Fitness Business School – Becoming the Best Option Through Follow-Up

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I wanna talk with you about becoming your prospect’s best option through follow-up. 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 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.

I think all of us would really love the opportunity to just get our ideal client to just walk through the door upon hearing about us or upon learning about us for the first time, and come in and decide to join and stay for a year or two years, on and on, and well, that all sounds good. Building your
business around that sort of thinking gets a lot of business owners in trouble because it’s just not how we operate as people.

And I think that smart business owners understand this. Smart business owners get that, but still they default to that kind of way of thinking when they get desperate, when things are maybe not going the way they want. I, I mean, it’s amazing how they default to that kind of approach. And I’ve seen ads recently
where there are all these incredibly over-hyped promises. Hey, we’ll add 150 to 300 clients to your gym in the next 30 days. I mean, first of all, could most training based facilities even handle 300 clients coming in the next 90 days without overwhelming them? Could they, could their staff manage it? Could they
onboard people? Could they actually serve those people with the available capacity that they have in a way that would make those clients happy? And would it not alienate all the existing clients that are in place? But see, the ad doesn’t have to address any of those things.

The ad just really kind of latches itself to that pain point of, I need clients. And these guys say they can deliver some lottery ticket kind of number of clients, so they’re gonna fix it. But the thing that, what the thing we really should be focused on is can we build a predictable pipeline that delivers us week after
week, the type of clientele that we want? And the magic in that type of thinking is it allows you to build a pipeline, right? It allows you to build a pipeline and optimize the pipeline. You can keep kind of adjusting things and turning dials, so to speak, until you get the result that you want. Because there are people in
your market who would love to do business with you, but if they don’t understand how you are a better solution for them, how you’re different, how you can better help them go from where they are to where they aspire to be.

Then logically, if they can’t delineate between all the solutions available, they should choose the cheapest, the most convenient, the one that they’re most aware of because it’s in, it’s in class a real estate. So they drive by it every day. They should logically choose those because those are the ones that probably breed
some confidence, right? Like, I mean, if, if something’s in the shopping center next to businesses that are high traffic and are established and they’re paying that kind of rent, there’s this implied confidence, well, hey, this business is successful. And if you see a lot of people going in and out, that’s some sort of social
proof. So how do we compete with that? How do we compete with that sort of business? Whether it’s an orange theory that I know in my neighborhood is right behind Chick-fil-A, right next to Blaze Pizza. It’s in a high traffic shopping center on a heavily thoroughfare and n, not even a quarter mile down the street.

On the other side of that main thoroughfare is a Planet Fitness that’s so big that, I mean, they basically dominate the New Year’s celebration at Times Square. They have that kind of budget, that kind of market awareness. I mean, they’re a big publicly traded company. And so how do we compete and win against
those folks? Well, we need to be the best solution because we’re not gonna be the most visible in most cases. So we have to be the best solution. Well, how do you do that? Well, you build this pipeline and you follow up with people. So I want to give you a way of thinking about follow up and even some systematic
tactical stuff that you can do long-term that will move people in your door day after day. And really all you have to do from that point forward is use some simple cost effective ways to introduce people to this pipeline.

And there you can do them for free. There are plenty of grassroots kind of gorilla marketing type tactics you can do to add people to the pipeline. And then obviously there are ways to simplify and automate it with with ads. So what does this follow up look like? Well, first and foremost, I believe you need two to
three times a week an email that goes out that does one of several things, if not multiple of several things. But the easiest idea is saying, okay, each email only has to do one thing at a time in the content body or the main area of the email. And if it does that, because I know I’m going to be sending these out in
perpetuity, it’s okay if it only does one thing at a time, right? It only has to accomplish this one thing. And maybe today’s email is a demonstration email where you show somebody your expertise because maybe you link to a video of you showing somebody how they can solve a problem.

Like, Hey, here’s a three minute mobility routine that’ll alleviate back pain. Or maybe it’s a demonstration video where you are sharing a case study or some social proof about a client who achieves some great results solving problems that are similar to the problems of the other people that you wanna track. So to
have great relevance to the people that you’re talking to. Maybe you are sharing some tips and actionable tactics that people can go employ, things they can do at home. Suggestions, again, that align with these goals that the people that you wanna serve have, right? So each time you do this, it’s like this deposit in
this relationship bank account, you’re demonstrating that you can help. So you’re positioning yourself as an authority. You’re lowering the perceived risk in their mind because they have evidence that you can help that you know your stuff, that you’re not just some random fitness business that all they’ve seen is a
sign out front.

You’re not just some kind of meagerly educated trainer or coach. You’re somebody who actually has expertise. And if you provide social proof, now you’re getting other people to validate that expertise. It’s not just you. The other thing that you’re doing by offering tips or tactics or even philosophical things like
talking about the way that you approach something, whether it is big picture, but very general stuff in our world, like, hey, body composition change. It’s systemic. It’s not this localized spot reduction type of thinking or something like that. Or deprivation diets and fad diets and everything else like that don’t work.
The whole underpinning of all of them are these commonalities that you see throughout all these successful weight loss approaches. I mean, you could talk about that. And again, your positioning yourself as an expertise, but or as an expert by demonstrating ex expertise. But you are also helping in the moment.

So you’re now taking on this role of coaching people before they’ve even paid you to coach them. So these are a couple different things that I think we can accomplish with these almost relationship deposit esque emails. And you can use the email as this courier to other things that you’re doing. Like if you have
a podcast, if you have great videos on Facebook, if you’ve got valuable posts on social media, you can give a little bit of a preamble and say, Hey, go check out this video I did where I shared those three tips to help you alleviate back pain. And then you provide a link. So now you’re just driving people to this other,
this other location where this content lives. And if they’re like a lot of people, they’re gonna binge a little bit, right? If you’ve got a channel or a thread of more content or something like that, they’re going to start to do a little bit of investigation.

And whether they know it or not, there’s a little bit of research because that’s just how people are doing this. They don’t necessarily have to go with the intent of researching, but it’s kinda like somebody binging on podcasts. If they like one episode, they listen to another. And so that’s, that’s what we’re trying to
accomplish with this email in the body, is we are now positioning ourselves as the best solution because maybe we can’t position ourselves as the most visible solution in the highest traffic area. We don’t have the biggest marketing budget. So now we have to win by being best. So we’re sending this, which is
infinitely more cost effective than renting class a real estate and that sort of thing. So at the end of each of these emails, we want to have some sort of PS where you’re gonna have one to three offers.

Now, when I say offer, this doesn’t mean a sale like in a newspaper circular for the local furniture store or something, right? It’s more of a, an invitation to experience other things that you do. Now, I learned the method I use most that we’ll call a super signature. I learned that from a mentor and friend, Dean Jackson. And that’s the typical one that you’ll see, not only me use, but Dean is, has such, had such an impact in the online marketing world. You see hundreds and hundreds of people use it where it’ll say, Hey, whenever you are ready, here are three ways I can help. And usually in those three options to help, there is some sort of free, really low risk option, right? Like it’s, it just is asking for time. Maybe it’s a link to a book you’ve written that you’re giving away a free download of, or maybe it’s a link to another one of the places that they can learn about you and how you help online.

Maybe it’s a link to like your YouTube channel or a free Facebook group. And then the second link is usually, or it could be an invitation to reply back it. It’s something that might require a little bit more risk. Now, we may see this as low risk and free or whatever else, but it’s still something that is it. It puts them
in an interactive place where there’s some sort of expectation that they may do something and and give up a little bit more of their time in a structured fashion. So maybe it’s a, Hey, download this gift card for our services. So now they’re actually have to say, they’re saying they have the intent to use a service, or
maybe it’s for a free consultation, or maybe it is for a free two week or a 20 day trial or whatever. And then the third option is usually a paid option for your evergreen type of program.

So what this does for us is it allows people to move at their own pace, if you will. It allows them to act if they’ve been inspired or nudged by the email that you sent if for something else caused them to be ready. This is lowering the friction between you and them in this ability to do business together. It is right in
front of them, and you’re giving them instructions on what the next simplest step is instead of them having to go search it out and figure it out on their own. So there’s that. There are varied degrees of next steps. Some of them are a really small single step. Some of them feel a little bit bigger because maybe they’re
having to make a a commitment of time and interest in actually doing more than just consuming information. They’re having to be proactive.

And then maybe the biggest step is they’re committing to some level of a program. So that’s the core super signature that we use. The other thing that we do with that PS is sometimes we wanna shine the spotlight on a specific offer. So we use that real estate to just talk about one specific offer. And maybe it is the
program that we want to produce most. Maybe it’s a program that’s kind of a featured thing coming up, like a transformation challenge. Maybe you are running a sale on some sort of summer program or whatever, depending on the time of year it is, right? So those are the two things that we do with that super
signature. And I think that if you understand that follow up is, is this tool that you can use this way that allows you to compete in a really favorable fashion with people who are spending likely 10 to 20 times more than you on marketing it.

Hopefully that’s an incentive for you to employ this. Now, the thing that we do to compliment this is I would encourage you that if you are in growth mode, we have a one time a week promotion that we’re all also gonna make. And you can make this promotion, this what I would call an invitation style offer. Most
of the time you can make it to your entire audience, you can make it to segments of your audience. But the same kind of email audience that we’re reaching. If we have different ways to connect with them, maybe you alternate one week I make the offer by email. The next week I make an offer by text. But once
a week, we are proactively giving somebody an invitation for a next step with us. And that’s the entire focus of that message. So if you are not sure, the simplest place to start is for four to five weeks, you’re just gonna extend an invitation to something that you have that’s already ongoing, what we would call an
evergreen program.

Maybe it’s your transformation challenge. Maybe they can come in and start the first month for half off. Maybe you know it, but it’s something that is rolling admissions that they can always do. Now, you can create different incentives to get them to come in if you wanna motivate them. You can discount things,
you can add a bonus, you can make it a specialized offering for a segment, your audience, just for former clients, just for referrals. But once a week we have some sort of structured, focused invitation type of offer for people to come in that really makes the offer the spotlight instead of the content that you’re doing
to build up your relationship. And then that fifth or sixth week, depending on the frequency at which you want to go, we’re gonna run a deadline driven offer where for three to five days you’re gonna promote something and it, there’s going to be this fear of missing out at the end of it.

There’s either gonna be enrollment closing at the end of that three to five day window. There’s going to be a discount disappearing at the end of that three to five day window, or there’s going to be a bonus or collection of bonuses that expire or some combination of the three. And that’s gonna nudge those people
who’ve been on the fence and thinking about it, because there is that fear of missing out. There’s that opportunity that will be no longer available to them. So if you have a current prospect list, and we all do, everybody does, whether or not you acknowledge it, you’ve got contacts in your phone, you’ve got
contacts on social media, you’ve got no shortage of people that you can run this kind of format through. What you can do too is filter people. Because if you take this approach and you create this follow up pipeline to really engage your ideal prospect and turn them into a client, you are basically putting your
best foot forward and they’re getting to know you and about you.

So the people that take the off ramp and say, Hey, you are not for me, fine. They were like, I would rather know that in advance. So we didn’t invest a lot of time or resources in one another, finding out we’re the wrong fit. So we have the option to pre-sale people. We’re pre-qualifying people, and we’re not just prequalifying them by by finances. We’re pre-qualifying them by fit, but we’re also building value in our expertise and that fit so that we’re diminishing the impact that financial objection could come into play as. So there’s this wonderful kind of overview of how this can work for you to continually kind of fill your
business with new qualified right fit clients week after week. If you make follow up kind of this linchpin of what you do. Now, I’m going to close by saying this. For most people, this methodology will fall on deaf ears because it’s not the type of thing that shows up in this kind of sexy Facebook ad with massive
promises or whatever else.

But if you’ve been around this industry for longer than a few months, you’ll notice that the people running those Facebook ads were nowhere to be found two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. And the people that have been around for an extended period of time, and who will likely be around
another 2, 3, 5, 10 years are the people who found a consistent way to position themselves as an authority and build a relationship with the market. And if you want to be in that kind of crowd and not this kind of one shot flash in the pan that when can’t deliver, or when people find out what you’re delivering is not
exactly as enticing as promised, then you know you, you disappear. So if you want a sustainable business, go look at it. Everybody that you will see in our industry that has had any degree of longevity coupled with meaningful success, has had an approach that really leaned on these fundamentals.

Now, it may not have used that exact type of tactic like the PSS at the end or whatever else, but that kind of consistency in demonstrating and building a relationship and showing that you can help positioning as an authority that has been inherent in all these businesses. And if you want to have that type of business that stands out, that’s successful for the long term, then learn that lesson and employ it in your business. And if you want my help because I’ve been taking this approach for almost two decades now, shoot me an email at [email protected] and we’ll see if we can help you install this perpetual marketing machine in your business.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School.

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

One of of the things that we’ve been doing with our current clients is taking them through this Ideal Business diagnostic and really what it is, this checklist that allows you to pinpoint exactly what your business needs next so you can keep improving, keep growing, and build a business that you love to own, one that pays you well, one that allows you to have the impact you wanna have and one that allows you to have a lifestyle that you truly enjoy.

In this diagnostic, we walk through everything and we do an evaluation and can instantly pinpoint what you need to do next to build that business that you want. I’m going to extend this opportunity to get on with either me or my team and take you through this evaluation and fix your business’s most vital needs fast.

So if we take you through this, you’re gonna be able to make those vital changes that you need to finally have what I call your Ideal Business. If you’d be interested in going through this entirely free, risk-free diagnostic with us and learn what you already have in place, what you’re doing well and where are your greatest opportunities for rapid improvement are just shoot me an email with diagnostic in the subject line to [email protected].

Again, an email to [email protected] with diagnostic in the subject line will get you scheduled and take you through this evaluation to help you build the business you want.