The Second Portion Of Personal Training Program Sales
In part two of a four-part series revolving around program sales, we are going to talk about client assessment. We’re essentially going to quantify movement. Our promise to customers is looking good – that’s usually weight loss. The second ones feeling great. Now, feeling great, a lot of time has to do with movement quality. We’re going to talk about what we call the functional movement screen.
Key Points of Discussion:
- Promise to clients: Looking good (usually weight loss), and feeling great (2:45)
- Feeling great, a lot of time has to do with movement quality (2:56)
- Putting a tangible score to people’s movements (4:04)
- It is important to show them a real process (5:40)
- In a group setting, let them know: “Don’t worry, all this is being recorded.” (6:20)
- We know exactly what to do with you and so we love the FMS (6:29)
- You don’t want to give them a test so tough they can’t pass it the first time (7:08)
- Taking out all hard things and replacing them with things that are doable (10:40)
- People are going to fall into four quadrants (13:21)
- The first: They move well, so functional and they have no pain (13:28)
- When the screen does serve to make you look really smart (15:30)
- The goal is to let them know they’re in good hands (16:24)
- There’s another quadrant that doesn’t move well but has no pain (18:47)
- Taking the data and applying it correctly… (21:18)
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Mentioned in this episode
Alloy Personal Training Franchise
Step Two Of Our Sales Process
When you look at our promises to customers, one being that we want our clients to feel great. Feeling great most of the time has to do with movement quality because of the fact that we are mainly dealing with that 45 – 50 age bracket and up. When you get to that part in your life, you are usually going to have some chinks in your armor. The best quote that I ever heard about this was from Dr. Stuart McGill is a spinal expert that we think a lot of, somebody told him “You know, every time I work out I seem to get tweaked.” His response, “You know, whether you’re active or not when you get older, you’re going to get tweaked. So would you rather get tweaked being active or sitting around? Because it’s gonna happen either way.”
We have a sitting centric society. What comes with that is generally, weak hip flexors, weak core, terrible T spine mobility. If you try to put activity or volume on top of that, people are going to get hurt.
The Assessment
That being said, for step two, the assessment, we use what we call the functional movement screen. A lot of you may have heard of the FMS (Functional Movement Screen). It offers a lot of scientific data to back up its validity. When you look at the predictability of injuries based on certain scores around the screen, they’re repeatable and they’re reliable. This has been used with tactical athletes, for example, the fire department or even with big energy companies for light pole workers. If they can get their scores to 14 or better their chances of getting injured, which means less workman’s comp for these companies, is exponentially higher.
Where I think the assessment is undervalued and why we really like it to be used in the sales aspect is because we’re trying to set ourselves apart from other facilities, certainly other training studios. A lot of other training facilities and studios can offer a good workout but often come with smoke and mirrors around it. Meaning it’s fancy, there’s good music, there’s a lot of screaming, and maybe even a headset, but what does it even mean? Are those exercises being applied to you correctly? And when we get someone in who says that they have an injury or a concern, this is your chance to show them that there’s a process to what we do. This is how our starting point is set up.
How Our Functional Movement Screen Evolved
If anyone here is not familiar with the FMS, it’s pretty technical. It came out of professional athletics. It’s built by a couple of high-level physical therapists that are sports performance-oriented and is also used in the special forces. We took that system and made it work for the general active aging population that we work with. It’s not easy. The quality of the information is great, but the test was so hard that it would make people often fail or feel like they were failing the first time in the gym. Through trial and error and a lot of experience, we modified the evaluation to better fit the active aging target market we set out to help.
About two or three years into us running the modified screen and successfully using it as a sales tool. We were approached by Lee one of the creators of the functional movement screen. He said, “Listen, we know you’ve been hacking the screen and you’ve been doing it at volume, with lots of people. We’d love to have you up to headquarters here to talk about it.” Alloy had a lot of facilities running the program at this point.
Originally the system was built for professional-level athletes as a predictor of injury at high levels of performance. We recognize the need for a simpler screen for fitness. We worked alongside them to come up with what we now call the modified screen (the assessment). This is the very system that is actually baked into our app.
Solidifying The Assessment
Their team came down to our mothership facility and we had clients in from our local brick and mortars and they screened like 300 people in two days. What they wanted to see was if we just ran the modified screen (the assessment) versus the full screen, would we have missed anything as it pertains to the health, the general fitness market. The answer was no. They were fully confident that we could run the assessment. So that is when we launched the modified screen, which is great!