2 step marketing

10 Ways to Get More Clients Right Now!

10 Ways to Get More Clients Right Now!

Published by on June 21, 2010 | Leave a response

get-more-personal-training-clientsBased on the emails I’ve been getting I know I have a lot of brand new trainers reading my blog each week. That’s awesome because I still remember just how tough it was to get going with my personal training business and all the basic mistakes I made then. If you need more clients here are my top 10 ways as a new or experienced trainer that you can get more clients right now:

1)      Be the trainer that everyone wants to hire. This may sound silly but to be honest one of the biggest problems we’ve had hiring trainers in our facility is they don’t come with the energetic personality you need to be super successful on your own. Each day has to be fun, your primary job is to be uplifting to the people around you and inspire them to commit to the practical magic you teach them.

2)      Consistently ask for referrals, and offer referral rewards. This business is based on service and good service produces great word of mouth advertising. Be sure to subtly remind your clients that you really appreciate referrals or offer a referral contest 2-3 times per year.

3)      Run real value free trial programs. Make people an offer they can’t refuse, commit to giving them 2 weeks for free or for $1. Show people really value and over deliver your enthusiasm and personality to build a raving fan base. These people become paying customers and bring others.

4)      Use the Human Billboard program I learned from my good friend Steve Hochman. Offer people a free trial program and ask them to invite their friends, for each paying customer they refer give them more free training time. What could be better than free personal training after all?

5)      Repackage your programs into short term rapid solutions for immediate problems. Ie. The 21 day Summer Tummy Solution. Use Kijiji and Facebook advertising to attract new targeted leads to these short term programs.

6)      If you are currently training clients, call your old clients and create a special offer just for them. Don’t wait for them to call you, show genuine interest and get in touch. We’ve signed up over 30 clients in the last 30 days with 2 special packages just for previous clients.

7)      Get out in the community schedule at least 1-2 speaker sessions a month for any office with more than 10 employees, a service club, a charitable organization, or anywhere you can find 10 or more people.

8)      Immediately position yourself as a community expert, contact at least 2-3 complimentary type businesses each week. Offer to add the manager or key employee into one of your group programs. Provide a nice discount for remaining employees and over deliver. Hairstylists talk to 10-20 people a day wouldn’t you like them to be talking about you?

9)      Use list builders on Kijiji and Facebook every week to grow your list and apply 2-step marketing methods to your list 1-2 times per month.

10)   Use lead boxes in high traffic areas to increase your list even faster and improve response to 2-step marketing emails.

If you made it a priority to totally commit to applying even 4-6 of these points on an ongoing basis there is absolutely no reason you can’t be booked solid as a personal trainer in the next 30-60 days.

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How to get your old clients back

How to get your old clients back

Published by on June 7, 2010 | Leave a response

After over 19 years in the fitness industry personally I’ve had somewhere around 3000 one-on-one personal training clients. Sadly you will learn as I have that for most of your clients, even the ones that are really successful with the best of intentions, they will one day need you again. Now if you’ve provided a great experience they may remember you again, that is if a savy marketer doesn’t get to them first.

Your current and previous clients are what are known in sales as your “lowest hanging fruit.” Whether it’s now or in the past you have earned their trust and hopefully have a much stronger rapport than you would a complete stranger. Because of that rapport they are twice as likely to repeat buy from you than a brand new customer will be.

If you want a sure fire high conversion method of filling your training schedule today, call your old clients. However you need to have a solid high value offer to go with your call.

This is just one of many strategies my elite coaching clients use. Could a mentor help your business?

This is just one of many strategies my elite coaching clients use. Could a mentor help your business?

Here’s what we did that netted us a 75-85% conversion bringing our old clients back.

Our three year anniversary at One-to-1 Fitness was May 27; we used the idea of this celebratory day to encourage our old clients to come see us again. Rather than the normal celebratory drivel that costs you lot’s of money and gets you nothing we decided to instead invest in great people. I had my sales manager go through our old client files and pick out a whole pile of people he remembered, the ones he had the strongest rapport with. After looking at their previous goals we called them to “check up” on how they were doing maintaining their goals. Since most people slowly slip back we offered a solution, we gave them 2 weeks of training on us in our spiffy new small group training program. What’s important is we showed we genuinely cared because we contacted them and took the time to see what was important to them, we offered them something of high value, and created the appeal of a different experience than they previously had with us.

All of these people only previously knew us for our great one-on-one services. Now they had a select and limited opportunity to be part of a program that was a pile of fun in a small group setting and totally obligation free, they couldn’t lose; why not come and see some familiar faces? Of course we hyped all the new renos and such to, that never hurts. The best part is if you just provide the same killer service all the time, this program sells itself!

Bonus: The Insurance Policy

As always marketing is really about customer value, how you can provide over the top value and still find a way to make a little profit. For our conversion of this program we just sweetened the deal, gave everyone a nice short term price break (call it a signing bonus) and we used all the value adds from our partner businesses. (Each client received something like $500 in free bonuses, so much so it becomes a no brainer.)

Provide value, everyone wins! In summary remember these components:

  1. Always genuinely care, call and see how people are doing.
  2. Offer them something high value and have a reason for you offer, ours was our anniversary.
  3. Make the offer limited and provide scarcity, in our case we only had so many spots to fill and they were starting on a certain date. Push people to take immediate action.
  4. Don’t blow it by trying to convert too soon, provide real value.
  5. Have a high value conversion offer, make it a no brainer.
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2 Step Marketing: Get Rich by First Giving it Away!

Published by on May 3, 2010 | 1 Response

Remember a little while ago when I told you how we signed up over 40 people for our bootcamp in 72 hours? (Refresh your memory by clicking here.)

Anyways, that re-packaging strategy was the first half of a 2-step marketing process. As a fitness professional 2-step marketing is an incredibly powerful tool. Most personal trainers are thinking small time and would cringe at the thought of what I am about to tell you to do. So if it first you think I’m crazy relax because I can assure you right now, I am! But seriously this is not for the faint of heart, quite frankly it’s only for those that want to be super successful and absolutely dominate in their geographical area.

Ok here goes…

2-step marketing in a nutshell is just as it says; it’s an aggressive sales-generating program that requires two parts. We’re going to title these two parts as follows: Part 1 – The Pitch, Part 2 – The Close.

Two-Step Fitness Marketing can easily take you from zero to hero!

Two-Step Fitness Marketing can easily take you from zero to hero!

Part 1 – The Pitch

In the re-packaging promotion we ran for our bootcamp we used an aggressive deep discount price point and a short term program as our Pitch. Essentially we gave away real value for next to nothing, but there is a catch our key concept is the value. Next to ready, shoot, aim the next best concept I got from my coach was, “always give them your best stuff.” Now here’s where new and small minded personal trainers cringe. A free session doesn’t cut it! Give them real value, 10 free sessions, 2 weeks free, or 2 weeks for $2, something you know your competition will never offer real value. Give it sincerely without expectation, pour your heart out into these clients, leave nothing on the table, and trust me. Seriously if you are personal trainer who needs clients you should be training people, you should fill your schedule any way possible even if it’s for free. Here’s why, it’s simple economics, a busy trainer is worth more and considered more valuable than a slow one. Once you’re full, raise your prices, you now control the supply and you set rates to meet demand, that simple.

Part 2 – The Close

Ok now is the key part, as the trial period is coming to a close you should have established yourself as a hero to the client. They look to you as inspiration, they are already seeing results and it hasn’t cost them a dime! Let’s face it that alone should have them pretty much ready to write you a cheque. But don’t stop there; give them an offer they can’t refuse. For example in our bootcamp promo we discounted the next month to a lower rate than they paid for the trial, gave them an additional week free and threw in hundreds of dollars in bonuses. (Did I mention those bonuses cost us nothing? We simply talked to businesses in the community and told them we’d like to send them a bunch of customers and asked if they would be willing to extend our good customers a trial of some sort. Some businesses won’t, but the ones you want to work with will be pumped at the idea.) Now closing these new clients should be super easy, you are there hero and you have given them multiple times their initial payment in value, hell this is better than Wal-Mart rollbacks.

Bonus…how to leverage these clients and get even more clients.

These new prospects from your 2-step marketing program will be so warm and excited about your program you won’t have to sell them, but even better because you have given them so much the Law of Reciprocity says they will likely even feel like they owe you. So simply tell them if they like what you are doing, if they would be willing to refer someone else you will give them the exact same deal.

Soon you will be so busy you either won’t need to do programs like this or you will simply have to charge for the trials because you are too busy.

That’s it go kill it! By the way if you’re coming to the Business Ignition Workshop on May 15 and received the free bonuses they not only give you step-by-step instructions, but also scripts, artwork, and everything else you need to execute another 2-step marketing promotion. These concepts alone can double, triple, quadruple your revenues easily, One-to-1 Fitness has proved that easily 3 years in a row.

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