How Many Clients Does a Personal Trainer Need?

Lately when I speak to personal trainers about their business, I ask three quick questions.

How many sessions do you currently do a week?  How many would you like to do each week?  Finally, how many clients do you think you need to reach that many sessions?  These three questions are vastly different and help to shape what needs to be done. Overall, what one really needs to figure out is how many clients does a personal trainer need to reach their financial goals?

First…

Are you training enough sessions?  Some NYC personal trainers only have 10-15 regular personal training clients to reach their desired number of personal training sessions, since they require a minimum of 2 sessions or more per week. That means you are training a minimum of 20-30 sessions per week.  Add in a few clients who do 3 sessions a week.  This is risky, but can be financially rewarding with less client administration.  But you’d better be good at what you do.  Losing a client has a greater impact when they are 10% of your business.  If you are looking to train 35-45 sessions per weeks just make the proper scheduling adjustments.

Next…

Do you have enough client diversity?  This goes back to the above.  Being able to fill your schedule with only a handful of clients has its advantages.  However, if a client becomes ill, travels for business for a week, goes on vacation, etc. these missed sessions can really hurt your personal training revenue.  Think about having clients of varying levels of participation in your book of business.  Single sessions, two and three days per week.  This will allow you to weather the cancellation storm better or when you lose a client.  For instance, you may find that a single session client is looking for more sessions.  You’ll also have more clients to offer make up sessions to when the opportunity presents itself.

Something to keep an eye on…

Are you managing cancellations?  Cancellations can wreak havoc on your income if you are not carefully monitoring it.  For example, if every week you have one cancelled session your losses add up into the thousands of dollars.  That’s real money! At $100/session, that is $5,200.  At $75/session, it is still a $3,800 loss.  You can’t dismiss that either.  These cancellations could be one simple reason to fall short of your goal.  Watch this activity.  Fill in those cancellations when you can.  Don’t just sit idle.  Keep a list of fill in clients for these occurrences.  Offer clients who missed a session a make up session. Lastly, be firm on your cancellation policy.

And this, too…

Are you charging enough?  It all comes down to the math, right!  It’s great to be busy, but don’t undervalue your services.  Your clients have to understand what you mean to them and what they mean to you.  They also need to know that you work for them even when you aren’t training them.  That is a value of your service that you should price in.  After doing all of your calculations, you may realize you are $5-$10 lower per session and may need to raise your prices to meet your goals.  Make sure you are getting what you are worth.

Finally…

Do the math?  This where you start to put everything together.  Once you have figured out the number of personal training clients, sessions, and your session rate, see how it all adds up.  You may want to experiment with a few different variables so you can see how one cancellation or even one additional session per week can affect your totals.  It’s good to create a few different models to understand how different factors can affect your overall benefits.

If you’ve done everything right…

Your projections should equal your goals.  So, you’ve run the numbers and checked them against what you want to achieve.  Do you have a match?  Have you exceeded your goals?  Are you below?  Having a match or exceeding your goals is a positive sign.  If you are below, go back and answer the questions again.  Do you need to train more session, increase your rate, or go out and find new clients?  Being a New York City personal trainer can be a grind, but it can be a rewarding grind if you do it right and pay attention to your business details.