Fitness Business School – Build Your Client-Generation Machine

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about creating your own client generation machine. We’ve got a lot to unpack here, so 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 til the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

You know, in most things, we recognize the need to progress incrementally in school. It’s first grade, second grade, third grade beyond you know, every passing year, the curriculum evolves and we master one thing before we move to the next in baseball, we’ve gone from T-ball at a coach pitch to machine pitch, and then finally kids pitched one another, everything, you know, the fields get bigger, the rules get more aligned with what the, the adult baseball world looks like. And martial arts. We have a belt system and in most good fitness businesses, there’s like this exercise progression, right? With, depending on somebody’s proficiency, we, you know, we, we have progressions that they can move up through that that are more appropriate for their, their stage. And I, I want to give you kind of a simple sort of progression in this episode about how to generate clients.

So we’ll start with kind of white belt level stuff and move our way through. So with level one, the goal is to lay a foundation that all the other stuff would be built on, right? That means getting clear about your message, who you help, what you help them do for me, it’s I help fitness business owners create their ideal business. For my wife, Holly, it might be, I help moms live their best life. So for you, you could simply start with filling in these simple blanks. It’s kind of like a mad lib, right? I help blank being these people and then blank accomplish these things. So I help you know, a certain target market accomplish their goals or achieve their desires, right? And then we want to create this small library of thoughts on why we do what we do, examples of how we’ve done it for other people. Our own experiences, our own process of doing it in our unique way. The questions that, that prospects ask that, that we can uniquely answer, and this is going to help us have those conversations with prospects in a way that allows them to know like, and trust us and eventually become clients. Next, we need to develop some basic marketing assets.

So we have our language, we have our message. Then we want to create some simple assets. So we want to have some sort of a web presence, preferably some sort of simple website a Facebook business page and a Google business listing, right? Plenty of other places you can create business listings, but that’s not necessarily the starting point. Think about the Google listing, almost like the old yellow pages, you know, if you needed a plumber or a roofer or whatever else, that’s where you’d have gone to find them. That’s where you’d look first. We want to be there when people are looking. And then after that, we want to start reaching out to those people. We already have relationships with and inviting them to experience what we do, right. We want to start with those people that are familiar with us and let them come in and, you know, maybe become clients, at least become advocates and start to be people who can spread the word on our behalf. They can you know, experience what we do so that when people ask them, they’ll be able to, to articulate how we can help in a really, really powerful way. And you know, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to worry about attracting people who don’t know us well, overlooking the people that do. So we need to list out the people that we already know, pull out your cell phone, open your, your email contacts, all that stuff, and invite them in with individual personal messages.

Now I know this all sounds simple and basic good. It should, right? Kindergarten tee ball, white belt. That’s all basic stuff too. Right? So then we want to move on to what I would consider kind of like level two of client generation, and really that’s developing a simple pipeline and a proactive outreach plan. My recommendation is to start at that last step that somebody experiences before they become a client and choreograph a plan working in reverse. So if you want to have somebody come in for a success session or a trial where you’re going to make them an offer, that’s the last step. So we need to dial that in and then work to the next step backwards, leading up to that. Usually we have to have a way to confirm that they’re coming in, right? Like we’re going to confirm the appointment, confirm the consultation.

And then the next step in reverse of that would be, you know, we need an ask. We need an invitation to get them to say they want to come in. For most people. You’ve probably heard me recommend this three time a week email, where they PS like the one that I use, we call it a super signature that invites them to, to engage with us when they’re ready. And then, you know, periodically, we, you know, we send out other offers. Sometimes there’s a deadline sometimes, or just an invitation, right? And so that’s, that’s a pretty solid pipeline, right. But then we need to get to that other end of the pipeline. And, you know, we want to make sure that we have a way to get people to, to enter the pipeline because we know what we’re going to do once they’re there, we’re going to follow up with them with that three times a week email, we’re going to make those offers in the PS or, or invite them in. We’re going to have a success session or a trial where they get to make a decision, but you know, to get them in the door, to get them to, you know, really raise their hand and give you permission to follow up, we can give away something, right?

We need something to attract people to, to who might be a fit for what we offer now for a lot of people, I’m going to tell you, just give away a gift card for your services. I use books as a lead magnet a lot, but there are plenty of other lead magnets. I’m sure that you see people run ads for cheat sheets and checklists and cookbooks. And, and you know, here download my training program or whatever else. The key is to get somebody to indicate their interest without requiring them to make some really big commitment immediately. We want people to give us their contact information in exchange for that gift. So we have permission to follow up. Now, we, you know, we want at least an email address or somebody to join a Facebook group. But if you’re, you know, if, if you want to send them something like a copy of a book or something, you can definitely ask for more, you can ask for phone numbers, you can ask for mailing addresses, but it minimum, we need some baseline way to follow up. And now we’ve got what I would consider like a minimum viable pipeline. And that’s really the foundation of of this level too, right? We’ve got a way for somebody to enter the pipeline ways to, to kind of guide them through.

And ultimately it results in them connecting with us in person, either for a consultation success session or a trial where we get to put our best foot forward and hopefully get them to move forward with us as a client. Now at this kind of level two or stage two, there are just couple more things we need to complete. We need to have that lead magnet or that, that gift, whatever is getting them to raise their hand, your gift card, your book, we need it everywhere. We can put it right. Our email signature on our Facebook personal page, on our business page, on our website, we need to ask other people to share it. And then we probably need to pick one offline and one online approach to, to introduce what we do to other people. You know what I mean? You could run Facebook ads, you could do Facebook or Instagram, kind of organic stuff anywhere we can reach our crowd and then ultimately give away whatever that gift is that lead magnet. And then we want to probably do the same thing offline, right? We want to have some way to get the word out some way to connect with new people and start those conversations.

Now I know that seems really, really simple, but, but that’s okay. Now it, it, the third level we want to do what I call building on the winners. If you’re doing something well, let’s figure out how we can go and take the things that we’re good, good at and do great. So if you’re sending your three times a week email, make those PSS more engaging, add varied ways for somebody to engage. Instead of giving someone the opportunity to come in for a success session, maybe we say, Hey, you can get on a call or you can do a short-term program or a free trial. And then we want to layer some things in. We want more deadline driven promotions or incentive focused offers where, you know, we’re creating more of an opportunity to invite people in. We want to really kind of build out a referral system where we have bring a friend options. We give people maybe a gift card at the point of sale. And, you know, we, we are building on our strengths, the things that we’re doing well, we’re adding to. And then finally, once we’ve dialed in these first three levels, right, we’ve laid the foundation. We have a message. We’ve started to connect with the people we already know.

Then we start to build out a pipeline and fill the pipeline. Next week, we just kind of take the things we do well and try to do them, do them better. And then finally we can diversify. Now, this is where I think people jump too way too early. They don’t get the foundational things in order first. And they jumped to diversification, right? I mean, you can add in seasonal promos or different lead magnets, you can pick a second marketing channel to connect people with maybe offline. You’re adding public speaking to just doing networking. Originally. Maybe you go from focusing entirely on Facebook to adding Instagram. And you know, at this stage you want to keep fine tuning everything, right? Because the more data we have, the more people that we’ve connected with, the more people that have gone through the pipeline, the better we can refine things. So that for every hundred people that enter that pipeline may be instead of 10 of them becoming clients, maybe we turn it into 12. Maybe we turn it into 15. And that’s how we get a much better ROI for the ad spend or the effort or, or marketing budget that we allocate to growing our business. And then finally, level five. And this, this is kind of the, the black belt level stuff. And that’s where you can hand off some of the ongoing day-to-day stuff, right? Sure.

Most of us probably need help with the creation of the website or landing pages, or maybe somebody to pretty up the lead magnet, or we’re going to buy gift cards or that sort of thing. But those are usually investments in one time kind of asset creation or, or direction on how to do things, right. It, but it stays five at this level. Now that you have a machine that is working well, you can and probably should hand some of it off. Somebody can manage the ads for you, or you can train somebody on your business to do the sales on your behalf. You can hire an administrative assistant to help with follow up, or you could pay for them to go through a course on advertising. So you don’t have to hire an agency, but, but, but this is level five and this isn’t the place that you’re supposed to start. Right? Don’t jump to this just because you’re trying to avoid having to do it because you’re not good at it. In the beginning. None of us are good at challenging things. In the beginning, we all have to earn the right to be good at them. And by building the pipeline by really refining it, you’re going to get good at it.

And you’re going to be way more effective it managing the people, either in house or the stuff that you’re doing outsourcing and get a better result. So you can do it profitably and ultimately graduate to play your best role. Now, a couple simple thoughts on this before we wrap it up. Now, there are certainly some pieces that I walked through the that you can kind of shift things around, but this, this pipeline, this concept is exactly how I’ve approached this with over 30 different businesses that I’ve owned. And I’ve really kind of guided at this point, thousands of business owners to take a similar approach. And I promise it’s going to work no matter what type of business that you have, no matter what stage you are, if you build it, step-by-step in this fashion. And then there are two real important ideas that you need to, to keep in mind. And they are this concept of focus and this, this mentality of being consistent. Once you get something dialed in and that takes focus to get it dialed in and master it, build on it, but then keep doing what works. Don’t get bored. Don’t chase, shiny objects, keep doing what works consistently and it’s going to pay off. So hopefully this helps you wrap your head around how to create your own client generation machine. I know it’s worked for me. It’ll work for you too.

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