Fitness Business School – Converting Your Prospects

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about converting those unconverted prospects that we all have in our database. Those people who’ve shown an interest, but have yet to join. 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.

I don’t know about you, but I encounter a lot of people who come into my ecosystem, I guess you’d call it, but people who are interested, but they’re not ready to, to invest in coaching. They’re not ready to join a program just yet. And years ago, that that kind of just clicked with me. And I, I started to understand that there is this kind of continuum or this path that people are on where, you know, they are interested, but maybe they’re not ready to commit and I can help kind of move them along that path as a guide, if you will. In fact, it took me back to my time as a college baseball coach, because that’s really how recruiting worked, right? You know, you would connect with prospects that might be a good fit for your program. You, you know, you express interest in them. They express interest in you, you follow up, they become more educated about the options available to them and how you might be a fit, you get them to campus. And then maybe it’s a good fit for both parties for them to become a member of your team.

Well, when I started to look at business in that way, and I started to look at prospective training clients in that same way, instead of thinking about, okay, this is, you know, me running an ad and somebody needs to see that ad and rip it out of the newspaper or bring in the direct mail piece and run in the door and join. You know, I, it really made business much simpler for me and my expectations completely changed. And then I kinda also knew my role in marketing changed because we don’t know where those prospects are on that path. When we meet them, they may have already been investigating a dozen different options. And they’re really close to making a choice as to who’s going to help them reach their health and fitness goals. They may just be starting out on this journey all together, or maybe there’s somewhere in the middle. They’ve been thinking it, but they haven’t really got into the interview investigation part. We just don’t know.

And if you’re running Facebook ads direct to offers where Hey, come in and do our six week challenge or Hey, come in and do our 30 day program. The only people that really connects with and speaks to is the person who’s almost at that end of that path. And they’re so close to ready that you just kind of timed it up, right? But the vast majority of people, and, you know, there, there’s plenty of research out there that that would kind of substantiate this. But the vast majority being like almost 90% of people that are interested in making a purchase are not yet ready to buy. In fact, most of them won’t be ready to buy within three weeks.

So we need to see step in and say, you know what, I’m going to be your guide on this journey. I’m going to be that person that, that kind of holds your hand and walks you to where you’re trying to go. And I’m going to educate you and motivates you. So how do we do that?

Well, the first thing that we can do is find a way to connect with them consistently. Now, for me, obviously I use a daily email is my primary point of connection with prospective clients consistently and educating them and motivating them and answering the questions they have. And maybe even kind of stepping in, into that role of coach before they’re ready to hire a coach, but maybe they’re, they’re interested in listening, but kind of on their terms, right? They, they, they like the coaching, but they don’t want to commit to a program. So emails easy for, for that. But I’ve also layered on things like this podcast. I mean, that’s kind of what we’re doing right now, right? I’m coaching you on how to convert unconverted prospects. You get to listen to it on your terms. You’re not paying a different fee to access it. You’re, you’re basically getting some coaching on demand, kind of at your convenience and you can use it, how you like. So you can use something like this. You can use video, whether you post it on a platform like Facebook or for you’re posting it and trying to optimize it for people to find it on YouTube.

But ideally we want to not only take on this role of educating and motivating somebody, but we want to step in and kind of, I guess, take control of the relationship to make sure this, that they’re getting this material right. They’re getting this intellectual. So we want somebody to opt in for the, the email newsletter. We want somebody to subscribe to the podcast or to our YouTube channel. We want them to join our private Facebook group so we can make sure that they’re getting this stuff consistently enough, that we’re helping them to make a buying decision. We’re helping them to move along that path, because if they’re just doing it arbitrarily, we don’t have much control over it. So that’s, that’s kind of in my mind a turning point in this relationship, the first thing that we got to do is understand the path that people are on and be willing to play the role of the guide.

The second thing that we do is get them to opt into letting us be the guide. And then once, once we’re on that path with them periodically, we’re making, making offers, right? We’re inviting them to experience what we, what we do, how we can help in a more kind of interactive way, right? More of a true coaching centric fashion. So we’re going to make offers. Deadline-Driven offers. We’re going to make engagement style offers. We’re going to keep offers in front of them with some degree of regularity. So when they’re ready, they don’t have to wait around for the next special we run, or the next challenge we offer, we let them know that, Hey, this is about you. Whenever you’re ready, we’re here to help. And then periodic, basically we can inspire them to maybe get off the fence. If they’re close, if they’re getting close to that, that finish line, so to speak, and they’re there, they’re approaching readiness, then we can nudge them a little bit. We can do a deadline-driven offer where maybe we offer a little bit of a discount, or we have an enrollment for a program that that’s going to have a, a closing date. So, Hey, we’re going to start on Monday. So if they’ve been thinking about it and procrastinating, this, this kind of nudges them forward, or maybe we give them a gift as an incentive where, Hey, if you join, you get this bonus so we can invite them, but we can also inspire action and we can also make it easy, right? I mean, it’s hard enough to somebody to get out of their comfort zone. It’s hard enough to get somebody to embrace change. People resist change. They like kind of staying where they are. And usually they have either be really motivated to change or they need change to be made a little bit easier if you’ve read any of the great resources out there, like atomic habits or tiny habits, you know, things that, that talk about habit building and behavior change.

One of the key things that you’ll hear commonly is we want to make new habits easy to adopt, right? We want to make the stuff we want to stop doing hard to do, and the stuff we want to start doing easy to do. So how can we make it easier for somebody to come in? You know, that’s where referrals are always a great way to go, because it’s always easier to start something with a friend. So you have a degree of comfort. It’s always easier to start something. If it’s not a big commitment, maybe we have a smaller commitment. Maybe we’re not putting somebody in as uncomfortable in the environment from day one. Maybe we’re only asking them to get out of their comfort zone phone from a time, or yeah, an emotional standpoint. We’re not asking to pay out of the gate. We say, Hey, come in and do a free session or a free week. So we lower some of the risks there. But if you want to convert prospects, you need to do you see that this is a journey that they’re on and they’re probably going to need some help because we’re asking them to do something differently.

Sure. You can wait around and take the people who just kind of stumble across what you do at the right time. But you’re going to be missing out on 80 to 90% of the people that you potentially can help and be paid to help if you’re not taking a role as a guide in this journey. And you’re not, not basically coaching them until they pay you to coach them. You’re not putting offers in front of them. You’re not making it easy to get started with you. And you’re not proactively really going into this kind of conversion role. Yeah. You’re just kind of waiting around for business to fall in your lap. So if you want to convert more prospects yeah. You can think about, well, how do I overcome this objection in a sales consultation? How do I get them to decide now, without having to go talk it over with their spouse or, or use money as an objection, those things are relevant, but they’re, they’re, they’re basically, you know, stepping over dollars to pick up nickels. You’re going to have more impact, more opportunity and more growth. If you start to see how you get people to land at your door, eager and ready to join, because of all of the things that you did leading up to that, do that. And conversion becomes easy.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School. And before you go, I have a quick announcement. When I first connect with a fitness business owner, they almost always ask me, “How can I get more leads or how can I get more clients?” Well, I have an exclusive offer for you and it’s going to help you do just that. As a listener of this show, you can test drive Fitness Lead Academy for six full weeks for just a dollar. Fitness Lead Academy is a one of a kind program where you get done-for-you marketing tools and coaching to attract more qualified prospects and convert them into paying clients. Imagine having three marketing emails written for you each and every week for easy-to-deploy promotions provided to you that are proven to convert and they’re ready to use and proven ads and social media posts given to you each and every month as well. Plus you have access to three weekly live video coaching sessions to help you with everything from dialing in your brand to navigating things like building funnels and getting ads approved. You get all of this and more when you join Fitness Lead Academy. And to prove that FLA can serve you as your virtual marketing department and not only save you plenty of time, but also consistently bring you more leads and clients, you can get access to the entire coaching program for six full weeks. Again, for just $1. If it delivers for you in the way that I expect it will, you can continue on for just $199 a month. So basically, just one additional client each month and you’re ROI positive. And I’m sure that if you apply what we give you, you’re going to get more than just one additional client each month. And you’re going to likely save at least 10 hours a month to take advantage of this special offer. Just go to TestDriveFLA.com to try it out for six full weeks. If it’s not what you’re looking for, you can cancel it any time.

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