I was talking with a health club manager yesterday and the discussion made its way to their trainers and that they didn’t sell. That was done by the sales staff and/or the personal training manager. I found this very interesting. One of the reasons I shifted my focus to teaching trainers sales and business skills over past fifteen years was because of the belief at the time was that personal trainers couldn’t sell and since they couldn’t… they shouldn’t. So what? They can’t learn a new skill? I had a big problem with this. Still do.
When someone sells personal training as a package or part of a program for a trainer, the trainer and client are missing out. Hopefully the person selling went through some basic health and lifestyle questionnaire, so they aren’t selling the individual something they don’t need or want. However, it doesn’t matter how many or how detailed the notes are from that interview, the trainer will probably still have questions and would need to do another basic information gathering meeting. This is additional time being used for what is essentially the same purpose. (Which could be annoying to the client.) The interview time is when the personal trainer can really get to know the client’s needs, wants, challenges, support or lack thereof, and more. This allows the trainer to understand the client as much as possible which is invaluable going forward in their relationship. What questions the trainer asks and how they ask them is also an opportunity to build trust and report with the client, something that is essential for a long-term partnership. The skills needed to perform an effective interview can be learned. (I am a huge advocate for teaching trainers motivational interviewing techniques.)
Besides the benefits of building greater trust, rapport, and a deeper understanding of the client for the trainer, there are some other issues that can occur when the trainer’s livelihood is dependent on someone else directing clients to them. When clients are directed to another trainer there can be envy, jealousy, resentment, feelings of favoritism, etc. Even when the salesperson is trying to be equitable, the trainer might not see or feel this. That was the case in one club where I was hired as the fitness director. Personal trainers felt in competition with each other and were constantly questioning why one trainer would get more clients than another. Of course this inhibits building a cohesive team.
Another big reason to teach the trainers how to interview and sell is that new members (those that will be interviewed by a salesperson or personal training manager) are only a small percent of potential clients. Most of them are already members that haven’t yet participated in personal training. According to the 2025 US Health & Fitness Consumer Report from the Health & Fitness Association (formerly IHRSA), 23% of health club members have used a personal trainer. While that might not seem that low to you, it includes those that only used them once, not on an ongoing basis. Personal trainers most likely see and interact with these members on a daily basis and are in a perfect position to ask members how they are doing, how their workouts are going, and if they are reaching their goals. If the member is making headway toward their goals and are feeling good about their workouts, great. Congratulate them. If they aren’t, however, the trainer can ask if they’d like to meet to sit down and discuss what they are currently doing and what changes might be appropriate. This gives the trainer a chance to interview/reinterview the member and potentially sell them personal training. These additional discovery sessions cannot and should not be done by any outside source. The trainer that initiated that conversation has already started to build report and trust with the member and now is in a position to guide them to a solution.
For these reasons, I believe it is incredibly important to teach trainers how to conduct an interview and how to sell solutions. They can and should be selling.