One of the biggest and most beneficial ways to get more sales and more personal training clients is to build rapport with current clients and prospects. Follow these five tips to build the relationship and friendship with your client.

1.) Be Real – If you put on an act or try to fake who you are then you are guaranteed to lose the client. People are not as dumb as you may think. They are already timid and have their guard up because they have been burned before, so the worst thing you can do is start to fake who you are. Also, a key point to being yourself is you will attract personal training clients who are like you and have things in common. Remember, you should not be everything to everyone. Use your personality and characteristics to attract people whom you fit in with.

2.) Quit being serious – It is important to build credibility but enough with all the serious stone face attitude. In the mind of the client personal training is already hard enough and the last thing they need or want is to have a personal trainer that is ALL business. Now, I know what your thinking and it is okay to be disciplined and consistent with your client but lighten up and show them you are human!

3.) Let your passion shine – If you love what you do and you show enthusiasm when you are with your clients then your clients will keep coming back to you. People are attracted to positive and energetic people and trainers that show this at every session gain the most clients.

4.) Listen and recall – It is so important that you listen to what your client says and talks about. You need to find out what profession they are in, if they are married, how many kids, birthday and etc… Make sure when you see them you recall things that they have told you. If you have a hard time remembering write them done, put them in notebook, set up reminders on a service like www.birthdayalarm.com.  

5.) Be honest and truthful – Do not sugar coat the relationship. You need to be honest and truthful about what you tell your personal training clients. Don’t lie and tell a prospect something that isn’t true just to get them to buy more personal training sessions. This will come back to haunt you one day and you will be sorry you lied and didn’t stay honest from the beginning. 

Building rapport takes work but if you follow these five tips then you will put yourself in a great position to build a long solid relationship with your client that can lead to endless opportunities.