as I was using “sales lines” or “sales techniques”.
I never saw that to be the case, and 10 years later I still don’t.
I just thought at the time that I have the pride and professionalism and genuine belief in what I do and the quality of the service that I offer
That I need to determine the best and clearest way to put that across to someone so they can understand it.
I used to practice what to say in certain situations until I was confident I had found the best way to put it across.
To me, ‘sales’ is selling double glazing, it’s selling used cars, it’s selling something you don’t believe in just because you want to make money.
I, and the rest of the team at “RISE” truly, truly believe in what we offer.
We are giving our members the chance to live longer, have a better quality of life, to change that body that causes them regular heart-ache and upset.
What we offer is an amazing service, and we all feel very fortunate to be in a situation where we can offer it.
So we don’t feel the slightest bit guilty if we take time and put effort into how to put this across to people.
We’ve been on courses that taught us how to use key-words to appeal to people; how to market specific groups; how to phrase and put across what we offer, to be as appealing as possible.
But again, that is because we believe in what we do.
The trainers would sometimes call these things ‘sales techniques’, never lasted very long in the industry.
They never get very many clients.
They never make contributions.
They never change people’s lives!
And that in part is because they didn’t put the effort into learning how to get people to understand what it is that we offer.
To my mind, what we offer is one of the most important services there is.
As I said before we change people’s life on a daily basis.
We believe in what we do, and we’ll continue to endeavor to find better and better ways to get more and more people to understand this.
Until every person in the world is happy with their body, their health, their fitness, we will not stop improving what we deliver and how we put it across.
Until that’s happened, our mission will be incomplete.
