Three rules before the words
Most gym owners hate the idea of a script because they picture a used-car voice. A script exists so that the worst call of the week is as good as the best one, and so that when someone new starts on the desk you can hand them a page instead of a shrug. The words below are ordinary words. Nobody has to act.
Rule one: the call has one job, and it is not selling a membership
The job of the enquiry call is to book a specific time on a specific day and get the person to turn up. Nothing else. A price quoted over the phone has nothing attached to it — no tour, no coach, no conversation about the thing they actually want fixed.
Rule two: ask before you tell
The person calling has a reason. Until you know it, every sentence you say about your gym is a guess. Two questions get you most of the way there.
Rule three: never answer “how much is it?” with a number, first
Not because the price is a secret — put it on your website. But as the first thing out of your mouth to a stranger, a number is a yes-or-no test on the least useful axis. Acknowledge, give a range, redirect to the appointment.
Script one: the inbound enquiry call
Use this when the phone rings, and use the same thing when you are calling back a lead who came in from a form — just change the opening line. Square brackets are the bits you swap.
“[Gym name], this is [your first name].”
“Hi — I was just wondering about your classes / your prices / whether you do personal training.”
“Yeah, absolutely, happy to help with that. Before I do — what’s your name?”
“Great, [name]. And what’s the best number for you, in case we get cut off?”
Name and number in the first fifteen seconds, every time. Calls drop and people hang up, and a number in your CRM is the difference between a lead and a wasted ring.
“So [name], what made you look for a gym right now? Like, why this week and not six months ago?”
They tell you the real reason. Doctor, wedding, birthday, the stairs, a friend, a divorce. Let them finish. Do not fill the pause.
“Got it. And have you trained anywhere before, or would this be starting fresh?”
Now you know whether to reassure or to challenge.
“Okay. So if I’ve got this right — you want to [their words, back to them, almost exactly], and you’d be starting from [where they said]. Is that fair?”
Saying their reason back in their own words is the whole technique. Not a paraphrase. If they said “I get out of breath going upstairs at work”, you say “getting up the stairs at work without being out of breath”. That sentence is what you will use again when you present the price.
“That’s pretty much exactly what we do here, and honestly the best way to know if we’re right for you is to come in and see it. What we do is a [free intro / consult / first session] — it’s about [30] minutes, you’ll meet [coach name], we’ll look at where you’re at and what the plan would look like. No pressure, and you don’t need to bring anything.”
“Are you generally better in the mornings or the evenings?”
“Evenings, mostly.”
“Perfect. I’ve got Tuesday at 6, or Thursday at 6:30. Which one works better?”
Two options, not “when are you free”. An open question makes the other person do the work and the usual result is “let me check and get back to you”, which is a no with better manners.
“Brilliant — Tuesday at 6 with [coach name]. I’m putting you in now. I’ll text you the address in about two minutes so you’ve got it in your phone; can you reply with a thumbs up so I know it came through?”
“One last thing — stuff comes up, I get it. If something changes, just text that same number and we’ll move it. I’d rather move it than have you not turn up. Sound good?”
“See you Tuesday, [name].”
The “text me back” ask does two jobs: it confirms the number is real, and it starts a conversation thread, which makes the reminder texts land as a continuation instead of an intrusion. Send the text before you put the phone down.
What they actually say, and what you say back
“How much is it?” — usually in the first ten seconds
“Sure. Memberships run from about [$X] to [$Y] a month depending on how often you’re in and whether you want coaching one-to-one. Which end you land on really depends on what you’re after — can I ask what made you start looking?”
Real range, four seconds, then straight back to the question. If they push again, give the exact number and then book: “The [three-day] one is [$X] a month, no contract. Want me to put you in Tuesday at 6 so you can see whether it’s worth it?” Never dodge twice — dodging twice reads as a hidden price.
“I just want to try a class”
“Yeah, we can do that. What I’d do first is fifteen minutes with [coach name] before the class starts, just so they know about [their reason] and can scale things for you. Otherwise you’re in a room full of people who’ve been doing it two years, and that’s a rough first hour. Tuesday you’d want to be here at 5:45 rather than 6 — does that still work?”
“I need to talk to my wife / husband / partner”
“Totally fair. Bring them — genuinely. Half the time they end up joining too. Tuesday at 6 works for both of you?”
Heard at the intro rather than on the phone, the same line works and is stronger: never present a price to one half of a decision if the other half can be in the room.
“Let me think about it”
“Of course. Can I ask — is it the money, the timing, or you’re not sure it’s the right fit?”
This is the single most valuable question in the whole document. “Think about it” is not information. Money, timing and fit are three different problems with three different answers, and people will nearly always tell you which one it is if you name all three so that none of them sounds like an accusation.
Script two: the in-person intro
They turned up. The next thirty minutes decide it. Structure: greet, sit, ask, show, price, ask for the sale. The mistake almost every gym makes is doing the tour first, which means you show them a rowing machine before you know whether they care about rowing. (What the intro itself should be — free session, paid challenge or consult — is covered in gym intro offers that convert.) If you run a PT studio, the same order works for a consultation, and our page on marketing for personal training studios covers how we fill those consults.
“[Name]? Hey — [your name], we spoke on Tuesday. Glad you made it. Find us okay?”
“Come sit down for a sec, I want to hear about you before I show you anything — otherwise I’ll just walk you past a load of equipment you don’t care about.”
Say their name within three seconds of them walking in. Stand up. Do not talk to them from behind a desk with a screen between you.
“You mentioned on the phone it was about [their reason]. Tell me a bit more about that.”
“What have you tried before? What happened with it?”
“Realistically, how many days a week can you be here? Not the best-case week — a normal week with work and kids.”
“If you came in three times a week for the next six months, what would have to be different for you to say that was worth it?”
“What’s the thing you’re worried about? Everyone’s got one — is it being the newest person here, the cost, the time, an old injury?”
Write the answers down in front of them, on paper. It signals that you are going to use them, and you will: questions three and four set the membership you recommend, and question five is the objection you would otherwise meet at the end, brought forward to a point where you can actually deal with it.
“Right — so based on what you said, let me show you three things.”
“This is the 6pm class you’d be in. See her in the grey? Started in March, same as you, couldn’t do a push-up. That’s the scaling board — everything on the whiteboard has a version for day one.”
“And this is where you’d be for the first two weeks, with [coach], before you join the main class. Any questions on any of it?”
Three things, tied to what they told you, each one aimed at the worry from question five. Not eleven things. A long tour lowers the close rate because it buries the two things that mattered.
“So — you said [their reason, their words], you can be here [three] days a week, and the thing you’re worried about is [their worry]. Given all that, I’d put you on the [three-day] membership. It’s [$X] a month, no contract, and it includes [the two-week on-ramp with a coach].”
Then stop talking. Completely. Do not fill the silence, do not add a discount, do not explain the price again.
One recommendation, not a menu. A three-column price sheet turns a decision about whether to change their life into a comparison-shopping exercise, and comparison shoppers leave to compare.
“Do you want to get started? I can put you in Thursday’s 6pm and we’ll do the on-ramp piece before it.”
“Great. Two minutes of admin, then I’ll introduce you to [coach]. And give me your address and I’ll get a shirt ready for Thursday.”
“No problem at all. Is it the money, the timing, or you’re not sure it’s the right fit?”
Ask directly and ask once. “So, what do you think?” is not an ask. If it is a no, you are not trying to rescue it in the room — you are trying to find out which of the three it is so the follow-up text seven days from now can be about the right thing.
If it’s still no, the exit line
“Honestly, that’s fine — it’s a real decision and I’d rather you were sure. Can I do this: I’ll text you in a week, and if it’s still a no then, I’ll leave you alone. And if you find somewhere better, tell me where, because I’d genuinely like to know. Deal?”
This gets explicit permission to follow up, which is what makes the seven-day text land. A person who said “deal” is not annoyed to hear from you.
If they don’t pick up
Leave a voicemail and send a text within a minute of each other. The voicemail is short and the text does the work, because almost nobody calls a voicemail back.
“Hi [name], it’s [your name] from [gym name] — you got in touch about training with us. I’ll send you a text now so you’ve got my number, just reply whenever suits. Thanks.”
No pitch, no price, no “great news”. Say who you are, say why, point at the text, get off.
The text that goes with it, and the four that follow it if they stay quiet, are written out in full in our copy-paste SMS follow-up cadence. The call script and the text cadence are two halves of the same system; if you only implement one, implement the texts, because they run whether or not anyone is free to pick up the phone.
Getting a nineteen-year-old to actually use this
A script in a Google Doc is decoration. What works:
- Print it. One page for the call, one for the intro, laminated, at the desk. Not on a phone.
- Role-play three times before it goes live. You play the caller. Be normal, then be difficult. Third run, ask the price in the first five seconds.
- Record your own calls where your state or province allows it, and listen to one a week. Otherwise have someone sit in. It is the only reliable way to find out the script is being skipped.
- Tally four numbers on paper by the phone: enquiries taken, appointments booked, showed up, signed. A five-column tally sheet beats a CRM report nobody opens.
- Review the tally on the same day each week. Fifteen minutes. If booked-to-showed is the weak link it is a reminder problem; if showed-to-signed is weak it is the intro script; if enquiries-to-booked is weak it is the phone.
Why this is worth more than another campaign
A gym that converts more of its enquiries gets cheaper members from the same ad spend, immediately, without changing anything in an ad account. It is the least glamorous lever in the business and the most reliable one — a better use of a week than chasing a lower gym Facebook ads cost per lead.
Carlos at HIITCore Fitness collected $1.1K+ in his first week of launch — and no campaign collects money on its own. Somebody still has to pick up and know what to say.
If the phone part is handled but nothing reaches people fast enough, the follow-up system is the other half we build: instant text, voicemail drop, and a cadence that keeps going for weeks so the script above gets used on people who are still warm.
Take these, change the words so they sound like you, and use them on Saturday. If you want a second pair of eyes on where your enquiries are actually dropping — the phone, the show-up rate, or the intro — that is a thirty-minute call and you do not need to buy anything at the end of it.
