Cabel

Continual Forward Momentum

Continual Forward Momentum

Published by on April 30, 2013 | Leave a response

Batch Processing and a Distraction Eliminated

I’m on my way home from Fitness Business Summit. As usual I am completely energized and ready to conquer the world…again.

It’s easy to feel completely revved up only to be left completely burnt out before the end of the week.

That’s why it’s critical to understand how-to manage your time.

There are three rules to time management, the more I learn the less negotiable I think these are (let’s face it there are a lot of different opinions on time management.)

  1. Create the “to-do” list the night before.

There’s a big difference between planning your list the night before and first thing in the morning so make sure you understand.

If you haven’t already read Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz you should (or get the audiobook). Dr. Maltz talks a lot about the “theatre of the mind” and that is exactly why you must set your list the night before.

burnoutBy creating your to-do list the night before your subconscious mind works all night without you rapidly looking for solutions the next morning. You’ll begin the day immediately productive and avoid early emotional burnout. You likely have never considered but it takes a massive amount of emotional resources to create your to-do list in the morning. You’re forcing your brain to be creative, problem solve and organize a series of tasks all in rapid succession; this is a difficult and demanding series of tasks.

  1. Complete the hardest thing first.

Doing anything else only fosters a behavior of avoidance. When you set a habit that says it’s ok to avoid certain things you will avoid more things until only the difficult tasks remain. When this happens you’re at a roadblock, you’ll be wasting hours on facebook, Harlem Shake videos and other things that are sapping your ability to succeed quickly.

What’s more if you’ve created your list the night before your subconscious mind will have worked all night to ensure that the “hard” task is not as hard as it otherwise would have been.

  1. Batch process.

It takes time to focus on any task. A good example is creative work, if you’re like me it doesn’t come naturally. It would be a terrible waste to move on to something completely different after writing this blog post, I’ve stimulated the creative centres in my brain in an effort to have words flow to a page. I’ll write several more blog posts or articles of content before moving on to something else. Don’t believe me? Measure. Write a 500 word article and move on to a different task. Later today or tomorrow write another article and record the time. After doing this several times pick a day, block off a few hours and write the same number of articles, you’ll find by writing them all at once it will take far less time.

Last but not least there’s what I call a conditional 4th rule, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t make it through your list.

Now you have to be a little honest with yourself. If you’re not engaged in productivity at least a few hours a day then you may have to consider how serious you are about your goals. However if you are managing a few dedicated hours each day (and this can be different every day) and the list doesn’t get completed, don’t worry about it, make tomorrows list and rinse and repeat.

The point is the only thing that makes really successful people really successful is their ability to continue with forward momentum. If you only managed to complete one substantial task in a week you’d be far ahead of the majority of the world.

Posted in ,

400 Square Feet, 20 Clients, $48, 000 Case Study

Published by on April 25, 2013 | Leave a response

400 Square Feet, 20 Clients, $48,000 (Case Study)

I have a really inspiring story to share with you today. This story is personal for me
because I know how hard it can be to achieve success, especially when you have
very limited resources.

It was Lori who introduced me to Misty who has since become one my top coaching
clients.

Misty is a WOW! Practitioner.

She owns TM Training and Nutrition and a Fit Body Bootcamp, which she is in the
process of opening.

She is also 6 feet tall. Think of how I feel when standing beside her 🙂

Lori introduced me to Misty because she knew I could help her. After all, I am ‘The
Mechanic’. I fix broken fitness businesses.

She was struggling with her personal training studio. I started working with Misty in
June 2012 and was making generating $6,000 a month in revenue. As of March she
has tripled her revenue to $18,000 in fitness sales.

The story I want to share isn’t about how Misty is kicking ass with her personal
training studio. It isn’t about how she started her Bootcamp and quickly filled all the
spots.

The story I am honored to share is about how anything is possible, even when you
have to run your nutrition business out of your living room.

Take a couple of minutes and watch this video.

Lori Kennedy, CEO of WOW! Weight Loss Inc. interviews Misty about her additional
revenue stream that has allowed her to bring in an EXTRA $48,000 per year in
profit.

You don’t want to miss the part where Misty shares her #1 tip for generating loads
of new leads.

After you are done watching, send me an email and let me know how you plan to
make extra money this year.

watch


Click HERE to find out more information about the upcoming WOW! Certification
and how you can bring in $48,000 in profit from a turn-key nutrition program.

Posted in , , ,

How To Hire A Nutritionist For Your Fitness Business

Published by on April 24, 2013 | Leave a response

How To Hire A Nutritionist For Your Fitness Business

By Lori Kennedy

Today I have a really great article for you written by my friend and colleague, Lori Kennedy RHN, CEO of WOW! Weight Loss Inc.

If you made it to the Fitness Business Summit this year you got to listen to her talk about how us fitness people need to step it up a notch and start offering turn-key nutrition programs in our businesses. She talked about the trend of turning your fitness business into a one-stop health shop.

I was actually just in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with Lori where we co-hosted the Wellness Business Summit. Together we taught over 170 alternative wellness practitioners the fine art of marketing and business.

If you ever thought of hiring a nutritionist or implementing a nutrition program you MUST read this. Lori gives away her best do’s and don’ts when it comes to hiring a credentialed nutrition professional.

Take it away Lori…

Hi everyone! Thanks Cabel.

Here’s a secret about Cabel. If you didn’t already know his nickname is, ‘The Mechanic’.

He is the fixer.

He puts the pieces together. He rocked the Wellness Business Summit!

As Cabel mentioned I gave a presentation at the Fitness Business Summit. After FBS I got a lot of questions asking about what to look for when hiring a Nutritionist.

Here’s an insider secret that I shared at FBS… Students in nutrition or Dietetics programs work for free!

Yup. Free.

They all need to complete a certain number of internship or practicum hours. My advice is to contact the nutrition schools and universities in your area with your offer to take interns. They will be grateful and refer loads of people to you. Create a job description and give the interns some direction. Remember they are students so don’t throw them into the deep end right away.

There’s a lot to know when it comes to hiring nutrition professionals. Here are my top do’s and don’ts.

Let’s start with the don’ts.

1. Don’t expect them to feel comfortable or confident selling nutrition services. Most nutritionists have a ‘save the world Norma Rae’ mentality. They have never had to sell anything before so it’s scary and overwhelming for them.

2. Don’t expect them to have any experience in marketing. Business and marketing is not a subject focused on at length in any nutrition program or certification.

3. Don’t expect them to come with a done-for-you turn-key nutrition program. It takes a long time to build up client materials. Most nutrition professionals are taught to create personalized plans on an individual basis.

4. Don’t underestimate the nutritionist’s capacity to work their asses off for you and your business. The ‘Norma Rae save the world’ mentality traits are amazing when it comes to providing superior customer service and support.

5. Don’t devalue the time you will spend training the nutritionist. Even though it takes time to build up the nutrition program, you will benefit in the long run. Adding nutrition services will bring non-fitness related leads into your business. It will separate you from the rest of the plain old fitness facilities in your community.

While I didn’t start off painting my fellow colleagues in the best light, it’s the truth. I experienced this myself when I was first starting out. I learned the hard way and experienced big failures when I first started out.

Now let’s move onto the positives. There are so many do’s to think about when hiring a nutrition professional. Nutrition is a value added service. Your clients are most likely already spending money on the food side of fat loss somewhere else… why not have them spend their fat loss dollars in your facility?

1. Do spend the time to train them like you would a personal trainer. Run them through your sales processes. Provide them with the same expectations you would a personal trainer.

2. Do look for a nutrition professional that has graduated from a 1 year program instead of just taking a 2 day course.

3. Do evaluate them based on their look and personality. Unfortunately the phrase don’t judge a book by its cover doesn’t apply. It will be hard for your clients to take a nutritionist seriously when they don’t look the part. Hire someone who is bubbly, outgoing and isn’t afraid to talk to strangers.

4. Do have them come in for a trial run. When I hire a nutritionist to fulfill WOW! contracts I always have them come in to do a free seminar for clients. I am able to better gauge their ability to build rapport, their knowledge and confidence level.

5. Do make sure you offer a short-term and long-term weight loss program. Your clients are looking for weight loss advice and a structured program. They are not aware of or really ??? care about their health issues. Market weight loss over health.

Cabel here again. Thank you Lori for sharing!

If you want more information on how you can create your own turn-key weight loss program for your fitness business CLICK HERE.

Posted in ,
A Distraction Eliminated

A Distraction Eliminated

Published by on April 23, 2013 | Leave a response

funny_road_signDo you use Facebook to grow your business?

 

Facebook, in my opinion, is one of the most robust marketing channels to quickly grow your business, and to automatically access a massive audience.

 

If you don’t have a fanpage for your business start one.

 

Once you start a fanpage it’s important you complete all areas. If you really want to set it up right I would really urge you to have a look at the Facebook Funnel by my good friend Josh Carter. (Josh is a highly trusted facebook expert in our industry and beyond.)

 

Once you have all areas complete it’s time to start your content stream. It’s critical you create a continual flow of interaction on your fanpage. It’s a real living, breathing community for your business.

 

Each day I’d commit to the following:

  • At least one positive status update or point of interest to your community.
  • At least one tip or piece of value for your audience.
  • At least one positive comment or recent success about a client or someone you know relating to your business.

 

When you’re making posts on your fanpage it’s been proven time and time again that posting an image with your update provides a much greater amount of interaction.

 

The more interaction you can stimulate the more people who will visit your page and the greater potential you’ll have to use it as an automatic lead attraction source.

 

Now every few weeks I’d suggest you also post an optin, if you don’t know what an optin is this is something of value you’re offering your audience for free in exchange for their email address. Free reports, videos and ebooks are very common.

 

In addition to optins every few weeks you might also post short term offers in an effort to stimulate immediate contac with new prospects and of course sales. (Afterall there should be a purpose to our facebook time.)

 

Ok now here’s something really cool I finally learned (thank you Shawna Kaminski and maybe many of you already know this.)

 

Batch process your facebook. Seriously facebook is all about interruption, and they are so good at it. I know I need to do all this stuff I’ve mentioned on facebook but I’ve went through periods where I’ve been really consistent and not so consistent because I know I’m going to be distracted while I’m there and it saps my productivity.

 

You can now cue facebook posts in advance, at the bottom of your status box is a little (easily missed) link that will allow you to choose the year, month, day, hour, and minute you’d like your post to appear.

 

Eliminate one of the ultimate distractions by chunking this task and preparing days in advance so you don’t need to spend much time on facebook.

Posted in , ,

Failing Forward

Published by on April 16, 2013 | Leave a response

The summary of my success in the fitness industry as a trainer, entrepreneur and now a mentor is really a result of my failures. That’s not to say that we should dwell or focus on our failures but rather be able to acknowledge and accept them.

I can only speak for myself but I find it important to sometimes on a tough day list off some of my proudest moments, the shinning victories, or the milestones of what I’ve created. The need to do this usually comes when faced with a big challenge, one that may be plaguing me with a certain level of dissension, pain, or fear. When I do this I’m often marveled, finding it almost unbelievable and full of curiosity as to how things came to be. This reflection provides a measure of character reinforcement and a source of inspiration to face the fear.

Once that warm fuzzy feeling of invulnerability is achieved you may often notice the dark clouds on the horizon; attracted by the fear you may be feeling at present challenges. Within those dark clouds reside the marks of previous monumental disasters, your mistakes, your missteps, your failures.

If I can give one piece of advice today it’s to face your failures, review them in detail, and acknowledge and use them immediately as the powerful lessons they are. My biggest failures are my biggest lessons. Once I accept the failure I realize that if I break it down the resulting information allows me to leap forward farther than I ever could have if I hadn’t failed to begin with.

Here’s how I do it.

1) Identify the big ass problem. Usually this has strong emotional ties, it makes me feel uncomfortable, maybe embarrassed, frustrated, angry or all of the above.
2) Try to strip away the emotion, and much like a fire, try to determine the point of ignition. For example one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was trusting a client “friend” to give us a verbal estimate and offer to organize a renovation. This mistake found me in a position where tens of thousands of dollars were wasted and I was now facing expenditure three times the original amount to complete the project, and the need to find all new people to do it.
3) Review any available information related to the problem. As time goes on you get smarter, you track more things, you keep better records, generally as a result of previous failure.
4) Review any information you have, if you have none make a list of things that would be helpful to have now that the situation has occurred. This way should a similar thing occur you’d have an idea what may help.
5) Formulate a plan for next time or update current systems to influence a future outcome.

Don’t’ beat yourself up, or really try to solve a problem that already happened, just have a plan to avoid the same outcome in the future.

That’s, in many ways, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned. If you’re solving problems you’re already one step behind. Work on altering future outcomes knowing you’ll face new situations.

No one likes to fail but it can be a valuable asset.

Posted in

The Ultimate Workout Solution

Published by on March 28, 2013 | Leave a response

Here’s some more kick ass content from my good industry friend Mike Whitfield. Serious read and deploy!

 

Mike_W-BioMike Whitfield, CTT

Author, Workout Finishers

Once you read this, you will change the way you approach training with your clients and campers forever. That’s actually a good thing.

If you’re anything like me, you’re willing to learn and invest in yourself to simply get better. That’s what I’ve done for years in order to give my clients and campers even better results.

After all, that’s what they pay us to do, right?

Back in the fall of 2011, I released a program called “Workout Finishers” which was based exactly on what I did with my own clients and campers to get faster results, but more importantly, made them more consistent.

Had I not invested in programs from great coaches like Alwyn Cosgrove, Craig Ballantyne, John Romaniello and more, I would have never even tried using finishers with my clients.

 

But… What is a Workout Finisher? 

In a nutshell, a finisher is a VERY metabolically demanding superset or circuit (and yes, sometimes even just one exercise) with very short rest periods and they include some of the craziest, yet effective set and rep schemes you have ever seen.

It’s the perfect solution to replace long, boring cardio and even intervals for your campers and clients.

The goods news gets even better – they last just a fraction of the time that long cardio and intervals take. Some are as short as three minutes!

Workout Finishers Can Be Used

  • At the END of ANY workout for an ultimate workout grand finale for improved conditioning and faster fat loss
  • As off day conditioning and the perfect solution for people who are stuck on a plateau
  • Some of the fastest workouts you can do when you are tight on time or have a very busy schedule (us as trainers face this a lot)

How Do Workout Finishers Work?

They just do. Next question.

Seriously – the real “secret” to workout finishers is based on one simple, yet brutally effective factor. That is the volume of work done in a short amount of time.

This is also known as “density”… and there is a lot of it.

In fact, that’s why Workout Finishers 2.0 came about.  I stumbled upon this study revealed in 2012:

Canadian researchers at Queen’s University tested a Workout Finisher style workout against long cardio.

(Reference: Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2012 Sep 20.)

22 college-aged women did 4 workouts per week for 4 weeks in one of three groups.

Group A did 30 minutes of treadmill running at 85% max heart rate

Group B did 8 rounds of 20 seconds of a single bodyweight exercise (burpees, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, or squat thrusts) with 10 seconds of rest between rounds.

Group C did nothing (they were the non-training control group).

Results:

Both training groups increased their aerobic fitness levels by the SAME amount (about 7-8%). That’s right, the short finisher style workouts (of 4 minutes) worked just as well as 30 minutes of cardio.

BUT…only Group B, the Workout Finishers style training, also increased muscular endurance in common exercises like chest presses, leg extensions, sit-ups, and push-ups.

And finally, the Finishers style of training used by Group B also resulted in greater overall workout enjoyment.

The Canadian Scientists concluded that this style of training will boost cardiovascular fitness just as well as cardio while giving you BETTER improvements in muscle endurance…

… All in just 4 minutes.

This ONE Study Impacted ALL Future Workout Finishers I Wrote

And sure enough, my readers and clients enjoyed this new change. The finishers became a little shorter, yet more intense.

Yet they were short, my clients and readers were getting even BETTER results.

So, What Does a Sample Workout Finisher Look Like?

That’s a good question, so let’s do one. At the end of your next workout yourself or with a client, perform this fun one. This is a great one to use with your camp or even group training because it uses timed sets so your clients can go at their own pace.

The Jump, Push, Swing and Climb

Do the following circuit three times, resting only as shown. If your campers or clients need more rest, that’s fine. They can simply jump back in.

Lunge Jumps (20 secs), rest 10 secs

Close-Grip Pushups (20 secs), rest 10 secs

KB or DB Swings (20 secs), rest 10 secs

Mountain Climbers (20 secs), rest 10 secs

Six minutes – Boom Done.

MW-WF2.0-Spiral-FlatThat’s why I HAD to come up with a new version of Workout Finishers. After all, if I could get even better and faster results in less time with my readers and clients, it was time to improve the original classic.

That’s exactly what I did with Workout Finishers 2.0. You’ll find 51 more fun and addicting finishers for yourself and to use with your campers and clients.

These fun workout grand finales are what kept my clients and campers coming back for more week after week.

But between you and I – I was more excited about their consistency to working out and them enjoying their workouts. That’s what it’s all about.

Plus, this gives them a permanent solution to never having to do boring cardio ever again.

 

 

To your success,

Mike Whitfield, CTT

 

Get 51 brand NEW Workout Finishers here

 

Posted in ,

Weird Density Workout (Clients Love This)

Published by on March 26, 2013 | Leave a response

I’d like to introduce you to a good friend of mine who has brought something totally unique to the workout world, today he’s got something really cool to share with you, take it away Mikey…

Mike_W-BioMike Whitfield, CTT

Author, Workout Finishers

I had a problem and I had to do something about it. You see, I trained at a small family gym in Dallas, GA. In January, it was really crowded as I’m sure you’ve seen this yourself.

Typically with my clients, I would take them through a simple bodyweight exercise warm-up of easier exercises. We would do bodyweight squats, pushups, planks and more.

Then it was time to do some metabolic resistance training. There was this small space in our gym where people would typically do their stretching and even get out the mats for some core work.

I liked to keep my clients moving and I didn’t want them having to walk all over the gym to work the supersets and circuits that Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) includes.

So, I would bring the dumbbells, bench and anything else needed to this small area. I call it the “open area” because it was indeed the only open area in the gym. Most of the time, this space wasn’t utilized. Unfortunately, the “ab machines” were more popular than this space. But being a trainer, I’m sure you already know how that goes… they just don’t work.

Anyway, after our MRT, it was time to assign them intervals. I would prescribe my clients a specific interval program to follow immediately after their workout or they can perform the intervals on their “off day” as long as it didn’t interfere with their recovery between their main workouts.

But like I said above, in January, the gym was pure chaos. My clients couldn’t even perform their interval training because all the machines were taken up. We had a variety of treadmills, ellipticals, bikes and even stair-climbers, but every single one of them were being used.

My clients were frustrated, and I certainly understood that. So, I started to use Workout Finishers instead. This would be a circuit or superset of intense exercise with short rest periods (if any rest).

Here’s the thing – my clients enjoyed the finishers more than the interval training, PLUS they were getting BETTER results. But what I found that intrigued me even more was that they stayed more consistent with their workouts because they found the finishers more challenging and fun.

They admitted they liked the change and the fact that they can do their “intervals” in just a fraction of the time that it used to take.

Doing this for one-on-one clients was great because I could use specific reps and rest periods based on their individual fitness level. But using finishers with my clients and campers became a challenge.

That’s when I started to use “density” circuits and supersets. This is when you complete as many reps or as many rounds in a certain timeframe. There are a variety of ways to use density finishers, but one of my favorites is using a short rep scheme with 2-3 exercises.

It’s certainly different, but that’s what our clients come to us for, right? We have to be different than our competition and really bring it.

Plus, the density approach allows your campers, small groups and semi-private training clients to work at their unique fitness level. Density finishers allow you to rest when needed. You simply jump in and out as needed as the timer continues to tick.

Here is the most popular finisher using this density approach that I did at the Turbulence Training Summit in 2012. It’s called the “3’s Company” Finisher. I know… my names are hilarious. Check it out:

 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_sxcl9W7Qc[/youtube]

Here is the actual finisher broken down:

Do as many rounds of this circuit as possible in 3 minutes, resting only when needed.

Burpee/Spiderman Pushup (3)

Lunge Jump (3/side)

X-Body Mountain Climber  (3/side)

The density approach lets you put in a lot of volume in a little bit of time. That means your clients will be challenged and get better results in less time. That’s a win/win for you and them.

Just be sure to tell your clients to rest when their form is getting sloppy. The idea is to put in quality work in the amount of time given.MW-WF2.0-Spiral-Flat

That’s what separates you from the trainers and coaches down the street. Even though it’s 2013, I’m sure you still see other trainers prescribing boring cardio for their clients, but you definitely know better.

Let your clients have fun AND get results,

Mike Whitfield, CTT

Creator, Workout Finishers

Get 51 brand NEW Workout Finishers here

 

Posted in ,

What’s Your Mission?

Published by on March 21, 2013 | Leave a response

Why are you a fitness professional? I’m sure it’s because you want to change peoples lives, to help people feel better about themselves and to make a difference in one person or the world as we know it.

If your clients came to you with similar weight loss goals would that be good enough? I suspect it wouldn’t. If that puzzles you re-read the statement above and acknowledge now how general that statement really is.

Get passionate and declare a mission to grow your business.

Over the last few years we’ve had a huge push to establish strong team culture at One-to-1 Fitness. Not only is culture important for managing internal relationships that hold our team together but has also lead to the vision of our public mission that keeps all of us focused each day on growing the business and making a difference.

Our public mission is: Inspire more than 10,000 local individuals to reach their fitness and weight loss goals by 2015.

Now this is no easy task given that our whole city is just 86,000 people, but then who says all of these people have to be local? I don’t know how we will track this goal or if it’s something we can truly achieve, but we’ll try.

This message proves as a powerful descriptor for our marketing and more. For one there is no way we can train 10,000 people at One-to-1 Fitness. It forces us to go beyond our customer and ramp up our efforts to ensure the knowledge of what we do is available to our community. Things like our “3 Week Home Fat Loss Course” have become powerful opt-ins increasing our list and helping many in our community in their efforts to get in better shape.

On our marketing materials it leaves the impression of greater purpose to our prospects rather than just a sale.

A scientific study tested an idea of human behavior. Every day for a period a college student attempted to cut in a long line with no reason given. The reactions to this were very negative and even quite hostile. By comparison over the same length of time another student was asked to cut into the same line but prior to doing so asked the individuals providing the reason that they were really late and letting them in was going to save them grief or personal pain. By comparison the individual that provided the reason was allowed to cut in line more often than not.

Our basic behavior is to accept a reason, our acceptance helps to breakdown some of the natural walls associated with sales or promotion.

Posted in , Tagged

Foundation Marketing: Revenue Share Programs

Published by on March 19, 2013 | Leave a response

I believe that developing strategic partnerships is one of the fastest and most cost effective ways of building your business. It should be one of the foundation elements that receive continual focus with direct goals in every quarter.

Now one of the big problems with strategic partnerships is that local businesses are constantly approached or solicited by others to do things, display things or post things that help other people grow their business. For the business being approached this generally just takes up valuable space and is a waste of time with little to no reciprocal benefit which is why so many businesses won’t talk to you or have a standard practice of saying no.

Here are my five steps to overcoming this. Go with a giving hand and deliver real value that leads to mutually beneficial relationships.

  1. Interview the Expert
  2. Sponsor Your Community
  3. The Charity Lunch & Learn
  4. Cross Promotion
  5. Revenue Share Programs

In this post we’re going to cover the final step, which is Revenue Share Programs.

Well this is it the end of our journey, the easy part.

At this stage you now have a great mutually beneficial, lasting relationship with likely some of the best of the best practitioners in your community. You’ve established yourself with them by showing them real value. If your community is like mine you’ve likely taught them all kinds of new concepts towards the whole approach of attracting customers, these are all good things.

With your strong relationship in place it now makes perfect sense to directly ask them to promote you, but we’re still going to do it in a fashion that’s win-win.

Create an exclusive service package for them. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel to do this just simply re-package and re-name a trial service or group of services you’ve used in the past for client attraction.

I recommend developing some sales materials to go with, perhaps a nice sales letter, a plastic card that can be sold or a combination of both.

Create a program that appeals to their customer, validates the practitioner and ties your relationship to them as the greater good of a mutual passion to help people. The goal is to make a product they are proud to promote and one that will surely yield easy sales.

The offer that comes to mind is the one I mentioned in a previous segment of this process. We created a (name) Chiropractic & Wellness Fitness Assessment. This included two appointments where we completed a variety of assessments, compiled the results and demonstrated individualization through a one-on-one workout. In addition we offered Infrared Therapy sessions as bonus value and the best part was the programming was always developed based on recommendations from the practitioner to ensure there was a high degree of overlap and reinforcement.

In this situation rather than sharing the revenue we just gave it all too them, this allowed them to sell more than $1000 in 24 hours and generated more than 20 leads for us.

Once in place these programs take no effort on your part the business can keep selling the product you keep validating them and supplying the service. Imagine if 10 different businesses we’re doing this for you? If they only produced 1-2 leads a month even that would be an average of 3-5 new prospects for you every single week.

It shouldn’t take much to see why Strategic Partnerships should be a foundation element of your business. Start every quarter with a list of 15 and work through all the steps with all those that will respond, if by step 5 you’re developing just 1 new revenue share program each quarter it will still be easily worth the investment.

Best part, after completing this process train a member of your team to do it and pass it off.

Posted in , , Tagged ,

Foundation Marketing: Cross Promotion

Published by on March 12, 2013 | Leave a response

Over these next few weeks I’ll be posting this entire series detailing my strategies on effectively developing strategic partnerships in your community.

I believe that developing strategic partnerships is one of the fastest and most cost effective ways of building your business. It should be one of the foundation elements that receive continual focus with direct goals in every quarter.

Now one of the big problems with strategic partnerships is that local businesses are constantly approached or solicited by others to do things, display things or post things that help other people grow their business. For the business being approached this generally just takes up valuable space and is a waste of time with little to no reciprocal benefit which is why so many businesses won’t talk to you or have a standard practice of saying no.

Here are my five steps to overcoming this. Go with a giving hand and deliver real value that leads to mutually beneficial relationships.

  1. Interview the Expert
  2. Sponsor Your Community
  3. The Charity Lunch & Learn
  4. Cross Promotion
  5. Revenue Share Programs

In this post we’re going to cover the fourth step, which is direct Cross Promotion. 

This is where it get’s really fun.

cross-promote

If you’ve followed this process as I’ve outlined and fully committed to each step you’ve now doubt created a great new stream of leads for your business. More importantly you’ve created relationships that lend credibility and that are strong enough to ensure your strategic partners will be compelled to work for you.

It’s time to talk to them about direct cross promotion.

One of the common promotions I’ve made popular in our industry from my first speech at Fitness Business Summit was the use of a leadbox.

A Leadbox has some fundamental problems though, they take up space and don’t really do a lot if people are mentioning them and actually directing people to enter.

At this stage in your relationship your partners will likely be excited about promoting your leadbox because you’ve given them so much upfront value.

One of the ways you can further enhance this is start your leadbox with a non-traditional offer. Working with your strategic partner create a prize package for entry that people will perceive as valuable this makes it easy to promote and ensures lots of submissions. Real tangible product combined with services for one winner creates massive perceived value that helps to overcome peoples fear of exposing their personal information. In addition your relationship with the strategic partner will have them excited to promote that value to win to their customers enhancing the number of submissions you receive.

Now obviously when you award the prize don’t stop there, make sure you’re contacting the other submissions with a high value trial or offer to generate as many warm prospects as possible and add them all to your list.

After the first month I recommend switching to a standard offer box for at least 60 days before offering the tangible prize again, you need to keep it fresh. Though the submissions will be lower your relationship will still ensure the strategic partner promotes it. This is also why you will need to rotate it to something dramatic every couple of months.

Now in addition or instead of the leadbox it’s time to talk to your strategic partner about possibly promoting you to their list. Create a high value promotion and provide them all the resources to easily send or promote it. I’d even suggest you let them keep a portion or all of the revenue and simply let them provide the certificates for service that people redeem with you. Your relationship and the tremendous value will almost guarantee they’ll be willing to promote your one-off offer.

14, 21 and 28 day programs or some other high-value trial package work great for this. If possible you always want to direct the promotion to where people are opting in with you to give you their contact information and become part of your list, this is what we’re really buying. Just make sure you’re prepared with your system of converting these people to ongoing clients so you can maximize your benefit from this cross promotion.

Next comes our final step, the Revenue Share Program, stay tuned!

Posted in