Fitness Business School – How Do People Make Buying Decisions

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in this episode, I want to talk with you about the way people really make buying decisions. Let’s get started.

Welcome to the fitness business school podcast. The show for fitness business owners who want to grow their income, increase their end impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen to the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

Over the past few days. I’ve ended out making a couple purchases I’ve, I’ve committed to a couple things that, you know, I have varying degrees of financial investment and actual commitment. And, and what I did was I actually jotted down some notes on my process and how I kinda went about making these buying decisions. And the reason I did this is because a lot of times in our world, we, we think about what we want the consumer to do. We want them to follow the, the buying process that, that, that is most convenient and most advantageous to us. When in reality, I don’t think that’s the way that most people make their purchasing decisions.

So the way that I made my purchasing decisions, like if we go down the list here the, the first thing I I can think of. So Holly has you know, a 2022 Jeep grand Cherokee. So, you know, a relatively new car that it would appear a neighborhood kid kind of rode his bicycle into the fender of, and the handlebar made a, a scratch down the fender, right? So certainly not tragic by any means, but something on a, you know, a car that’s just a, a few months old, you, you would probably prefer to fix. So I didn’t have any preexisting relationships for that kind of solution. Now I could have taken it back to the dealer, but the dealer that we bought from actually no longer has kind of the, the body shop part of their business. The, the place Holly in her previous car at one point had been rear-ended on the way home, like driving Alex home from school one day. And so we had had a re like a collision repair shop, do stuff, but I felt like this was a smaller kind of need. And I know there are some businesses just based on, you know, growing up, working in a garage, my dad owning a garage. I know there’s some businesses that specialize in that kind of small scratch and dent stuff. And so I didn’t have a specific person in mind there.

So I went to Google and I looked at all the reviews, I just typed in stuff and looked at the reviews. And I looked at you know, that, that Google local listing. And I said, okay, well, what are the stars? What are the, the comments in the reviews? How close is this to me? Are there any photos that can show me about the, the work that, that they’ve done? And there, then there were a couple businesses that I felt like ranked relatively well. And then I, I selected the one that was closer to me that that actually is just, you know, maybe within two miles of me versus the other one that, that I thought kind of met that initial filtering criteria that was about 20 minutes away. And the, you know, so I call and I get somebody to pick up the phone within just a couple rings. And that was kind of the way that process worked and worked. And there was no real friction along the way, you know, I could send a couple pictures over, they could gimme a quote, we could schedule something. And all of that was very, very low friction, very simple.

But if we think about that that’s how I went about that buying decision. I certainly didn’t look on Facebook, hoping something would magically pop into my feed. I didn’t look on Instagram and type in scratch and dent or something like that. Right. Like I, I went to Google and look for this, but then on the flip side there were, there are a couple home projects that we’re doing the, the first of which was a, like, where last year we did this brand new, big patio deal at, at our house. Well, there’s a, you know, a deck that I sits kind of above the patio that needed replace. So we went to you know, I, I went to people that I already know, and I said, Hey, do you have somebody you can refer to do this, like the people who built the patio. And so I went to their, you know, went to that referral and said, okay, this is gonna be the first place I look, and I’ll get a quote and make my decision based on that, that quote. So that’s how that worked out. So I asked the same people because we wanted to get some painting done at our house. Well, so I went to the, the same people and said, Hey, do you know anybody who does this? I got another quote. And I felt like it was a little bit higher than, than I thought it should be. So I went to people who had done some work for us previously not the same type of work. And I say, Hey, is this in the scope of what you do? And they said it was, they gave me a quote. I accepted that quote. So think about this for, for a minute.

We put an ad in front of like a training program. And for, for people on social media, a lot of the time, or we send out a direct mail piece to, to ask somebody to buy in the moment. And, and sometimes we’re frustrated with the response like, Hey, I spent X number of dollars on this ad and I didn’t get anybody to buy. Well, I just committed to spending, you know, at, at this point, multiple five figures on things that you know, three different projects, if you will all varying degrees of commitment or whatever else, I didn’t look on Facebook or YouTube or Instagram, a single time. And I basically went off referrals and reviews to make my buying decisions. And you know, that’s the way that, that I buy a lot of things. Like if I get on Amazon, I’m going to look at reviews or somebody recommends a book to me. I’ll go and probably buy it without thinking twice. Now you may say, well, fitness is different. You know, this, what I’m selling is different. Well, everybody thinks what they’re selling is different. And the reality is in, in my world, me committing to a certain behavior for the next 12 months, three days a week, and allocating that amount of time to me is that for me, not for everybody, but for me would feel like a greater level of commitment, you know, two or three days a week of appointment that I’m rearranging my day around.

And I’m building my schedule around sound like way bigger commitment than having somebody come over here and paint my house, because at the end of painting my house, it’s done in a week that that project is over. And you know, the, the other is kind of this commitment and perpetuity. So, you know, it’s not apples to apples, but it’s, it’s useful to think about the way that people actually make buying decisions. So my kind of homework for you as we wrap up this episode is to think about the last 3, 4, 5 buying decisions that you’ve made that were over a hundred dollars. And I don’t care if it was you know, buying a retail item, investing in a service, a anything, think about how you made those decisions. Were they based on convenience? Were they based on things that you already know, places you’ve already purchased? If it’s something new, did you look at reviews? Did you ask for referrals? Did you already have some sort of awareness? So another thing that I, that I purchased in lately was this piece of technology that I’ve seen a bunch of ads for. But I hadn’t pulled the trigger on, but then I had a client at our house the other day and they had one and they kind of nudged me over the top. And because I had clicked on this website, the ads were following me around. So the ads, I think, solidified the buying decision.

I think I would’ve lost track of it and stopped thinking about it. If the ads wouldn’t have reinforced this, and that’s a lot of what, you know, me sending three time, a week emails, or in my case, more than that, it is about right. It’s about trying to show up and be in front of people consistently when they are gonna make a buying decision and hopefully getting them to know like, and trust me and feel like I can be the one to help them when that time comes, that they’re making a decision. So that’s just a little bit of insight on how buying decisions occur, at least in my world. And hopefully a prompt to get you to look at the buying decisions in your world. Because I think that you’ll get a lot better result if you build around the way people actually operate instead, instead of the way that we wish that operate.

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