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Reading Emotions Through The Written Word by Josh Martin, CrossFit for Glory In the world of social interaction, humans have a multitude of different ways to communicate. Today, I want to highlight three of them: • Written word (via emails and texts) • Spoken word (via an audio medium such as a phone) • Face-to-face We are gym owners; business men and women.At the end of the day, being in business is simply an excuse for being in relationship with people. But ours is rare in the sense that folks frequently get to interact with the CEO on a daily basis. This means that deep emotional bonds are often formed. I truly believe that this is important to ensure the success of your clients, as the better you get to know them, the better you can shepherd them along in their journey to fitness…or whatever reason it was that they came to see you. But that deep relationship is a double edged sword at times. Relationships are highly emotional, for better and for worse. For instance, when someone makes the decision to leave your gym, no matter how many times it has happened, I’ll bet that it hits you on a deeply personal level. It should if you’re human.Well rest assured that the same is true for the person leaving as well. It is just as tough for them, many times more than they lead on.Last year, for the first time in our gyms five year history, we raised rates. I knew there would be some backlash; people rarely like change, especially when it comes to things costing more money. I got a few texts and emails from folks. Most wanted clarification (lesson learned – be crystal clear about exactly how things would change), but some voiced their displeasure. Taken at face value on paper, these people were angry, called my character into question, and made it seem like this decision made me a pathetic human being. But I knew ...

In January 2017, I traveled to San Diego with an elite mastermind group. The clever folks in this group are all owners of businesses worth $2-5 million, and we’re all in the service sector (though some sell software as a service, or SaaS.) We visited several companies who had scaled past the $5 million mark, including Classy.org, whose founders provided an insightful perspective on Sales vs. Marketing. Classy provides a payment platform for charities. They bill clients (the charities) based on a recurring monthly fee, a percentage of revenues collected, or both. Their service allows charities to scale without hiring software developers or negotiating payment rates with different processors. It’s a great model, and they have some huge clients. When Classy started, most of their sales were inbound. Charities heard about the platform, called for information, and signed up (or not) based on the pitch Classy gave them. This is SALES, and as Classy refined its process, more people signed up. Our sales process is called a “No-Sweat Intro.” It’s the product of years of trial, tweaking and data tracking. We teach it verbatim in the Incubator. The goal of your sales process is a high integration (i.e. signup) rate. There are two stages of client interaction before the Integration stage. These are Awareness and Interest, and they’re MARKETING. As Classy grew, they realized they could help more people by adding a Marketing team. The Sales team polished its Integration process while the Marketing team started their Awareness and Interest campaigns. In the gym world, CrossFit affiliates benefit from massive awareness campaigns from HQ (Reebok, ESPN, the Games, the Open…) and our marketing should be primarily focused on Interest. That means our emails, newsletters, website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, events, seminars, cobranding, and coffee talks should all have one goal: tell the future client how our service can help THEM. If you want to improve your revenues, focus your attention here: ...