John Franklin (00:02):
Hello and welcome to this episode of Run a Profitable Gym.” I am your host for this session. My name is John Franklin. I’m the CMO here at Two-Brain Business. And joining me today is the head of sales at Two-Brain Business and the owner of Vault Health & Fitness, a network of four different gyms doing over seven figures in revenue. It’s his first time on the show. Welcome, Mr. Matt Temby.
Matt Temby (00:25):
Hey, thanks for having me, John.
John Franklin (00:26):
Were you always a sales expert or was this something you picked up through the annals of being a gym owner?
Matt Temby (00:34):
No, I was terrible in sales. I come from a corporate background in retail and then opened my first two gyms at the same time, which was a big mistake. And then, kind of stumbled through sales until eventually I found mentorship and then I learned that I should actually have a sales process. It’s a lot easier to make money that way.
John Franklin (00:51):
And the story of how you found mentorship is kind of a dramatic one. How did you come—how did you get on my radar? How did you find Two-Brain Business?
Matt Temby (01:00):
Yeah, I didn’t know that Two-Brain existed. A lot of people who come to have conversations with Two-Brain, they’ve been following for a really long time; they’re familiar with Chris’s work. I was not in that camp. I was coming out of COVID. It was July of 2020. I had opened both of my gyms in 2018, left my corporate role in 2019. So, I didn’t have any money coming in for about 16 months. And I was about 12 weeks out from filing bankruptcy. And I had missed a flight to a cousin’s wedding out to Kansas City, cried all day. My mom told me that everything was going to be OK, and I assured her it was not OK. And then I found a paid ad from Two-Brain that night, kind of went down the rabbit hole, started reading some articles, watched some videos, listened to the podcast. I had a call on a Monday, and I started that day, and that was about four years ago.
John Franklin (01:48):
I got you. That was my ad. Alright. And so, things have obviously—things have obviously turned around since then. The way you came on my radar is obviously you had a lot of success with the program, and then I was looking for people who had succeeded and wanted to hop on the sales team. I found you, we interviewed the first time, and you didn’t get the job. You didn’t sell me; you didn’t close me. So, we ended up bringing you on a second round. I saw a little bit of opportunity there. I saw you were coachable and moldable, and then, you came on, you blew my expectations away, and now you run the entire sales team, and you’re a better closer than I am. So how did you go from someone who couldn’t get a part-time sales job to being the number one sales expert in an organization known for selling?
Matt Temby (02:44):
Yeah, I think when I first started on the sales team, and rightfully so, I didn’t get the job the first time. I didn’t do a very good job of closing you. When I first started, it was about creating structure and having a format that I could follow consistently and a flow that I was confident in because with sales, if you don’t have confidence and conviction, the person across from you is going to feel that regardless of if you’re selling mentorship or for most of the people who are going to be listening to this episode, we’re selling to consumers that want to change their life through health and fitness coaching. So, if they are timid and they’re scared, which most of them are when they get to sitting across from us, and we’re timid and not confident, they’re not going to buy. So, it was about building my confidence with what was working well for me. And then since that time, beginning of 2022, I’ve invested in mentorship for sales training. So, if there’s a skill that you want to learn, there’s somebody out there that’s doing it better than you are, and you can acquire that skill.
John Franklin (03:42):
Yeah, I mean, it got to the point where I was just like, “Matt, I’ve kind of taught you everything I know now.” And so, you were just like, “OK, that’s fine.” And then you found people who were better than me and then better than those people. And now you’ve gotten really good in such a short period of time. It’s really impressive. So, mentorship was one thing you did. Obviously selling with conviction and developing a good sales mindset is important. Like what did you do to hone in on those things and develop those abilities?
Matt Temby (04:15):
Yeah, so part of it is practice. And then reviewing game tape is really helpful. So, a lot of the sales that we do at Vault is all online. It’s through Zoom, so those are recorded. It gives me the opportunity to watch those conversations that the team’s having and give feedback to team members on things that they can either do better in discovery phase, which is the first part of actually leading a sales conversation, which I’m sure we’ll talk about more in a minute. The pitch, which is like presenting the solution, here at Two-Brain we call that the prescriptive model, and then the close, which is overcoming objections. If you can’t overcome objections, you’re not going to make a lot of money in sales or in your gym because you’re not going to have a lot of people that you’re going to be helping.
Matt Temby (04:56):
Something that you had actually shared not that long ago within Two-Brain is called “The Jolt Effect.” And in that book, they talk about 40 to 60 people, or 40 to 60% of people, don’t make decisions on the thing that they’re looking at. So, if you think about how many people actually show up, they say, “Hey, I need to think about it,” or “I need to talk to my partner about this,” and then they just go back home and sit on the couch. That’s the true competition for other gyms. Those people that come into your gym for a No Sweat Intro, they’re not signing up at F45 or Orange Theory; they’re just going back to the couch.
John Franklin (05:30):
Some of them are, but to your point, about half, maybe a little bit more, are just going to do nothing. So that’s why it’s something that I stress with you and now you stress with the team that it is important to get a commitment of some kind on a sales call because it’s what the prospect wants to do. But a lot of times there’s indecision, and that may be because they’ve been burnt by a company before, or they don’t know if they’re ready to commit in the case of a gym membership, or they don’t know if this is the right gym. And we need to help them realize that whatever the solution is you are selling is the right solution. So why don’t we run through some of the frameworks that you teach at your gym to help create strong closers?
Matt Temby (06:16):
Yeah, so it starts at the beginning of that sales conversation. So, it’s really about overcoming the person because that person, typically the people that we’re servicing within our gyms, our avatar is somebody who does not work out regularly or has never had a workout program before. So, by the time they’re actually sitting in front of us, they’re fairly intimidated. This is uncharted territory for them. But we want to just get right into it, and we have to make sure that we’re leading the person because they’re going to make a decision on if they want to work with us specifically or not. So, asking what they’re looking for specifically in terms of their health and fitness is a great spot to start the discovery phase. Anything that a prospect is going to share with you or a potential client’s going to share with you, you want to make sure that you clarify what they said.
Matt Temby (07:04):
So you don’t want to make assumptions, right? So, they might say, “Hey, I want to get healthy.” Alright, well, in my mind and in your mind, you might have a picture of what healthy looks like, but we don’t know what it actually means to them, so we need to clarify what that is. We might need to probe and ask follow-up questions. And then once we understand what they’re actually talking about, then we can build. Because if that specifically is why they’re here, there’s probably more to it. And so, we need to start to build that story of what brought them in front of us, how long this thing has been going on for, what they’ve tried to do to solve that in the past. And then ultimately what will happen from that discovery portion of the conversation is that you’re going to end up finding a lot of pain typically because people are trying to solve a problem.
Matt Temby (07:47):
And then the larger that gap gets, the more urgency that they will have. But there’s really three parts to discovery. So, the first part to discovery is really understanding what the problem is, which is why we just ask that as soon as we start. The second part is understanding the goal, like what’s the future state for this person? What’s the thing that they desire? And then the last piece is urgency, and there’s really kind of two pieces to urgency. The first part is cost of inaction. So, let’s just use a female avatar who’s in her mid-forties, and she wants to lose body fat. So, if she wants to lose 25 pounds, and she’s been trying to lose this 25 pounds for the last three years, and there’s probably a lot of things like little comments from her partner, or the way that she looks in the mirror before she goes out to a birthday party with the girls, like these little things kind of chip away at her confidence over time, and it’s probably created a lot of pain in her life.
Matt Temby (08:40):
And so the cost of inaction of, like, “OK, you lose 25 pounds. How are you feeling?” She’s feeling awesome; she’s got more energy. And she just kind of has that kick in her step again. Well, what happens if she does nothing? It’s just going to continue to get worse because the track record over however many years it’s been since she’s wanted to solve this problem, it would be unreasonable for her to think that it’s just going to magically solve itself. So, we have to paint the picture of, like, “OK, this is the thing you want,” and then you have to rip it away. And we’re not doing that to be rude. We’re not doing it to be disrespectful or mean. We just have to bring them back to the reality of the situation that they’re currently in. Like, you’re doing nothing, and it’s your decision to do nothing.
Matt Temby (09:20):
Or maybe she’s done other things, and she’s either failed to execute or was the wrong program with not the right information or lacked implementation and accountability to actually get her the thing that she wanted. So once there’s urgency where somebody is raising their hand and saying, “I understand that it’s my fault that I’m here, whether it’s decisions I was consciously aware of or unconsciously aware of, they were still my decisions, and I am in control of this, and nobody’s going to come to save me, and nobody’s going to do this for me.” At that point, once they’ve committed to taking action and changing their behavior, which is what sales truly is, then you can go into the pitch, but not before then because you’re going to end up with a “think about it” or you’re going to end up with a partner objection that’s going to be hard for you to overcome if you haven’t led them to the point where they take accountability.
John Franklin (10:07):
Right? So, we have: What’s the problem? What’s the desired goal or outcome? And then we need to create that urgency. One of the things that I’ve heard you talk about is the depth of questioning is what creates that urgency. If you stay surface level, you get surface level answers. So, a lot of times when you’ll be sitting down for a consultation in your gym and you ask someone a question, they’ll say something pretty generic like, “I want to lose weight,” or “I want to get healthy,” or “I just want to feel a little better.” And so, if you’re a novice salesperson, you’ll just kind of go down the script and kind of get a check next to each one of those boxes. What I think separates someone who’s good and who’s great is who can kind of dig and figure out what the true source of the pain, what the true source of the problem is. What are some tips you have for doing that?
Matt Temby (10:55):
Yeah, you really have to kind of peel back the onion until you get to the spot where there’s pain. So, we’ll just go back to that same avatar. She comes in, she says that she wants to get healthy and feel confident again. “OK. Well, tell me a little bit more about what that looks like for you to feel healthy and feel confident again.” “Well, I—”
John Franklin (11:15):
Let’s just roleplay it. Let’s just roleplay it. Take me through.
Matt Temby (11:18):
Do you want to be the—
John Franklin (11:20):
Yeah, I just want to lose like 20 pounds.
Matt Temby (11:24):
OK, got it. 20 pounds. And how long have you been wanting to lose the 20 pounds?
John Franklin (11:28):
So I had a kid about a year ago, and then life’s been busy. It’s very difficult being a mom and balancing work and my relationship. And so, it’s been something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time now. But I just need something to kind of like get me back on the wagon.
Matt Temby (11:44):
OK. When you say long time, you said that you had a kid a year ago—did this desire to lose the 20 pounds start before then?
John Franklin (11:52):
Well, I was pregnant, so it wasn’t realistic to lose weight at that point in time, but no one feels they’re sexiest when they’re in their third trimester of pregnancy. So, yeah, it’s been a while. I want to have my old body back. My pre-pregnancy body is my goal. I want to fit in my old outfits and be able to fit in my pre-kid jeans.
Matt Temby (12:11):
Got it. OK. And so, what have you been doing to work on losing the 20 pounds currently?
John Franklin (12:17):
Honestly, I haven’t been doing much. I know it’s been something I’ve needed to change, but it’s just been something I’ve been kicking down the road because it seems like I’ve been putting the needs of others before my own needs because I’m busy, I’m a mom, that’s what I do.
Matt Temby (12:32):
Got it. OK. And has something happened recently that you showed up today to have a conversation about finally putting something in place to change that?
John Franklin (12:40):
My kid is potty trained, and they’re starting school in two months.
Matt Temby (12:45):
OK. So, it sounds like—
John Franklin (12:46):
My oldest, my oldest. I have two kids.
Matt Temby (12:51):
Oh, alright. Well, that’s good to know. So, it sounds like you have a little bit more freedom of time with the oldest one going off to school. So, you’re trying to prioritize yourself to start to lose this weight.
John Franklin (13:01):
I just have a little breathing room, and I can get out of the house for an hour a couple times a week, where before that just wasn’t even a consideration.
Matt Temby (13:10):
Got it. OK. Now, when you said that you wanted to lose some weight, you said 20 pounds, and it seemed like that was pretty specific. What’s the significance behind the 20?
John Franklin (13:19):
That would just put me at what my pre-pregnancy weight was.
Matt Temby (13:23):
OK. And were you happy at that weight?
John Franklin (13:26):
Definitely happier than what I was, just felt a lot more confident, felt a lot younger, felt like I had more energy.
Matt Temby (13:33):
Got it. OK. And so, is that kind of the ultimate goal, or do you think that you would want to do something beyond that once you hit the first 20?
John Franklin (13:40):
I think I’d have to get there first, but you always want to look better. There’s no end state in these things, but I do think getting pre-pregnancy would give me a lot more confidence, make me feel better, give me a better feeling when I look in the mirror.
Matt Temby (13:55):
Got it. OK. And, you know, I’m just kind of curious what would happen—because you mentioned that you kind of kicked the can down the road to get to this point that we’re at today—what happens if you don’t do anything?
John Franklin (14:06):
I just keep going like I’m going, and I could be talking to you next year, having to lose 30 pounds instead of 20 pounds.
Matt Temby (14:16):
OK. And what is that going to do for your quality of life? Because you said that you wanted to kind of get back to feeling sexier again.
John Franklin (14:22):
It’s certainly not going to improve it.
Matt Temby (14:24):
OK. And is that something that you’re prepared to settle for?
John Franklin (14:27):
No, I mean, I want to make a change, or I know something needs to change because this isn’t something where I can do it on my own. Like, there’s too much—I have to keep track of my husband, my two children, I work. I just don’t have the type of head space to think of how to make these other changes and habits that I need to get back to where I was.
Matt Temby (14:53):
OK. And when you say that something needs to change, do you have an idea of what that looks like for you?
John Franklin (14:59):
I think just moving, getting into the gym and starting to take time for myself is really going to be that first step in the process.
Matt Temby (15:06):
Got it. OK. So that’s where instead of just taking you at your initial response, you can keep going, and so you get a lot more information from the prospect because that starts to build that gap. And so like you said, “Hey, it’s my fault,” and you took accountability, so you’re a good prospect, somebody that’s probably going to be a little bit easier to close of, “Hey, I know that something needs to change, that’s kind of why I’m here, and I know that if I don’t do anything, this is going to get worse, and I’m probably going to have 10 more pounds that I need to ask your help to lose next year.”
John Franklin (15:40):
And it doesn’t feel pushy, and it only took a couple extra minutes to get that information. But you have a lot more to work with to fight inaction later on, right?
Matt Temby (15:51):
For sure. Yeah. If you settle for the surface responses, you are just going to be checking boxes on the conversation, and you’re not going to have the opportunity to change that person’s life. And at the end of the day, this isn’t about making more money. From a business perspective, obviously, that’s important, but this is really about changing somebody’s life in your community. And if you’re not a leader at the beginning of the conversation, that person is never going to say, “Hey, I want you to lead me on a daily basis,” whether it’s one-on-one semi-private, large group nutrition, coaching, whatever—that person’s not going to sign up with you because you didn’t prove to them that you can lead them at the beginning of the relationship. So, they’re saying, “Hey, I’m kind of concerned. I don’t have the confidence that you’re going to be able to lead me to the thing that I actually want.” So, they’re rejecting you, not the program that you have.
John Franklin (16:41):
And what would you say to a gym owner who’s like, “This sounds—this doesn’t match with the vibe of my gym,” or “I don’t like my sales to feel salesy”?
Matt Temby (16:53):
Well, what I say to that person in that regard, I would ask them about their goals to start. Like what are they trying to do with their business. If they’re trying to make a larger impact on their community and they think that they could be doing better. Now maybe they’re doing free trials, which a lot of gyms used to do that, and a lot of gyms still do that. I would ask them how that’s working for them, and if they think that they could be doing better, I’d ask them if they’re happy with the results, and if they’re not, then I’d say, “OK, well let’s talk about a different way that we can actually help people on a deeper level.” Because I don’t know anything about that person who goes into a free class.
Matt Temby (17:32):
I don’t know what their goals are. I don’t know what their limitations are. I don’t know what their past workout history is. And so, really, I’m doing that person a disservice. And a free class at this point is really a commodity. It’s no different than just turning on the lights. I expect the light to go on. And so, there’s no differentiation between what you’re doing and what the F45 down the road is doing. And if you have a really large group model, let’s just say, you have 20 to 30 people in that room and you dump Nancy, who’s a 65-year-old female who’s never worked out with weights before into that group, she’s probably not going to have a good experience. And the likelihood of her getting hurt is actually significantly higher. And the coaching level just goes down because your coach is trying to get that person to have a good experience so that they sign up to the gym so the gym grows as opposed to coaching everybody else who’s already paying you to reach their goals.
Matt Temby (18:26):
So I would encourage you to have a more structured process and understanding what that leads to in the long term: That person’s probably going to pay you more money for other services because you can just address and give them an action plan of “You said you wanted A, B, C; let’s do X, Y, Z to help you get there. This is the timeline it’s going to take.” So, you can set reasonable expectations and so there’s not like buyer’s remorse 30 days in when they just think that 20 pounds is going to melt away, but you didn’t walk them through what they should actually expect. So, there’s a lot of upsides into having a true structured sales process. It’s not just about making money; it’s about helping that person better.
John Franklin (19:05):
Right? Like you can’t help Nancy if you don’t know what Nancy wants, right? If you’re one of those gyms saying, “Here’s my gym. This is where the rowers are. We have a lot of barbells. Our coaches are better than the gym down the street. It costs $140 a month. There are no contracts; there’s no hard pitch. Let me know if you want to sign up.” Like again, does that person know you can solve their problem? Have you done anything for that person that leads them to believe that you are an expert, much less should command a premium price to solve their problem versus getting a more bespoke solution like this where you can say, “Hey, I hear you. I can solve this. We do this all the time.” And then providing them exactly what they need. So. kudos to that. Once we’ve gotten the problem, we’ve kind of painted the dream outcome, what is the next step in the sales process?
Matt Temby (19:51):
Yeah, so at this point you’re going to make a prescription, a recommendation. This is what people would refer to as the pitch. And so, this is—when we talked about building that gap in the first part of the conversation and discovery, this is building the bridge to get her from this side over here to the side that she wants to be on. And the best way to do this—like if you have a lot of confidence in what you do, less is more. She doesn’t need to know about the coaching app that she’s going to have access to or your functional training day or all of these other things. She just needs to know, “Hey, we’ve done this with hundreds of people before, a lot of them very similar to your situation, and this is the outcome. And so based on that and what you said that you’re trying to accomplish today, these are the steps I want to take with you for the first four weeks. After that, you’re going to sit down with my coach, and they’re going to make the next recommendation for you.” So, this is the pitch. She understands what’s going on, he or she understands what’s going on, and then we’re going to get to the close.
John Franklin (20:53):
And does everybody get the same pitch?
Matt Temby (20:56):
No. Everybody’s going to get the pitch that’s best for them. And so, if you have—in your business, if you have team members who are helping with the sales process, they need to be empowered to do what’s right for that person. I’ve always told my team, if you start seeing me make recommendations that are just based on money and it’s not based in that person’s best interest, it’s probably time for you to get another job because the ship has gone astray somewhere along the way.
John Franklin (21:22):
So you make the pitch. Usually, how will you deliver the end state of the pitch. So, I’m assuming you’ll walk through, “Hey Nancy, based off of what you told me, I would recommend X, Y, and Z.” And then how do you deliver the price and ask them to sign up?”
Matt Temby (21:40):
Yeah. So, you want to make sure that they believe in the plan. So typically, what we do in our gyms—because we do have a nutrition program that an RD leads—we’ll kind of break it down into two pieces. Like “Here’s your fitness side of things; here’s the nutrition side of things.” Even if there’s no recommendation for nutrition, we’ll just say, “Hey, based on everything that you’ve told me that you’re trying to accomplish, I don’t think that you need nutrition at this point.” We just let them know that we do have programs, but at this point I don’t think that it’s imperative for them to go down that path to reach their goals. And then I’m going to ask them for their confidence of “Do you believe that this—everything that I’ve presented to you in terms of fitness—is going to get you to where you want to be?” and they’re going to give me a yes or no.
Matt Temby (22:20):
I’m going to ask a binary question there. So binary question, just getting clarity of it’s this or that; it’s yes or no. I want—like, you’re not asking an open-ended question. If she says, “No,” I’m going to ask her what her hesitation is or where she thinks that we may have left something out, so I can address that. Because it’s not an objection at this point. It’s just like, “Hey, there’s something that’s missing, and we’re having a straightforward conversation.” If she says, “Yes,” I say, “Great,” and then I’m going to walk her through the investment. So, a lot of gyms are just going to have one-size-fits-all for pricing. What I would recommend is you get a little bit more advanced and actually have two different pricing structures. You can have your paid-in-full that is not discounted because that’s not something that we teach.
Matt Temby (23:02):
But that’s the regular price. And then you have a finance option where it’s like, hey, maybe that person can’t pay $1,000 to get started for whatever your intro package is. And so then, if we isolate that conversation around money, if they have the money and they just don’t want to part with all of it at one time, “Great, I can break that down for you.” And so that’s how I would deliver that pitch is, “The investment for you to get started today is going to be this. How do you feel about the investment?” And then I let her respond so that you don’t need to have this big awkward pause. Like some people will teach that where you have a staring contest, and nobody says anything until the other person blinks or coughs, and then you feel like you got them. You’re just going to get straight to it. Because typically, if that person wants to do this, then it just comes down to like, do you actually have the money, or are we having a different conversation of finding the finances within your budget? And if they have the money and they just don’t want to give it to you, then it’s going to be one of the other objections.
John Franklin (24:00):
I would guess the most common one that people in here would hear from someone, is, “Hey, yeah, that sounds good. I think it’s going to get me where I need to go. Can you give me a couple days to think about it?” How are we handling that?
Matt Temby (24:13):
Yeah, that’s no problem, John. You know, just before you go away and take some time to think about that, what’s coming up for you that is leading you to wanting to take some time to make this decision?
John Franklin (24:24):
I’m just not an impulsive person, and I want to make sure that I’m making the right decision for me. I’m just not somebody who signs up for things right on the spot.
Matt Temby (24:36):
Got it. OK. And how do you feel about the decision itself? Do you feel like this is the right decision that’s going to help lead you to losing the 20 pounds that we talked about earlier?
John Franklin (24:47):
I do, but it’s a lot of money. It’s a little more expensive than I thought it was going to be coming into the conversation.
Matt Temby (24:53):
OK. So now we have the real objection. So, it’s a money objection. It’s not a “think about it” objection. So, of the five objections, there are two that are smokescreens: That’s a “think about it”; that’s a partner objection. And then you actually have money, fear and logistics. Those are the three real objections. And so, you have to pierce the smokescreen that somebody has of like, “Hey, I want to talk to my partner about that.” Well, if it was a partner thing, then I’d say, “Yeah, that’s not a problem. Like, that’s fair to go home and talk to your partner. I’d want to talk to my partner about this as well. Let me just ask you this question before you go away. Is there any reason that your partner wouldn’t want you to lose the 20 pounds that you shared with me that is really important to you?” Then you’d probably say—
John Franklin (25:32):
They’d probably say, “No,” and then they’d give you, “It’s a money thing,” or “We’re saving up for a vacation,” “We want to buy a car,” or whatever. Or the kids—I’d have to hire a nanny, something like that. And then it would come down; then you get to a money one. OK, what’s an example of a fear because you said something important there. So “think about it” and partner are smokescreen objections. That is usually something that requires further questioning to get to what the actual issue is. And the three real ones are money, which is pretty straightforward. The second one is logistics. So that’s like, “Hey, I told you my kid’s starting school in two months. I can’t start today.” Right? Like “I just don’t have the time until this kid’s out the house.” Right, and so for that, how would you handle something like that?
Matt Temby (26:20):
Yeah, logistics is pretty straightforward. So, it’s like, “Listen, Susan, you came in today wanting to solve a problem. I understand that your son’s starting kindergarten in a couple months, and you want to spend those summer months with him. But you also said that you wanted to have more energy so you can actually play with your son this summer. So, what do you think about the plan of breaking this down to just two days a week? Originally, we talked about four days. So, if we reduce the frequency just to get you started, right? Because I don’t want you to kick the can down the road and have the situation be a little bit worse off than you are today. Would that be helpful in helping you take the first steps to get started towards your goal?”
John Franklin (26:57):
And then you just move down that line of questioning until you find something that could work, or again, you do a follow up, but you want to make sure that you’re exhausting all those avenues first to actually get someone to commit and make some type of a decision. Alright, now talk me through fear. What’s a real—like, at what point do you know, “Oh, fear is the actual objection here.”
Matt Temby (27:20):
Sometimes you just have to label it, right? So, it would be like, “Hey, you said that everything is great. This is exactly what you’re looking for, you know that you need to do this, but you’re not ready to move forward. Do you have a little bit of fear of moving forward?” So, if we really wanted to go deep dive, there’s four fears: There’s a fear of me, there’s a fear of you, there’s a fear of yesterday, there’s a fear of tomorrow. And we could unpack each of those if we really wanted to. But when you’re looking at fear, a great question to ask is, “What would you do if you knew that you couldn’t fail in this program? Would you still do it?” Typically, they’d say, “Yeah, of course, but what if it doesn’t work for me?”
Matt Temby (27:57):
Well, why wouldn’t it work for you if it’s worked for all these other people who are on the wall behind me? And then they would go through, like, “Well, what if I don’t have time?” or “What if I don’t show up?” or “What if I’m just not strong enough?” And so, then you’re just addressing the thing of, “OK, you’re fearful of this.” And then another good question that you can ask is—or just kind of a statement really—is we can either make our decisions based out of fear or despite fear, and the person who you want to be where you lose the 20 pounds and you’re back to feeling confident, what decision do you need to make in this situation to put yourself in position to become that person? And so, if we can strip things down to really just a simple human conversation where we take our emotions out of it—because at the end of the day my life doesn’t change. If she signs up, her life will change significantly. If she doesn’t sign up, her life won’t change. It’ll probably just kind of continue on the way that it’s going. And she probably isn’t happy with that, which is why she’s sitting in front of you. And this applies for men too. I’m just using Susan as an example.
John Franklin (29:03):
Speak through that again. Because I think that’s an important way to think about it. A lot of some people will hear this and be like, “Oh, you’re just trying to push a decision on this person.” But really you want to act from a position of indifference, right? Is that the way you want to think about it?
Matt Temby (29:19):
Yeah. So, internally, a while back, we used to talk about the “be back bus,” right? Like the client says, “Hey, I’ll be back,” or “I’ll talk to you on Monday. But what we fail to realize is the person that’s trying to lead this situation is that the “be back bus” is a one-way ticket out of town, and you’re never going to see that person again. And if you as a gym owner or you as a coach at a gym, if you have conviction in what you do, that you’re the best in your town at X, Y, and Z, you can change that person’s life. You have to do everything that you can to help that person fight through the fear, fight through whatever they’re going through right there because this is the best opportunity that they have to make a decision that will change their life—if you have something that will actually deliver that.
Matt Temby (30:07):
So, if you are a little bit timid, and you’re like, “Oh shoot, I’m glad that this is going to be over, they’re going to be gone. I can go lift some barbells.” That person is going to leave. You’re never going to see that person again. You might hear from them; they might just pick up and say, “Hey, I’m not interested.” But you can’t have a real conversation with them at that point because they’re just—you’re an order taker in conversation number two. They’re saying either yes, or they’re saying no, or they’re going to say that they need more time, but the only conversation that you have where you can be transparent and just face-to-face is right now. So, you have to get over your fear and if you are fearful, it’s probably because you lack the knowledge, skills and experience to be successful in your role as a salesperson in that moment. And as gym owners obviously wear wearing a lot of interchangeable hats, but you have to get really good at this skillset because that person needs you, and you have the opportunity to change their life and probably impact their family’s life in a positive way, but not if you’re afraid and not if you don’t have the skills to help them work through that in that moment.
John Franklin (31:09):
So that runs us through the process and how we get through there. And I think there are some nuggets in there for both novice and advanced salespeople. Earlier in the conversation, you said something that was important, and I wanted to bring it up on the tail end here: So, one of the things we do on the Two-Brain sales team is we review calls relentlessly, so we are constantly auditing calls, we are providing feedback, and we are making improvements to the process. You mentioned that you do all your gym sales calls on Zoom so you can monitor, audit, give feedback. Is that the only reason you do it on Zoom? And if you’re talking to a gym owner who doesn’t do it on Zoom, would you recommend moving to a virtual setting so you could get that feedback? Or is there another way around that for people who like having people in the gym?
Matt Temby (31:59):
Yeah, we have recently switched to the Zoom process. One, logistically, it’s easier. We have a couple specialized team members now who handle the majority of our sales. Sometimes clients or prospective clients will want to come into the building and check it out even though we say, “Hey, the dumbbells that we have look just like the dumbbells that you’ve seen in other facilities; they actually work just the same way. But if you really want to come in and see us, we’re happy to meet with you in person.” And so, just the logistics of getting another coach scheduled sometimes is a little bit clunky, which is why we prefer to do it on Zoom. The other reason I prefer is kind of the point that you just made is I would love to see the conversation with the team members because if they’re not leading with confidence, just like everything that we’ve talked through, we’re probably missing the opportunity to help more people.
Matt Temby (32:48):
And then, if you put like a more business-focused perspective on it, if you’re doing a lot of organic marketing, and if you’re doing paid marketing, each of those leads who have these conversations cost money. And so, you want to be able to get a profitable return on that. So, you want to make sure that you’re not just flushing money down the toilet because your team is either unskilled, or they don’t have enough reps to be good at the things that you want them to be good at, so it’s kind of a double-edged sword. And to answer the last part of your question—sorry for rambling there—is I would encourage other gym owners to be able to do it. If they’re like a solopreneur and they don’t have anybody else on their team, and they go home at lunch and the prospect is available in that dead time, great.
Matt Temby (33:32):
Instead of you having to rush back up to the gym, especially if you aren’t good at lead nurture, and that person might not show up, like if your show rate’s like 60%, then you might end up at the gym like an hour and a half earlier than you wanted to when you might have wanted to take a little nap after that. So, doing it on Zoom, there are a lot of pros there, and there’s not a whole lot of cons unless somebody actually wants to meet with you in person to make sure you’re a real person.
John Franklin (33:55):
And just to be clear, a lot of people will read Two-Brain guides or resources and want to remove themselves from certain tasks in their business. I am of the opinion that sales is the last, if not one of the last, to go for a reason that you mentioned: that it is very, very expensive to have a subpar closer on your team. Maybe we can use some math to kind of highlight that. So, if Matt and I are working for the same gym and Matt’s close rate is 80% and mine is 70% and the life—what’s the lifetime value of a client at one of your gyms?
Matt Temby (34:40):
Like 4,000.
John Franklin (34:41):
4,000 bucks. Alright. Yeah, so if Matt delegates all the sales to me, for every 100 sales appointments at a 70% close rate, I’m going to close 70; Matt will close 80, right? That’s that 10% difference in close rate we talked about. The true value to the business is $40,000, so that extra 10% in close rate at a $4,000 lifetime value means that for every 100 sales appointments I do, I cost the gym $40,000 in revenue. So that is the true cost of having a subpar, untrained closer on your team. And it’s one of the reasons why I think if you are a gym owner, you have to manage that process for yourself in the beginning. You have to get really good, and then when you do delegate, you have to monitor it really closely, at least in the beginning until you have someone who is closing at your level, if not a little bit better. Maybe you can talk about how you went about delegating the sales in your gym.
Matt Temby (35:45):
Yeah, so I started with wearing multiple hats, with having multiple gyms, and then stepping into the role with Two-Brain—that’s kind of grown over time. Just logistically speaking, I couldn’t take all of the sales meetings. So, I started to train the team. So, I built out like, “Hey, this is the process.” We always had the basic No Sweat Intro. And then over time, we had expanded to that because we were selling other things on the front end. And then I kind of stripped that away because I was like, “Hey, this is very process driven. It’s a great spot for you to start. If you don’t have a sales process at all.” Kind of the things that we’ve talked about in this conversation, you can get a little bit—as you build your skillset, you can get a little bit deeper and really help your team more.
Matt Temby (36:25):
And so I started to train the team. We would film things; they would watch that. We would do a lot of role plays together in a group. We would do role plays one-on-one, and I set up all my sales tracking information. So, I could see, like, “OK, how many leads do we have coming in? Of those leads, how many are booking appointments? What’s the set/show/close rate?” And then starting to give feedback on those things as well. And then for the two people who I have closing for the gyms, they get paid commission. So, they work the leads; they get a set rate per close, and it’s structured as a tier, so=o they’re incentivized to hit the next tier up. So, if they’re at 10 closes, the 11th close triggers all of the previous 10 to be worth more money, incrementally more.
Matt Temby (37:11):
Once they get to 15, same thing. If they hit the 16th one, it’s worth more for all of them. So, they’re going to be hungrier to make sure that each lead because these are people who raised their hand and said, “Hey, I’m interested in the thing that you have.” It’s our duty as professionals to give good service and say, “You reached out for this thing.” And we also have to understand that these people are typically fearful. And so, it might take five days of calling twice a day and shooting a text once a day and sending an email every other day to get that person. And it might not be this week, it might not be this month, it could be a few months down the road, but just remember they reached out to you for a reason. Like I’m not cold calling, dialing in the white pages in the phone book. Like that’s not how that works. So, somebody is interested in you; you have an obligation to give good service and follow through with that person. And so, then you can kind of monitor what your team is doing, and they’re going to service those people better if they’re paid to do it.
John Franklin (38:09):
Well, Matt, we’re getting close to the time limit here. This has been great. Listeners, if you got some value out of this, be sure to like, leave a comment, let us know. We’ll get Matt back on the show. He can peel back the curtain and show you as much as you’d like, and if you want a full breakdown of Matt’s sales process and how he trains and how he thinks about sales, he’s going to be speaking at the Two-Brain Summit in Chicago on June 8th and 9th. There are honestly like a dozen tickets left, so by the time this airs we might be sold out. But if we aren’t, go to twobrainsummit.com and buy your ticket. We will be shutting down the sales page once we sell out, which will happen before the event, so if you are on the fence, consider this your final call, and I hope you got a lot of value out of this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym.” Thanks for watching, and we will catch you later this week.
