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5 Steps to Pricing your Personal Training Services

One of the most difficult aspects of starting your own personal training business is finding the ideal rate to charge for your services. If you set your price too low, you’ll quickly run out of money, however, if your rate is too high, you’ll price yourself out and struggle to find any new clients. Finding the right balance between profitability and affordability requires you to look at some business different variables.

In this post, we will guide you through all of the necessary steps to determine the ideal rate to charge for your services.

Step 1 – Calculate Your Overheads

This is the amount of money it takes for you to operate your business. Any expense such as rent/mortgage for your training facility, utilities, phone bill, payroll, insurance and taxes all need to be calculated to find your total overhead expense. Also if you contract any outside professional services like accountants or lawyers, you’ll need to factor in these expenses as well. It’s a simple equation – the more overhead expenses you have, then the more you’ll have to charge for your personal training services.

Step 2 – Check the Local Industry Climate

Research is key; you need to assess the local market. Find out what other personal trainers in your area are charging for their services? Are you located in a large city with a high cost of living or a small inexpensive village? Are you the only powerlifting personal trainer in the area? Or is there a lot of competition within your particular fitness niche. Through surveying the local market, you’ll be able to get a sense of how much your potential clients are willing to pay for your exact services.

Step 3 – Your Time is Accountable

Are you an experienced personal trainer looking to earn a comfortable living? Or are you new to the industry and happy to just scrape by on small margins? Once you’ve calculated the required costs of running your business, you can then start to factor in your expected take-home pay within your client’s hourly rate.

Step 4 – Get Time Smart

How many hours can you realistically work? Basically, how many dedicated hours can you spend each week working with clients? You need to understand that a 10-hour workday doesn’t translate into 10 billable hours. There may well be a lot of time spent organising your schedule, running marketing campaigns, completing administrative tasks or just generally working on your personal training business.

Step 5 – What’s Your USP?

Something we see a lot of with personal trainers, is failing work out their USP – Unique Selling Proposition. In simple terms, this is the difference between a general income and owning that flash sports car. Let me explain. A regular doctor is a GP (General Practitioner), and he get’s paid a general GP income. However, a heart surgeon is also a GP, but he or she specialises in heart surgery. Guess who owns that sports car?

After taking all of these factors into account, you can then start to crunch the numbers and find an estimate of what you should be charging your clients per hour.

Then once you have calculated your hourly rate, see if this number is above or below the average rate charged by other personal trainers in your area. If it is below then great! You’re in perfect shape to start marketing yourself to new clients. However if it is above, then you’ll have to figure out some ways to either lower it or to generate some extra revenue.

Optimising Your Income

Here are a few ways to help optimise your income; either through lowering your costs, earning extra money, or charging the hourly rate you’ll need to cover costs.

Show Your Worth – Do you have an outstanding fitness resume? Were you at one point a successful athlete? Is there anything that helps position yourself as a leader in your specific fitness niche.

Any personal fitness achievements or qualifications like advanced degrees or certificates, years of experience, or even previous noteworthy clients can all be communicated to your clients, making them more likely to spend some extra money on your services compared to another personal trainer.

Charging more than the competition can also work to benefit you. Automatically you’ll have clients wondering what it is about your services that justify the higher price. Similarly, if you just work to undercut the competition, customers might assume it’s due to you offering subpar services.

Reducing Your Overhead Expenses – If you rent or own your fitness facility, consider the option of subletting some space to others. It’s quite common for fitness studio owners with spare rooms or lots of floor space to rent out to sports therapists, beauty therapists, or even small event organisers who can make use of the space during off-peak or closed hours.

If the costs of owning or renting a facility are especially crippling for you – maybe consider specialising in at-home personal training, this way you won’t have to pay for a facility at all. Your only overhead cost might be for transportation and some minimal mobile fitness equipment.

Sell Health and Fitness products – Another great way to earn some extra revenue is to sell health food supplements and fitness equipment directly at your facility. Energy drinks, protein powders, vitamin and mineral supplements, even Swiss Balls and yoga mats are all great sellers at fitness studios and gyms. You could even go as far as printing some branded merchandise to sell to clients. This is an excellent way to earn extra cash and market your business through branded hats and t-shirts at the same time.

Summary

Once you have been able to work out the rate you need to charge your clients to reach your income goals; you can then start to get a little creative to find ways of reaching it. Remember that part of starting your own business is trial and error, so don’t hesitate to be a little flexible with your rates at the start. You should always experiment with new marketing strategies to reach as many people as possible, so you build a solid base of clients.

Remember, never sell yourself short and do what feels right for you – it’s your business, and you have complete control.