Fitness Business School – Selling Fitness in Today’s Landscape

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about selling in today’s environment. I think that a lot of people have found the sales process to be a little bit tougher in today’s landscape. So I wanted to give you a few tips and kind of a step-by-step process that will not only help you sell more, but to sell more comfortably. So let’s get to it.

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All right, selling in today’s fitness kind of business landscape. Now there are a few things that go into this and you know, I don’t know that you know, this podcast and clear up any internal hangups you have with money or with your comfort in asking for, for, for a commitment or whatever else, but let’s face it. I mean, people need self care probably now more than ever. They need somebody to help them stay motivated, to help them be accountable, to help them stay on track with all the other disruptions and, and things happening in their life. I know in our house, Alex is still being schooled virtually we’re in the middle of a move. So I’m actually recording this in the basement of our new house while there are people upstairs working on the kitchen and doing different things. So lots of disruption here, and everybody has their own kind of you know, to use a common and probably overused phrase, new normal.

So how do you continue to sell, how do you continue to sell in an environment where there’s a lot of uncertainty where people may be more apprehensive about making a commitment? So I want to take you through nine kind of steps. Now, when I teach selling, I would tell you that I teach almost like a three-step process. It’s going to be you know, this, this discovery questioning process, then value building, problem solving, and then offer. Those are the three, three things I take people through, but I want to break it down a little bit further for you in this episode of the podcast, just so you can get a feel for should be happening along this conversation, whether it’s over the phone or over zoom or in person. So the first thing that I would tell you is something that’s going to seem a little bit corny when I say it, but you want to sell to people who like you, right? It’s so much easier to sell to people that like you because it’s just disarming. It’s, you know, they, they want to do business with people they like, so how do we do that? Well, do some, some pre-selling, build an email list and put out good content. Position yourself as a trusted authority and somebody that’s likable. Put out good content on social media, share videos of you, where you’re essentially coaching people before they’re paying you to coach them. So pre-sell them, don’t always try to sell to cold traffic. Don’t you know, don’t come across as the person who they’re not gonna want to spend time with sure. We buy things from people that we don’t particularly enjoy, but we don’t buy things that it obligate us to spend time with that person over and over and over again, if we’re not going to enjoy them. So sell to people who like you, right. That’s just a general concept. So if you’re not building a list that you can kind of nurture and pre-sale that’s step one, do that.

The next step, when you’re actually in this interaction, we’re kind of selling opportunity, selling situation. You want to build some personal rapport. You want to make this less transactional feeling. You want to make it less, you know, less cold, less antiseptic. You want to make it feel very comforting dribble for the prospect because let’s face it. We’re asking them probably a lot more than most of us realize we’re not only asking them to financially invest during a time of some financial uncertainty for a lot of people, but we’re also asking them to get out of their comfort zone and do something that they’re probably not very good at right now, because if they were, they wouldn’t be looking for a trainer or a coach, if, you know, we’re asking them to change up their routine and disrupt the way that they’re currently spending their time. We’re asking for them to maybe inconvenience some other people in their lives because those people are going to be maybe having to change up their routine. I know if I went and started training at a new place at a new time, Holly and Alex would probably have to accommodate that in some way. So we’re asking a lot. So we want to build personal rapport. We want to get to know somebody and let them know that we care about them as an individual, not just as a number, not just as a transaction or a dollar sign. So spend a little bit of time getting to know them. Some people will say, well, I don’t like small talk. Well look, if you don’t like people and you don’t like learning about people, and you’re not interested in actually caring about people, I would tell you to find a new profession.

So build some personal rapport, but then start to do dial things in and target specific problems. The problems that your prospect wants to solve, the journey that they want to go through or are willing to go through in order to get this new new, better them. So everybody has this dream come true results. And we got to ask them what that is. We’ve got to ask them, Hey, what would be a win for you? What would be a dream come true outcome if we work together for the next three months, the next six months, the next 12 months. So we want to talk with them about that and understand better why they’re actually here. Now it may take a little bit, you may be able to ask them that question, and they’re just going to pour everything out to you, but you may need to ask, follow up questions to dig a little bit deeper, to better understand why they’re actually willing to make this investment and make this change and commit, and really kind of restructure their life and get out of their comfort zone. And then we want to find out what they believe is preventing them from being there right now. What are they, I think, has to change or happen to go from where they are to where they want to be. So we’re going to target these specific problems.

And then we’re going to talk about how we can solve those problems, how our programs specifically address those things. This isn’t a health club tour, where you’re just going around and talking about everything that you do in your club and hope that the prospect can connect the dots. We want a specific problem. We want to understand what’s going on with our prospect and how they’re feeling and what they think is holding them back and really where they are. And then we want to show them very specifically how we can help, how we’re the best solution available to them. So we want to show the benefits of our solution specific to them.

And then we want to give them some proof, some social proof, some confidence that we’re not just telling them this works. We can illustrate that it has worked for other people who were in similar circumstances who had similar goals, who may have been experiencing similar things. So we want to provide a little bit of social proof, and then we want to make our offer. We want to basically basically present a program that packages up the solution. Now I would tell you that offer should likely be an alternate choice, close there’s option a or option B. And we want to make sure that both of these options, or you can do up to three options. We want to make sure that we’re basically out saying, Hey, this option is great for somebody who’s liked this, or is going through this in life, or has these challenges or obligations or commitments. And we want to do that for each. We’re not, you know, I’ve seen people put, you know, a, a title next to program saying, Hey, option a is for the very committed option. B’s for the kind of committed option. C’s for the not very committed at all. Like, honestly, that just presents you as a jerk. This person sitting in front of you, letting them know that they want to be better. They want to be different. If option C is the best option for where they are in life, then we need to be a coach and help them and really meet them where they are. And if that evolves into a more or intensive coaching relationship along the way, great. But if that’s enough to get them where they want to go, why be little that, and more importantly, why be little to them? So make an offer. And then one thing that I would be doing now this next step would be integrating some sort of guarantee or other risk reduction mechanism. So right now it’s tough to expect people to make these big commitments, knowing that there’s so much uncertainty. I mean, think about how much has changed in their life and how much upheaval and how much uncertainty there has been for the past six to eight months for virtually anybody you’re going to talk to.

So we need to either add a guarantee that you know, a money back guarantee or something similar to that. If we don’t deliver on what we’re promising, or we need to make the commitment more flexible and maybe not ask for six to 12 months up front, or maybe we do a trial or a lower cost front end offer, but we want to reduce the risk on the part of the prospect. Now, you know, people are apprehensive when it comes to guarantees. I would tell you that. Sure, yes, you can’t control everything that the prospect does, but we offered a money back guarantee to own most 1500 personal training clients over the time that I own two locations had one person take us up on that guarantee. Now sure. We offered a few other refunds for people that were moving and had prepaid different things like that. But somebody who really just cashed in on the guarantee one out of almost 1500. So the, you know, people aren’t going to just come exploit you. If you’re doing your best, doing good work work. I mean, they’re building a relationship with your business. They’re going to be touchpoints. So the, the business that, that sort of thing will gain you far off, it sets any sort of way that it may detract from you over time.

But then we need a call to action. We need to basically take a leadership role and coach this person and say, okay, which one of these programs are we getting started with today? What are we going to do today? Because they’re sitting in front of you or they’re talking to you, they need to take action. Like they, if they walk away from this and they’re not taking action, then they can’t expect a different outcome. Now, does that mean we can’t let people think about it or you know, talk to the other people in their life that may be influenced, like be effected by this decision or they share a budget with no, they’re, they’re welcome to do that, but within, we need to provide some sort of deadline. We need to tell them, okay, let’s if they need to go talk with somebody, Hey, let’s reconvene two days from now. Like, which time is better for you? Two o’clock or three o’clock. And then we’ll basically put a bow on this, either you’re in or you’re out. And, you know, anytime that we can put a deadline on something, there’s this fear of missing out there, this, really kind of a hard decision point, because at that point it’s no longer a, maybe they actually have to look in the mirror and say, I’m okay with the status quo for now.

So put a deadline on now. Okay. What can that deadline be? Well, it could be a price incentive. It could be an added bonus. It could be an enrollment closing for a particular offering. If you have a short term offering like a challenge or something. So we want to integrate a deadline whenever we can, and that deadline could ease it. Like for us, when I had an in-person training businesses, the deadline was usually just an added bonus that would go away if they didn’t decide, right. It might be a bonus package that included a gym bag and a t-shirt and a towel and a water bottle. But you know, so it wasn’t, Hey, we’re not going to take you as a client or anything else. It was, Hey, for the people who are ready now, we’ve got a gift for them. We’ve got a bonus. And if you’re not willing to decide, that’s cool, we’ll take you with open arms, but you know, there’s no fancy gym bag or any of those other things. So nine steps, pretty simple. And I understand like I, I would probably not be eager to look at a nine step process, but it really all fits into those three kind of phases of selling that I talked about. I just wanted to break it down to you and go kind of step by step through a conversation and talk about the things that might be happening now. So sell to people, you like build personal rapport, treat them as an important individual because they are target the specific problems and the specific goals that they have, then show how you can solve those things, how your program is uniquely designed to address those specific specific problems or provide some social proof, make an offer, and then add some sort of guarantee or risk reduction mechanism, have a call to action, and then finally integrate some sort of deadline. So if you want to sell in today’s landscape, that’s it, that’s all we need to do. And remember risk reduction could be month to month. It can be, Hey, normally we’ve done 12 months, but we know everybody’s kind of in a different situation. So now we’re just going to go month to month with a program. So just be sensitive to where people are. Don’t think of this as just self-serving. This is the beginning of a relationship, not the conclusion of one. So understand that whatever you do during the sales kind of consultation or the success session, it is kind of this jumping off point from the relationship you’re going to have with a client. So do it well. All right, that’s selling it. Today’s landscape.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.