Stop Attrition Dead…Right Now
You can be the best marketer in the world, and generate tonnes of new leads to sell personal training to but if you can’t keep your clients (AKA Skyhigh Attrition) then you are dead in the water!
I’ve found for a lot of trainers it’s when they open their studios and hire staff that their personal training client attrition appears, increases and becomes alarming.
And it’s no surprise, I mean when we’re solo, we live, breathe and die by our clients.
We have to fight tooth and nail for every single one, and each personal training client we lost to attrition was like a mortal chest wound! (Ok maybe that’s dramatic but I remember plenty of times when someone quit I had that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach because I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to pay my rent on time.)
So as time goes one and we become industry veterans, well we do things naturally that keep our attrition low, and then we hire people and try to train and expect them to do the same. Only…they don’t.
They like the grind, hustle and ability to foster and maintain relationships like we can, and it’s no surprise, or skill was born of pain and frustration; they just work here.
What’s worse if you’re like me, I had no idea how to train or teach other people to do what I do, it just kind of developed naturally for me and I’d known it so long it seemed crazy that they didn’t, hence I too struggled with high personal training client attrition.
Now, results are a given, you’ve gotta get results for people, but beyond that there are three relatively simple things that you can do with your growing business that will put you back in the drivers seat and pretty much stop attrition dead, and once these things are in place you can delegate and let them go, though the rule is slowly, very very slowly.
Here watch this video I made on personal training client attrition and how to stop it, if you like it I hope you’ll subscribe! (Just click here to subscribe www.youtube.com/mrfitnessmarketing)
January Is Never As Busy As Personal Trainers Busy Expect Here’s Why
Even if you’ve been in the industry for a while as a personal trainer you expect that when the clock strikes twelve on January 1 that there will be a line up outside your gym like Best Buy on Black Friday!
But that’s rarely the case, and as the days tick on, you begin to get a little nervous and wonder what’s going on?
Even worse you have more clients cancelling than usual, it’s January, everyone has a fitness New Year’s Resolution, what’s going on?
Truth is, it’s like this every year, unless you realize what you’ve missed.
January presents a unique consumer psychology that doesn’t exist at any other time of year.
Christmas = time off work for most.
Time off work = smaller or missed pay.
Smaller or missed pay + increased spending = greater price sensitivity.
New Year’s creates a “Blank Slate” mentality, I mean I can’t even deny that on January 1 there’s a sense of relief that good or bad the old is gone the new is here I am, once again the master of my future (even though I know and believe this can hold true for any day of the year.)
When you add all this together you have consumers that are hyper-motivated and ultra-price sensitive, in other words they look for cheaper solutions because “they can surely do it on their own this time.”
I talk about this weird phenomenon in this weeks video and share with you the fitness marketing strategies to use to overcome it.
Please click to subscribe to my channel, new videos every Tuesday www.youtube.com/MrFitnessMarketing
Facebook Marketing Has Flipped On It’s Head!
First off Merry Christmas!
What a year 2018 has been, I can’t believe it’s already drawing to a close.
I hope you are set to take time off and enjoy family for the next few days.
Don’t forget to take a deep breath and reflect on all this year has brought, and then gaze ahead to the horizon…what is your biggest goal for 2019?
Since it’s the end of the year I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting myself…and a lot of thinking.
I always get asked; what do I see happening in the coming year? What will be (if any) the biggest changes in the coming year?
Truth is, it’s kind of already happened and you’ve likely felt it.
Facebook ads getting disapproved more than ever before, ads initially approved and later shut down.
Pushed by Facebook to limit what we show on our landing pages.
Our industry thrives on social proof more than many others and we’ve become more and more limited in how we can proudly display our social proof than ever before.
And it’s only going to get worse…
Yet.
This is actually GOOD NEWS!
Yup, not a typo, this is good news.
Everything comes full circle, and this is no exception.
If you’ve been around as long as I have you likely remember what it was like before things like Facebook.
Getting new clients was largely referral and B2B based.
You had to put yourself out there.
Form real relationships.
And it generally took more than one interaction (think of it like dating.)
It took time to get people to know, like, and trust you before they would commit to buy a premium service like yours.
Well, that’s come back around.
You see for basically the last 10 years direct response marketers had a heyday on Facebook.
We ‘d put up an ad, take people to a landing page then use long form sales copy with fancy headlines, videos, testimonials and before and afters to build the relationship there.
The longer we kept them on the page the better chance we had at getting a sale.
Now I’m not saying this is completely gone or done, in fact quite the opposite, you’ll still see plenty of this and many of these same strategies will work…only just not like before.
In 2019 and beyond you’ll need to be in the groove of building relationships with potential customers on platforms like Facebook through multiple interactions.
Only then will you find the Facebook advertising rules will make it easier to show them your landing pages the way you’ve intended.
And here’s why that’s good news:
- You’ll soon only be showing your ads to highly qualified prospects who know who you are, what you do, and are somewhat actively on the lookout for you. This will make those ad clicks much much cheaper.
- Your offers and content will become perpetual, which means you won’t need to constantly reinvent the wheel. Your brand recognition will grow as a result, and it’s going to take you less time to market more effectively than ever before.
- And maybe the best part of all, it’s going to be really, really hard for your competitors to duplicate, see fully and harder still to understand just what your true marketing strategy is.
All of this will be accomplished with content cycling and custom audience targets, and I’m excited about it!
Why?
Well because everything comes full circle, and in 2019 we get to return to what made us great, we can focus more on being the phenomenal educators that trainers are.
Our marketing will become a showcase for all the amazing knowledge we gathered around training and nutrition, not just the latest marketing mumbo jumbo!
2019 is going to be a great year, are you ready?
If not, you still have time, that’s my Christmas gift to you, this new process is a marathon not a sprint, you start today and your results will steadily increase, your costs will decline and unlike your marketing now each new piece of content will increase your brand and recognition in the community!
Let’s do this!
Merry Christmas from my family to yours!
Cabel
P.S. In January my coaching clients now get to enjoy our ad setup and management services, meaning if all of the above sounds great but leaves you ever confused well we could just do it for you. J I’m taking on new clients in the New Year, would you like to schedule a consultation? If so reply to this email, I’d love to help you make 2019 your best year in business!
Content Has and Always Will Be King
You know it’s been more than 20 years now that I have been “self-employed.”
A lot has changed, for instance when I first started there was no Facebook or Twitter, in fact it was amazing if as a small company or solopreneur you had any kind of a functional website.
I had no idea what I was doing, so I did like everyone else, I put up posters in the gym, I printed brochures and business cards.
And I had no customers, in fact over the first few years I’d bounce between jobs trying to make ends meet in hopes that sometimes I could take up personal training full time.
I didn’t know anything about email marketing, I guess that existed back then but it wasn’t something I knew about.
But somehow, I still stumbled upon the importance of content.
Soon my brochures became articles that I’d leave at coffee shops, etc.
From there someone put it in my head to reach out to the paper and see if they’d give me a column, I did so relentlessly until they finally said yes.
That lead to a couple random contacts from people asking if I’d come present to small groups in their offices, which low and behold lead to customers.
From there I began to try to speak more, and over time my website became more and more cluttered with articles and resources I developed and posted for people.
Kind of by accident for a long time in my city of then 70,000+ people I was “the fitness guy” if you wanted to get in shape or learn how to you sought me out.
As time has went on this hasn’t changed, except that it’s easier to reach more people faster and harder to keep up.
In fact it’s almost too easy to reach people now, so easy that we are inundated with more content than ever before.
And there are more places to post and deliver your message than ever before (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Email, Website, etc.)
Just thinking about it is exhausting and a daunting task, and I’ll be the first to admit I find it easy to burn out.
And with that has come some hard lessons.
Content truly is king, when you lose your focus, burnout or become inconsistent with your content your business will suffer, whether that’s a little or a lot only you will know but it happens…without fail.
Truly that should be obvious, I mean there’s just so much now, so many businesses, services like yours, people doing basically what you’re doing.
It becomes harder and harder to differentiate yourself except that only you can be you, and people want to buy “you,” I want to buy you.
What you have to say is important, what you have to give is golden.
Only first, define who is the ideal person for your message. Know their age, what they like, the clothes they wear, the places the hang out, the things they like to do, the products they buy and more.
Craft an image of that person that you can “speak to” every time you step in front of a camera, add text to a page or through whatever means of deliver.
My challenge to you is from today forward try to post something every single day, but don’t get spread to thin trying to service all the mediums.
Focus on your blog (which also goes to your email list), your Instagram account (which also goes to your Facebook page) and if you have a private group for your clients that rounds out the third.
If you can commit to this every day, even 2 posts a week in each of those places (take Sunday’s off or give one channel bonus attention) in time will have a significant impact.
Total truth, I find generating new content very tough to do each day, and I prefer to write which seems to take the most time for me, but what I see from my mentors is like anything else this is a muscle, work it out and it will get stronger.
In time try to increase your frequency to each channel once per day, I can do it, you can do it.
Here’s some tips and tools I use to help you get started:
- Spend 30 minutes brainstorming topics you could talk about confidently with no preparation for 10 minutes. Set a goal for 10, trust me you will easily come up with 20. Use this list each day you’re stuck for an idea what to write on/talk about, even using the same ideas over you’ll share new things.
- A great little app I’ve found I like for generating Memes for blog post images and social media posts is called “Typorama.”
- For Instagram I always use the “Hashtagger” app for my hashtags posted in the first comment and have had good success with this.
Finally remember, and this is the tough one for me, your content doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be you, authentic and come from the heart. If you really find yourself stuck for a day, take the day off instead take those 30 minutes to go read your current professional development read I find this helps me get back to creativity sooner.
Oh and maybe one last weird suggestion that truly does help me, I’ve fallen in love with a supplement from Perfect Sports called Onset, a blend of Agmatine Sulfate and NAC etc that helps with focus, I find it has a tremendous impact for me when it comes to creative tasks.
The Personal Trainer Marketing Channel You’ve Forgotten! (And Need to Add Right Now)
Speaking has been one of my most effective personal trainer marketing strategies.
And it’s a high converting one, I remember one I used this personal trainer marketing strategy and it brought us more than $11,000 of new sales in just a month, and continued to deliver adding much more for months after.
And this will work for you too, in fact, arguably, with a little consistent effort it will work better and be cheaper than anything else that you are doing.
What’s more, this is the perfect time of year!
When I got started as a personal trainer there was no Facebook, Instagram or for that matter even having a website as a small company or solopreneur was a big deal.
Look I’m only 42 but I’ve literally been in this fitness game as a trainer for 25 years!
Here’s how I built my whole business, (and you could to on just this one personal trainer marketing strategy) and it’s so simple at first you may not even believe me, but I’ll lay it all out for you.
First, I made a list of:
- All the accounting firms in my city.
- All the law offices.
- I tracked down contact info for a number of local charitable organizations: Rotary, Kinsmen, Heart & Stroke Foundation, Diabetes Association, Weight Watchers, TOPS (Taking Off Pounds Sensibly)
- I made a list of as many companies as I could that had large numbers of employees (Start with over 100+ and then work your way down.)
Then I went and introduced myself.
I’d simply show up, talk to whoever I could, explain I was a local trainer, yes I was looking for clients but no I wasn’t there to pitch.
I’d explain that I knew if I educated people and gave them things they could use today and see and feel a difference (all without leaving the office) that some of them might look me up after.
Literally I’d do everything I could to make sure that introduction turned into a 5 minute impromptu fitness evaluation and demonstration for that individual.
Hint: A real good understanding of posture and being able to spot deficiencies and explain why and what to do on the spot really helps keep the conversation going.
Here’s an example, you walk into office XYZ, you see receptionist sitting at the desk, she stands up to great you. You notice her right shoulder is higher than her left, what might you discern?
Maybe she doesn’t use a headset, so maybe she holds the phone against her shoulder a lot. Maybe she carries her purse on that shoulder all the time, or a child/diaper bag. Maybe she sleeps on her side, on that side all the time. Or if it was her left, maybe she has a long commute too and from work each day.
Identifying these things and asking, “hey do you sleep on your right side at night?” worked quite often to arouse curiosity and keep the conversation going as I began to explain why I thought that which lead to discussions of headaches, back pain, and what to do about it!
You don’t have to be right all the time, and not every conversation will go somewhere.
But out of 5-10 I can promise you there’s a big chance you’ll be able to book a lunch presentation or meeting presentation where you get a chance to teach a group.
Larger organizations and charities etc that have regular luncheon meetings know very well that by having something education or entertaining on the schedule helps get people focused, inspired and engaged which leads to a more productive meeting.
That should be you!
Now you absolutely can’t pitch, but there’s plenty you can do to ensure you get the opportunity to pitch most people in the room; and not just once but repeatedly.
First, make sure your presentation is engaging and calls for participation.
Not only is it entertaining to watch people try to squat in business attire or high heels, you can turn into David Copperfield deploying things like PNF stretching that will have people who’ve never touched their toes touching their toes in just minutes.
Sure this boosts your credibility, but more importantly participation gives you a chance to offer reward.
“Hey for being a good sport you get to choose, I have a $5 gift card to Starbucks or a free session with me.”
Make sure you have little certificates for your session and the gift card, it doesn’t matter which one they choose as you just planted the seed in everyone’s mind.
The point is use your services as rewards for participation because that’s how you’ll get the audience to ask you about them afterwards without ever seeming to pitch.
Next…this is the grand finale.
Never have handouts, teach them things, stretches, meal planning, etc.
Something that will be much easier applied and remembered with a handout, tool, etc.
Sure some people will take notes, but here’s what you’re gonna do.
You’re going to place a clipboard at the back of the room (because it’s super non threatening and non solicitous) and at the end thank everyone and announce, “if you’d like handouts that show you exactly how to apply this or what I’ve taught please just leave me your email on the clipboard at the back and I will send them to you.)
Let people know your eco conscious and that’s why you don’t print them, or because everyone is so technology centred these days digital handouts are better because they can be saved in email or on a device and never lost and easy to access any time they’re needed.
My aim was always to make sure I left with at least 60% of the participants in the room, if it was less I knew my presentation didn’t connect well enough and that gave me hints as to what to change, what to improve or even what to speak on.
It’s not like I was doing these all the time, but I did likely go through periods where I’d have 1-2 of these sessions a month for 3, 4 or 5 months in a row.
Needless to say they gave my business a huge boost each time, and it didn’t take long for me to become “the fitness guy” in my city of nearly 100,000.
Even in my businesses right now I realize this is a huge gap and missed opportunity for us, in fact that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this for you, because it’s something I know is needed in my businesses and I’m gearing up for more speaking this fall!
Like this strategy? You’re a coach, you understand why your clients need you, but often we forget, we need coaches and mentors too. If you’re ready to take your business to a new level, or just looking for the guidance you need to turn the next corner reply, direct message or use the contact form on my website at www.cabelmcelderry.com I don’t know if coaching is right for you but only one way to find out! Consultations are no-obligation of course, I’m just a coach like you doing what I love to do!
Road Map to Your Income Statement
Do you find your financial numbers confusing? Are you afraid to or not sure what you should be looking for?
Your income or profit and loss statement and your balance sheet are key roadmaps into how well you’re business is doing, what is and isn’t working, and even how you’re likely going to do going forward.
I don’t know about you but even having went to school for business I still found deciphering my business financial statements to be confusing, in fact for the longest time I never looked at them.
And for most of that time I still continued to struggle.
I’m guessing if that was true for me it might be true for many of you.
I’m truly committed to help you grow a bigger, better, more profitable business and in turn allow you to help even more people. (Once a trainer, always a trainer, I truly believe together we can change the world.)
So it would be a tall task I think to fully break this down in one short article (and likely rather dull, long, boring and confusing.)
So today I just wanted to get you aware of and thinking about some key areas of you Profit & Loss/Income statement.
First, if you’ve never even seen one of these that’s the first problem we should deal with.
If you have a shoebox full of receipts and statements you deliver to your account 1-2 times a year, you’re really shooting yourself in the foot.
I can’t urge you enough to make sure you have a bookkeeper you work with on a monthly basis, make sure they’re doing a bank reconciliation (I think it would be rare to find one these days that doesn’t but you might as well get familiar with the term.)
Essentially this means they’re going through your bank statement and identifying, recording and classifying every transaction; so you’re left with information that follows your actual bank account.
I say follows because what you see in your account will NOT correlate to your statements on any given day, cashflow and what has already processed are very different things.
But let’s focus on some key information in your profit & loss/income statement that can help you right away today.
First the obvious stuff.
The big numbers at the top, the good stuff AKA revenue.
In addition to the obvious of how many dollars/month your business is currently generating you may wish to look at this in a couple of different ways.
- Do you have multiple services or products? If so you might want to look at each in terms of what percentage of revenue does it account for? Let me give you an example, if 80% of your revenue comes from your group program, and only 20% comes from your one-on-one training program, which one would you most likely want to spend most of your marketing dollars on?
- Another way you may want to consider your revenue is to divide it by the total square feet of your business effectively giving you revenue per square foot. This can be useful in understanding the pricing of your service, or as you get fuller what opportunities may exist and even how it evolves and changes through quarter after quarter based on heavy promotion etc.
Those pesky expenses.
Of course inverse to revenue is all the costs to run the business, and more importantly what’s left AKA profit or income (we hope there’s something left anyways.)
Either way revenue minus expenses gives us a dollar amount for profit and loss, divide this number by the total revenue and now have our gross profit margin (gross because we haven’t considered taxes, but we’ll leave that out of the discussion today.)
These few numbers alone can be very helpful in understanding how healthy your business is or how it’s performing, but let me give you a couple more specific things I always teach my entrepreneurs that I think can have a really big impact in your decision making.
The first is: percentage of revenue attributed to payroll.
Within your expense categories you should find entries for payroll/wages, possibly subcontract expenses, and if your provide benefits for your employees at shared cost don’t forget to add that in as well as what you pay yourself.
The later can be a bit confusing as for tax purposes you may pay yourself primarily via dividend which will not show on your income statement, this is recorded on your balance sheet.
For our review purposes it’s still important to add it in because we need to think of our company as a living breathing entity that must support itself, and of course you need to know that the resources you’re using to support yourself can continue.
Once you have a total of expenses related to paying others (and yourself) divide this total amount by total revenue, this gives you percentage of revenue attributed to payroll.
What’s yours?
Is it over 40%? If so I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, if you’re presently struggling, you’ve found one of your biggest problems, the bad news is I can tell you from seeing hundreds of fitness businesses that this isn’t going to be sustainable long term with much hope for real profitability. We’ve got to get revenue up, or payroll down if this is where you’re at.
35-40% This is a common area to find yourself if your business is new or within a heavy period of growth and expansion.
25-35% This is the sweet spot operating zone, at 25% congratulations, you are part of the 1% of very efficient fitness businesses, at 30% you are doing great and should work to maintain this long term, at 30-35% you’re doing great, you’re healthy and can continue to strive to find new opportunity!
This metric can be really beneficial when it comes to hiring, and deciding what you might be able to afford a specific employee(s) or even how you need to set certain goals for new positions in an effort to ensure payroll that may initially increase, over time, ends back up in target ranges.
Ex. Let’s say your payroll is at 30% and is a total of $10,000. This tells us total revenue is a little over $30,000. For easy numbers we could speculate that if payroll was at $11,500 we’d now be at about 35% of total revenue; still within our ideal operating parameters. So this gives you budget of about $1500/month to expand your team.
Can you spend more? Sure but now you can be aware that long term that may create additional stress if that hire doesn’t quickly impact your total revenue in a positive way.
Make sense?
I’ll leave you with one more.
Marketing or advertising dollars.
If you divide the total for marketing and advertising against total revenue now we get a percentage of revenue spent on marketing.
I can tell you that my recommendation to all of my clients is to work to grow comfortable with spending at least 8% of total revenue on marketing and most of my most successful clients spend much more.
You can also quickly evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and begin to understand the implications of different seasons (like January vs July.)
If you divide your total marketing spend by your total number of new leads for that month we have a basic idea of cost/lead.
You can do the same thing with total new sales for the month, total marketing divided by new sales gives you cost/customer.
Now in theory we can calculate what we need to spend to reach certain growth targets, we can also measure the effectiveness of present and future campaigns by comparing current cost per lead and cost per customer to the previous quarter, promotion, month or benchmark.
Do you see how all of this can really help you make much clearer and better decisions regarding what to do next to achieve your next goal or milestone in your business?
If you’re going to win this game you cannot avoid or be afraid of your financials.
P.S. If you’ve watched my 4 Pillars of a Successful Fitness Business video then what you’ve just learned is most of the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for Pillar #4.
I’d sure love to help you with your business and can teach you the basic KPIs we use in the other areas to help your whole team become better aligned behind your goal and on the path to bigger growth!
If you ever want to know if coaching with me could be a good fit for you please reach out via a reply, direct message or the contact form on my website at www.cabelmceldery.com
How I went from 200 to 2000 Instagram Followers in Less Than a Month
And started to generate real business inquiries…
This week I wanted to share with you how I’ve picked up over 2500+ new Instagram followers in less than 30 days and am now gaining 100+ new followers/day.
Now these are not some fake followers or something like that that I’ve bought from shady site or service. These are real people and for the most part all people interested in what I do as an entrepreneurial coach for fitness professionals.
In fact in just the last couple weeks I’ve seen a significant increase to optins to my email list and direct messages and email responses from people asking questions and ultimately inquiring about coaching services.
Now before I get into this, I need you to understand a couple things:
- I really dislike social media, I’m not someone these days that wants to constantly post and try to cater to the masses.
- If you have a reasonably large following already (like 10,000+) this isn’t likely for you, the tips below are for people who (like me) have resisted Instagram for too long and realize it’s hurting their business by not establishing an audience.
I just watched a video last night from someone talking about how Kylie Jenner will become the worlds youngest self-made billionaire (she’s 20 by the way and did this all in 3 years.)
She did this by building an Instagram following of 111 million followers, and then using that to launch her cosmetics line, what’s more is companies now pay her in excess of $500,000 for a single promotional post!
Now I’m no Kylie Jenner, in fact I’ve been very resistant to this whole evolving social media but the reality is, like it or not, over the next decade or two as stupid as this sounds it’s going to be a significant class differentiator. Meaning the wealthy and the poor will largely be separated by one thing, the size of their audience; or at least that’s my belief.
So I don’t know about you but I definitely don’t want to be on the outside looking in when it comes to this new social economy, whether I’m late to the party or not I intend to make sure I’ve got social capital to leverage in the coming years.
So here’s what I’ve learned recently…
The game has really changed, since none of us are early adopters there’s no easy way through all the distraction and noise to catch people’s attention.
Content alone isn’t going to do it (though good content is key to retaining your following.)
But here’s the real scoop on how you build an initial fanbase on Instagram.
- Make sure you post 1-2 times/day. Instagram is all about the “image tells the story” what will be your identity? I’ll be the first to admit I sometimes struggle with this, I’m not big into selfies day after day, instead I try to use images that mean something to me, that capture what I’m thinking about (keep it simple at first, take a picture of your breakfast, your favourite plate, your favourite brand of something, your favourite park to go for a run in, your favourite clients, one of the camps you taught today, etc, etc.)
Talk about what you’re thinking about in the description, but keep it easy to read, use extra periods to give you line breaks. No one reads paragraphs or blocks of text anymore, think of each line as a Twitter comment and break it up!
- Use Hashtags, you can have up to 30 of them on each post and you should try to use all of them! Make this easy on yourself, download the app Hashtagger. You can enter any one hashtag (Like (yourtown)fitness) and it will give you suggestions, you can tick them off, copy and paste and you’re done! (PRO TIP: Paste your hashtags in the first comment of your post, this makes it look cleaner and if you autopost to other platforms (which you should, you’ll notice the option to connect a Twitter and Facebook as you post) it will keep your posts cleaner.
- Install Ever-Liker. (everliker.com) Ever Liker is am extension for Google Chrome, if your computer is on; you can connect it to your IG account, give it a list of hashtags and it will start liking posts for you. This is “Social Media” afterall so we need to be highly engaged in social things like interacting with other content, but who has time to like 700 different things a day? Work smarter not harder, have Ever Liker do it for you! (P.S. I use the paid version it cost $5/month and let’s you also specify other users who have large followings and may attract followers similar to what you want, it likes the content of their followers, great value for $5/month)
- Followers Pro App. Finally I use a simple app that shows me who recently unfollowed me, no sense continuing to follow people who are not following me (unless of course I really like their content) I just check it a couple times a week and quickly unfollow the users that have unfollowed me.)
Ok if so if you’re an Instagram newbie like me I hope you found this helpful! I’m shooting for 10,000 followers by the end of the year and I encourage you to do the same!
How-to Get People to Do What You Want, Make More Money, and Get Laid More!
Some time ago I came up with this acronym for EAS, which always stuck with me because growing up I was such a big Bill Phillips/Body For Life fan.
A few years ago I was hugely honoured with a special invitation to speak at the local TEDx event, this was a big deal for me I really wanted to do something impactful, in fact it’s the first speech I kind of wrote and the only one I’ve practiced to memory since college.
If you haven’t watched this video I really do suggest you spend the 18 minutes: https://youtu.be/3O1yYuOBFrE
You see EAS began as sales training and because of TEDx became the simple equation to harness the power of inspiration no matter who you are or what situation you’re in.
Why should that be important to you?
Because this is what I think is amazing about the world today.
Bad news.
Like it or not, you are always selling and selling to everyone.
If you weren’t always selling…
You wouldn’t have any friends…
No one (your kids) wouldn’t listen to you…
You wouldn’t have a job/career/business/etc…
You’d have never gotten laid (yep I just said that)…
You’ll never get “upgraded” on an airline or in Vegas…
Your clients wouldn’t be getting results…
I think you get the point.
Good news.
Selling used to be that the salesperson knew more than the prospect about a product or service and they would leverage that information to convince (or coerce) a prospect into making a decision.
Hence we all have this gut response to dislike salesman or associate sales as being a bad thing or something to be avoided.
But that’s not how it is now.
The internet, the Facebooks, the YouTubes and all those kinds of things have placed all the information that we can handle (and more) at our finger tips.
As consumers we are equally or often more educated about a product or service than the salesperson whose job it is to sell it to us.
And this is great news (and where EAS comes in.)
Selling can now be honest, transparent, sincere (or at least that’s my belief and what I teach when it comes to selling.)
Your job as the salesperson now is to help people to take action on what they really want, to help them realize why continuing to procrastinate is hurting them, or they are the only ones losing out.
Your job is to be supportive, kind, caring and sincere and by doing so we give people the confidence to be decisive, to take action and make a change in their life.
Now that’s what I call sales! I love that I can be supportive, kind, and enthusiastic and give someone else a lift, almost no convincing necessary!
But…remember this is still sales (not to be confused with a conversation) all this goodness only happens when people make a consensual decision (like the conjugal situation I mentioned above) so you better hone your skills when it comes to participating in that decision process.
And that’s where EAS comes in.
Emotion.
No one makes a decision without being emotionally invested.
What would it feel like to wear that bikini with total confidence?
The conversation always begins with emotional questions, things that lead to a description.
Affirmation.
You’re the assistant, you need permission to proceed.
Does this make sense?
Do you understand?
Can I show you the different options?
Can I be sure you will follow your meal plan to the letter this week?
Yes or no questions. (If you get a no you have to back up, they are not emotional enough to be ready to make a decision, or at least not the one you want.)
Solution.
Only when you have their total consent, affirmation and permission does the solution, your product, service or offer even matter.
If you haven’t navigated the first two steps before getting here it’s going to be a negative outcome nearly every single time!
But don’t take my word for it, think back to previous situations, watch my video, put it to the test at work, at home, with friends and with your kids.
Anyways I hope that helps.
Here’s a great 4-minute video as a follow up that talks about how this same process works with a group of people https://youtu.be/nL5zujknLkM
Reverse Engineering
Below is a weekly email I sent to my team to explain the idea of reverse engineering any goal, I thought you might find value in it’s application personally or even to your team so I thought I’d repost for you here!
Enjoy!
Do you use reverse engineering in your life?
If not you should, and it’s a great concept to understand and be able to teach friends, family and especially our clients.
Reverse engineering is just as Stephen Covey (author of the 7 Habits books) would put it, “beginning with the end in mind.”
Most commonly people might think of this in terms of money or finances, and certainly in my crazy entrepreneurial world it’s a way I use reverse engineering frequently; but it’s so much more than that.
It can and should be used for any goal.
Why?
Simple, what’s the only thing that stops us from reaching any goal? (Finances, fitness, personal, any goal.)
FEAR.
Yup that’s it. We can be too intimidated to start, too stressed out about the work or how hard it will be, or fearful because we fail one or more times along the way (or have previously failed in our attempts to reach the goal.)
Reverse engineering helps absolve fear by shoring up another thing I’m a big fan of talking about with you and hour clients; and that’s confidence.
You know what I’m talking about, that when the step or next task is so small or easy that we’re not afraid motivation or action comes easy because well it appears easy.
Now what feels easy to you may not to me and vice versa, which is where reverse engineering comes in.
Step 1: What’s the big outcome you want? (ex. Buy a new car/lose 30 lbs)
Step 2: What time frame do you want this to happen in? (ex. 6 months/12 weeks)
Step 3: Break down to next increment. (ex. each month I need to earn an additional $500/each week I need to lose 2.5lbs)
Step 4: Break it down to next smaller increment until it feels easy.
Ex.
I need to earn and additional $125/week, I work an average of 30 hours so I’d need to earn about $4.25 an hour more or increase my working hours by 5-8 / I need to lose only 0.35lbs/day)
Does it feel small enough to you yet, if not break it down further or begin creating a plan.
Ex.
Earnings
Could I talk to my teammates and offer to take some extra shifts?
Do I have a skill or hobby that I’m good at and could pick up a freelance project on the side?
What could I do to add enough value to increase my earnings by an additional $4.25 an hour?
Every testimonial/before and after we publish helps increase our reputation, every new Google/Facebook review we get helps someone on the fence make a decision, every new person that has a great workout has a chance to sign up, every new person you get to come workout the first time has a 50/50 chance of deciding to stay.
Every person you talk to about staying longer has a better than 50% chance of deciding to stay. Have a look at the “Levels in your job description” for ideas on how you can quickly achieve this. Could I speak to 3 people per day about continuing and basically “1-2” memberships per week? Or find 1-2 new people per week to try a workout by asking daily on my personal social media? Does that seem easy and sustainable?
(Now boys and girls, full transparency, I mention this because I want you to choose this one, as selfishly it’s the one that can help me the most, but there’s also a bigger reason. This is the one where if we all work together the results/potential are limitless so selfishly it should appeal to you too!)
Could I learn about something new and start building a passive or additional income?
Last year I became curious about Amazon, in September I sold $184 on Amazon all things I bought in clearance bins with less than $100 of starting capital, in October that was $1994 with a profit of $330, last month we sold nearly $40,000 on Amazon! Now I wish I could say you could grow like that with $100 to invest but that isn’t true. But my point is that anyone could easily generate $300-500/month on Amazon with 5-10 hours/month worth of effort and I will even teach you how.)
Could you dedicate 1 hour/day Monday-Friday to learn about how to sell on Amazon and another 3-4 hours/week to go and shop for things to sell? Does that seem easy and sustainable?
Fitness
0.35lbs of fat = 1430 calories of energy.
30 minutes of boot camp = approx. 400 calories
Reducing daily calorie consumption by 10% = approx. 180 calories
Adding 30 minutes of slow distance cardio = approx. 200 calories
Reducing starchy carbohydrates and replacing with fibrous to increase energy utilization during digestion = approx. 150 calories
To me this is about the maximum that seems “easy” and might be overwhelming already for many, so we must re-evaluate the goal, if it took 16-18 weeks to lose 30lbs would you still be satisfied? Does the above seem simple? Only works if you can answer yes to both!
Anyways, that’s my attempt to teach you the power of reverse engineering, it can work for anything like: setting dedicated working hours or working less, like improving your relationships with others, like accomplishing any big milestone in your financial life, and even spirituality or emotional growth.
Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help!
Why You’re Failing at Group Selling Before You Start (and How-to Fix it in 4 Minutes)
Yesterday I was hosting a weekly video coaching call for some of my clients and I was teaching about why people fail when it comes to selling personal training to a group.
For the record, I was slow to adopt group selling, to me I always connected best with people one-on-one and felt I’d never be able to connect the same way to a group…which would lead to no one making a decision, me letting them down, and ultimately them not embracing change.
In short I was afraid everyone was going to lose.
But the thing is, it’s just a matter of understand people and behaviour, and more importantly being a real person.
Watch this 4 minute video and I explain exactly why most selling situations (group and one-on-one) fail before they even begin and exactly how to setup your next one for instant success (and I promise you you’re going to feel more genuine and relaxed doing it.)
If you liked this, I have a treat for you, just like I teach in the video, it’s all about establishing relationships, I have a gift for you. (I want to help you with selling more personal training programs or boot camp or really any kind of service!)
I’ve decided to make my give my wholes sales program away for free for a while in hopes I can help you and who knows maybe you’ll want to talk to me about your business some time.
Just head on over to: www.howtosellfitness.net and get instant access right now, totally FREE!
YES! Contact me today to schedule a FREE no obligation consultation and trial workout.