The most profitable area of your gym you may be ignoring

We work with a lot of gyms. That means we know what can help a gym stay profitable. When we looked at the data from over 50 gyms over the last financial year, we noticed that they all had one thing in common. The most profitable part of their gym was personal training.

Did you know it costs nine times more to acquire a new member than to retain an existing one? Or that increasing member retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25-95%? In fact, leading research shows that a 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10% (Leading on the Edge of Chaos, Emmet Murphy and Mark Murphy).

If personal training hasn’t been a big area of focus in your gym, you could be missing out. Here are five ways to make personal training more appealing to your clients:

1. Offer goal setting workshops

Personal training is great for clients who know what they want or who have achievable goals. But what about clients who don’t know what they want or how to get there? Or clients who think a competition-level body can be achieved with a few sessions a month? Setting the right goals and working toward them is a big part of client satisfaction. As an add-on to your personal training sessions you can offer goal setting workshops to insure they’re working toward goals that work for them.

2. Nutrition classes

Personal training can’t do a whole lot for people if their nutrition is still poor. Rather than leaving them with less than optimal results, why not help them with their nutrition as well? You can do this by hiring personal trainers that have a nutrition background, or by hiring an onsite nutritionist to help. By working on both nutrition and exercise you increase the chances that your clients will start to see the results they’re looking for.

3. Full body health with chiro and massage

With an increase in physical fitness will come an increase in physical soreness. If you’re already offering training and nutrition sessions, why not step it up and offer full health packages. This can keep clients coming in even on their rest days. These packages will help insure clients are taking care of their bodies which will reduce injuries, and therefore downtime.

4. Have a plan for when clients reach the end of their sessions

Have a plan for when your clients have 5, 3 and 1 sessions left. Don’t wait until they run out of sessions before you check-in with them to renew their packages. This could mean training your staff to start the conversation early with their clients, or booking in time with them yourself. No matter what, at the end of their packages you should do a body/health assessment to see where they’re at with their goals and design the next phase of their fitness journey. By understanding how close they are to their goals, or what’s been holding them back, you can better offer a plan to meet their needs.

5. Offer convenience items like towels, water bottles, and ear buds

Getting to the gym is half the battle, but if you’ve forgotten something it’s just as easy to walk right out again. Don’t let a forgotten towel or bottle of water stop a client from working out. Display these items close to your front desk or check-in area so clients know they’re on offer in case they forget something. You can also offer iPods or other devices on loan while people workout if they’ve forgotten theirs. This should eliminate any excuse they could possibly have for not sticking around.

Keeping your clients engaged can go a long way to keeping your gym profitable. Focus on the areas you can change to make your personal trainers more successful. In addition to implementing these ideas, you should also talk to your trainers to find out what feedback they’ve been getting from clients. The happier you can make them the more successful your gym will be.