The Gym Owners Blog/Podcast/NEVER Upsell Again: Downselling is the FUTURE

NEVER Upsell Again: Downselling is the FUTURE

Friday, July 14, 2023

CUSTOM JAVASCRIPT / HTML

EPISODE KEYWORDS

gym, people, talk, planet fitness, product, membership, sell, sales process, coaching, move, nutrition, client, week, fitness, work, john, service, owners, training

OUTLINE

  • Introduction to the gym owners revolution. (0:01)
  • How to get people to buy your product? (3:18)
  • The difference between product and service. (8:17)
  • ​How much does a gym membership cost? (12:13)
  • The problem with simplifying nutrition. (18:16)
  • ​The reason why building a business requires so much infrastructure. (24:27)
  • How to get people to move up and down. (29:24)
  • ​The importance of having a sales process. (33:21)

TRANSCRIPT

Tyler 00:01
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode of the gym owners podcast. This week, we're gonna talk about one of the kind of fundamental guiding principles that we have here at the gym owners revolution, which is how to make more money, obviously, is the goal here, selling your products, but how to make sure you do it the right way, the ethical way, in a way that actually makes sense for your clients long term. And what else for your business in the long term. And the short term so many people out there want to try and convince you to talk people into spending more money, the upsell, upsell, upsell, we touch on, we talked to gym owners a lot and, and we see it a lot even in regular business consulting size stuff we work with inside the fitness industry, as well as outside is, is upsells are the key, you got to move people up your value ladder up, up, up, up, up, up, up. And while there are some principles, I think to be extracted out of those policies, those systems that they use, I think it sucks for fitness, I think it's bullshit for you as a gym owner. I don't think it works for people in the long term. And I think that in the fitness industry, we need our clients to have more ownership and be more empowered. And that means allowing them to really take control of their own journey from the very beginning. And how do you do that in a way that makes your business profitable. We're gonna talk to you about that today. Before we get started, make sure you go to the gym owners revolution.com. So our websites where we have access to our gear Academy, all the blog posts, all of the podcast episodes, everything that's there. So where if you want to start working with us in the gear Academy directly working on your business, starting right now moving things up the hill. That's where you get started. Also, you need to join the gym owners revolution Facebook group, that link is going to be in the description here. That's where we do all that other stuff, but even cooler on a more consistent basis. So get in there, join the community, we got a bunch of gym owners doing cool shit and making things happen the right way. And the gym owners' revolution. So follow the show at gym owners podcast on Facebook, follow me at Tyler effing stone. That's Taylor eff ironstone. And you find John,



John Fairbanks 01:58

at Jay banks FL on Instagram.



Tyler 02:01

All right, John, let's get into it. So the norm that we see most of the gyms that we go to being totally honest from a, even if you do offer more products than just a base membership, the norm when most people come in, and they see I'm gonna maybe join this gym or they're clicking around on your website, or they come in for a sales meeting. The vast majority of them only hear one product to hear nearly one price. And that we've covered in the past. And I'm sure we'll do it again in the future. I think I think that kind of sucks. In general, I think there's something to be said for doing one thing and doing it really well. But over the life of your business, I think what happens is most gym owners end up trying to just stuff more and more value into that singular product to try to attract people instead of actually attracting people to things that will make them more money in the process and allow you to deliver a higher level service and let it let instead of just diluting all of your stuff. So that offering just one product thing is I won't put a percentage out there. But like most gyms, that's what they do, especially functional fitness gyms, catch all memberships, and a lot of other stuff that you maybe do if you do n't live anywhere where people can find it easily. And it doesn't live as a part of a sales process that makes any sense.



John Fairbanks 03:18

Definitely not easily. Even if you are saying somebody that does try and get everything out in front of someone. It's so complicated. I can't tell you like the special I've seen multiple times, like the main, you know, the one sheet or the two sheets that get handed to you and you go through it. And it's so spastic because you're just trying to get everything down on the page. And there's so many nuances or so many like, if this then that's it's like, well, if you're if your kids, sisters, brothers, also a member here, then we'll give you a discount of three and a half percent every other Tuesday. Like there's so many things that we have to be able to account for that a confused mind won't buy.



Tyler 04:05

And this, we're gonna get into much more product specific stuff in this episode. But one of the things that John and I identify very early on when we start going through a business's sales processes, website, marketing, everything is all the weird little exceptions and things that you feel the need to communicate formally, which is not that you do not need to live in before someone purchases the system. It just can't. Well, John, you mentioned this count is one of the most interesting ones that I see. If you got to have on your sales sheet that you give a 10% discount to veterans and 8% to law enforcement and, and 7% to first responders and then if you have a family in the family of three, it's it's 2015 10% off everybody for the first two, like if you're writing a pair if you're reading more than frankly if you're adding a whole sentence. I'm being honest, John, right. On your sales sheet there's almost no complete sentences. No, I don't and, and maybe an outcome or approach should be very fluffy branding in their language,



John Fairbanks 05:09

it shouldn't be fine print is fine print is for the terms and the conditions and all that kind of shit that lives in one place, if somebody wants to go through that. And I learned early on whenever you're going to create like documentation, you're going to create these types of things. I'm talking like, even in a formal sense, you never make a rule for the exception. And so the problem is, we oftentimes are running into the rule for the except like you're creating rules and creating processes for the outlier.



Tyler 05:43

Well, and I think one of the things we've talked about John is that the fine print is never going to sell anything. If someone is reading fine print, and is presented as somebody early on in the sales process, the only thing that that is going to do is talk someone out of buying. That's it. So if you think it's helping you by letting somebody know that, you know, but if your child is under the age of 14, that you have to be there with them. And then they're 20. It sucks. You don't need to worry about that. At that point. It's only going to talk people out of us are chasing us down like oh geez, what a bonus, it's just not worth it. So keep things as simple as possible. Up front. Now, in this, in presenting your products now, I think it's very, very important that you have more than one thing. And I'm most of you, and this is the thing we see when we go through most of the gyms that we start to audit, we go through stuff, and all we see is our membership. Well, if you're only selling, and catching all memberships, you're going to have a lot of trouble. And you're going to only be able to turn up the volume on one knob to make money. And that gets really tough. And most likely you do more than that, for sure I already do. And so do you do nutrition coaching, if you don't, maybe you're doing it kind of on the fly with clients. But if someone comes in and wants to lose weight and can identify that they know and they all know, by the way that they need to do something different with their food, but you don't have a service that helps them with that they're what fucking by the way, everyone I know who has extreme weight to lose fists as I say extreme is pretty common in America 50 plus pounds of weight to lose, every single one of them knows they need a food plan and food guidance and food coaching or something they need to make nutritional changes, they would identify that as absolutely a thing that they need to do. And they're coming to the gym, because they want those outcomes. And you need to know that if you can, if you're going to be coaching them telling them things casually, day to day, when you're coaching them like in a group or even if it's personal training, just know that that time and effort would be better served for them. And it would be better served for you financially, if they just paid you for that service. Because they would get actual better coaching, you'd put a little bit more effort into making that food plan for them. It would exist as a product, that the market will decide if it's valuable or not. Which means if you're doing it right, you will constantly be refining it and improving it as you go. That if you've been actually selling this nutrition product to people, they'll base it on sort of changing it based on feedback and results and outcomes. It doesn't take long to have something that works and works really well that people like doing.



John Fairbanks 08:17

And I think it's and I don't know how far we're gonna go into this. But I want to differentiate it because we use the phrase, which is product and service, where like a product is something that truly can be built. And it's a one off piece that's built off of just doing it time and time again. And now it's sharp enough to be able to give to somebody, and can oftentimes be one of those things where it's like, let's get you started, let's get you on the right track. And again, this could be something we'll go into a little bit later. But it's then there's the service aspect of it. So this idea of an ongoing service. So if you're doing nutrition as a service, there's another element to that. And that's oftentimes where I think there's some convolution that happens when we start talking about, well, do I do nutrition? Do you have a nutrition product or service that you provide to clients? It's like, well, yeah, like it's included? It's like, well, the all that means you don't it doesn't fucking



Tyler 09:06

exist. And that's, if no one is choosing to pay you for it, you don't fucking do it. And that goes back to fundamentally why we don't like baking things into everything, which is just like adding a new specialty class, but including it into your memberships like, well, that sucks. There's no incentive for that thing to be successful. Good. Frankly, the best thing for everybody is that it kind of made me die on the vine that nobody has to put forth any extra real effort. So when we talk about adding those products, that's the reason right that you kind of do these other things you should. They should exist as a thing if you just make a list of things that you do that people can pay you money for. Right what's on that list, and I would hope that there's some sort of personal training group, there's options for specialty stuff, nutrition, coaching, accountability, metrics, and depending on the measurables depending on the types of coaching that you do, if you're in the performance side of things, it may just be performance testing and body scan. thing and body composition. If you're in the weight loss business, it may just be body composition, which is totally okay.



John Fairbanks 10:06

And I think it's also really important that we talk about as you're listing all these things out as a gym, what do you actually have this right now? Right? I want you to be thinking about what you could do, like, what do you have that's available to you right now, and avoid this pitfall that we are finding gym owners getting stuck in, you have to leave your opinion and your own personal baggage at the door. Whatever your opinion may be, of what for whatever who the fuck knows why nutrition coaching, or personal training, or fill in the blank, any service or product, if you immediately castrate your business where you don't allow those things to exist, because of whatever happened, at some point in your past, you are going to cut the throat of every staff member, coach, personal trainer that ever works for you. Because a lot of times these are the levers that need to be able to be pulled, that not only allows you to be able to be successful, revenue wise as a business, but also affects directly the people that were working for you. Yeah,



Tyler 11:08

yeah. So it's one of the best ways to make sure that you can get money that's not absolutely based on commoditized time. Exactly. to scale up your I mean, it's just one of the things. Well, personal trainers that we work with are completely maxed out on time, they can't sell anymore floor time, just can't be booked completely full. Well, what do they do? Nutrition coaching is a big one. Accountability is another one met body scans are another thing, doing a very specific plan and upgrade a challenge some inside outside stuff like that is that's kind of the only options that they can do, where they can build another system that's truly scalable, instead of just sell more floor house sell more floor hours. So let's get into this, John. So you've got this list of all this stuff, right? All the stuff that you kind of can do. And that ends up kind of existing as your value ladder, give or take whatever it is that you're not now it is what it is right? Most of the kinds of sales strategies I see end up living in an upsell mindset, right? And maybe not specifically on the execution. But in the seller specifically in the fitness industry. This is how we often approach it. Someone calls and they want to know basically how much is a membership cost? Why do they think what they call them wants to ask that? Well, maybe because that's all you've been saying is come become a member, come join our gym, join the gym, join the gym, join the gym, becoming a member is just what they think that they get. And they don't understand that there's more stuff that they can do.



John Fairbanks 12:31

And you're fighting an uphill battle, you got to know this fundamentally, because of how the big players play. The advertising game in this world is Planet Fitness. Anytime Fitness is all of these. They are playing a different game than you they're saturating the market because they have more marketing and advertising dollars than you, so they are always going to fuel society as a whole with how they think about fitness. So there is a piece for



Tyler 13:00

membership goes into the gym starting for $1 and going into the gym getting in shape is what most people think. Let's remove you who's already in the fitness industry. Most people go to the fucking the you guys as fitness people ever talk to normal people. And I really guys, I talked to a lot of fitness people. Yeah, man, I can tell you, you fucking don't you don't, because I've never seen people so disconnected from the reality of what's going on around them with people's lives. When people think that they got to get back in the gym, or they got to start going to a gym, the I'm gonna say more than 90% of them think what that is, is buying a gym membership, and going to a gym where I don't know what to do, and don't know what to do and when to do it or what's right and what's wrong and just starting to do things. And that's the big barrier to them starting is all that stuff. So do you know the solution is not to talk them into that the solution is your actual higher value product is a better access point to your business. It truly is, which is training and coaching. Because you know the value of training and coaching is referred to fuses all of that right, come in, that's the pitch, it's gonna work. Someone who knows what to do is telling you what to do, who's guiding you around the gym, you're not feeling lost, you're not wasting effort, you're not doing the wrong things. That is all of a sudden valuable to them. But if your membership, you're just membership costs twice as much as Planet Fitness, which had had better, by the way as at least right? Because you don't want to be competing on price. They don't know the difference between those two things. And why would they go to you over them because your equipment is nicer? I don't know. It won't be one of those places. It's just they won't be there, there won't be more of it. It just won't. So it's just one of the things you guys need to kind of all understand that that psychology is that like when people are calling and saying how much is your membership cost? That already means that they have not connected to any of the other stuff you can do before. It was just how do they find your brand? It's your social media. Is it Google whatever it is they've gotten that far? I don't have a clue that you sell anything that's an actual service that you just sell key cards, key cards and toilet paper. If people can use



John Fairbanks 15:10

it, you won't be able to you can't compete, we have a we have a CrossFit gym that's been in our area for a long time where I'm at, and they have a brand new Planet Fitness that's going to move in September, right literally in their back door, they're gonna take over a massive abandoned like old Kmart like parking lot setup, and Planet Fitness is going to roll in. And that CrossFit gym is going to have to realize really quickly, you have to differentiate, you're not going to be able to play that game. So leaning, really and this probably gives us the rest of the way of what we want to talk about leaning heavily into all those differentiating pieces of your business now should be 100% of your marketing. Because the big guys are already going to do the gym membership marketing for you. They're



Tyler 16:00

already on to the bottom. Correct. And you can't afford to play them. Nope, no that. No that. And so, but I want to talk about so when someone comes in, they say what just what's a membership cost membership membership. Now trying to move them to a higher value product seems coercive. And then you get their guard up in regards to the actual sales process, like what does this look like? Someone comes in saying membership, and I start membership. But we can also add nutrition coaching. Or if you go membership and you want some personal training, you've already gone now. I heard at the box connected to 80 bucks a month. And now you're trying to get me into the thing. Very often people go into a buying experience. And what they want is to get out of this with as little expense as possible. It's true. Not all people, yeah, but some and then somewhere in that math becomes what they actually want. And then it becomes can I get what I actually want, while spending as little as possible, right. And so this is why the sales process needs to look like. And this goes back to things we've talked about, these are the things we've run very, very consistently, with a lot of success with all of our gym owners here in the here Academy. It needs to start with a conversation about what this person is trying to accomplish. That's it, what are you trying to accomplish in these next few months? After that, what are the barriers to those goals? Like what's that? What's stopping you from getting there? Now? What stopped you from getting there in the past, a candid real conversation. But those quick two questions are gonna get you 90% of what you need to hear out of them. Because if it's weight loss, if it's strength gains, it's John. I mean, I can tell you, you can tell me anybody can tell you why they're not in the shape that they want to be in. Let's give the list right? Maybe have a few too many beers in the summertime. Maybe not working out as hard as I need to right now. I haven't been lifting very heavy, been a bit lost and need a bit of guidance bouncing from program to program. Like that's as someone who trains a lot and trains hard. That's the reason why casseroles Yeah, my wife is on a bread machine. Oh, yeah, he doesn't eat carbs herself. Therefore, give me those. Those are things that are real, right? And to somebody else who isn't already involved in gym and involved in fitness and training. Those reasons may be even more dramatic. You know, I don't know what to do when I go to the gym. It's even more extreme versions of the same sets of problems.



John Fairbanks 18:16

And I think that this simplification is what's missing. Yes. Right. Like simplifying that process and and like you call that earlier, knowing what regular people are struggling with. It just is there isn't when we're talking about nutrition. Again, we've we've we've touched on this before, but I think it's really important to say it again. Like, if you're talking about nutrition, we're already off. Yeah. Did you ever read the word macros get fucked? Like it just is like there has to be an understanding. And this is why Planet Fitness has pizza on Fridays.



Tyler 18:49

Because it's just kind of fun. That's it, it's just kind of is I don't know,



John Fairbanks 18:54

it's because it's like, I like that it's the community thing. Nobody's gonna be there. They're not judging. Like there's a reason for their marketing. There's a reason that they do it. So if you understand some of those pieces where my favorite thing is, it's been the best way to explain. Kind of give an example if you're talking to the guy that either you were helping nutrition wise was one of your clients, and it just was, let's switch from beer to liquor. Like it was just like not stopping drinking. Or let's just move from high octane Budweiser to God forbid Bud Light. Switch to that, like it's a real switch from Mountain Dew to diet. Yes. Like it just it's like, that's what's real, real



Tyler 19:40

real assessment of what real people are doing because the difference between someone telling you to eat 180 grams of carbs a day and 30 and the difference in the same 2700 calories and it's like whatever but adherence is the key to the process. All of this stuff is like on the ground, what actually matters, and people are gonna go right away. They're gonna go all in on your wacky fitness plan thing for a little bit, and then they're gonna go away, or they're gonna get their guard up with it right away. I've had people I need to tell him to stop drinking six packs of Mountain Dew a day. And they go, No,



John Fairbanks 20:16

I'm gonna. And it's



Tyler 20:17

like, okay, well, then I can you know what I mean? There's so it's there's just it's a lot more complicated than just simply saying, Do you want nutrition coaching? And that's why this strategy that we've kind of, we've kind of talked about the conversational strategy we're looking to accomplish. What's what's been in the way of you accomplishing this in the past? Or where have you failed in the past where you're failing? Now, when that comes, when all those things come up, what they're, what they're telling you is, these are the problems I need help solving.



John Fairbanks 20:41

And they just want to hear you say, I can't we do that, that we can do that for sure. That is, absolutely, I don't



Tyler 20:48

I know what to do in the gym, I need to lose some weight, I don't feel very strong, my back hurts. I've got whatever else is going on, I got a wedding going on this summer. And I just can't seem to keep myself on. I need a plan to stick to food. Perfect. Well, here's what you do. Next, guys, you present your highest value offer first, that's going to have all of the products that we're going to that are baked in based on the things that they say that give them the best chance to succeed,



John Fairbanks 21:12

it means that you've done the work ahead of time. Yes,



Tyler 21:15

this is right. This is what we do with our offer stack. When we build this for gyms, they basically have like an iPad app, it just sits there that people can kind of tap through. So then it just becomes a part of that conversation. But when you go through this, the first thing is listen, our top option, and I like to use, I still use this on top option, it's the most expensive option, right, but it's 12 weeks commitment, we have guaranteed results, that's going to include nutrition coaching, body scans and accountability to keep you on track. one on one personal training three times a week for 12 weeks, if they are depending on what you're doing. Let's say it's just your membership, John, let's say it's just you're only doing membership, right? It's going to include access to unlimited access to our group fitness classes. And you're also gonna get 24 hour access to the gym as well, whatever, depending on what your products are, right. And you say, and here's what it costs, you hand them the thing and you say, but we have these other options, all those other options are just going to be different tiers than the top option, we just presented them as a platinum option. So when you hand it over, say we have these other options. Take a look, let me know which one you want to go with. All the other options are going to flow very easily, it's just gonna include one less thing as you go down to the base, which is just going to be what 24 hour access or something



John Fairbanks 22:26

or whatever. Yeah, whatever you ever need memberships. And



Tyler 22:30

now, you're gonna hand that over to somebody and you're gonna shut the fuck up. That's it, guys. This is the beauty of a down sell fucking a down sell based sales process, especially for fitness, you got dragon people up, you're not trying to get them to have one moment of greater commitment than they've ever showed in their life. Well, then they default back to this low level of commitment and then fail, and then they're failing with your business now attached to it, which sucks. So the key that you want here is to have people fall into the level of commitment that they actually have at that moment with their budget, their buying habits, their needs and wants after they verbalize exactly what they want and tell you exactly why they're not there. Okay, when you connect those dots and then let them choose. Now that momentum is really they're and they have ownership of them. They have ownership of this next step, and having ownership of this next step is what gives them actually a chance to succeed. And the reason by the way, that coercing people up to outspend their level their actual level of commitment, when people do that, that is where you get this Herbalife Isagenix MLM bullshit. That's all that stuff does is get somebody who's at their wit's end and says, perfect. Well, what you can do now is spend two and a half $1,000 on some bullshit. And it's, and yeah, that'll give you a chance to succeed. And we'll include some other bullshit with it. And then when they spend all that money, they've reached up and then they go back to not doing anything else that they need to be doing. They don't exercise and very rarely even take the supplements that they bought. And then they're trying to hawk them on the internet. Six months later, they expired. Okay, that is a model that does not work. And the reason that is exactly the reason is you try to stretch somebody's commitment, get them to buy outside the reach, pull up, and then they just, boom, they're down. They've invested a lot. Hi, they hate your product. They speak nothing, but nothing well about it. And then they're not getting any progress



John Fairbanks 24:27

requires so much in the reason why it requires so much infrastructure. There's so much that has to be built out to where if you're going to offer a $100 a week product, you have to make sure that you can fulfill it. Because if you sell vaporware, right if you have this, this bait and switch setup where you're selling a 600 $700 thing upfront, which the principle is sound as far as people's need right their pain is the greatest when they walk through the door. The issue is that not everyone needs to do a goddamn challenge. Everyone doesn't have to go into the same thing they do if the only system you've built is that, yeah, but you are now forcing everyone through a system that's not going to be what's best for them.



Tyler 25:23

And that's one of the, I think the biggest things that I think gym owners need to come to is that like, you can be very specific, and that's great, but then know that you're only going to get people who are already attracted to that very specific thing. And essentially, then you're running a YMCA fitness class, truthfully, what you're doing, what are you doing this any different than body pump? If it's the one thing we do, it's the one way you can do fitness, and it's the only product you can buy. And if you don't already know what it is or like it? How the fuck like and then you wonder why your people aren't beating down your door or paying you a ton of money.



John Fairbanks 25:59

And this is why we call it this, this is the executing this down sell process is education is the key here. Because this is usually the very first question that I'll ask as I start to talk with a gym owner, which is what are all the things that you do? Take them a while, we will leave that question. And five minutes later, they will remember something that they had forgotten to tell me five minutes prior, because they didn't remember. And then it's like, can all your coaches explain everything that you guys have to offer? And then it's like, no, and then can all your members. And it's for sure No. And this is where this system, how you run this process through top down in this format guarantees every person that you ever communicate with knows exactly what you have to offer. Because you're not in the business of churn and burn. No, not in the business of fucking losing someone in 90 days. Because you're in this for the long haul. So how this gets structured from the very beginning, is built on taking advantage of the fact that you know, these people are here with you for six months, eight months over a year, because this takes us into just that natural cyclical client journey that everyone has.



Tyler 27:19

Yeah, so if you try to take somebody who comes in wanting a membership, you try to move them up a ladder, that just want to get in shape and try to stuff them into some challenge like whoa, the fact that doesn't really identify their needs and what they want. They already have their guard up on anything you say they're really not that interested in even if you get them to buy what's next for them, they're already only thinking down the ladder, which by the way, is okay, for the most part. But if you stretch people up in their initial commitment, it's very tough to get them to move up beyond that point, right? If you let people kind of buy where they buy, and as long as your product is actually a lot of shit that people want and they work in it, it just seems to make sense. Then what you have is this long term client journey that is about that person and their current level of commitment and their current budget, mid current amount of time they have available. So when you come in, you know if I come into somebody who maybe wants the middle of the road, because it's the most that I can afford, but I was presented with the top option first. And the top option is expensive and sounds like it has everything that I really wanted. Even the few things that maybe I failed at, in my first commitment, right, the first thing I kind of went through with you, as I picked the middle of the road thing I'm gonna get into group classes, I'm gonna do a little bit of that maybe that's just where I start group classes and some nutrition coaching. I don't want to do all the scans and stuff like that. But then you end up kind of not getting where you want to be. And you go, Okay, let me let me level up. Let's do some personal training a little bit next time. And let's add to the body scan so that I know that two weeks from now I'm on track and then a month from now I'm on track and we have measurable stuff that level of commitment now. See sits out in front of me as something that's desirable. As something I'll go man, maybe I should have done that in the beginning. Because I was informed about a top down, I can always choose to go up because I know and usually when people don't force them into a thing, they'll go shit. If I need to make more progress, maybe I need to invest more so as we talked about as fast as why they'll go buy shoes, that's why I workout clothes because it's about investing more in that part of your life. And this is another way for them to do it and make sure that if they actually have the opportunity to move up that you've got something there and that they already know about it and that starts with the very beginning because at the very beginning, not everybody can afford your 12 week upfront guaranteed results 4000 $5,000 package that's all the all the bells and whistles right maybe they just can't. But ideally everyone who has those same goals and those problems in front of them. They all should want those products. Not all but most of them will go. That would be the best and easiest way for me to get these results, it was just that they should be able to identify that right away if your process is done right. And then from there, you're fine. Because then if they don't make it, they go, Yeah, I should do that, I should do that it makes sense for them to move up. Now on the other side of things, if I pick that top option, very first, right up right off the bat, I picked that top option, or maybe the option right below it, that's a monthly option, whatever that is, but I picked this option, I spent a lot of money. If that's the amount of money that matters to me, I can't stay in that forever, right? But I may know now because I saw that there are other options for me to move down to, like a perfect, let me say, this is how I want to commit, right, I'm gonna go in hard, I want to go in with a bunch of money, I want to put a bunch of time and effort in I want to kickstart this process. And then after that, I'm gonna drop down to your group, let me get 12 weeks of like, some kickass results, I'll be comfortable in the gym, I'll know what I'm doing. Or I'll drop right down to just 24 hour access. And I'll just come in and lift myself. But I want to get these results. So I know what's up. And then I can go down. And now instead of people coming in and just buying a base product and sitting at a base product, you will allow them to move up and down. But that starts with delivering this actual process and delivering this top down and delivering it in this way with those conversations. Because if you don't, all people are seeing is a menu then. And it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't feel like it's connected to them or their goals. Right? If you went into a restaurant and you go well everybody's you go to a restaurant, you sit down and there's just a list of fucking food. Right? There's just a list of food. That's all if that's all on the menu really. And it doesn't really align you with it. You have to read everything to know what's what and to know things. That is not what we want with this sales process. Your sales process should not look like a menu, it should look like the top option is the best thing that's all the stuff that you want. Right at the top. It's hard to make a one to one food connection with this other than the menu is not what it is that everything that's on there should connect his value to them. It's like having a very custom menu that's made only for you and only for your specific choices . The four things that you like the most, the things you need the most, everything.



John Fairbanks 32:09

Yeah, imagine, imagine if you went to a restaurant, and they said, Are you vegan or vegetarian or whatever. And then they give everybody a custom menu. What do you



Tyler 32:19

What are you craving right now? Exactly. And then you move there, and you move to that. And now you're living in a spot where you're reading only the things that matter to you. And that's and that's what we really want to connect with in the beginning with this process. So that cyclical nature, I think, is the most important thing. Because if and we're going to get into how you can market and advertise this so that it makes more sense a little bit to the people coming in. But running people up and down as you go isn't about coercion. It's about their own fitness journey. Yeah, it's everything. And so people will come in and they will have great success that they invested in, and then they will tone back down to something they can afford. And then they may stagnate. And then they will connect reinvesting fundamentally reinvesting money reinvesting time reinvesting in your expertise in your services, they're going to connect that with a greater rate of success. And in their mind, that's all that matters. And that's the most important thing for your businesses, the more money I spend with these people, the better experience I get, and the better results I get.



John Fairbanks 33:21

And it's, and it's huge, because then how you are seeing those successes. It allows, it's like if you do this the right way, and we'll talk about it in the advertising and marketing side. But it's your people who tell you what they'll buy. So there's this, there's this never ending loop that allows you to be like, hey, what do you guys want? What do you guys want? What do you guys like? And you may already know this, because you're confident who your avatar is, which is right, really dorky marketing speak of like, who are the people you like to have being in your gym? Like, who do you want to have as clients, and then once you know who they are, you kind of already know what to put in front of them. And if you allow it to be this cyclical nature of I start a thing and then that thing ends and then I can start a new thing. It allows it to where it never gets dull. You know, when gyms are starting to get in weird spaces, you start to hear your coaches will start to get if they're being honest with you, or they'll talk amongst themselves or do your GM. And they'll say stuff like, you know, it just it's, it just feels flat. You everybody just kind of feels like you know, men are flat or just the fire isn't there like it used to be. And there are so many pieces that come to mind and this is one of the things that can help to avoid that. Where it's like is the idea of like,



Tyler 34:45

take on something fresh. To take on these things together. By the way, once one person is doing it, it's more appealing to the others. It's it's it's it's managing a tribe. It's really what it is is people need freshness to do they need new things to do they need new experiences. Now, I want to touch on one more concept because I mentioned the menu concept. There are things still that you do within your gym that maybe don't need to live as this offer stack truly is your base offer, right? Whether that's nutrition coaching, whether you have a remote workout program, or whether you just have, you just write workouts for people, whatever that may be, maybe you have a PDF of at home workouts that you built there in 2020 that you can sell now or something like this. Sure. With this offer stack system that we've talked about here, this was the sales process. If someone looks through those things that you gave them, whatever, here's your top option all the way down to your base, which is either group fitness, 24 hour access, whatever that is. And they said no, just no. And then they're usually going to tell you why I can't afford it or out or whatever this is, if it's about money. The one thing I always like to have with my sales process is a simple ala carte menu. For little services like this that are one off which may be a 12 week nutrition plan. It may be what I have is I have 12 week nutrition plan I have a 16 week kind of like email focus like nutrition transformation, it's kind of a more slow burn write lots of lots of homework stuff. I also have a couple of PDF, workout programs ones for gaining muscle and once more conditioning, then I have kind of a hybrid beginners workout stuff right all of the some of it can be done at home some can be done in other places, and not just kind of lists on the spot where someone tells me No they can't afford my now if I was a gym if they say they can't afford my a couple $100 a month for my base group fitness membership. So well, you know, you did mention you're looking to lose weight. One of the things I really highly recommend the most important thing in weight loss is nutrition coaching or nutrition plan. So if you want your you can just want 250 bucks, off you go it's no not a recurring thing. And there's a food plan that will get you X amount of pounds loss in X amount of weeks. Always finding ways to down sell your nose, or at least to have a product when someone tells you no to a higher level product that you have something there that is valuable that fits their needs, I think is a way that you'll basically get a nearly I would say you'll be over 90% closure. For sure. You know you really well, because if you're truly getting people, you know into the sales conversations, if you're truly getting people there who actually have the need, and they want to do it. Hopefully you know that if all of your products can fit truly any budget, right you get down to like, if I'm selling you a PDF of some at home workouts that I made, like that's not a ton of money, right? If you can spend $75 can't spend $75 on that you never were going to be buying anything from anybody. And that means so that's that is what that is. But down selling your nose is a great one that aligns directly with the principle and someone kind of exits out of a higher level product. I did this for 12 weeks more than I can carry for the long haul. What do you get for me now? What do you get for me instead that fits my budget? So if your products can fit any budget, then we can pivot to how do you advertise these things? How do you promote them? And that's really, really, really important to know because we talked to gyms that have 24 hour we're talking to a guy yesterday who has 24 hour access probably represents two or three quarters of probably three quarters of his overall membership base. Right. But a shit ton of the revenue comes from the actual services most of the revenue comes from the other services yes



John Fairbanks 38:25

that he said 75% of services comes from other additional exactly beyond just the 24. So



Tyler 38:35

That now means you have to start marketing for this because if you don't market for these higher level services, you're only going to get these conversations when a customer comes in and says how much is a membership I need to join a gym. And they don't connect your gym with a place that has coaching or high level services or does any sort of human interaction right? Most people when they think of a gym they don't think of human interaction. They don't think of humans coaching them humans teaching them you can think of Planet Fitness and all the big dogs for that exact reason. Exactly, exactly. So, but know then that each of these products that you have each of these services that you offer, whether it's personal training, I'm doing this lesson personal training, nutrition coaching, our lifting team we have you know, Cub running club we've got whatever else whatever it is that you do those things. And then you also need to take the specific goals that people may have which are gaining muscle, losing weight, losing fat, competition, offseason sports performance, whatever it may be. You need to market each of those things. You need to talk about each of those things very specifically on your social media. Instead of talking about "here's my gym, here's where we are," there's always a time in place to talk about your gym. Right? But your gym is not what those people want. They don't want to join your gym. They want to do whatever the list of things that I just described for you.



John Fairbanks 39:55

If we have to assume that they have found you because they were looking for a gym. Yeah So, so perfect. Yeah, Jim is done. Got it understood, you're a gym, you have a place where people can work out. So what makes you different from everybody else? Because otherwise, you just are everybody else. And so this is definitely that piece where it's, and I think it's important to when you're talking about advertising, please understand this is not this is not Facebook ads. This is not Google AdWords, this is not somebody that's going to come in and try and help improve your SEO for your website, or for the blog, but you haven't written in since 2019. Right. So it's, it is, it's talking about what you do. Yeah. That's fundamentally what marketing and advertising is, first and foremost is what you're doing in person. It's the digital stuff we get very obsessed with. And we kind of get in this weird circle jerk motion where it's everything's digital, everything's on Facebook, everything is on Instagram. meanwhiles, we've talked about so many times before, it's the majority fucking take a poll of all the people that are members of your gym, how close do they live to your gym. That is what now what marketing and advertising you're doing in that immediate local community. That is really where the rubber is gonna meet the road.



Tyler 41:12

Now, coming up with a way to make sure you have balance in your high value products, I don't care if you put prices on there. I don't I really don't. I'm not anti anything regarding putting pricing out there anymore. I've said I've said before, I've kind of changed my stance on that stuff. So I don't care if you want to blast out what your base membership is, you want to say it great. But know that you need to also be having a certain amount of content whether it's posts, conversations, banners, billboards, flyers, whatever it is you're doing that you're putting out there, that they need to talk about your high value stuff, too. The reason nobody goes to Planet Fitness for personal trainers is because what do you think of when you think of Planet Fitness, purple $10 a month, purple $10 A month pizza, that's it. So know that they're never going to make it into the high value space ever, because they've done so much moving to Lova. And this is you guys, a lot of you who have services that you're having a hard time selling, you've already painted yourself into that box by not talking about them, and not talking about them as if with a value that they really have. Right. And I think that you cannot just be pushing people to your cheap stuff, because you end up doing the dollar menu thing, which is people only associate McDonald's with the dollar menu stuff, McDonald's doesn't really make a lot of money off of it. But then they get a shitload of people coming in buying dollar menu stuff in which McDonald's is making pennies off of okay, and in hindsight, they scrapped the dollar menu because they go shit, just attracting people based on that low value, low profit margin business. Only buried us on the fulfillment side for low profit business. And you cannot only attract that race to the bottom because you're going to lose it. And you're not going to make as much money. So you need to sing the song of more premium products you need to whatever the things you do that or what do you do? Well, you need to attract people for that. And you'll be able to tell when you ask people very quickly when they come in, if we have gyms that offer different baseline services, right? That's a toy. Good examples when we work for 24 hours. Gym access only is one class, they are one tier of how we split the inquiries. The other is group fitness, which kind of allows them to choose semi private or you know, as overall group classes. And then the other is private personal training. Okay, those are three tiers, right? Each of them has a different perceived value, both monetarily and outcome wise, to anyone who reads them. So depending on who you're attracting the answer to that first question, what are these three products or you know, what, where would you like to start is usually how we kind of phrase that question and we show it to them, whichever one they choose is what they're most likely not you for. Very likely, or they just don't have the money. And that's okay. But it's very important if you go in, and 99.999% of people are choosing a 24 hour access. And you're getting such a low amount of people that are choosing that personal training button, you're missing out on a big opportunity. And it means you're not promoting it as well as you should. It means people don't know that you do it. Right, I came here already. People are informed buyers and 2023. They are already informed before they're having a conversation. They want to have as much information as possible, which means they need to kind of already know what they want. John, do you ever call a restaurant or go to like, I've never known what I want pretty much before I go in. You know what?



John Fairbanks 44:34

Because I go to the Google reviews



Tyler 44:37

menu and I've decided too much.



John Fairbanks 44:39

I don't even look at the menu anymore. So Google reviews right? Google has figured out why people use the reviews. So they will give you keywords. So they'll show you how many times has the rice pudding been mentioned? And if it's like 17 times whatever the highest even gives you like a little smiley face like And it's green now like it. So you can see very quickly I went to the Mexican place. I know that I want the Bulldog Margarita. Because everybody talks about that. And I know I want the shrimp thing that I can't say. And because it's so I already know exactly what I want, because I can just see how many times somebody has already said this is great. Yeah. So people



Tyler 45:19

don't know your personal training? Correct? They don't know about it, they're not gonna go ahead. There's, you're not gonna go to that Mexican joint with a cheeseburger. Don't Don't be that guy. But it's important that like, You're that even though their cheeseburger might be fine, and they may do it. Well, like, you don't fucking know that correct? You have no idea. Okay, and so I think that that is going to be one of the most important metrics as far as how you need to promote these things and market these things is what is happening when people are answering that first question. If you're having a hard time, everybody's choosing to go. I want group fitness groups to fit group fitness. Well, great, you have a great opportunity. You know, you need to clear up and inform a ton of people that you do personal training, you need to convince them that it's for them, you convince them why it's for them what it can do for them, that it's good who it is, who else does it that people actually paid for this to social proof is a big one. That's why you go to the reviews, John, to read his, you want social proof, I don't want them telling me the rice pudding is good. Nope, I want the people eating it to tell me it's good. So that's where you start going into these you know, kind of more things that we cover in the gear Academy helping with getting testimonials, you know, harvesting, leveraging the clients is the client experiences that are already going on within your gym. That becomes your kind of guiding principle when you only sell when you're always talking about your group membership. And people come in and they have a hard time pushing them up to the ladder. What's why because you're only trying to get people in so you're only speaking cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, and you try to move people up the ladder you feel resistance. And it's one of the main reasons that gym owners and fitness people don't like sales, in general, they don't like trying to sell because they feel like they're selling. And it doesn't need to be that way. But now that each different product, there's a different type of person who's going to align with my personal training clients are very, very, very different. Everything from financially, their goals, all of it, they're it's they're, they're all different from each other. But all of them are very different from what I would describe as the prototypical 24 hour gym. Sure, client. Okay. So if I'm trying to get the prototypical 24 hour gym client, and I'm trying to sell them on personal fitness, I will eat a plate of shit every single time I try to sell that person. But if I make sure that while I'm at a gym, that's known for 24 Hour Fitness, that we offer personal training, and it's done by professionals who are very good. And these are the clients that these are the results that they've gotten, these are the things that they have to say. Now a person who is not a prototypical 24 Hour Fitness client is going to go. I want that. And they didn't want anything to do with your gym beforehand, but they want that. And that's the way to be as you cannot be the value lot car dealership and expect someone to come in trying to buy a hot new car, you just can't.



John Fairbanks 48:10

And how you speak to those people is adjusted, depending on the location you're in. Yes. So how you've sold your personal training services to folks that are going to be leads that are coming through your 24 hour facility is going to be radically different than say when you were doing personal training at the CrossFit gym. Yep. And then when you're doing personal training, that you are just a total Freelancer that is just renting out space, and someone's coming in through your own social media. How you talk about that service to them, is where the sale is made. Because you are using their language you're connecting with where they're coming from. Because if this is the issue, when we start talking about bargaining and advertising, we're like, Hey, you guys need to post, you need to post about these services, you will just start, you will just start saying personal training starting at $130. It's like that's not it guys. Like that's that's not it, what you just said was a word. And what you've done is you've put yourself at the you've put yourself at the risk of whatever someone that's reading that whatever they think that word means, yeah, is what it now means to them. And that's a dangerous place to be. So when you say certain phrases you can't leave down, this is why avoid it altogether and start talking about what they want.



Tyler 49:39

And now, one of the things we do that sometimes we run into gyms with their social media is they're either not doing much in the long run, right? They're not being very prolific, not being very consistent, or what they're doing just isn't anything. There is no plan and it's not about anything purposeful. Now John and I have identified a few here as well. had to split up your products and split up your clients as well. So on the promotion side of this, know that what you actually have now is lots of different things to say to different people about different products. And in doing so now you shouldn't be sitting there completely adrift without a plan with your social media, just snapping a picture of someone exercising and slapping your fucking logo on it says gross sucks, there might be a time and place for it sometimes, but Jesus Christ, the amount of gyms we've seen in our, I mean, we're at over 1000 Now that we've that we've gone through that, that don't fucking do anything, the only thing they're social media, they're just like snapping a picture of fitness happening sucks, dude, it sucks. So you take each of these things, you split them out, and then you split into who would want to hear this type of person and you have a plan, and talk about each one of those things once a week. And by God if I do the math on that, that's once a day, you've got something, you go back into some of our further episodes, we talked about how you can batch content and batch queue copywriting and you can kind of be very prolific when you get in one lane, poem, pump out a bunch get in another lane, pump out a bunch, you can spend a little bit of time having someone put this together, or at the very least, if you're putting this together yourself, it'll go faster. If you're having someone else put this together for you you're paying for what you're doing now is giving them an actual plan, because there's nothing worse than giving your fucking coach who has an iPhone, the login to your Instagram and say here or run the Instagram account, all they're going to do is post pictures and videos of fitness happening know that whatever. So even if you're hiring someone else, if you give them no plan, and no products, you're just going to swing and miss to Okay, or they're going to need to get all this information from you anyways. Right? So if you're going to hire it out, or if you're going to hand it off to someone on your staff, know that everything that we've just given you here, that is your plan. Those are the things you need to talk about to direct them to this. And I think if you do that consistently for three months, the amount of leads that you will get and the types of leads that you will be getting will change dramatically. And this is only starting with a free strategy, right? That's the free service, not even running really paid ads, take these same principles and apply them to your paid marketing. And now, instead of advertising for your gym, paying advertisements, whatever is for your gym, okay, you can be paying to have people interested in coming and losing weight, and working with one of your professional personal trainers. And getting hands on like that is much more appealing than going to the gym. Because the gym equals whatever it equals in that person's brain. Correct.



John Fairbanks 52:37

And I think it's really important that we talk about these organic strategies, because we should have our ads Dude, come on down for a little bit and go into this because here's the next piece that I think is some some runway that you need to build for yourself as you start thinking about marketing, just generally, is typically, you're going to be cash poor. So you're not just dumping money, you're hiring social media managers, or folks that are ads to run your ads for you. You're just not spending that money. Because you're so cash poor. And so what you do is you put in a lot of time, but you if you're not doing just a simple audit every once in a while of your time how much time you are spending on these things, and then putting $1 amount to that time, I think that you can, you will be surprised. In fact, I'll guarantee that you'll be surprised how much money you're spending by the amount of time that you're spending on the thing. So as you're doing and executing these pieces and wanting to get sharper at it, say how much time did it take me to build this out? And then how much time would I have charged somebody for one on one personal training for that same amount of time, and start figuring out how much time it took and then how many leads you got that came in through your marketing strategy and stuff that you're doing? Because this is going to allow you to see how much a lead costs? Now it's my time. But it's really really important because when we start talking about the paid ads world, when we say a lead costs about $5. It's $5 a lead or $6 a lead or $10 a lead right, whatever it may be, it's okay. How does that compare when you're doing yourself organically?



Tyler 54:25

Yeah, so we threw a ton of stuff at you. I would say this is a lot. This might be the most layered information we put out in a while when we look back at what we've got. Yeah, so pay attention I hope you're taking notes we do have the transcripts are going to become available they are they run we run them ran transcripts are available at your monitor evolution.com So if you want to go through a reading version, and you can really read the words of me saying um and fuck



John Fairbanks 54:51

and fuck



Tyler 54:55

yeah, go to gym owners revolution.com But to follow these things, guys, go back listen to this episode and it was A bunch of kind of dumped at one time, but just take it in the context of your business. Where can you start with right now? We talk a lot of shit like you're fucking up this fucking up that just to start moving towards some of these things systemized some really the thing that I think you cannot budge on is the way we talked about the sales process, the offer stack and those conversations, okay? Then from there, this down selling principle will flow, it's not a thing you have to force like upsells, always or forced, down selling just flows and people move down, and then they choose to move up and you don't have to be nudging, you don't need to be the guy kicking somebody in the ass moving them forward, because that's not what this business is about.



John Fairbanks 55:38

And you don't have to all of a sudden have this weird, like guilt thing, or I'm fucking up or I'm screwing things up because I lost a personal training client. If you haven't structured the right way, you haven't lost them, they didn't go away and go away,



Tyler 55:51

heat up the time. And you're going to an easy, more scalable product that fits them. And you've now freed up the time to take in somebody new who, by the way, ideally, hopefully, is another opportunity to possibly buy one of them top options as well. If they got the right buying habits, if your marketing correctly, that's the way we always look at look at you know, when Megan she has a client either shifts down or goes from three times a week, or four times a week down to two or one or it's going to take a couple of months off, we get to open a time slot. If I can rule because usually people are prepaying for 12 weeks at a time because you don't get that time slot. So it's like, hey, when someone drops off, if you're able to fill these slots quickly, by doing all the things we've described, that is a lot of money that gives you all of a sudden to like get a big boost of cash when somebody drops off, because they've kind of already settled into the recurring nature of this. So just keep that in mind that there's no there's no losses, when you're down selling people, there's just your mouse, filing them away into something that's profitable, consistent and works. And they can always move back up while you open up another big money spot for somebody else.



John Fairbanks 56:52

And because of the nature of the podcast, we're gonna go, we're gonna have a breath. And every once in a while we'll get autistic. And we'll go really deep on a particular thing. And, and we went a couple of layers deeper on like three or four things that we normally do. But understand the reason we do that as because these are just a generic principles that are going to apply to all the different types of gyms that we work with, really, when it gets when, like we really get into it, and it does get deep is when we could say, alright, what is your thing. And now we go deep into it only with your things considered. So when I'm talking when we talk with a gym, or that only works with teens and kids, and that's their only business. And then we talk to somebody that only works essentially with adults and a small footprint that cannot run large group plants like the principles then need to be able to be applied, and then adapt it in the methods we go get customized specific to their spots. So if you need it too much, and you want to be able to talk through it and get an idea of how it applies specifically to your spot. That's what you reach out to us directly for because that ultimately is what the year Academy is. But we have to be able to give you some things to work on to show that you're capable of going from A to B to C before we can bring in because the reality is this is done with you. approach we can do it for you. Not unless you're the next level up and it's and we cannot have you just do it. You can just have to do it yourself. We've tried it before we've put things out for you to learn. The podcast is about doing it yourself.



Tyler 58:23

Yeah, yep. So it's either free yourself, just listen to us. Eight, nine, almost 90 episodes out right now. So you go and you do all these things yourself is no problem. But if you want us to work with it directly, gear Academy has a spot. Listen, if you want to go to a much bigger commitment where we can nearly do it for you. We can talk about that as well. But most of you guys we want to be here with the gym owners who are starting moving forward trying to get things bill to actually give a shit about client results and making themselves a really good living and along the way, so if you want in on that get into go to gear, the gym owners revolution.com also go to the link in the description for gym owners revolution Facebook group, follow the show at Jim Morris podcasts on Instagram. Follow me at Tyler effing stone that's either eff ironstone and John J banks, f L guys. Thanks a lot for listening and we'll see you next week.


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