The Fitness Business School – Is Your Year Off To A Slow Start?

Full Transcript

Welcome to the podcast. In this episode we’re going to be talking about a topic that I’ve seen a lot of fitness professionals talking about at the start of the year and that’s really what to do if I’ve got off to a slow start. So I think I’ve got some tips that can help. So let’s get started.

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

So one of the biggest topics that I’ve seen to start off 2020 is this concern with people getting off to a slow start. The first month or two of the year has been maybe less than they had expected, piggy-backing maybe a December that a lot of people don’t always expect to be big in our industry. But you know, I feel like a lot of people start a year and expect January to really kind of set them up for success throughout the whole year or at least January and February. The problem has been that so many people have been dependent on things that might have worked in previous years. They’re kind of defaulting to those things that worked in 2016, 17, 18 and 19, and a lot of cases maybe worked less well in 2019 than it did 2018 but it wasn’t enough of a drop off to create a red flag to get them to change behaviors or get them to adopt a different approach. So examples of this might mean kind of sticking with the same type of Facebook ads that worked previously and now they’re not converting at all. Sticking with those same challenges that people ran for a couple of years that in many cases transformed people’s business but now have gone stale because everybody in their market is running a challenge or a lot of people in their market have been burned by some of those kind of bait and switch challenges.

So people are really kind of struggling in a lot of cases this year and you know that that is not a necessity. There are a lot of businesses in our industry that are thriving. I mean we’re seeing the Orange Theories, the F45s, going into new markets and pre-selling hundreds of memberships. We’re seeing the big box health clubs like Planet Fitness, pre-sale when they open up in a new market and do 5000 to 10,000 memberships. So people are joining, people are buying. If you’re a independent business owner, or just a small-training based facility, what do you have to do to be able to succeed to be able to make sure that you finish 2020 strong even if it didn’t start off the way you wanted? Well, there are a couple of things that come to mind.

The first is be okay with letting go of something that might have worked in the past, but you know, maybe maybe its shelf life has expired. If we think back the way the fitness industry has worked over time, that happens with everything. But we tend to hang onto things and almost kind of be the captain going down with the ship, if you will. If I look back to almost 20 years ago when I started my first couple of local fitness businesses, things like lead boxes were big drivers for businesses. You might get a day pass to go in and try out a health club or something like that. And frankly group training was just a non-thing. Personal training was largely one-on-one package-based and we see how the industry has evolved to more of a subscription model, a lot more group training-based facilities than one-on-one facilities. Lead boxes may not be the marketing tactic of choice anymore. But we graduated from that. There was a time when Myspace was a viable marketing mechanism. There was a time where I had clients that were doing 800 to 1200 purchases when they ran a Groupon or Living Social. Now somebody might get a dozen if they still try to go back to that. So things change over time. We saw a period with Facebook ads where Wufoo forms like running an ad directly to a Wuform was something that could fill up a six week challenge or a four week challenge or something like that in a matter of 72 hours.

I think over time we understand that we need to evolve. We need to graduate from things that might’ve worked previously, but if we had a positive experience with something, sometimes it’s hard to let it go. So what do we understand that we can kind of carry forward that, that work in virtually any environment? Well, the first thing is follow up is tremendously effective. And if I even date this back to learning some of this industry in a health club setting, people would have a log book of all the prospects that had called in all the prospects who have visited the facility and not purchased and they would just keep working those leads over time. Now the way that health clubs worked leads didn’t necessarily always fit with maybe a service oriented person, but they were consistent with followup. In some cases, they’re almost relentless with followup. So we understand from studying any sort of business or marketing outside of the fitness industry that most purchases don’t happen when somebody initially shows an interest. Basically somebody shows an interest in something, they find a way to kind of vet the options available to them, whether they use social proof like referrals or reviews. They do some investigation by visiting multiple facilities by at least looking at multiple facilities’ online presence, maybe they call a couple of different people on the phone and eventually they make a choice.

And these things usually don’t happen simultaneously. Somebody doesn’t have a light bulb pop over their head and say, you know, I think I’m going to join a gym and get in shape. And then within two hours they’ve joined a gym. What usually happens is they kind of go through that discovery process to make an informed decision. Sometimes that’s about us, but then sometimes that’s about them, right? Sometimes that’s about the prospect thinking, Hey, I’ve tried diets, I’ve tried joining a health club or fitness program before and it didn’t work. And so they just need more confidence that this is going to work. Whether it’s a lack of confidence in themself, a lack of faith in what the actual provider is going to deliver, and each person has their own experience. So the way that we can move somebody from interested to becoming a client that trust us and buys in so we can actually serve them and help them reach their goals is by following up. So whether we’re talking about consistent email follow up, social media follow up, following up via text, phone call, Facebook messenger, we have a lot of different tools at our disposal to continue the conversation with somebody. My recommendation is combine the things that you’re most comfortable with, a multifaceted approach to make sure that you’re meeting somebody where they’re actually paying attention. I tend to use email a lot because most of my clients use email relatively heavily. So you can use email, you can send two to three emails a week, letting somebody get to know you, letting them build some trust with you or, or gain trust in the fact that you can help and then start to believe that you are a viable solution. You can actually solve the problems that they believe they have and help them go from where they are to where they want to be. So my recommendation, follow up, multifaceted approach. I mean, use text, use the phone, use email and stay with somebody because most people make buying decisions when they’re ready, not necessarily when you want them to.

So in a marketing landscape where leads, they’re harder to come by where there are more people trying to vie for that prospect’s attention. So there’s more competition than ever before. And then where leads are just more expensive. Make every lead more valuable, follow up more. The second thing that I would recommend you do if you want to thrive in this market is start to look back at offline marketing. A lot of people, when I talk to somebody, when they struggle, right? I’ll talk to somebody and they’ll say, Hey, you know what? My leads have dried up. My business is down, everything else, and I’ll ask them what they’re doing for marketing in variably they’re doing nothing offline. They’re not getting out and networking. They don’t have a robust referral program that has multiple referral systems in place. They’re not doing any public speaking. They don’t have any strategic alliances with local businesses. They’re not getting out and really connecting in the community, which makes no sense at all because we’re selling something that’s face to face. We’re not typically delivering this thing virtually all of the time. Even if there is a virtual component to what you deliver, somebody is coming to see you two, three, four times a week in person. It would make sense that we can actually connect with those people in person if we want to start to build a relationship.

And then the last thing that I would tell you is in a more competitive market, you’ve got to dial things in, right? You need to track your numbers a little bit better. You need to track your lead sources a little bit better to know where leads are coming from, what’s working. You’ve got to be willing to get outside and not just the reactive and hope people walk in the door, set some targets each day, new leads, new guests inside your facility, sales closed. Do more of that. Be a little bit more focused. And what you’re going to find is what I’ve seen for the last almost 20 years doing this as a business coach. You know, the people who aren’t stepping up their game are going to struggle, but the people who do, there’s always room at the top. There’s always opportunity for somebody who’s doing a great job and delivering a great service to thrive. So if you’re looking for some ideas to step up your game and finish 2020 strong, hopefully those were of some help. If you need more help, feel free, reach out, I’m happy to help you build your ideal business.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.