Fitness Business School – From Relationships to Business

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I wanna talk with you about how you can turn client relationships into new business. 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.

For as long as I’ve been a business owner, I felt like networking and kind of face-to-face relationship building was the fastest, most cost effective way to grow a business. And that may sound funny considering I’m doing a podcast right now. Obviously I lean on email marketing for a lot of what I do to grow my business, but, you know, if you told me, Hey, you’ve got to go grow your business this week, or somebody’s gonna come foreclose on your house, or something like
that, you know, I would want to accelerate that, that kind of buying cycle or expedite the, the growth and evolution of a relationship.

And, you know, things like podcasts and things like emails, I think they help with the know, like, and trust a great deal, but it’s the long game, whereas sitting down with somebody and spending 30, 40, 60 minutes with them, getting to know them, getting to talk with them, I mean, it does more to
move a relationship forward than a year of newsletters possibly could. So one of the things that I talk at length about with clients is networking and finding ways to do more networking and, and really kind of becoming the mayor in the, in your respective community when it comes to fitness. But sometimes
people are a little bit introverted. Sometimes people are not sure where to start, or they don’t feel like they’ve got a lot of time on their hands to go out there and attend networking events that may be at times that are not convenient for them.

So the easiest way to really kind of dive deep into networking, in my opinion, is to leverage the relationships with the people that you already know, either clients that you have or strategic alliance partners or you know, the other kind of people that you already have some sort of relationship with. Now, there are a couple ways we teach this. There’s the a hundred cups method that I learned from my friend Jason Elkins, who teaches an entire program on this, and he does a great job. And then there’s the ask for advice method that I’ve been teaching for almost 15 years. And basically what we’re trying to do is just create a scenario where we are gonna sit down with somebody that we already have a relationship with. And so my recommendation is start with your current clients. The people that might be centers of influence might be people who are you know, people that you feel like, Hey, I’d like more people like this, or people who may be in leadership at a business or may be heavily involved in a local organization of some sort.

And really what we’re gonna do is just sit down and have a conversation, but we want to make that conversation one where it’s not a big ask for a referral pitch. We’re not basically saying, Hey, will you be a sales rep on my behalf? Now with the a hundred Cups approach, it, it’s largely just talking about them
and asking about them, and starting conversations and understanding that just in a normal conversational way, a lot of people are gonna reciprocate and ask about you, but you’re building a stronger relationship, you’re learning more about them, and you’re creating a situation where you are basically saying, how can I support you? How can I help you? And then you’re gonna follow up with them. And because you are helping this person, because you’re supporting this person, there’s gonna be some reciprocity, and odds are they’re going to become more of an advocate for what you do.

But you know, even if there’s no immediate gratification in that sense, if you’re doing this with clients or you know, o other kind of leaders in the community, you are, you’re kind of hardwiring that relationship. These people now are much closer to you. They’re much you know, much more of an advocate for you and your business. So because you spent that time with them, when somebody else does talk about joining a facility or starting a fitness program or something like that, you are going to be the first person they think of and they’re gonna be better equipped to talk about you. Now, if they ask for advice method, the simple thing to do is basically just go to somebody and say, Hey, you know what, could we sit down sometime this week? And I get your advice on something? And, you know, ideally you, even if it’s a client, you’re getting outside the gym and you’re trying to find, you know, I mean, obviously you’ve gotta do it in a way that’s appropriate for the, the relationship that, that you have with the client.

But what we want to do is lead by saying, Hey, I’d like to get your advice on you know, how I might connect with more people like you. I really value your opinion. You know what? You’ve been a great client, you’ve been a team player for all of the other people in this business. And I know that you are very successful outside the gym as well. So I thought there’d be no better person for me to ask for advice from on how I might be able to go out and connect with more people in the community like you or, I mean, if the goal is to get public speaking opportunities or business of the month, or organization of the month opportunities or corporate deals or whatever else, you’re just gonna ask them. And so now you’re not saying, Hey, can you do this for me?

Can you, it, it’s basically saying, I value your expertise. You are, you’re the type of person that I would come to and lean on, and you’d be amazed at how forthcoming people are. Once you do that, if you do that, man, it can be really, really powerful because some people are gonna give you really
specific advice and they’re gonna get granular and they’re gonna take some ownership of this and really say, well, let’s do this, and why don’t we do that? And, and you’ll find that a lot of the time because people, you know, feel appreciated and respected when you’re asking for their advice. And so they
wanna make sure that they, they see you win, plus they want their advice to actually be effective, so they’re going to get involved. And then the second kind of way that people come back to you with this is sometimes people say, well, you should do this and you should do that.

They’ll be a little bit more general and you can certainly ask for more ideas and say, well, hey, could you go a little bit deeper with that? Or could you know anybody there? I don’t know anybody there, could you introduce me? And, you know, you, you get them a little bit more involved. And then obviously to
be respectful of them giving you the advice we need to follow up, we need to make sure that if they suggest that we do something, we need to go out there and do it right. We’re not just saying, Hey, gimme your advice, and then we continue to do what we’ve always done. But if you’ve struggled with
networking, if you’ve not made that a priority in your businesses and, and you’re one of those folks who kind of just defaults to thinking ads and social media posts are the only way to do it, there’s, there’s so much opportunity in getting out and actually connecting with people face-to-face in your local area.

But the easiest place to start is with the connections you already have and starting those kind of conversations and, and spending time with those people. And then use that to kind of spiderweb out into the community. Let somebody introduce you to other people. You can ask during that a hundred
cup stuff, Hey, who else do you feel like I should know? Who else do you feel like I should sit down with? And before you know it, you’re gonna have an army of advocates in this local market. You’re gonna feel like you know everybody and you’re gonna watch your business grow without having to have the perfect
funnel or optimize every last ad. And it’s all gonna go faster because we’re in a relationship business. We’re in a business where, you know, getting to know somebody really pays dividends very quickly. So easy way to start networking hundred cups or ask for advice.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Fitness Business School. 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 leads and client?”

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