This Fitness Consultation Form Converts Leads Into Clients

Using a well-structured fitness consultation form is an easy way to convert more inquiries and leads into paying clients. It helps you ask the right questions and guide the conversation toward a sale.

In this article, we share the consultation form we recommend to personal trainers and gyms, along with the key questions you need to cover to maximize sales.

We’re a specialist fitness marketing agency with 15+ years of industry experience, so we know first-hand what works when it comes to generating leads. We help gyms, fitness studios, and personal trainers to promote their businesses and get more clients, so our strategies are tried and tested.

What’s a fitness consultation form?

A consultation form is a short document that gyms and personal trainers use when first meeting potential members and clients. It captures basic contact information like name, phone number, and email address, along with details of their fitness interests and exercise needs.

Many membership sales consultants and fitness trainers find it helpful to use a form for the consultation process. It provides a structure to follow that guides the conversation without being too rigid (which keeps it relaxed and natural). It also ensures that you ask the right questions so that you can truly understand the client’s needs and which services will be best suited to them.

Using a really good gym or personal trainer consultation form can help to…

• Increase sales by providing a proven guide for team members to follow
• Identify client needs, barriers, and challenges so you can create a tailored solution
• Enable members and clients to identify their own needs and justify your services to themselves
• Create a consistent experience for gym members or studio clients
• Improve efficiency by providing a repeatable process

Most people don’t like being sold to. They don’t want a sales pitch – they want a solution to their problem.

Asking open questions and listening closely to their answers enables you to create that perfect solution.

But you don’t want to ask just any questions about their health and fitness. It’s vital to ask things that’ll help you uncover their underlying needs and pain points.

That way you can identify exactly what they need from your gym, fitness studio, or personal training business. And how you can present it persuasively and compellingly.

What should it cover?

So, what should a good fitness consultation form cover exactly? Well, it needs to strike a balance between being concise enough that people don’t get bored or feel interrogated and gathering sufficient info to help you sell.

We recommend that gyms and personal trainers collect basic contact info and ask five simple questions…

Contact information

Noting a person’s contact information is the first step in the consultation process. The form needs to capture…

• Name
• Phone number
• Email address
• Postal address (optional, but useful if you do direct mail marketing)

If they’ve inquired by phone or an email form on your website, then you might have some of it already. But it’s essential to collect the key info you need to follow up with them afterward. This simple step helps you convert more inquiries into paying clients.

Quick tip: One mistake we see with our marketing clients is that they ask for too much personal info at this stage. While having their date of birth, Instagram handle, or other details might seem useful, it’s better to streamline the process by collecting only the bare essentials. People can be put off when asked to share a lot of personal details so wait until after they sign up before asking for it.

You might also like… this Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (Printable PAR-Q Form).

What prompted them to get in touch today?

The first question you should ask during a fitness consultation is ‘what prompted you to get in touch today’? This opens the conversation in a way that allows the person to tell you about their motivations in their own words. It’s a simple but powerful tactic.

It often leads to them telling you a story about why they want to join your gym or get personal training. They might recount catching a glimpse of themselves in the mirror and being unhappy with how they look. Or feeling out of breath after running up some stairs and suddenly realizing that they’re no longer as fit as they were in their 20s.

Whatever they tell you, it’ll give you insights into what’s driving them. And this enables you to position your offering in a way that appeals to their underlying motivations.

For example, if they mention always having struggled with their weight, then that’s a cue to highlight your most fun activities that people love doing. Reference your calorie-torching HIIT classes and how other people have seen long-term results with short but consistent workouts. Tailor how you talk about your products and services so it’s clear how they address their specific needs.

Many fitness professionals make the mistake of asking about a person’s goals straight away. And they’ll get a brief response like ‘I want to lose weight’ or ‘I want to get fitter’.

While this info is useful to know (and we’ll ask them about goals later), it doesn’t reveal their underlying drivers. Understanding these drivers is what’ll help you convert more people into paying clients.

Free Fitness Marketing Guide

Learn which fitness marketing strategies produce the best results (so you can focus on what actually works).

What membership types or training services are they interested in?

Next, ask them what membership types or training services they’re interested in. They might have already done some research into your offering so let them tell you what they’re keen on.

It’s an open question that can take the conversation in many directions…

• Membership tiers – they might tell you that they’re specifically interested in a peak-time membership because they work 9-5.
• Facilities – they might say they’re interested in a membership that includes pool access and group classes.
• Training services – they could outline exactly which personal training package they’re interested in and why.
• Workout types – they may describe the types of exercise they’re interested in like HIIT or aqua aerobics.
• They don’t really know – in which case it’s over to you to make some recommendations and explain why you think these will suit their needs.

Whatever their answer, you’ll know what they’re already interested in. It means you don’t need to waste time persuading them about the benefits of something they’re already bought into (like peak over off-peak membership). You can also focus the rest of the conversation on these areas and keep referring back to them (which shows you’re tailoring the solution to their specific needs).

You might also like… 50 Lead Gen Ideas For Fitness Businesses.

Do they have any health or fitness goals in mind?

At this point, it’s time to ask about their health and fitness goals. How you frame this question is important…

If you ask ‘what’s your fitness goal’ some people will freeze like a rabbit in headlights. They might not know how to answer and then feel embarrassed. They may not know what’s realistic or feel uncomfortable admitting how much weight they want to lose or gain.

There’s an underlying assumption in this question that they must already know what they want or need – some people don’t.

The gym can be a daunting place and even seemingly simple questions can make nervous people feel more anxious. We want to put them at ease…

So reframing it as ‘do you have any goals in mind’ can remove some of this pressure. It makes it ok to say ‘no, I don’t really know what to aim for’ or ‘no, I’m not sure what’s achievable’. And it still caters to the people who know exactly what they want and aren’t daunted by the gym.

Once you know their goals, interests, and motivations, you can tailor your sales pitch accordingly. Keep referring back to what they’ve told you and explain how the membership or training package will meet their specific needs. If you’re not sure how to sell, our Fitness Client Fast-Track Playbook outlines exactly what to say at this stage.

What next steps have you agreed?

A fitness client consultation form should also include what the next steps are. How did you leave things and what have you agreed?

Too often fitness professionals won’t ask for the sale or try to close. They’ll answer all the person’s questions and give them lots of information. Then let them walk away without asking if they want to sign up.

Please ask for the sale!

And if they’re not ready to sign up immediately, ask about the next steps. Are they going to think about it? Do they want to discuss it with a partner? When would be a good time to follow up with them?

You’ll get so many more conversions by simply following up. Everyone gets busy so a little reminder is often all it takes. Especially when you’ve done all the groundwork of understanding their motivations and creating a tailored solution.

How did they hear about you?

This is a really quick and easy question that’ll help you improve your marketing and lead generation. Asking ‘how did you hear about us’ gives you an insight into which promo channels are driving leads for your fitness business. Then you can double down on what’s working!

Downloadable fitness consultation form template

To make things easy, we’ve created two downloadable fitness consultation forms for gyms and personal trainers. They cover the key questions we’ve outlined here so you have a clear process to follow.

One form is a printable PDF that you can download and use immediately. The other is an editable Word document so that you can add questions or amend it to suit your business needs.

Both forms along with other lead generation resources are available in our Fitness Marketing Template Bundle…

Our ready-made fitness marketing templates make it quick and easy to promote your fitness business effectively. Generate consistent leads, sign-ups, and sales revenue for your gym, fitness studio, or personal training business.

You’ll get 30+ resources covering…

These affordable templates are the same resources we use with our own clients. The bundle includes all the essentials you need to promote your business and sign up more customers. Learn more here.