Fitness Business School – Getting Clients

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And we’re back with episode number two in developing your recurring revenue program. So if you didn’t listen to episode number one, we talked about crafting your business model. Be sure to check that out, but now we’re going to jump into how to get clients. 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.

So we know what we want to offer. We know that we want to build this model. That’s going to provide us with some sort of monthly recurring revenue in exchange for the value we’re providing. We know kind of what we want to do, what we want to deliver. Well, now we’ve got to get clients. We’ve got to actually bring people into the program to make it viable and to make it more than an idea. So there, there are a handful of things that we need to consider here. Probably four different things. The first is we need to be a specialist. If you want to build a recurring revenue program, you need to be a specialist in something. Being a generalist is a great way to be ignored and ultimately go bankrupt in this type of offering. Now you may be thinking well, Hey, in an offline business, like a training gym, well, I train everybody. I train a bunch of people. Well, you’re a specialist by geography already. You’re a specialist by convenience. It is convenient for those people to get to you some regularity. So you’re a specialist in that way.

Well, if we’re going to be doing this in a more kind of online focused way, we need to be a specialist by identifying a specific person first and foremost, like who do we want to serve now? That, that may very well be a target market. It may be somebody like a demographic focus target market. I know my wife, when she launched her initial membership program, she was serving busy moms who wanted to get their pre-baby body back. And basically it was not moms of newborns, but basically moms of kids from preschool on. And that was her person. So you need to have a person as well. It may be the demographic side of it. It may be just the desire that they have. So that’s the, the other way that we can be. Well, one of the other couple of ways we can become a specialist is by solving a problem, a specific problem. I give you help somebody work out at home in the time that they have, like what I just alluded to with my wife. That’s the problem you’re solving. If you help somebody get leads for their business, that’s a problem you’re solving. If you can help somebody stick to a nutrition plan when they’ve struggled with yo-yo dieting all of their life, that’s a problem you’re solving. So having a specific problem that you can solve makes you more of a specialist. It makes you very valuable. And then finally the solution format. So some people do one-on-one coaching. Some people do membership sites, some people do group coaching or semi-private coaching. Some people provide daily accountability. I mean, whatever solution format like.

So I’ve used my wife as an example, when she started, there was a workout of the month. So it gave them a fall long workout instead of just, Hey, there is a list of workouts you can do. So they could actually fall along with her doing the workouts so they could feel like they were working out in the living room or on the deck with her and understand the tempo and have somebody motivating them. So it wasn’t just some exercises on a spreadsheet. She delivered that in a DVD at the time. So that was a format, right? And our business growth accelerator program. The format is primarily group coaching. We offer over 10 zooms most, every week with coaching on everything from lead generation and paid ads to mindset and personal productivity and time management. So we do lots of lives. Zooms. We provide lots of done for you tools to make it easy for people to execute. And then we mix in a little bit of one-on-one to help people customize anything or address whatever problems or challenges they have. So that’s a solution format, which would be different than just working with somebody one-on-one and not having maybe that sort of interaction or, you know, a different format. Like somebody might be doing one zoom a week. Is there a coaching? So for somebody who wants a lot of options, they want a lot of different things addressed. Our format may be appealing for somebody who just wants one-on-one coaching or on demand one-on-one coaching. So to speak our, our format may not be a good fit at all. So become a specialist, make sure that what you’re doing can stand out. So you become the obvious solution, someone.

All right. So the second thing that we need to think about when it comes to getting clients is how we’re going to sell our selling method. You, if we’re higher priced offerings so in most cases in my world, anything over $200 a month, I’m selling things through a success session, selling them through a live interactive call or zoom, or like when I was doing in-person sales, it, you know, for personal training or health club, or even some franchise stuff selling through a success session. Now, if you do it that way, you could sell at full price, you can sell some sort of risk reversal, but it allows you to personalize the you know, the sales process for that person address their specific needs and make sure they understand how it best serves them and ultimately see if it’s a fit. So that’s an easy way to do things you can sell through a trial. We knew that a lot with fitness lead Academy, we do that a lot with virtual fitness mastermind where we’ll let somebody try stuff out for you know, a predetermined amount of time for a dollar just basically so they can experience it and it can kind of sell itself. But because they’ve put a, you know, an investment down, even though it’s a dollar now the, you know, it’s set to auto renew, it’s going to renew and bill, and if they don’t want to stay, they just have to let us know. We’re happy to keep them excellent. But selling through a trial basically allows the prospect to yeah. Instead of you telling them how valuable it is, they get to experience how valuable it is.

And then one of the, the popular things that I think has permeated the fitness industry for some time and now it’s really taken off in the online world is selling through a challenge. Or what I coined is front end offer way back in probably around 2007 or eight. It is basically a short term opportunity to experience what you do. Now. It may not be an exact parallel of what you always do. Like a challenge. There may be heightened accountability. There may be more stringent nutrition coaching. There may be extra workouts, but it’s a way for somebody to come in and see the value in what you do very quickly and get to know you without feeling like they have to make some sort of ongoing commitment where they, they basically can say, Hey, you, what I want your help for six weeks, you’re going to help me do ABC and D and it’s worth this much money and this much time to me, and that is your opportunity to put your best foot forward and help this person, but also to be paid, to do it. And, you know, there are plenty of challenge opportunities or front end offer opportunities where you can go out there and basically bring somebody in for a shorter term offering that isn’t recurring. And, you know, that can be a really, really powerful tool to me to, to not only let it somebody feel like your mitigating, a lot of the risk and then joining, but for you to also be able to use a deadline, because if you’re going to do a challenge, there’s a start date and an end date. So there’s some urgency. There is this fear of missing out. If somebody misses the enrollment date, then they don’t get to participate. And, you know, we’ve seen that for, for a decade in the gym world, but I know, so my wife, Holly has probably done 40 plus challenges for her online business. Yeah. Same thing, same thing works.

And then something, something else that works there. I know Dan Kennedy did incredibly well with his newsletter for years, was sell by bonus. He would give you this big bundle of stuff. If you join the program, he’d give you all of these reports and some books and recordings. And, and all you had to do was join the program. I know when Frank Kern launched Kern’s inner circle, he kind of did the same thing. There were a handful of reports and bonuses that you got if you joined. And a lot of people would join because they were more excited about the immediate, immediate gratification of the bonuses. Now in the non-subscription world, we see this a lot like in the cosmetics industry, there’s that gift with purchase and the idea with all these bonuses or gifts or whatever you like to call them is that they probably have as much perceived value is the, the actual, the, the membership in some ways. So we sell by bonus. And what’s great is you can put a deadline on that too. I mean, we see that a lot, like, Hey, this bonus expires by a certain date or something time. So those are a few different sales methods. I think we’ve had our best success when we’ve kind of cycled through different things. Having some deadline driven things where enrollment closes or price goes up, or a bonus goes away, having challenges where we try to convert people, the challenge selling through a trial and then doing some actual calls where you can build value in things and then move them into programs directly. So when you’re making offers to actually get them to the sales kind of get them to that sales process, there, there are four different things that we use that, that have proven to be very effective that I think you can probably just take as is and apply to your business almost immediately.

The first one is what we’ve already talked to deadline-driven offers. There is a price increase in enrollment closing, or a bonus going away at a certain deadline. So it gives somebody an incentive to join. So that’s the first thing that we do to make offers. The second is just an invitation, Hey, we’re going to be doing this thing, or we’re going to be inviting some people in to participate in this thing. Would you like to join us? I also refer to those as engagement emails. It’s basically just an invitation to be part of this thing. And if they’re interested, they reply. If they’re not interested, they don’t, it’s super straightforward, but highly effective. In fact, I would say that it, at this stage of the game, 70% of my new business comes from invitation. The third way that we make offers is what we call the super signature. It’s something I adopted from my friend and mentor Dean Jackson. And it basically says, whenever you’re ready here are, you know, one, two, three ways that we can help you. And it just basically almost is like an invitation to three different types of offerings. And those records revenue programs comprise some of those offerings. So that’s a, that’s a really powerful one because it’s almost like just a daily billboard for what you have to offer. And then finally, the fourth one is post-opt in somebody joins your list. Somebody downloads your lead magnet, they grab your book. They, they access your video or special report on the thank you page. You make an offer to enroll in what you do. And so basically make sure that this new person to you is aware of how you can help them and what you have to offer. And what’s great is sometimes, you know, people don’t read the emails later on. Sometimes people stop paying attention. So we know that we’re getting our offer in front of somebody from day one. So wait, we’ve talked about how we close sales. We talked about how we make offer. So let’s finish up this episode by talking about how we get leads. Well, the first thing is, I believe you need a lead magnet. Now you can go directly to a front end, offer a low cost paid product and try to break even on the front, end that way and just get buyers on your list. And that’s a very valid approach, but because it’s not one that I’ve used nearly as much, I’m going to tell you about the stuff that’s worked for me that I’ve used time and time again, to generate multiple eight figures at this point with recurring revenue programs. And so the, the get getting lead side of things almost always is started with a lead magnet in my business, right?

I’ve given away something of value and said, okay, I’m going to start this relationship by giving you something good. And usually is specific to the person that I want to serve. The problem that I want to solve. It’s either a book or it it’s something that really addresses a specific problem. And the more specific, the better when I’ve put out books that have not gone well or lead magnets, that haven’t been great. They’ve been a little too general. So the more specific that you can be the better off, the better results you’ll get the, you know, the better your cost per quality lead is going to be. Second, ideally it solves a problem, right? It gives somebody a solution. Hopefully my books solve, you know, handful of problems for small business owners. Hopefully like when we do done for you, things like newsletter bundles is lead magnets. You know, they, they solve a problem. They solve that time. And I don’t know what to write about problem that prevent people from following up with prospects. And then finally, we’ve got to promote the lead magnet daily. Like you need new people in the pipeline daily, because no matter how good you are with your recurring revenue program, there are going to be people that leave credit cards that expire people that move on people lose interest. So you always have to be refilling the pipeline, so to speak. So promote daily. And then from a referral standpoint, like you can always like, you can promote your lead magnet anywhere you can use. Yeah. You know, things like Facebook ads, you can ask clients to share. You can do things organically. You can write content and put that in your byline. There are so many ways you can get your lead magnet in front of people.

So the other thing that I want to talk about is kind of what people don’t talk about is how to get leads for your recurring revenue program for like through referrals. So there are basically three things that you can do, whether we’re talking about offline or online, the first is ask your clients and friends, your network, ask strategic Alliance partners, give away a lead magnet, just give them that magnet that we just discussed and ask them to share it with other people. And the people who are interested in the lead magnet are probably going to be people who fit your target market. To an extent, second, we can provide gift invitations, like gift invitations, to trials, gift invitations, to challenges. But basically you can give the clients that you have the network that you have the opportunity to gift something, whether it’s a front end offer or you know, a gift card towards your services or whatever else, but allow them to gift invitations to other people. And then finally we can offer discounts. You know, if you have a a front end offer that is $99, you can allow clients to have maybe a coupon code or a discount opportunity where they can share with their friends to get 50% off or something like that. But there are really kind of the foundational things we do to get clients. I mean, there’s no magic here. You’ve got to build an audience. And then you’ve got to make offers. And if you’re selling something valuable, that is specific, like we talked about. And if you’re continually building a list with people that have at least some interest in the type of things that you do, the problems you solve, the goals you help people achieve, then if we’re making consistent offers, we’re going to be growing the business. And then at that point, we can just scale things. We can move to paid traffic, we can up our paid traffic budget. We can really start to kind of put our foot on the gas if you will. So we’ve covered business model planning. We’ve covered getting clients in the next and final episode in this three-part series. We’re going to talk about retaining clients, which is something that I think we all need to probably put a little more emphasis on. So we’ll get to that next.

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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