CASH COW OR MONEY PIT

By Ed Gaut

Not very long ago, a personal training program was the exception not the rule in most fitness facilities. You might be able to get the gym rat in the corner to give you a few tips if you caught him on a good day, but that was about it. Over the past several years, however, members have come to expect personal training when selecting a club, and having a personal training program has become a necessity, not an option, for many facilities.

While many club owners and fitness directors welcome this opportunity to provide members with personal trainers, they are also understandably concerned about the cost. This is especially true as the public demands well-qualified, certified personal trainers. A good personal training program, however, can be a profit center. The trick is to set it up and manage it properly. Here are some tips on how to make the most of your personal training program.

Hire The Best. A good personal training program starts with good personal trainers. It is that simple. This means hiring intelligent, well-educated people who have a knowledge of exercise and fitness and are certified by one of the major personal training certification programs.

The Houstonian club in Houston, Texas bills itself as the Ivy League of personal training. Like many facilities with successful personal training programs, the club requires all trainers to have minimum of a four year degree in a fitness related discipline. Also like many facilities with successful personal training programs, they support continuing education for their trainers.

When hiring, don.t just look for college students or recent graduates. Consider trainers of a variety of ages. Different members are comfortable with trainers of different ages. The right trainer for a thirty-five year old man might not be the right trainer for a seventy-five year old woman. More importantly, a mix of ages enables younger trainers to take advantage of the experience and wisdom of older trainers and so improves the quality of your program. The Houstonian, for example, tries to maintain diversity in their personal training team with ages which typically range from twenty-two to forty-five years old.

Maintain A Separate Personal Training Staff. If you are serious about providing personal training in your facility, you must also have a separate personal training staff. Personal trainers should not be folding towels, checking people in at the front desk, or repairing equipment; they should be training members. Top-notch trainers are not going to work for your club unless you guarantee them this. And since you have hired the best, you want to make the best use of their time and skill.

Ideally, the personal training staff should also be separate from the floor fitness staff who circulate through the club and help members with equipment and fitness questions. Kati Ray, Corporate Fitness Director for the Sport & Health chain, notes that when Sport & Health first initiated a personal training program, they made the mistake of using the same staff for training as on the floor. The problem that Sport & Health encountered was that floor staff spent its time soliciting personal training clients rather than helping members. Now the club has a separate personal training staff.

Whatever you do, do not use your personal training staff for sales. "Some of the really big clubs make the mistake of having the fitness staff be involved with selling memberships," says Wendy Walters, Fitness Director at Rio Sport & Health in Gaithersburg, Maryland. "Our fitness staff has absolutely nothing to do with sales.... The bottom line is people can tell when someone genuinely cares and when someone just wants a commission and it makes a big difference at our club."

Avoid Outside Trainers. If you have a fitness facility without an in-house personal training staff and you want to allow selected outside personal trainers to train clients in your club, by all means do so. It is a great way to provide your members with a service that you do not already provide and you can charge the trainers for the privilege.

If you have an in-house personal training staff, however, avoid outside trainers. You cannot pay your in-house staff what an outside personal trainer earns, nor would you want to. If you allow outside trainers to train clients in your facility, your in-house staff will have a pretty good idea what the outside trainers are making and they will resent it. Nothing will demoralize your personal training staff more.

You are building a personal training program. You want your members to build a relationship not only with an individual trainer, but with your program and your facility. An outside trainer does not promote your facility. This month he or she is using your club. Next month he or she may take his or her clients elsewhere.

Concentrate On Retention. Member retention is particularly important to a successful personal training program. A good personal training program cannot be built on single sessions. There is just too much overhead involved in bringing a new member into the program. A successful personal training program must retain members who train with the staff on a regular basis.

The key to retaining members is your personal training staff. "Staffing is probably the most important factor in the success rate of our members," says Ms. Walters of Rio Sport & Health. "If a new member feels intimidated, lost and never learns to use the equipment properly, chances are he or she will not enjoy the club and will terminate the membership without ever reaching [his or her] goals."

Require Packages. One way to help the personal training program retention is to require members to purchase a package of training sessions. For example, after an initial session, members could be required to purchase sessions in groups of ten. This will turn away some members, but these are the members who would be least profitable anyway. Locking members into a group of sessions up front gives the member a chance to become accustomed to the trainer and the training process before making a decision whether or not to continue training.

Promote Personal Training. Having a top-notch personal training program is not enough, however. A successful personal training program requires promotion. It is suprising how many gyms and health clubs offer personal training but do not promote it. At many facilities, the existence of personal training is one of the best kept secrets in the place. And, at those facilities where personal training is mentioned, members are often given little help or encouragement to take advantage of it.

Promoting personal training in your fitness facility does not have to be time consuming or expensive. If you regularly mail a newsletter or flyer to your members.and if you don.t, you should.be sure to mention personal training. Include information about personal training on class schedules.

And put up signs in your facility about personal training with profiles of your personal training staff.

Also consider having your personal training staff offer an occasional free group seminar on some aspect of fitness training. This is a great way for your members to meet your training staff and to consider the option of one-on-one training. Sport & Health, for example, offers free fitness clinics in its clubs. Ms. Ray explains that these clinics are targeted at specific audiences who might be most receptive to personal training, such as seniors, and serve as an opportunity for the clubs to introduce members to the concept of personal training.

Automate Personal Training. Running a successful personal training program in your facility requires scheduling member training sessions, rescheduling member training sessions, billing members, keeping track of member payments, scheduling trainers, and keeping track of trainer income. There is now software available to automate these tasks including Personal Trainer Business Manager for Windows and Fitness Studio Business Manager. Take advantage of it. Not only will it save you and your staff time and effort. It will enable you to manage your personal training program better by giving you the information you need to make smart decisions.

Treat Personal Training As A Business. Finally, treat your personal training program as a business unto itself. It should and can be profitable. The days of throwing a few college students out onto the floor, giving them shirts which say personal trainer, paying them as little as possible, and hoping for the best are over. Members expect and deserve experienced, well-trained personal trainers. How you hire and manage your trainers can mean the difference between a personal training program which is a cash cow and one that is money pit.

Ed Gaut is the author of numerous articles and books on fitness and the business of fitness including The Personal Trainer Business Handbook, the best-selling guide to starting and running a personal training business.