Using Weapons Of Influence In Your Training Business – Part 1

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A Fitness Marketing Guest Post By Zach Hunt

Hey! Hope you're are doing well…

A quick note, if a friend ever asks to borrow a book, make sure it's something you don't care to see again, I was just trying to find my copy of Robert Cialdini's book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" and I just remembered I let someone borrow it… 6 months ago.

And I had all sorts of notes written in there. Not sure if I'll ever see it back. Argh.

Although I just realized I had a second copy of that book which is pleasing. But still……the notes!

Anyway, I want to share something with you I think you'll love and has really helped me in my training business with not just sales, but also client retention and, well you'll see.

It's called Reciprocity, or in an even sneakier form "guilt".

It's actually the first rule discussed in Cialdini's book and it's mega powerful.

How can you use reciprocity and guilt to make your clients pay, stay and refer.

This is something I've been tweaking and refining and after seeing how it works so well I wanted to share it with you. Check this out..

So when a client comes in to sign-up for their trial workout or their two-week trial or one-week trial, regardless here's what you do. Personally I've found a two-week trial works best for this tactic.

What you do is you do so many nice things and give the client bonuses, gifts and appreciation that they feel guilty if they don't join your program after two weeks. This is kinda like the law of reciprocity's evil sidekick.

For example here's some of the things you could do and what I do for a client. Here's the flow of a client coming into your business.

1. Day 1 – The client comes in to work out for the first day of their two-week trial. You congratulate them on making the right decision for their health and reminding them why they are joining (their goals / hot buttons / etc.) referencing future parts of their life that will be better as they continue to do training. Basically not even acknowledging the fact that they might not join after the trial.

At that same time after the workout we give them a food journal with our company name and website on it. Along with a nutrition binder that they can reference. This is very impressive and people always comment if I made this on my own.

A lot of clients even ask if I'm some type of franchise cause it looks so professional. (On The Right)

We tell them to start filling out their food journal as it's very important especially in the coming months as they start to see more and more results. (Basically just getting them thinking ahead of time).

2. Still Day 1 – Give them 6 referral gift cards and explain the whole referral rewards program mentioning how they can earn their entire training for free. Get them in the mindset that they are going to stick with it and it might even be free. Saying something to the effect of "As you start to see results in the first month and second month especially others will ask what you're doing…." and so on ending it with, "does that sound good?"

The ninja-ness of this is that they're agreeing to the whole statement even though you're mainly referencing the statement about the referral rewards.

3. Day 2 – Send them a thank you card in the mail again congratulating them on their decision to get in better shape and make their future brighter. If you want to be extra sneaky you can include some type of motivational book saying this will come in handing in the coming months.

4. Day 4 – Phone call from admin asking if they have any questions on the nutrition or food journal, how are things coming along with their journalism, and other questions like this. Mentioning the book they got in the mail mentioning for them to please read it.

5. Day 8 – Right before their two weeks are "up" send them another card in the mail with some other pamphlet or tips booklet or motivational quotes with a note saying something like "this helped me a lot when I was getting in better shape", or whatever.

These are just some of the things we do. But man it works well, pretty well everyone that comes in joins like clockwork. Some people might say "hey that's going to cost me like $30 per client. Yes it might even be more with the journal, binder and depending on what other gifts you give them in the first two weeks. You could even spend $50 per client.

However, the great thing is, the closing percentage is so high that you'll end up making a ton more on the back-end. As long as you pre-qualify everyone (read the note below).

Please Note: This is to be combined with a good pre-qualification and phone script if you just let everyone come to training for their "freebie" then this may not work as well for you.

This has worked really well for me and really this has been the best "funnel" I've ever tested. Compared to doing trial workouts, consultations and any other method. This is like an auto-sales machine. Cause there's no risk upfront for the client, but when they do come in they'd have to feel like some loser if they didn't join your program after what you've done for them.

Anyway, hope this will help you out. It's has helped me quite a bit and it a very powerful system you can implement in your business.

Stay tuned for the next parts in the series showing how I use the weapons of influence in my training business. Let me know what you think in the comments section below..

Zach Hunt is a Spokane Fitness Coach and fitness studio owner.

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• Are you tired of clients canceling on you?
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