A Guide To Create The Perfect Fitness Client Testimonial

As you work with people daily to help them achieve results, you shouldn’t underestimate the impact your have on changing their lives and the one’s of people close to them too. You work very hard at doing just that.

Helping your clients understanding how they’ve gone from one point successfully to the next, can be challenging and recording data for each of them is going to be critical to your success.

You can’t capture essential information about them retrospectively.

As you read this article, think about who’s at the start of their journey with you or has just set a new milestone and make a note to follow up with them.

Record Data

People looking to get into shape are keen to see how others who are in a similar position to them have achieved great results – it certainly triggers their interest.

If someone is overweight and needs to lose 10kg/lbs, they’re eager to understand how someone has turned this objective into a reality, by working with you.

Someone looking to gain strength will also need to be convinced over evidence.

When you catch people at the start of their fitness journey and have managed to show them you can help, you’ll be able to start conversations with them that will open them up.

We also notice that across all of the websites we’ve built, the success stories are by far the pages that better convert.

Build a Checklist

As you’re well aware as fitness professional, the scales don’t give the full picture even though your clients may find it useful.

That’s what we’re looking to address here – giving your clients a full picture of their fitness journey, not limiting to a weight capture but enriching it with photos and measurements will help your clients to contemplate their transformation as well as help you guarantee their results.

With that being said, once you’ve explained to your client that scales are not the only measurement to take into account, what do you need to actually record?

Let’s take a look.

Record Progress with Tape Measurements

Tape measurements are consistently one of the best and most effective ways to show your clients results both in weight loss and strength gains.

One of the greatest things about tape measurements is that it provides you with practical information- unlike weight and photos, which could be somewhat misleading, then tape measurements work really well.

By tracking thousands of people looking to improve their fitness, it’s been discovered that people are prioritizing weight loss around their stomach and hips over all other areas. So make sure to highlight these specific areas to the people you’re working with.

Here are the areas we recommend recording:

• Neck
• Chest
• Waist
• Hip
• Thigh
• Calf
• Upper Arm
• Lower Arm
• Wrist

Track Weight with Scales

Although weight isn’t the only factor, it can be helpful to track and add great insights to the overall picture.

For clients over a certain level of body fat (for example 25%) we see good results combining weight tracking with tape measurements – and progress becomes pretty obvious.

Take Photos

Your clients ultimately want to look and feel better, they want to feel confident over time; and trying to recall from memory where they started can be incredibly misleading.

Not all clients will be ecstatic about you taking their photo, especially when you were not there in the first place, however it’s a crucial element to maintain their motivation.

Photos are also valuable to you as a business owner – you know you get results, so you need to be able to demonstrate those to potential future clients.

When asking your client for permission to take pictures, explain clearly your motivation to document their journey.

At the time, make sure you take three photos of the front, back and side.

Finally, mark a line on the floor so your client stands in the same spot each time while remembering to hold your camera up in the same place every time.

In front of your nose is fine, as long as it’s consistent!

Keep Your Client Updated

Once you start to collect this valuable information, you need to make sure you file it and keep organized!

If you don’t, you’ll waste time searching for past results and tracking new ones, and will loose all the benefits of recording data.

Regardless if you send your client a short paragraph update over email or if you’re sending a custom report from a more advanced tool, make sure you’re taking the time to keep your client in the know and update him or her regularly.

Make sure you also carry out regular review where you compare photos from previous sessions and demonstrate to hem that their efforts pay out.

Once your client has hit a large milestone, for example 12 weeks of training or 10lb/kg weight loss, ask them for a testimonial and permission to make use of it – which I cover below.

Create and Share Testimonials

A good testimonial, will help you benefit your business in a great number of ways.

There are three things your testimonials are good for – if they are really pleased with their results you’ll find that they are happy for you to use them as a testimonial.

Post on Your Website

It sounds obvious but many don’t publish testimonials on their website – make sure to present them in a prominent spot.

It’s known as social proof and will help visitors to convert better as they’re going through concrete demonstration on how you’ve helped others.

Encourage Your Client to Share

Clients are your best advocates – trust them and encourage them to share their progress with others on social media or in face to face.

You need to make it as easy for them, so it’s best to post visual evidence of their status before and after, ideally front back and side, onto 1 background with your logo in the bottom right.

If you don’t have any graphical editing capability (like Photoshop) you can use great free services, like Canva for example.

Hand this over to your client, congratulate them on their major achievement and encourage them to share with their friends the image you’ve created.

A well deserved pat on the back for them!

Share on Social Media

With the above covered, your client should be a little more comfortable with you using their testimonial. With their consent, start sharing their success story on your own social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter.

Next Steps

A lot of what you do is relationship building, which will become stronger over time as you provide positive results to your client.

Many personal trainers we’ve been speaking with tend to procrastinate and don’t feel confident asking their clients for testimonials, but it’s essential for your business and increases your chance to acquire new clients in the future.

Don’t be afraid of asking your client today – don’t wait to start next week as you unfortunately won’t be able to go back in time and collect this data retrospectively.