The Gym Owners Blog/Podcast/Text Messaging: The Future of Sales

Text Messaging: The Future of Sales

Saturday, January 21, 2023

CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML
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EPISODE KEYWORDS

people, text message, conversation, gym, communicate, texting, owners, price, text, person, sell, work, membership, check, sales, day, meet, coach, talk, bit

OUTLINE

  • What is the future of communicating with your potential clients via text? - 0:02
  • ​How the internet makes us fat as a society, which makes your job in demand - 3:38
  • ​People want you to be fully informed - 6:41
  • ​A phone call is inconvenient because you could be doing a variety of things when someone calls you - 12:45
  • ​What are some hurdles you’re going to run into when starting out? - 18:54
  • ​The importance of price-shopping in sales - 23:46
  • ​How to use text messaging and social media to get more leads - 28:06
  • ​What to do if you’ve never had a client before - 33:32

TRANSCRIPT

Tyler 00:02

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the gym owners podcast. This week's episode we're gonna talk about the future of communicating with your potential clients a way that you should probably start to figure out how to talk to people this way right now, because this is going to be the future it used to be a thing of a thing it was what was frowned upon trying to sell this way trying to communicate with your leads this way. And we are talking about selling and communicating with clients and prospective members via text message this episode. So, before we get started, make sure you go to the gym owners revolution, this Facebook group, get in there as a resource for gym owners will a big Challenge Cup coming here in the next month, I believe month to month, month that we're going to help you sit down and we're gonna go through and build all sorts of great stuff. It'll be free. So if you want in on that, make sure you get into the Facebook group, the link is going to be in our description. Make sure you follow the show at the Jim Morris podcast on Instagram. Follow me on Instagram at Tyler f and so on this Tyler EFI and so on and follow my co host John, we're gonna find a



John Fairbanks 00:56

jade J banks FL on J Greg's



Tyler 00:59

FL i Guys text messaging. Okay, there's something that started to happen. I don't know how long ago this was. I probably remember there was a time when I worked with blue collar job construction. And I worked with a guy who was like a bit of a dirtbag, actually. But this guy would like texts, chicks all day. Like he would text his girlfriend he would text his side girlfriend God knows what he's doing. But he was always texting and this was maybe in like 2006 You know? And so I told him I said what are you like, I would like to make fun of this guy for texting. I'll just call What are you stupid like, John, you're laughing here knowing who I am now. Because that was the thing that texting was like for girls or teenagers or children or something. I thought it was a juvenile way to communicate 15 years ago, 16 years ago. And now it's gotten to the point where I don't accept phone calls. I will never ever answer a phone call almost under almost no circumstances unless it's like an immediate family. And they have called me multiple times in a row that I haven't answered. And even then the right protocol, if you're going to try to call me or frankly anyone that I need to call if I'm going to call anyone , the first thing I'm doing is texting them, so I can get permission to call them. Yeah, right. That's exactly how I do it. Yeah, John, you and I communicate a bunch. We use messaging apps that will go back and forth because at least that's a direct line, you know, and then if there needs to be a call me to get more stuff out. And got a minute, can we hop on a quick call? confirms Yes. And then the phone will ring and what will usually happen first is neither. Whoever's on the receiving end won't answer either. Because we got Do Not Disturb turned on and I don't let anything come through there. Then I gotta go in and check again. And then the call happened while the phones in my hand that is the trend now is leaning towards that people don't answer their phone, the only people that ever call my phone now it's like my kids school gets canceled or it's just some shit that somehow they had my phone number for god knows what. And the day you used to be the way that you'd order pizza, you order pizza delivery, you just have to get on the phone to call a guy. And he didn't know what the specials were, you didn't know what the prices were, you didn't know what all the toppings they had or didn't have. You just kind of winged it. And you'd get through and they'd order the pizza, they come in and they had to have cash. And that was just the way it went. And now there's a local pizza spot here that has online ordering. But it's just browser based. Sometimes it doesn't work and it'll say hi there, you gotta call in to confirm your order. And I get furious if I even have to call. They'll just be like, Hey, I ordered this, did you get it and I'm so mad that I have to get on the phone with somebody. And so while the internet does make us a bit more antisocial, it also tends to make us fat as a society, which for you as gym owners. That makes your job value big policies, your job in demand. And so I do think you need to understand the trend in the past and it's still I still think it's valuable to try and meet your clients. I do think it's important, but I also think if your marketing is good, and so you're doing a good enough job on your Google business profile and being informative and putting like the good vibe, the right welcoming vibe out there on your social media so that people are no longer reaching out completely uninformed hoping to go in and spend time meeting with a person to get informed before they decide to spend money. It's not the way it is. People who want to have all the information in front of them have already pretty much made the decision and they just would rather pull the trigger. I buy cars the same way. I do all my research online I find the color of shirt search by my budget budget search searched by the mileage I'll go out I'll drive drive through the lot and I'll kind of sit check it out shop all the places in town. And then when I go to buy a car, I just pull out there and I say I want to see this car, the one from the website. Get in, we drive. I will have already had financing like pre approved so I just come in to say perfect let's pull the trigger called the bank. They send the stuff up. I am the easiest person to sell a car to because I'm buying a car you're not selling it to me.



John Fairbanks 04:56

Well when you think about it, too. It's when you go out. So I do this Same thing, let's say it's not even something as huge as buying a car for sure. I'm gonna go eat somewhere, I will have already looked to see, what do they have available? What's on their menu? What do people talk about most in the reviews that they like this is if I've not been to a place before, and they have to have over a four star rating. Yeah, they are already filtered out. So I will have made all the decisions, that there really isn't a single question that I have, when I walk into a place to eat. Because I will already know what kind of order I want based on what I've seen people talk about positively or what I already know, I like.



Tyler 05:46

Another interesting thing I've noticed is when you ordered delivery food, I almost won't order something unless there's a picture. Because I gotta know quantity. Like it really is the case for me i i get very if it's like a I need to I need to see like Uber at restaurants for Uber Eats that don't have don't have don't have pictures of the food. So I don't know the quantities, I don't really know what it is, if it's a little adventurous, I have no idea what I'm not playing that at all. And I actually saw a leveled up version of this, someone uses essentially augmented reality, but it's just a little dance hologram thing. Did you see that? And so it's a menu, then you set it up, it looks like a little tower, you sit at your table, and it projects a plate in real size of what the food is. And you just kind of swipe that's pretty cool. And you can see and that's perfect, by the way, that is the most informed I can be short of actually smelling that dish and dip my finger and get a little taste. Right. But that's that's the thing people want that meaning you got to build all of your other, all those other pads to you, from your gym to the point where they're reaching out making contact you any other piece in that, or what I would call it, anything within that reach right? In the moment before they decide to make contact you need to understand that that's what people want is they want you to be as fully informed as possible. This goes towards the thing we use. So I used to always be very hard to I used to be a hard ass about this. I was it's always been 5050 with me on whether or not you should just put like all your prices out there. As far as for gym owners go like if I say if you primarily sold membership? Do you just want to have your membership slapped on the window? Or do you want to be able to send that out to everyone who come to ask any question? Hey, what's your price? Do you send it out to all of them, I was really up in the air on it. Because I can only say I can only handle so many clients anyways, there wasn't like a ton of stuff that I could do. So just take out a bunch of people. So I didn't want to deal with price shoppers. So someone who's going to price shop between me and say an audio, you know, a $10 planet fitness membership, I kind of don't want to have that conversation. But that's changed. You know, I was very much a kind of a fuck you when people would come at me with the Well what's your price? That's all they would ask is what's the price? I'd get messages? What's your price? And I would you know, be bid, come in and we'll talk about it. And nowadays that age doesn't age very well, that policy like you know someone that wants to know what it costs to join your membership. We had a coach in our gear Academy the other day who had a great, great approach to it. Because now you do, you kind of give them the information. Well, what are you looking for? Right, get a little bit of clarification, or look for group fitness one on one, you know, whatever, it's this group perfect. Tell them what your group membership is, tell them You also have options for nutrition coaching, whatever else, and then ask a follow up question. Always ask a follow up question. So you don't just shoot out a blank price and let it be. So at least it can be some sort of engagement because that piece is learning how to communicate that people may think they just want the price, they don't really want the price, they want results, they want the price and to know how likely it is that they're going to be successful. I want to know how much time and effort you're gonna invest on them. They want to know if they're gonna like you. They want to know if you're able to be respectful of their time and stuff. And if you just say, come in and meet with me, and we'll talk for 20 minutes before you make, even get to know about prices or make a decision. I don't want to do that. I just don't want to illustrate the truth that $450 a month membership, it's not worth it for anybody. So I don't want to buy a $150 a month membership and go ahead and make an extra stop in my day like after work between dropping kids off at places. I gotta stop here. And then I gotta meet this guy who just wants to sell me the membership and I got to warm up. I just am not interested in stalking social interactions like that on my day.



John Fairbanks 09:25

Well, and it's, it's all about the speed of communication. Yeah. And email used to be the fastest way to communicate. And now it's borderline. It's not as bad as having a conversation with someone on the phone. But it's bad, like the speed and that really comes from social media DM, like the ability to communicate or DM back and forth is now so normal. That really is a more personal version of it. And then as we are able to, like get closer to a sale, move to I have your actual phone number. Yeah. Now it's just that level of communication.



Tyler 10:10

And we've seen this a lot. Yeah. And we've done the other reason. So this is, let me, let me give a zoom out a little bit, what we're telling you is you need to start to dip your toes in the water, of being willing to have some of these almost complete sales discussions via text message. That's what I'm saying. And while that may be, we've talked about this at length, people have different communication styles that they prefer. But I'll tell you this old people, boomers are less likely to use email. Now, they've kind of adopted text messaging, I'm not going to push on much via email, frankly, maybe they don't even want to come in and meet you. Some may prefer that. But you do know you got to start to check this box. Because this box is just I'd prefer to just communicate via text message. That box may represent in a year, probably like 70% of the people that are reaching out to you. And that's my guess I'm fluffing it out there. But I bet if you asked everybody, how would you prefer us go through this process, you want to come in and meet or hop on the phone, or go back and forth via email, or you want a text message? Three quarters, or my guests are going to choose a text message every time? Three quarters of the time, it works every time,



John Fairbanks 11:14

especially if they're millennials? Yes. Like their millennial or younger? Absolutely. And I think it's to call out what you call what you were talking about at the beginning of the episode, which was the transition of our thoughts about text messaging, before it would have been viewed as incredibly informal. Yes, it was so informal, that was borderline, you know, unprofessional,



Tyler 11:40

it would seem so we talked about this before, like, you almost want to warm people up before you're going for an ask, right. And if I want to coach somebody, or they want to be coached with me, I want them to know me, they want to know, they should want to know who I am. They want to know what's a good fit. They want to know all this information. And now if I'm just jumping the gun, saying, here's the price, what do you think you want to get started? Or do you want to come in first class at this time, and that almost seems presumptuous or too pushy. That is not the case anymore. Now it's, I think, formality. It's one it's in writing, which is there's a part of me that starts to think that that homeless has a lot to do with it. In that a conversation that's had between you and I, you can say almost anything you fucking want to get me to commit. If you're writing it down. Now, technically, I can show that to anybody else that I see in my life. So if you'd be sure a bit shitty, I just I think it holds everybody accountable towards acting like decent people a little bit and being honest, because if you're lying, or you say some stuff untoward or you're, you know, whatever dismissive or rude, like, Hey, man, I'm gonna show everybody this. So it does, I think it just keeps things on the up and up. And it's not as informal as it used to be



John Fairbanks 12:45

perceivable. Absolutely. Because now it's leaning. More importantly, pointing towards this is really convenient. And I want to have the conversation right now. The one thing that's so inconvenient about a fucking phone call, is that you could be doing a variety of things, when someone calls you. Very rarely, almost never. Is that a convenient time to chit chat on the phone, when someone calls a text message, somebody can fucking send it to you at any time. And you get to that shit when it's convenient for you. But that means that's how important you want to be. This skill is how important this skill is. And why what we're saying is you want to have this skill sharp. Because when someone says, Yes, I want to talk to you right now about this thing. You have to be ready to have that conversation right now. Because now that convenience and all the pieces, and this is where I wanted to say was the informal nature and now the ease of being able to communicate the text messaging allows. It doesn't make it an informal conversation as in you don't have a fucking plan. Yeah, you still execute all the steps that we know you take in person. You just do it now via text message and your ability to to close. I mean, sure. When was the last time you met with someone that you were going to personal training? Yeah, my



Tyler 14:20

personally my personal training clients now I almost never have them, they're closed. They will meet in person maybe before we start. It is simply going over schedule if we're going to get measurements from nutrition stuff or anything like that. But that meeting will be a productive meeting, not a closing not a decision making meeting. You know, I won't. It won't matter if I don't want to take that meeting unless they're like, Yeah, let's go ahead and do it. Yeah, I'm ready. And because now I'm comfortable with it's very difficult to give an entire sales presentation, even if it's just a quick conversation, using the system we use. It's 10 to 15 minutes, but you have to meet somebody there. It's their time. It's your time. For a yes, no. And it's pretty scalable, pretty easy. It's also Pretty for people that aren't, I think you should be good at selling in person, I think you should be looking people in the eye and like talking about the stuff that you do and are passionate about. But I also think that's exhausting. And I think that you can get used to getting told no if you text if you do that via text message. And I do also think you can optimize it a little bit better via text message as well as days, it's not so loose, you can steer the conversation without some of the social awkwardness, I just think it really works. It also keeps people less likely to, I want people to unload the person, I'm talking to him about why they want to lose weight and stuff like this. I don't want to hear every reason, every story, every tragedy, I don't want that. So there was an abruptness to the text message. It's an abbreviated version of this conversation. It's like yeah, you know, I've kind of let things scare, I put on 20 pounds, like I am just ready to be done with it, it makes them summarize their shit efficiently with you in a way that just digest is easy to digest. And it's super important. Because in the long run, eventually, for you guys, like you're going to have a sales team, that would be great. Maybe your lead volume isn't high enough, maybe you don't have the capacity or the lead volume to run a big staff that's just selling. But you can text and still kind of keep most of your day to yourself, you're not making appointments, you have people coming and going and you kind of run this stuff a little bit on the fly throughout the day. And then eventually, you can hand that off. And then that becomes a very easy task. When you find someone to trust the way you communicate, you can hand it off to one of your other coaches who maybe does some of your in person meetings and then hands a little bit of this correspondence. And then maybe that'll be the first person that they meet when they come in, and get ready to sign up. But it allows you to start to transition away from having to do everything yourself and in person all the time. Because that ends up being a big problem. It says the same reason. We don't want you as a gym owner to be coaching 100% of the coaching hours that go on in your gym, because at some point, you're gonna be topped out and you're gonna be completely screwed, and you can't get anything else done. If you want to make more money, you just have to sell more of your own time. And that doesn't work. So this does give you the ability, much like hiring another coach and bringing somebody on frees up your time to do something more important and also allows you to grow because you can start to handle more volume, you can actually take on more clients, you can actually start to pay money to generate more leads, because it's not you having to meet clients in the five minutes before or five minutes after class. Or even worse, while you're coaching other people, someone's popping in answering questions like you need to learn how to have this conversation. And that's the real benefit of text, in my opinion of selling via text message. It allows you to put this conversation in a time and a place that's best for everybody involved.



John Fairbanks 17:39

Absolutely. It's



Tyler 17:39

efficient, it's effective, it's respectful of everybody's time, and it's just not so uncomfortable. It's 2022, almost 2023 The days of needing to see people in person to buy stuff is long gone, absolutely gone. You know, you don't even have the people don't even bag your groceries anymore. They don't even scan your groceries anymore. And you think you got it, somebody's got to come in and meet you personally the owner and have a 45 minute conversation to make sure you guys really connect on a deep level before they can spend 120 bucks on your little membership. No, we've already talked about why you need to offer more than if your products offer more to connect with their needs. You kind of don't have to sell yourself as hard. So you get a good offer stack like this. And it goes well. What are you looking for is you know, you can see this conversation as it plays out via text. I'm not telling you how to carry it out. Because right now we're kind of in the process of just making sure people know that this is the future. It's a thing that everybody we've been doing it with gym owners for a couple years ENCOURAGES them to do this. And we'll get into the internal sales stuff in a minute. But like we've been encouraging gym owners to do this, and knowing this is a method that shouldn't be left behind. And now we're really starting to see with the success they've been having that it is the future, in my opinion.



John Fairbanks 18:54

But can I tell you one of my favorite things,



Tyler 18:58

Let me touch on one thing real quick, is what we want to assemble here is eventually a kind of a system of best practices, some do's and don'ts, some some hurdles, some landmines you're going to run into and that we just don't have enough data. Meaning you got to get out there and you need to start tinkering with this don't put all your eggs in this basket but you gotta start playing with this yourself you got to go through and you got to know what it's like to sell people with this figure out what works. What doesn't this is it's an inefficient trial and error process. At least it's efficient on your time is better than just wait if you don't have a sales system or one like ours or offer stack system like ours or threaded offers via app like ours, and you're just winging this, you're just going into having a wild conversation and hoping somebody buys this something and spends the most money they could be willing to spend with you. Great, you can do that. But that'd be a lot less efficient than trying it via text. So do trial and error this way. No trial and error in person. Get all red in the face and afraid of selling people.



John Fairbanks 19:55

Yeah, my favorite part about the text messaging piece is how scalable it is. So the scalability of it, because as you trial and error this, and as you learn what works, what works better, what doesn't work, how quickly you're responding? How do conversations usually go? The one thing that's nice is that it's all written down. So your ability to go over things like notes or game film of like, man, because when you speak unless you are recording, which I recommend recording every sales conversation you have, or a coach has. And then you have the ability to go back through those recordings and say, Okay, I got this sale, this person bought, you know, three levels up than what I was expecting, what went well, in this conversation that I could duplicate or replicate the next time I have a spoken conversation with a prospect or a lead. But those are, that's a lot of steps for regular people that are just starting out and have always hit record. It's also



Tyler 21:04

a way time consuming, going back and listening to a 15 minute conversation versus you can just scroll and be like, Yeah, I know where that one went off the rails.



John Fairbanks 21:11

Right. And you know what questions you asked, as you practice this, and perfect this, what I mean by the infinite scalability, one of my favorite things that we've done with a gym owner, and with gym owners before is getting them hooked into an app that allows you to now bring in whether you have coaches, whether it's the gym owner, whether you're hiring virtual assistants, to be able to 10 then take that trial and errored conversational piece of how you take someone that text messages you that's interested, or current members that text message and have a back and forth for internal services, or upsells, or opportunities to move to personal training or whatever it is



Tyler 22:00

selling supplements versus specialty programs. All those things, once you get the best practices tuned up. Now you can just have other people handle it for you.



John Fairbanks 22:10

And it looks like it comes from you as the gym owner. And there's all sorts of automations that exist out there. But this is where I have yet to find where I will get there. Yeah, but I've yet to find someone that can then use a service that can just communicate back and forth with your people like a human. So don't try to replace humans with inferior technology. It's not more convenient to have somebody that sucks. be communicating with your people. So if you can scale that and feel confident, and you have, and more importantly, you teach your people that they can text message and go back and forth, we've seen so much success for gym owners that have this all put into place can text back and forth with their current members, and with possible leads and new members. And that gym owner doesn't ever have to communicate at all, if they don't want to.



Tyler 23:13

And the benefit of that is that they still feel like they're talking to the gym or the gym owner also still sees all of it. And that's another thing. The services that we've run we've set them up with and they use us as an app so everything still pops up on the gym owners' thing. If a gym owner wants to address it, they can on the back end people can see who's taken care of this conversation and, and what's been answered What hasn't and, and that also gives you a record of everything too. Meaning instead of having to record your salespeople having in person conversations, you would just go back if someone's like, yeah, message me with this. It was a whole problem. You go back and look like what the fuck? Why



John Fairbanks 23:44

the fuck would they say that? Yeah. Why



Tyler 23:46

Did you say that? But that's my opinion. I was so hard on price shopping, I thought if you're worried about price going to the cheaper guy because I made sure that we were more expensive. I charged 50% More than the next place in town because I let that speak for itself. Right. And if someone came in and wanted to compete, wanted me to compete or was like butthurt, because I charged whatever and someone else charged 30 bucks a month, 40 bucks a month, some 24 hour spot that was just super cheap and doesn't have a coaching product. I wasn't even interested in having that conversation. Now we have some coaches that do a really good job of having that conversation. Or they'll say, you know, hey, if you want to pop in and check out one of our classes, for free, I'll happily meet you here. We can show you why you know why our product is more expensive and that's great. I don't have patience for those things. I'm glad that other people make the world a better place for people because of people like that, but I am not one of those people. But man, I have completely turned around in this. I was always coming to me. We got to come in and meet because still for me I don't want to, so let me go through this. I don't want to coach somebody who I don't want to coach and I don't want to coach somebody who is non committal, either who like lacks that commit meaning sure in my conversation and when I define Best Practices, I do make sure that they've defined that everything I talked about in the sales process, talks about what they want to accomplish the next few months in this conversation, that's the goal, I may have to disclose prices before this, by the way, it's fine if they're playing hardball. But I just want to try everything I can to make them feel what to make them tell me what they want to accomplish the next few months, maybe what barriers there are to that, to that progress, and make them define the terms of their success. So you know, if if, in three months, six months, you've accomplished this, you'd be, that's what we would, we would consider that a successful endeavor between the two of us. And yeah, I thought, as long as we can all come to a meeting on that, and then we're talking about the prices, then we're fine. But if someone just wants to know my prices in a vacuum, and they're not willing to meet anywhere on this, I still am not interested in coaching them. But again, what I've done to save myself a meeting. And that's important for me, because I got other stuff to do, John, we do this business I train, we have Jim that we're working directly with now and you know, in person that will be handling. And so this is plus all the other coaches we work with remotely, I do personal training to still be out there in the field, working with people to still have fun, I like the clients that I have. But it's also important for me to be able to test some of these sales systems on the ground, which is why I do it that way. And, but it also means I don't have to take any shit. I don't have, I don't have to take on clients that don't want to take just because there's an opening, I don't have to play that shit. And neither do you text messages or by texting for you, I really, really mean it, it can be a great way for you to respect everybody's time, and still kind of optimize your process because it used to be a detriment. And I think old school sales guys would have said if you try if you're trying to offer price early on or at all via text message, that's it can either be a waste of your time and effort because they're just price shopping or going to shop that to the next guy, which is possible, or it can be too pushy on your part. You know, if you're the one offering that up right away, oh, cost this much you want to come in over here. It's almost like trying to close too early. You know, it's trying to say you want to go back to my place before generous even showed up at the restaurant. Yeah, that's a bit thirsty. But I do think those perceptions have changed because people value convenience more. And everything else in their life does that now think of a thing you have no, you don't even call for taxis anymore. Small towns, if you're used to selling to call the taxi service, I still have friends that remember the number. And when there's no lifts or Ubers around here late at night, you have to find an old timer, who's got that number memorized, you know, and then that is that that's the thing. Now people don't have to remember taxi numbers, they don't have to know the pizza place. You don't have to remember any phone numbers anymore, because you don't call anyone anymore, and you don't want to. So texting, mark my words, two years from now, I think three quarters of your communication will be done via some sort of messaging service. And you won't hardly be closing your sales in person at all. Unless people just really, really want to at that point, yeah, I would give them that if someone really, really wants to come in and meet me. That's perfect. If I give them every option not to. And they say you know what I'd really like to come in and meet That's a fucking lock for me.



John Fairbanks 28:06

Well, and we've talked about this before, if someone walks through your door, all the hurdles, every barrier for success that they possibly could have been blocked by to not have them buy if they're walking through the door. They want to buy something from you. Yeah. And I would say that the people that you will get to walk through your door, you don't. And I think it's really important how we're talking about how you're selling and utilizing text messaging to allow this speed and and now it's no, you know, almost it's just a more personal way of communicating because you're with them right there palm of their hand. You can see them typing, while you're waiting for what they're gonna say. Those pieces now our talk game untethered and completely lost.



Tyler 28:57

It's all good. Well, no, I think what you're getting at is that used to be a thing that was informal, right? It absolutely used to be. And what's happened I do think is, nowadays, this thing is more polite than the other. It's more respectful of their time. And I think that there's when we talked about the language that people understand now, when they come into, you said before, when people walk into your gym as soon as they come into your gym, that they're already informed. That didn't used to be the case. Right now, the only language that people understand is star reviews, customer reviews, Yelp reviews, how many star ratings that is, they've checked out your social media profile. The expectation now is I am fully informed before I show up. Meeting Yes, used to be the case, right? Someone walks into your door that needs the highest, they're ready to go. And now I think somebody's reaching out to you by filling out an online form on your website. Like I don't do that for fucking anything at all. So if I've done it for your gym, I'm ready to go. Meaning any engagement right now? Any outreach So responding to a text message filling in online for any contact now is the new meeting in person. It really is because people don't want to do anything.



John Fairbanks 30:10

And that's exactly what I was getting at was cold versus warm or hot traffic, or leads, somebody that walks in, they know some lot, they know somebody that goes to your gym. Like the odds of having people that are know of you, or they're in your community, when they come out, and they want to reach out, there's the odds of not there being like two or three degrees of somebody that is already going to that gym, how you speak to those people is so different. So you have just like you said, you have to anticipate if someone's already put their information into an online form, they're coming to the gym. It's they're not cold. Like you said they've done their research done are the days that you go to the doctor and just hope that the doctor can tell you things about what this lump is. Yeah, the odds are you've already looked up, and you already know it's cancer.



Tyler 31:06

And you're just hoping it's open. It's a good kind.



John Fairbanks 31:10

Like, you just you've already done the research. And that's everything. So assuming that your people that you're interacting with have done none of that. And they've just like, because too many times Tyler has seen someone pay for ads. And some of the leads that do come through are almost people that like they're confused. They don't even know what you're talking about when you communicate with them. It's like, well, didn't you fill this stuff out? Like you didn't show any interest? That's one of the downsides of paid ads that we've seen that you can run into, but organic shit that you have set up, you're organically communicating with people. They're not confused, why you're texting them.



Tyler 31:53

And I think that's because if you're doing your social media, right, there's going to be some boxes, they will have already checked, or you're going to know kind of your vibe, your social media should reflect at least your mood a little bit. And they can be very practical as well. But they should know your schedule, they should know kind of what you do, they should know what the place looks like, they shouldn't there shouldn't be a bunch of surprises on the way. It's about setting expectations, meaning when they're texting you, they should probably know what your face looks like. If it doesn't sound genuine and things you would do is you send him a picture like hey, this is me, I'm the guy here in this picture, for a couple of messages, you know, say hey, this is me if you're coming to chat or whatever, but that way they know there's a face to the voice there's a face to the words. Its text messaging is more human than it used to be. It used to be one of the most inhuman ways to communicate. And now it's the only way that I would prefer to communicate unless, frankly, I'd rather find out that somebody in the family died via text message. So I don't want to pretend too much. Yeah, well, so like nobody, nobody asked this. Do you all deserve the right to my live reaction? You know what I mean? Even if you're the one breaking the news to like, do now you got to know how I took this. Like, how about you text message me this? And then we're gonna fucking I'll handle it because it's me. You know? I don't Yeah, I'll let you and then we'll move on. Yeah, so guys, that's got us wrapped up for today. But I do think there's lots to take away if this hasn't been on your radar, keep in mind with it, don't jump. I will also warn you not to jump into large systems of how to do this right away because it can be costly. Unless you have a lot of lead volume. It's not worth it to outsource it and to build a bunch of infrastructure for this especially when you right now. So short, here's your shortlist: start doing this. Don't be unwilling to do this. Start nudging some people in just just taking a spin you may get a client who seems text friendly, and just run with it. See if you can take the whole thing the distance without having to meet them in person just try if they will, and if they seem apprehensive say you want to chat in person. But otherwise, I want you to go through that and start doing it, put it on your radar and start to develop some best practices. That's gonna be the big thing here is



John Fairbanks 33:54

an easy one for this is just start texting your current people



Tyler 33:59

yes in person or in house sales.



John Fairbanks 34:02

Yeah, just texting. Check in. Like I'm such a firm. There's a lot of sequences we talked about, but like having check-ins with your existing members as a gym owner, once a quarter once every six months or whatever that you are just a man checking in to see how things are going.



Tyler 34:20

Let me do an easy one for you. Okay, people who buy supplements for you regularly or at least take the last 20 People that have purchased supplements from you. You text message them this morning today don't fuck around text message each one of them separately by the way if you do put us in a group message they're gonna fucking fire oh my god, okay. Just one of those hopefully and say, say hey, I'm gonna place an order of supplements here tomorrow or the next day. You want me to write you down for anything? Yes, no whatever. Or if you have any questions on what it is just that can be it and anyone who hits you back up, or you may want to follow up with Yeah, here's the list or here's the pricing but just stick with people who are already familiar that have already kind of bought it. and just see what happens. So I'm gonna say nah, some will ignore you. Some will say, Yeah, sure I want my type of protein. And then you can say just also have one more follow up like one more offer one more bundles like, Hey, cool. We also have a special on this, this and this. That's it. So you want anything that says, Yes, try to run one more offer by him. And then that's it. And you may find you may sell eight to 10 new things for you might just make five to 800 bucks a day from just deciding to do some cold messaging for people that are already your members. So come up with some best practices and start doing this thing. I do think it's okay to use it for external leaves, but move slowly till you get good at it and start playing that game. My opinion is the only way I'll communicate with my members. That's it. Because then eventually, once it's busy enough, and I'm doing all my announcements that way, and I'm doing any offers and stuff that way people will expect that not it won't always be me doing a pitch but it'll just can also be things like hey, you know, how's the user to check in? How's things going? Right? Anything if you ever want to sit down and chat and make sure we can kind of find a true Northstar here we want to like reorient your training or is there anything new stuff you want to go over here? Just Just shoot me a message you know, if you want me before class after class, we can chat but start to do those sorts of it's it's personal, but I do think you start to open the door if you don't text anybody at all. And you start texting everybody all the time this week. You're gonna this is gonna dry out fast. Yeah. So So move slow but make it a thing you start to do because Mark my words in one to two years this is going to be the preferred way it may not be text messaging, per se, but it will be via a direct messaging. direct messaging is going to be the the only way alright guys, thanks for listening. Make sure you get in on the Facebook group gym owners revolution links in the description. Follow the show at the gym owners podcast on Instagram follow John at Jay banks FL on Instagram follow me at Tyler FSOs Tyler eff i n stone Hey and if you want to check in on the last episode might be behind a little bit was episode 350 the Masonite mix one. If you look at the episode of The Master Numbers podcast, there's episodes as mystery guests. And so it's one of the hosts. I was one of the original founding members of mass genomics, one of the original hosts of the show. So we came back on and had a cool conversation about all that stuff. So there's some cool insights about how we kind of developed that business and how we started rolling out the apparel so if you want to see it's a bit dense adjacent to what you guys do little bits of fun little conversation. You can check that out look for the mass anomalies podcast fall at Mass and obviously Instagram. If you're not following mass amounts. I don't know what you're doing listening to the show. So thanks a lot for listening everybody and we'll see you next week. Later.



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