Fitness Business School – Getting People in the Door

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and I wanna spend today talking with you about getting people in the door. Let’s get to it.

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.

If you’re like most business owners who’ve been around for any amount of time, I’m talking even a year, then you’ve got a list of unconverted leads. You’ve got people who’ve opted into things, people who’ve filled out forms on your website, people who’ve shown an interest in what you do. You have connections
through social media, through your cell phone, whatever else. And there are plenty of those folks that you probably could go back out to and make different offers to.

And I think that sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there may be a mismatch between the offer that you made and the person that you made it to, or there may have been a timing issue where somebody just wasn’t ready. Now, with that in mind, I wanted to talk with you about different types of offers that you could use to go get somebody through the door. And the first one I’m gonna mention is a free offer. There are some, some people in our industry and always have been that’ll tell you that free is a bad idea. And those people are silly. I mean an idea that can certainly be misused and can be a crutch that some people depend on entirely, and it kind of waters it down. But letting somebody experience what you do.

If what you do is the best conversion tool you have, if that’s where your strength lies. If you are great in person, if you’re great at delivering a service or an experience, putting up barriers to prevent people from experiencing that is just silly. It’s foolish. And so having some sort of free consultative or
assessment type of environment, having one or two free workouts if you’re doing one-on-one or semiprivate offering, one to two free weeks if you are small group or large group, are all really viable ways to get somebody in the door and now they’re in your environment. We’ve done all sorts of free offers ever
since I got into business. I mean, from a couple free sessions for one-on-one training to even three like 30 day free experiences with a health club membership, because the whole goal was how do I get somebody to walk through the door?

Because I knew that if somebody walked through the door, we went from low probability to high probability that they would stay. And historically, our conversion rate on people who’ve walked through the door, no matter how generous the free offer might have been, has stayed above 55%. So more than
one out of two said yes, no matter how low the barrier was that, that they came in. Now, does that mean that free should be the only tool in your toolbox? Not at all. Some people, they have skepticism about free. Some people don’t respond to free stuff because they feel like there’s a
catch or that it’s just a thinly veiled sales pitch or whatever else. And sometimes free can be too wide a net, and you don’t have the capacity to manage the, the number of people coming through the door.

And so that’s, okay. So how do we use free In that case? Well let your clients invite people in as guests, like referrals is free, and maybe that’s the only time that you are for free. Or maybe you do that and then one or two times a year during slower times when you have more capacity, you invite people
in for free or maybe through just one specific type of promotion. Maybe it’s something where you’re affiliated through a strategic alliance or a chamber of commerce or something like that. There’s a free offer available to those people, so there’s some exclusivity to free. And then the flip side
of this would be paid offers. We can do what people have called low barrier offers. What I coined is a front end offer many, many years ago low barrier are typically things that are under a month and have a discounted price.

Whereas front end offers could be anything, right? It could be a six week challenge, it could be a 14 day trial. It doesn’t necessarily have to be discounted. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a a a some sort of pricing advantage. Heck it, you could do something that’s more expensive. You could have a premium
way that somebody got introduced to what you do, six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks. But there’s a big benefit. But there’s really a front end offer is basically saying, Hey, come in experience what we do for this duration, there’s probably going to be some benefit to you doing it. Either you get to do it
at a discount or you may be doing it to derive a specific benefit in a defined timeframe. And what’s great about some of those front end offers is if you’re doing them, and like a six week challenge is a simple and effective example of this.

There is some urgency attached to it because it’s what we call a deadline driven offer, right? Like if you’re starting the challenge on Monday, then you gotta close enrollment at some point. So people have to make a decision. And if they’ve not made a decision, right, they’re not clear. They’re, they’re thinking about it, they’re considering things. This is forcing them to get to yes or no. And weaving that into your kind of toolbox here into your, your, your
annual offer calendar is a pretty good idea. So how do we mix all this stuff together? If you are not getting enough people through the door with any sort of regularity, I would tell you to put more free and more really low barrier stuff in place. Lower the barrier for people to come in
and experience what you do, leverage your current clients, get them to introduce you to other people.

Go out to people who have audiences that would be useful to you as a potential client base business of the month. Those are great. Run things like sweepstakes to get people into the pipeline. Those sorts of things I think are great. If you get a reasonable amount of traffic in a, in, in a given month, run your
premium kind of offer. The deadline driven stuff, like a six week challenge, or if you’re doing something any longer than that, run it a couple times a year. So you’ve got that deadline driven kind of urgency. Have a paid offer that is running throughout the year, a paid front end offer that’s 30 days or less. And
then use free for clients where they could gift somebody maybe the paid offer or even the challenge. So now there’s a higher perceived value because they see that this actually has a price tag attached to it and they’re able to give something of value to other people.

And then two or three times a year open up a free invitation with a deadline attached to it to get some of those people who haven’t come through the door yet, but are in your pipeline off the fence. And if you do that, you’re gonna see more. You’re gonna see more consistent, what I consider a prospect who is available now for a conversion opportunity. Like when I think of this pipeline leads are people who are on this list in your database, whatever else. Prospects are people who said how I’m interested in what you have to offer, but a conversion opportunity, somebody you get to actually make an offer to and try to make a sale to. And so using those different approaches, depending on where you kind of fall on which side of the fence they’re gonna get you more prospects, they’re
gonna get you more conversion opportunities, and ultimately they’re gonna get you more sales.

What you can’t do is just set it and forget it. You can’t just say, well, this is what we have and this is what we’ve always had. I literally know like one person in the fitness industry who’s had like the same simple front end offer a free trial throughout and built a rockstar business. Everybody else has kind of varied
things a little bit or it’s been varied for them by seasonality because they’re a sports type of business or something like that. So if you’re trying to get more people through the door, there are a couple ways to do it.

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

Before you go, I’ve got a quick announcement. When I first connect with fitness business owners, they almost always ask me how I can get more clients and make more money. Well, I’ve got an exclusive offer for you and it’s gonna help you do just that.

And as a listener of this show, I would love to invite you to a conversation where you and I can talk about our new program, the Business Growth Sprint.

The Business Growth Sprint is a one-of-a-kind program where you get everything you need.

We actually work with you one-on-one, unlimited, one-on-one coaching and support.

We design a marketing plan for you. We give you assets to execute the plan.

It’s unmatched in our industry between the level of coaching, the frequency of accountability, the simple step-by-step nature and the completeness of how it’s gonna guide you to making more money and improving your personal income fast.

Imagine having every tool, template, ad, and script that you need all ready-to-use. Plus you’re going to get one-on-one access with me and the other coaches on my team to make sure that everything from your business growth plan to your marketing and sales system is done, turnkey, ready to go.

And what’s great is there is zero risk. We guarantee that you are going to add at least $4,000 a month in recurring revenue, or $20,000 a month cash collected as part of this program in just four months.

So if you are interested, if you’d like to discuss and see if this is a fit, just shoot me an email at [email protected] and put Sprint in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details.