Plan Backwards

Being an entrepreneur is tough. On any given day you’ll be bombarded with numerous things. It’s easy to become overwhelmed, feel unappreciated, overworked, and generally burnt out. When this happens it’s common to go through periods of frustration and even resentment toward the business you are usually passionate about. What’s worse is all these negative thoughts often cloud your mind so much that you forget the simple logic that continually propels you forward, each obstacle feels insurmountable and no matter how much effort you contribute you can’t seem to formulate a plan that makes sense.

These last couple years depending on where you are in the world have been especially difficult for many fitness professionals. Unpredictable economic conditions have produced cash flow and revenue problems for many. I’ve received a lot of questions lately about how I continue to reach and exceed my revenue targets; my answer is always the same plan backwards.

I’m going to walk you through this process the same way I’m looking at future facilities.

In my mind the goal for a new facility will be to reach $500,000 total revenue in 18 months or less. This means simply I need to reach $28,000 reoccurring revenue/month.  If it takes me 3 months of aggressive promotion to get near to this that number rises to $33,000/month to reach my 18 month goal.

The average cost of personal training in my area is around $1/minute or $60/hr. we’ll use these numbers for this illustration. Most of my clients train an average of 3 30 minute sessions/week, or an average cost of $360/month in this example.

$28000 / $360 = 92 clients. I have 90 days to find 92 clients or simply 31 clients per month, or 1 day.

What is your average closing ratio of new prospects? Meaning how many people that inquire become paying clients? My program manager regularly maintains 75% to 85% even with aggressive trial offers and promotions for continual lead generation.

For this example let’s use 60%, very attainable for a new trainer.

So to reach my 31 client target I will need to meet with 52 prospects each month, or 13/week.

When you set consultations or sales appointments how many show up? We find consistently in our area it’s at least 80%, usually more. So assuming the same is true in your area that means I need to set 63 appointments this month or 16 appointments per week.

This is your most important task, ask yourself how am I going to set 16 appointments per week? What means of promotion can I use that will allow me to talk to 16 new people about what I do?

When you become razor focused on this one objective (or break it down even further to 2 a day) you’ll be surprised at how much easier this becomes.

Ask your clients for referrals, use email promotion, use facebook ads, online classifieds, direct mail, door hangers, flyers, trade shows, run aggressive trial offers and short term fitness challenges, all you need is to be able to 2 people a day.

If you want to know what I do check out www.3dclientattraction.com these are the exact strategies that we’ve been using to hit our targets.

In just 90 days I could be easily on track to reach $500,000 in total revenue from scratch in 18 months or less. Having worked backwards is there any reason you couldn’t continue to apply this process and easily exceed that goal?

It’s so easy to be distracted by your emotions with all the unexpected things you must face each day. Take a minute, focus think about what you really want and then plan backwards, once you understand the baby steps it’s much easier than you think. Doesn’t this sound a lot like the same things you probably tell your training clients?