How to onboard a personal training client...so they stay a client

Most trainers think onboarding starts after the client signs up. CEO of Fitness World Chris Smith says it starts the second someone walks through the door.

Welcome back to Smittyville, the smartest small town in fitness.

In this episode, Chris and Krissy break down the infamous Pink Sheet process used at Fitness World and the psychology behind better personal training consultations. From handshakes and first impressions to active listening, rapport building, asking better questions, and creating professional recommendations, this episode covers the systems that help trainers move beyond "selling" and actually understand people.

Topics include:

• How to build trust in the first meeting
• Why people decide if they like you in seconds
• The Pink Sheet onboarding process
• Active listening and consultative sales
• Asking follow up questions that uncover goals and motivation
• Why permission to present matters
• How trainers can create stronger client buy in

If you're a personal trainer who wants better consultations, stronger retention, and more confidence onboarding new clients, this one is for you.

Become a citizen of Smittyville.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Like there's assumptive closing, but that's different than assumptively just like trying to pigeonhole or push people in a direction. And again, I'm trying to lead you to a place where you're making an informed decision. I've provided you all the information necessary to invest a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, whatever million dollars based on whatever package you're doing.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

You just rolled into the smartest, small town of fitness. Welcome to Smitty Vill. Big Rap, Big Villa. Yeah, we're building it up. Smart small town of fitness. A podcast for personal trainers. Let's get to work.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

All right.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

All right. Well, as we've established systems and processes, have heard those two words out of your mouth on several occasions here in the town of Smittyville. And one of them that I know you have in Fitness World is the infamous pink sheet. So we're going to talk about onboarding today. So first of all, what is the pink sheet?

SPEAKER_00 1:16

The pink sheet is a sheet we use from an assessment tool perspective in terms of meeting a new prospective client that is a guided experience to help uncover what it is that we need to know about that individual to assess if they qualify for our personal training services or not, if it's somebody we think we can help.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

So we're going to dive into the what and the why of the pink sheet, but let's just start by talking about the onboarding process in general. What are the number one things that are important to uncover?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, I think you know, some of the big things we're talking about is at a high level is kind of likability, rapport, and trust. Um, so we're working through that, right? So we we we start from everything from where do you meet that individual? Um, what does that handshake look like, feel like, high five, et cetera?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

What is the handshake supposed to what is it supposed to feel like?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Uh we practice handshakes.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Really?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

How often?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Uh when you're hired, we're gonna practice to make sure you got a legitimate handshake and not like some limp noodle.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Because what does a good handshake practice look like?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Well, we could practice right now if you want. I could tell you. I'll tell you, I'll give you a scale. Yeah, like yours, I would give you, like from a business perspective, we were meeting on a business deal. I'd go, yeah, like probably nine out of ten.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

I demoted me by a point. Oh, I've been told that many times. I've had some people that are like, whoa, like crusher.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, that's stronger than most men's handshakes right there.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

I'm just glad I don't have calluses from lifting weights right now because that really just adds to the cause sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah, so I think you know, we but we practice like can you maintain eye contact, give an appropriate handshake? You know, it's the right amount of firm, you know, not too much. But like again, back to like the Goldilocks, like too much. People decide if they like somebody in the first three seconds of an interaction. Yeah, that's the hello and handshake. So you better get it right. Because they don't like you all of a sudden right off the get-go, tough gig.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Who's the handshake master? Like, do you have a person that's the handshake judger?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Is it you or yeah, this mayor Smithyville carries that burden.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Fair.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Um, I wouldn't say I'm the only judge, jury, and executioner. But yeah, we'll literally, you know, sometimes have people line up and practice handshakes down a group. Um, if I see a pervasive issue even a club, I'll say to the manager, hey, let's just start shaking everyone's hand. And then I go, So what'd you learn? He's like, dude, I don't even know, but that guy's handshake's terrible.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Yeah, and I notice it though, I mean, obviously I'm in a business setting a lot too. But if I get the fish, I mean, we all know the fish handshake, instantly my level of respect goes down. And that is an unfair assessment of another human being, but it just does. I'm like, what was that?

SPEAKER_00 3:53

It's a skill you can learn.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

And I think there's an appropriate handshake. So back to just kind of likability, the rapport, the trust. So the rapport building is again now we're gonna be asking questions. What brought you in today? What are your goals? How long has this been your goal? How long have you been thinking about it? That's the rapport. We're asking all these questions, right? Uh, and the trust I think comes from asking the right questions that are relevant to them. And again, you're doing active listening. So I'm hearing your answers. My follow-up questions to your answer isn't my next question. It's what did you just tell me? What piece of information did you give me that I think you could expand on that's relevant again to your goal, your aspirations, your hopes, your dreams, your desires. Because I think I don't know, I think we explained the podcast or not, but just to reframe for people, like if I took a square, right, in a three square, like you just have to imagine this space right here in between my hands. Like, that's people's hopes, dreams, desires, goals, everything else. And what we do is try to package it all really tight, and then we sell it back to them for a cost. The tangible product is your service, which is inside this weird little sphere of nothingness. Because it's really how can I help you accomplish your goal in the safest, fastest, most effective way possible.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

So, how does the pink sheet drive that? What's on there, and what are you actually walking the potential client through?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Yeah, so we're facilitating the conversation I just talked about, right? And so what we teach is consultative sales. So for every question we ask, we want to go two layers deeper and we want to ask kind of two follow-up questions to each one of those questions. Again, it's just based on a lot of experience and kind of high-level kind of pieces. There is some nuance to it, if you will. It's it's a it's a combination of art and science uh in terms of going through it, and then we're gonna go through like overhead squad.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Let's just like go back a beat. So walk me through it. I'm all right. Pink sheet me.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Well, I'm not gonna do it. We we'll be here for a half hour.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

No, just that. Like when you're saying like the follow-ups, like where would you just go?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Well, I would just say, so Chrissy, like what are your so what are your goals?

SPEAKER_02 5:45

I'm training for a high rocks in Toronto in October.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

And what motivated you to want to do a high rox? What's the driving force behind this?

SPEAKER_02 5:52

I didn't even I haven't had a goal in a while in the Fitness Avenue, and my trainings looked exactly the same for a while.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So tell me more about why having a goal in your finished journey is important to you.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Because I fucking like to smash goals and I lost that part of myself and now she's back.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

So on a scale one to ten, how important is it for you to show up and do well at those high rocks?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

It's important for me to show up and need a bucket. That's how hard I'm gonna go.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Like you're as long as you need it, you're good, or is there a time?

SPEAKER_02 6:22

No, there's not a time, but I also want to leave knowing I crushed it to the utmost capability.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

So you want to make sure you're well trained. Yeah. You want to be prepped.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

You're not just gonna show up.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Then I want to show up shreddy spaghetti so people feel slightly intimidated at the starting.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Yeah. Who's that?

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

All right, so you're gonna be trained.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

It's like a sleeper hit where they're like, uh-oh.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Okay. And so have you ever done an event like this before? Because you said you've trained for events, but have you ever done like a strength kind of hybrid running event, one of these types of things?

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Never.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Spartan, tough mudder, anything?

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Never in my life.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Okay, so this is a first time.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

First time.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Okay, so just if I went super high level, like what would that plan for you look like? What would you do for yourself?

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Well, I'm mainly worried about running because I don't identify as a runner.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Okay, so like if I said the fit principle to you, which is frequency, intensity, time and type, have you mapped out a plan between now and your high rocks where you know exactly what you're doing every week and every day between now and then?

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Not at all. I should probably give you my money so that I could get one of those plans.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

You're jumping the gun. You're jumping the gun.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

See, I'd be the easy sell because I understand the importance of investing in training.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

You do. But again, we're gonna uncover like what you know and what your own plan is, so then I can understand where I can add value to what it is you're trying to do.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

And people I'm sure become so invested in the conversation too, because you're mirroring a lot of things back to me. I'm noticing. Like I say it much like in a in therapy where they're like, I'm hearing you're saying this, kind of, which psychologically does a lot for a person. They're like, You get me. We've just met and you get me.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Correct. Yeah, I'm trying to mirror and match to whatever extent is realistic and plausible, right? But yeah, you definitely want to just talk about it. And then again, it's gonna be, I'm gonna go through recovery and we're gonna talk about nutrition and we're gonna talk about strength training, all in that same way. So now I understand what you're thinking about. So, well, that was really great getting to know you a little bit. Now I understand some background history. What I'd like to do now is do some movement assessments. So now we're gonna go in overhead squat assessment. I might do some additional strength testing, push, pull, press, some different things to get an understanding, core, so on and so forth. And now I've got a picture like I understand you a little bit. I've done some movement assessments, and I say, So, Chrissy, I'm still getting to know you, obviously, and this and that, but I'd love if we could just sit down and review what I think are some options that make sense based on our conversation today. And that's really where we kind of quote unquote get to the professional recommendation of you know that. And again, we do that through the lens of at the end of that, what we teach is asking permission to present, which is again, Chrissy really enjoyed our time today. This and that. I'd love to show you all the options of how working with me could work long term. Do you have a few minutes of time where I could sit down with you and review that?

SPEAKER_02 8:56

Yeah, it's interesting. There were several comments on a piece that we posted on YouTube about that permission to present. Some people saying exactly that. I love it. Others like mainly just highlighting the premise of that. So maybe talk to me about the psychology of why it's important to ask permission to present.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Well, I think that that's part of the first thing to know if you've earned the right to do so. So if someone says if I say if I were not to say that and I said, So, hey, let me just show you how my programs work. So, well, before you do that, can I ask one more question? Oh, yeah, sure. What do you got? Well, like today when we were on the chess press, we did this, we did this, we did that, versus I'm bringing it to a finality. Right? Like I'm bringing it to an end and I'm concluding it, the paragraph, if you will, starting a new paragraph from a grammatical perspective on now we're transitioning to this kind of part of the experience, versus I just leave it open-ended. And again, that that's it's just too assumptive. Like there's assumptive closing, but that's different than assumptively just like trying to pigeonhole or push people in a direction. And again, I'm trying to lead you to a place where you're making an informed decision. I provided you all the information necessary to invest a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, whatever million dollars based on whatever package you're getting into me and into this business. And so I got to make sure you've got all that information. And that's that asking permission is kind of concluding that, like, I did all that. I gave you all the information. Because if someone says, Well, yeah, just a second, like before we do that, I have a couple more questions. Oh, absolutely. What do you got? Okay, cool. So it's are you good now? Okay, Chrissy, great. So now let's maybe talk about what I think I can do to help you.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

So the pink sheet is part of the system here at Fitness World. And I know you you give away a lot of the secret sauce on the podcast, but obviously not everything. Yeah, that's well, and that's super fair.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

There's a lot of free stuff for some people if they're paying attention.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Which hopefully, if you're here, that means you're paying attention. Active listening, as pointed out. But when it comes to executing the pink sheet, obviously, if they follow the plan in theory, it should work. Is there anywhere in part of that process you see a lot of people lose the sale along the way?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Well, yeah, everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

But what are the most common?

SPEAKER_00 11:06

The the most common is the nuance of how to have a conversation, right? And it's the idea of again enough reps to be skilled at the listening and then to allow the listening to be taking place, but knowing that where that listening is gonna take you for a next question versus what's my next question, and I'm not listening. And so that's where it gets broken in the beginning. Like I can teach almost anyone, here's the let's make sure we have a proper handshake, here's how we're gonna start the dialogue. Like that part, most people can figure it out. It's now that we're in the dialogue where it gets broken. Uh, and sometimes you know that that's just a nuance of consultative sales. And again, that's just a byproduct, and it's become truthfully worse and worse over time because we're more and more, you know, engrossed in a digital world and all these conversations taking place in the Twitterverse, uh, and everyone just typing what they're talking about. Well, I know, I'd still like to that's how old I am, Chrissy. I do have the app, but the point is, is I just they're just people aren't used to conversing and just that kind of what does that sound like and look like and whatever in just a real world, real time with strangers. It's like, no, I talk to people. Who do you talk to every day? How many strangers do you talk to every day? And it's like, oh well, I not very many well, and that's that's what this is, right? How many strangers can you talk to every day and not be uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Let's head to the trainer circuit. Real questions, real situations. Chris shows up, listens, and mentors from experience.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Why do we call it personal training? It's personal. So if there's no personal and personal training, right? Personality. If you don't have any personality, you're gonna struggle. And so I think that's the other part of that again back to it's not just the queuing, but it's like, what is the fun factor? What is the entertainment value, if you will, of that session? Like, what are you bringing to the table to make me want to come back? When you go to a restaurant, what makes you want to go back? You're like, the service sucks, but the food's incredible. Okay, but what if the food's incredible and the service is like over the moon? It's like a double. Now what? That's the place you try to take anyone that comes to ever visit you, right? You're like, oh, you gotta go to this is my favorite restaurant. You gotta come here, it's my favorite restaurant. You get because it's your favorite restaurant. No different than those members or those clients that you would train that way. That's how they're gonna talk about you. This is my favorite personal trainer. Did you train with them? I did, honestly, but honestly, my budget was tight. I only trained with them like four times, but they're so cool. They're so you have to meet them. They're like the life of the party at the gym, they're the coolest person there. And if you're like, well, I don't want to try to be the coolest person, that's fine, then be average. And you're like, well, wait a minute. I promise you, you'll be at best, you'll be average. If you're like, I don't want to be average, like you I live by a phrase that says, average is okay, just not here. Average is okay, it's just not for me. I'm not trying to be average. So if you don't want to be average, then you gotta figure out how do I do more? What does more look like? What does that sound like with my clients? Right? All that stuff matters. And so I would also just add that like what needs to change now more than ever is the personal and the personality of personal training has to come to life. What used to be okay is like gone. Because again, I can get all the rest of it from a machine. I don't need you for that. I don't need you for a program.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Before we wrap, we'll leave you with a smithism, a lesson Chris has picked up along the way.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yeah, so I think the last thing I maybe I would leave you with on this pink sheet topic is, you know, is I see different, you know, podcasts I think I've been, you know, pretty adamant about that uh I've uh stolen my Smithisms from different people and leaders and mentors and all kinds of places I find them over time. But I was actually signing a podcast where Jason Kelsey was talking about practicing his saxophone and what that taught him about practice and how he applied that in other places of his life to kind of be, you know, a world class athlete and the great podcast that he has with his brother and just all the amazing things that he's been able to accomplish in his life thus far. And I think the same holds true here, right? Is it's about practice. And so I think often it's like, well, practice is not me, like if you're the client, it the yes, there's a rep that's gonna take place, and that is practice when I'm doing it with you, but it's like, how many practices did I have before you and I sat down? And so, did I practice with everyone in my family? Did I practice with all my colleagues, the trainers around me? Like, how many reps am I getting? Another good example being that from uh, you know, my my son-in-law recently, I got him some golf lessons. I said, How was your lesson? And he said, Well, it was kind of boring. I said, What do you mean? He says, Well, I got to hit two golf balls and I had to take 10 practice swings. I got to hit two more golf balls and I had to take 10 practice swings. But it's in that practice that he's building the rhythm and the tempo and the repetition and the body mechanics and the neuroplasticity of what that movement is. Like those practice reps are massively meaningful. And so, again, that's what I'd say. And so, my my my practice concept, the ultimate smithism, is it it's not about just practice, it's perfect practice makes perfect. So, if you want to be great, then you gotta practice to be great and you gotta hold yourself to a really high standard.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Brilliant, I'll get those handshake reps in to get it 10 out of 10.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

You need to like loosen it, loosen the grip there just a bit.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

I don't know if my higher ox training is gonna help loosen grip, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

We need to need to we need to dial this back a bit.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

That's fair. I probably scare people. It's fine.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

He introduces you to new friends and they're like, Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

That's today's Smithism. Chris Smith is the mayor of Smittyville, and I'm Chrissy Van, your town correspondent. This is the smartest small town in fitness. We'll see you back here every other week.