5 Tips to Earn Client Trust When Hiring New Personal Trainers

If you have experience hiring new personal trainers, you know how challenging it can be to win client trust for them. We often hear this is an issue for gym owners. With the right strategy and follow-through, you can help your new personal trainers take on clients more smoothly.

Have the Conversations

To start, you need to make introductions and conversations with your clients. By expressing your high standards and telling your clients why you chose to hire the personal trainer you did, they will know you believe in your new team member and expect them to deliver results.

Get the new trainer introduced to the culture, other staff and clients before transitioning them. The more comfortable the new trainer is with the environment, the more natural the transition. I like to have them teach a couple of classes that we invite personal training clients to, and I have them do a couple of joint sessions with me and the clients before transitioning. I always joke with the clients they are going to get an even better experience than they did with me (the owner) since the new person is 100% focused on them and not the business!

– Amy Abraham, Zen Planner Sales Manager and Former Gym Owner

Be Transparent

While displaying your trust to clients, be sure you don’t over-sell your personal trainer’s experience. This is easy to pick up on, and you may make your clients skeptical of your new personal trainer’s ability.

Leverage Positive Reviews

One of the issues when hiring new personal trainers is that new personal trainers probably have little to no client reviews when they come to you, so it’s important for them to solicit reviews as soon as they start to work with clients.

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Shadow and Provide Oversight

Shadowing your new personal trainer will help them be the best they can be, but it also builds trust with your clients. When clients see you shadowing your new personal trainers, they know you have their best interests in mind. They also see that you care about service and their results. It will also be helpful to have your new team members shadow your experienced personal trainers to learn best practices and build relationships.

Consider Promotions or Discounts

Sometimes it takes strategic promotions or discounts to help your new personal trainers get the right start. However, the key word here is “strategic.” If you discount too much, you may present the message that you don’t believe in your new personal trainer.

In the case that you discount, help your personal trainer take advantage of the business they get from it by following best practices and customer service standards.

Since most personal trainers must build their client base from the ground up, being new is just part of the process. But, you can make on-ramping them much easier by being transparent, using personal training software, providing oversight, leveraging reviews and making the right introductions.