Fitness Business School – The Prospect Checklist

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I want to talk with you about what I consider the prospect checklist. 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.

So I have this kind of checklist in my mind that I should probably document on some sort of worksheet somewhere or whatever else, but there’s this checklist that I believe prospects need to kind of go through this mental checklist that they have to kind of work themselves through in order to make a buying decision or at least a happy buying decision. Because yes, sometimes people make desperate buying decisions based on, you know, immediate circumstances.

There’s urgency. I mean, if you’ve got you know, clogged up drains or a big leak in the house or something like that, you may hire a plumber based on urgency or desperation or something like that. But in general, for people that are going to be making a buying decision, that’s something of a
commitment and something that’s going to ask them to be invested over a period of time, not just this immediate kind of gratification thing. There’s a bit of a checklist that I believe that people go through, maybe not necessarily in this order, and they certainly don’t think about it in the exact way I’m
articulating it, but I think you’ll understand when I walk through what I consider these six basic steps. So the first is, there has to be a desire. And the desire is basically they have to have a problem to solve, or a goal that they’re trying to achieve.

And they have to believe, notice it’s not what we believe, it’s what they believe. They have to believe that the benefit of making this purchase exceeds the investment, not just the investment of money, but the investment that they’re gonna have to make, whether it’s time or getting out of their comfort zone
or sweat equity or whatever else, financial factors into it. But it’s not the only factor. So the first step in this prospect checklist is desire, no desire, no reason to do anything, no reason to change, no reason to spend money, to invest time, nothing. So there has to be desire first and foremost. And so that’s the first box that has to be checked in order for this to, to even be a perspective coach-client relationship. The second step in this prospect checklist is awareness. See, there has to be an awareness for this even to work.

The, you know, the prospect has to know that your solution, the prospective solution to their problem or this prospective bridge to their goals exists. Now, you may think, well, sure everybody knows who, who I am in my area or whatever else, but I can tell you that at least once every week or two, I run
across a business in my general area. So my general, like two to three mile radius that I was unaware of, right? Just whether it is I saw an ad in one of the periodicals that get mailed to us, or I see a Facebook ad pop up or a Google ad pop up in my feed, or you know, I happen to be going somewhere and just notice
something else. But there are plenty of businesses that I am just unaware of, and sometimes it’s because of their lack of marketing, or sometimes it’s just because the reasons I might be interested in them just weren’t there.

So I just wasn’t exploring, I wasn’t looking around. I had no reason to become aware of them. And then the second piece of awareness is me as the prospect or whoever your prospect is, we’ve gotta believe that it could actually solve the problem. It could be the answer. There has to be kind of that belief that
yeah, maybe that that would work. Or maybe, maybe I should look into that. Maybe I should explore that a little bit further. So we’ve got desire, we’ve got awareness, then there needs to be some demonstration, right? Demonstration that, that we can help. Now, demonstration could be as simple as
somebody looking at your website or your social media profiles or your Google Business listing, and they could see that you say you solve these problems. They could see videos that you’ve created. They could opt in on your newsletter.

They could do do some sort of discovery Somehow. They, they could be told by somebody else that this is what you do. They could be, you know, somebody could refer you, they could see a commercial, butt here, there has to be some sort of demonstration for them to actually have confidence that you could
help. And then it has to be congruent. It has to be in line with what they believe is the right answer. Now, the reason that matters is somebody could look and say, well, sure that would work, but I would never do that, right? Like, somebody could look at a video of the way that you train, and
if they’re a really introverted person that’s kind of private and they see everything that you do in a group setting, there’s not congruence. Even if you’ve demonstrated that, yeah, you can help people get in shape, you can help them lose weight, it’s just not congruent with what they’re looking for.

So demonstration is about confidence and congruence. Now, at the same time, it, it may happen simultaneously or one of these things may happen kind of sequentially before the other. But demonstration in social proof, both, both have to happen, right? Social proof is essentially risk
mitigation and trust building. And social proof could be the reviews on your Google Business listing. It could be like if, you know, if I buy a book on Amazon, invariably I look at the reviews, I look at the stars. But social proof needs to be in place so that people can feel confident they’re making a good buying
decision because nobody wants to feel like they got taken advantage of. Nobody wants to feel foolish. And so this is kind of the, the foolishness police, right? Like, nobody wants to feel that way. So we need to be able to put them at ease.

Now, that’s why referrals are so, so powerful because they, they essentially combine demonstration and awareness and social proof all simultaneously. So you wanna talk about like the ultimate trifecta. As soon as somebody indicates that they have a desire, if somebody refers them, if one of your clients
refers your business to this person, then man, there’s awareness, there’s demonstration, there’s social proof. And to be honest, a lot of times there’s convenience. And that’s the fifth factor in this checklist. Convenience, usually if I’m referring it, I’m kind of making this assumption that you could potentially
take advantage of these services because if we are friends, I’m not gonna refer you to something that I know doesn’t work for you. It just isn’t a good fit. So from a convenient standpoint, you know, people need to be able to make it work at the level needed to achieve the results.

So they need to feel like, yeah, if you’re asking me to get here three days a week, I can actually pull it off. And that’s, I mean, that’s what convenience is, right? Like if your class times are when I’m at work, then I can’t, I can’t make it work. No matter how good you are, no matter how much demonstration
and social proof that, that I’m seeing, if it doesn’t check the convenience box, I can’t go forward with it. So convenience is first about making it work at the level needed for the desired outcome, whether it’s solving a problem or achieving a goal. And then the second part of convenience is it, you know, it can’t
disrupt their current life too much. Now, the higher levels of desire mean the more disruption they’re willing to go through, the lower levels of desire mean the less disruption they’re willing to go through and disrupting their current life could be, you know, making them get up an hour and a half earlier than
they were previously getting up, or maybe requiring them to ask neighbors or friends or their spouse to drop the kid off at soccer practice or something like that instead of them take ’em.

I mean, there are all these other things that are going on in their life as it is, and we’re asking them to change or supplant some of those things in order to partake in what we have to offer. So the convenience factor is, is really, you know, first and foremost they’ve gotta be able to make it work. But
then beyond that, that second one that’s a little bit more of a sliding scale is inversely related to the desire. The greater the desire, the less convenient it probably has to be. The less the desire, the more convenient it has to be. And then finally, they need to perceive it to be a match for who they are today.
And a match can be price, a match could be the people, they can feel like, Hey, these are the right people for me. Because yes, people do buy people.

And so if you’re not the person doing the selling, whoever’s doing the selling is essentially the gatekeeper to the relationship with your business. They have to trust that person. They have to think that person’s a fit for them. They have to believe the format is the right format for them. That checks is
the boxes that they need to check in order to get to where they’re trying to go. And they have to believe the environment is right for them because, you know, if, if they’re somebody that is that introverted, kind of reserved person and it’s a loud really, really high energy atmosphere, and maybe that’s not the
right environment for them, or maybe they’re looking for that type of environment and you’re providing a more subdued, kinda laid back or calmer environment. So those are the steps that, that the prospect kind of works through.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be in that order, but it kind of starts where we talked about first the desire and then it ends with the match. And all too often we think that people jump from desire directly to match. Like, I have this desire to change, so what’s the price? And that is just not the case.
And yes, there are certain people that cannot afford what you do, or maybe financially it is just not in their best interest to do it because they, you know, they’ve, they’ve got other issues on their plate and their need isn’t significant enough to prioritize what you do at the moment. Doesn’t mean they can’t
prioritize self-care, exercise, physical activity, but it may mean that hiring a coach is not where they should be spending that $250 a month. Maybe they should be paying down credit card debt or whatever else.

Who knows, I’m not here to determine how somebody has to spend their money, but I’m, but I am going to tell you that if you think that the difference between people buying and not buying is because somebody charges 207 versus 221 or something like that, that is so rarely the case. It is
almost never the case, but somehow we get stuck on that stuff instead of focusing more on awareness, demonstration, social proof, and convenience. So if you want to sell more, if you want to get more people who love what you do, if you want to have more of an impact and greater income, really start to
hone in on that awareness, that demonstration, that social proof and that convenience. And if you do that, you’re going to find that your business grows and the results you’re getting for your client, the client experience, the referrals, everything else will grow right along with it.

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

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