Developing Your Credibility as a Personal Trainer and Professional Coach

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Building Your Credibility as a Professional Trainer and Coach

Credentials always have their place —  they are often the first step towards getting your foot in the door and they can help build your confidence as a personal fitness trainer or coaching professional. What a credential won’t necessarily do is help you attract that all essential stream of clients. To achieve that you must develop and demonstrate the credibility factor that your clients are looking for. That means putting yourself out there in ways that will demonstrate and deliver real value.

Create a Quality Website

A quality website is imperative to help you build credibility as a serious and quality professional. Think of your website as the window to your services. It needs to convey your company standard appropriately. Make sure your website looks clean and professional.  If the client sees a poorly designed website, they may not take your services seriously.

Something else to keep in mind when putting together a website is the ease of use. When someone visits your website they’re looking for certain things to be in certain places. Most importantly, your services, pricing, location, and how to get in touch.  Make sure they’re easy to find. use simple navigational headers like Home, About, Services, Contact, and Blog and display all of the information they’d expect to see clearly using easily identifiable headlines. Also, when getting in touch, a professional and memorable email address that reflects your business is important.

Highlighting Your Credentials

Yes, your right…we did say above that your credentials weren’t that end all be all, but it is important that you share and highlight the credentials you achieve. Your certifications and qualifications should be easily located on your website, on your business cards, and in your email signature. You may even consider including a professional headshot so potential clients can connect with you on a more human-to-human level.

Become 100% Client-Focused

Everything you do in your business from your sales and marketing to your choice of further training needs to be of benefit and value to your clients. This means demonstrating your understanding of their needs and most pressing problems and challenges and your ability to help them to get the result they want. What are your values? Identify your why and communicate this to your clients. Why do you choose to be in the industry? What fuels your passion? What do you want clients to experience while working with you? What do you value? Keep it front and center and in the minds of those you serve.

Grow Your Professional Network

Networking is a deliberate effort to nurture important and mutually beneficial relationships. Successful training and coaching businesses are built by people who are well known and trusted by their clients and networks. Your network (who you know) can attract clients that would not have come to you otherwise. A professional network allows you to build quality connections with others outside of the personal training business in order for you to best serve your clients and refer them to the right professional should the need arise.

Stay informed on current trends by talking with other personal trainers, nutritionists, and group exercise instructors. This builds a support system and creates relationships with people who have similar interests. They might have read the recent exercise fad or may have tried a new type of exercise class. Simple communication provides information.

Testimonials = Sales

Make sure you get testimonials from all of your clients as this builds confidence amongst prospective clients that you can do the job, that you can help them get the results they want too. A glowing testimonial from an existing client who is achieving what your prospects want or overcoming the same challenges they have is very powerful. More powerful than anything you can say. And you don’t have to wait until a client is leaving you to get a testimonial either. If your clients are happy with what you are doing for them they’ll be happy to write one at any time, so don’t be afraid to ask!

Continue Your Education and Specialize

The fitness industry is constantly changing and shifting. Every certified trainer and coach has a responsibility to improve their technique and grow their knowledge base. Enrolling in new courses helps sharpen your edge and expand your services. If you can specialize, you’ll be in the best position to get to know your clients in terms of what they want.  You’ll be able to develop your expertise to better serve your clients and you’ll be much more effective at communicating and selling yourself to them.

Start Writing

Writing provides the opportunity to deliver great value to your clients. At the same time, you build your authority and become more believable in your client’s eyes. It could be articles, reports, an e-book or a published book, contributing to existing newsletters or magazines, or creating your own.

Start Speaking

Any opportunity to speak to your target clients can help to build your reputation and help them to get to know, like, and trust you. It helps you to stand out from the rest and is an important part of the process of getting your ideal clients to choose you over your training and coaching colleagues. Find conferences in your industry and reach out to an organizer about speaking. Pitch them on topics you’d like to speak about, and back it up with your skills, expertise, experience, website, blog and more. Learn how to become a world-class speaker by doing this now.

Getting Started

Check out what it takes to start a career in personal fitness training. This is your most affordable and fastest way to become a highly qualified personal trainer.

Is your recertification coming up? Learn more about earning your CEU credits. You can find the full list of CEU courses here.

If you are ready to start your online personal training or coaching business, don’t forget to learn more about our online coaching course. You will also really enjoy this very comprehensive training course called Online Expert Empire.

There is always something exciting about earning a new training or coaching certification and applying that new knowledge of how you train your clients. This also helps you hit the reset button.

NESTA and Spencer Institute coaching programs are open to anyone with a desire to learn and help others. There are no prerequisites.

That’s it for now.

Take action!

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