Stick Rate

First and most importantly, happy Family Day everyone!

If you’ve never heard the term ‘Stick Rate’ it’s one that you should become familiar with, even if you are a brand new trainer. Stick Rate is something I learned a great deal about from internet information marketers. Most of the most profitable info marketers sell products, or have their affiliates sell their products, but these products then lead to subscription based services that generate recurring revenue. (I would advise you to read that last sentence over and over until you have burned that idea in your mind so strong that you will never forget it. It’s critically important for us all to continue to work toward having multiple income streams of recurring revenue. Anyways, that is not the focus of this article.)

Over time the info marketers learn how long the typical customer maintains their subscription to their services, this average subscription length becomes their personal ‘Stick Rate’. As a personal trainer for many years, long before I even knew what ‘Stick Rate’ was all about I noted my average client stayed with me for 9 months. I knew this was an important somehow but because I didn’t know about the idea of ‘Stick Rate’ planning I had no idea how important it was for my business, or how to use it to grow my business. Now since the opening of One-to-1 Fitness our Stick Rate has increased drastically, the question is why? Simply answered, we now understood how to use Stick Rate to tweak our services (environment and customer experience) to keep our customers longer.

This is very important for the new and experienced trainer. In one of my last columns we discussed differentiation. I believe to be continually successful in this industry and generate the business that will give you the lifestyle you desire; your service as a whole, from day one and ongoing, must maintain strong differentiation from your competitors. A bench mark for this is your Stick Rate.

By now you might be getting the idea of what Stick Rate is all about. Even if you don’t by following the instructions below and tracking these 5 critical elements of your business you will soon, not only understand your personal stick rate but, have a comprehensive platform for planning and evaluating many aspects of your business. Keep the following as a simple spreadsheet each month.

 A few important details can be determined from tracking these five elements in your business right from day one.

# of leads – This will help you determine how effective your lead attraction and marketing elements are. Over time you will even be able to identify what your cost per lead is with any given marketing promotion.

# of new clients – This will help you understand and track what percentage of leads become clients (close ratio) and allow for planning of presentations, marketing and services to improve conversion.

Total sales – This will allow you to determine you average sale, the average sales associated with a batch of leads, and of course total sales for budgeting and future goals.

# of cancelled clients – This is very important as over time it will help you plan with razor focus how many leads you need to generate each month to replace clients and grow to achieve or maintain your sales targets.

Total program duration – Track this for your cancelled clients, this will identify your personal stick rate. If you know how long your typical client stays with you it gives you a measurable method of implementing changes to improve or maintain your service. At some point your stick rate will stay pretty constant, at this point you can now fine tune your service to optimize costs generate the best service for your customer while providing the most margin for you.