Would you walk into a cinema and demand a free trial? or a free trial at your local barber? 

Our landlord does not entertain this farce last time we asked, what about our internet provider? Nope, no such luck there either..

So why do people expect something for free when it’s costing businesses?

Loads of gyms around New Zealand offer free trials. Usually you can come for 1 or 2 session (or maybe even up to a week) for free.

Like these establishments, we also initially offered free trials. As a general rule of thumb, we do not anymore.

What are the reasons for this?

What we discovered is this, people generally don’t appreciate free things.

They might take up freebies but they don’t value them.

So, they might make a booking and not show up. Or they might show up and treat the training session as a time filler.

So, by charging for paid trial sessions we filter out those who are not serious.

If they pay for the their trial session they must really want to give SPARTAFIT a serious try.

I learned this principle from our pilates instructor whose studio is just down the road at Revolution Studios.

She said at her studio nothing is free, including trial sessions.

If someone wants to try a class they have to pay. There are real costs to businesses when the opportunity cost is having full paying members enrolling in the spaces available.

Since then, we started to charge for trial sessions which you are more than welcome to register HERE>(click here)

Our Little Ninja Sensei, gave an analogy, saying you can’t go to a cafe and expect to get a free meal on your first time there.

Someone said that was a flawed analogy because there are costs involved in offering a free meal.

What they don’t realize is that there are also real costs in offering a free trial.

Space rental, equipment usage all cost dearly. But more importantly, beginners (with no experience at SPARTAFIT, CrossFit, F45 in general) take up time.

We need to allocate coaching resources to them. It’s fine if they are real prospects but if not, it’s a waste of our valuable time which could be spent focused on actual members, plus, our class size is limited to a small group so free loaders are literally taking much needed revenue away from a small business.

Charging a fee for trial sessions ensures that only serious prospects will come for a trial.

Many CrossFit gym owners will disagree with this approach. They will say it’s hard enough getting people in the door.

If you charge a fee for trial sessions you will kill off all but the ones who are really determined to get fit.

But those are exactly the ones we want.