Almost every gym with coached classes says it sells coaching.
But look at what people actually buy. At most gyms, every new member gets the same unlimited group membership. The person who wants to lose weight, the person who wants to gain weight, the high school athlete and the busy dad all walk out with an identical product.
So are they buying custom coaching? Or are they buying access to classes that happen to be coached?
Look at it through the prospect’s eyes. She sits down with you and hears about an unlimited group membership for $200 a month. Then she walks across the street to Orangetheory and hears about an unlimited group membership for $119 a month.
You’d say Orangetheory doesn’t sell coaching and your gym is different. To her, both gyms are offering unlimited classes, and one is doing it at about half the price. If that’s the comparison she’s making, you’ll lose the pricing battle, and you’ll get dragged into a race to the bottom.
Imagine a mom who tells you she wants to lose 10 pounds. She’s tried a few programs, they all failed, and she needs someone to keep her on track. If you hand her the same blanket prescription everyone else gets, it won’t make sense to her.
So she says, “Let me think about it.”
That’s a smokescreen. Most of the time, it means she doubts your offer will get her to her goal.
What Real Coaching Looks Like
Real coaching means a coach owns the outcome. The coach:
- Helps the client pick the right sessions.
- Checks in when life gets busy.
- Changes the plan when something isn’t working.
Personal training, semi-private training and group classes are delivery tools. What the client is buying is the coaching itself: a coach and a custom plan built to help her hit her goals.
For you, that’s a small shift in delivery. For the prospect, it’s a big shift in how she sees your gym. It separates you from every other group gym in your market.
Prescribe Like a Doctor
You can’t prescribe a plan if you don’t know the prospect’s goals, so this only works through a consultation. If you’re already doing consultative sales, great. You only need to adjust the wording when it’s time to offer a solution.
In Two-Brain, we call this giving a prescription.
When you tell a doctor what’s wrong, the doctor doesn’t hand you a menu of drugs and ask you to choose. The doctor tells you what to take, and you follow the plan. Your prospects are asking for the same thing. They’ve told you their problems, what they’ve tried and what hasn’t worked. Now they need you to step forward as the coach and tell them what the plan should be.
Start by summarizing what you heard:
“So you want more energy, and you want to keep up with your kids. You tried some access gyms, and you didn’t like walking in and having to figure out what to do that day. You also tried a couple of boot camps and group classes, but there wasn’t much accountability, so you got bored and fell off. Did I get that right?”
Let her clarify. Then prescribe:
“Great. What I’m going to prescribe for you is coaching. You’re buying me as your coach. Group classes will be part of your plan because they’re fun and you won’t have to think about what to do. But your program is managed by me. It’s my job to do the thinking and help you show up. You still have to get in the car and follow the plan, but everything will be built around your goal and your lifestyle. How does that sound?”
You’ve taken ownership of the outcome, and she knows she isn’t getting the same cookie-cutter plan everyone else gets.
Lay Out the Tools and the Price
Once she agrees to the plan, explain how you’ll deliver it. Every gym will do this a little differently, but it might sound like this:
“You and I will meet one-on-one once a week, early in the week. We’ll work on the things that need the most attention, and we’ll map out two classes based on where you are in the plan and what’s going on in your life that week. The commitment is about 12 weeks, and we’ll check in at week four and week 12 to make sure the plan is right. If anything needs to change, we’ll adjust on the fly. The investment is $475 a month. How does that sound?”
Then stop talking and let it sit.
We call this “prescribing up”: offering the thing the prospect actually needs instead of the thing you think will be easiest to sell.
Darren Thornton: From $9,000 a Month to $1 Million a Year
When Darren Thornton joined Two-Brain, he owned a group-only CrossFit gym with two part-time coaches. He was doing about $9,000 a month in revenue.
Darren believed every member would get better results with a personal trainer who was responsible for their plan. So he built personal training into every membership. You can’t join his gym without it.
The results:
- More than $1 million in revenue each of the last three years.
- Seven full-time coaches.
- A starting coach salary of $60,000 a year.
Darren runs the same group classes and the same style of fitness he always did. He changed how he positioned and prescribed it. He stopped saying “we do group classes” and started offering coaching that includes group classes. And he prescribed with conviction, because he truly believed coaching would get his members better results. (Darren went on to become a Two-Brain mentor.)
Why Gym Owners Prescribe Down
Some of you are reading this and thinking, “Sounds great, but it’ll never work in my gym.”
When gym owners feel that way, they tend to prescribe whatever is easiest to sell. They’re afraid of rejection, and if the gym is struggling, losing a sale feels terrifying.
In conversations with hundreds of gym owners this year, we found that most prospects use words like “scared” or “intimidated” during the consultation. Those people need to feel safe, and they need a plan that works. A coach who owns their outcome gives them both. A class schedule and a key fob give them neither.
The other big mistake is projecting your budget onto your prospects. If $475 a month sounds expensive to you, you might assume it sounds expensive to everyone. It may not.
In fact, many of you already sell $400-$500 on-ramp programs before moving people into group classes. Your market is already paying coaching rates. You’re just charging for it once instead of every month.
When Objections Still Come Up
A strong prescription prevents a lot of objections, but you’ll still hear some. People get nervous about price, want to talk to a spouse, or tell you they’re too busy right now.
When that happens, a good prescription gives you something solid to return to. If a prospect says the gym down the street is $140 a month, remind her what she told you earlier: She’s tried group classes, got bored and never had accountability. Ask if a coach who manages her plan would make her more likely to hit her goal. If price is still the sticking point, offer weekly payments before you touch the prescription or the price.
For the full framework and how to handle each of the most common objections, read How to Handle the Most Common Gym Sales Objections.
Your Homework
When you get prescribing right, your worst case becomes your old best case.
Some gyms will always beat you on price for access and classes. Nobody can compete with a plan built around one person’s goals and delivered by a coach who owns the outcome.
So here’s your homework: Build a hybrid coaching plan this week. On your very next consultation, prescribe it once and see what happens.
If you want help building high-value coaching into your gym, book a call with the Two-Brain team. At worst, you’ll get an outside set of eyes on your business and leave with free material you can use to grow your gym that day.
