Mike Warkentin (00:02):
Ever wish a gym marketing superstar would share their secrets? That happens today on Two-Brain Radio. We’ve got a top 10 leader in set rate, show rate, and close rate. And it’s coming to you direct from Ireland. This is Two-Brain Radio, please hit subscribe wherever you are watching or listening. Now, my name is Mike Warkentin, and I’m here with Ronan Mahon of Movement Fitness Dublin. We’re talking set, show and close rates. Set rate is the number of people that book a sales appointment at your gym. Show rate is the number of people that actually show up for that appointment. Close rate is the number of people who buy something once they show up. Ronan crushed all three last month. So without further ado, we’re gonna dig right in and talk to the expert. So Ronan, welcome to Two-Brain Radio all the way from Dublin.
Ronan Mahon (00:46):
Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
Mike Warkentin (00:48):
It’s your afternoon. It’s my morning. I am fired up to talk marketing with you. So let’s start at the beginning. First of all, where are you getting your leads? You had a great number of people book appointments. Where are you getting these leads, and are they warm or cold?
Ronan Mahon (01:01):
Yeah, so really good question. And we’ll kinda like look at the past to understand how the present works. Obviously a couple years ago, you know, you stuck on your ads on Facebook or Instagram, and it didn’t even need to be, you know, the best copy in the world. You could have some good fitness pictures and you would get a bunch of leads at quite a low level. It was great. It was fantastic. All you gotta do is get them in the door then.
Mike Warkentin (01:26):
The golden days of marketing!
Ronan Mahon (01:26):
But obviously things got a little bit more competitive. There’s more gyms and there’s more people in the space, so things need to change. So that’s it. You know, I follow all the instructions on Two-Brain, but I realized that our lead flow is slowing up. So I decided I was gonna try out a really good marketing agency specializing in fitness in the U.K., and I would highly recommend them specifically for your tactical marketing, your copywriting. It’s these little details that are starting to make the videos–what you should actually say in your video ads (as opposed to your picture ads), how to localize your ads to track more leads. Those guys are called Fitness Marketing Agency, and I definitely recommend them. We started to implement like minor changes in our copywriting and minor changes to the scripts in our videos, and the quality of leads that came through started to get better.
Ronan Mahon (02:14):
It didn’t stop there, and we didn’t just want those like cold front-end leads coming in the door. We wanted some warmer leads coming in, because obviously those front-end ones are a little bit cold. So we started doing some detailed retargeting. So people who had engaged with our page, watched our videos. And we had videos up on Facebook and Instagram with common questions. Why people don’t join the gym, you know. Top three concerns. So if you look at what we’re doing there, like top three concerns, we’re using a hook. A hook is, you know, in the race for attention these days, you need a good hook. So if people say, “Well, what are the top three reasons?” And they go, “Hang on. This is why I’ve enjoyed the gym.” Then they start to watch the video. And then from there it’s warming up the leads.
Ronan Mahon (02:53):
So we’re getting a mix of cold leads to start with video views. We’re warming up those leads. If they register, they go into an automated sequence. Okay. So we’ve got emails, and we’ve got text messages, but we’re gonna look to the past again. What we used to do is we used to market. We used to get our leads in. We used to do a group. Let’s say we had like 10 or 15 people in a room. We’d do our sales pitch. And you know, if there were 10 people there, maybe five people signed up and the rest walked out the door.
Mike Warkentin (03:21):
Oh wow. So you did group sales?
Ronan Mahon (03:23):
We originally did group sales because you get group mentality. And if you got one person to sign up, half the room were gonna sign up as well.
Mike Warkentin (03:31):
The lemmings go over the cliff. I get it. Yeah.
Ronan Mahon (03:33):
The lemmings go over the cliff. Then we used to do in-person, face-to-face individual. However, there was that weird cold and flu season that went around a little bit a while ago. Right?
Mike Warkentin (03:43):
I heard about it.
Ronan Mahon (03:45):
And we had to shut up shop for a little while. So I decided I was gonna take advantage of this. So I moved myself over Tenerife, which is an island off the coast of Africa owned by Spain. Everything was closed. It was really interesting because during that time, Facebook were giving out grants to small businesses who had to shut up shop, you know? So we got like a 3,000-Euro grant to advertise, but it had to be used by a certain point. Now the gym wasn’t back open yet, but I didn’t wanna let this go. So I said, “Right, I’m gonna set up my ads for, you know, when we open in the future, even though we don’t have a set date.” And I ran these ads. That was great. Cause nobody else was running these ads. But I was sitting on my balcony in Tenerife with the sun beating down in the middle of, you know, the Irish winter. And I was making your—
Mike Warkentin (04:34):
Beer in hand.
Ronan Mahon (04:35):
Yeah, beer in hand, occasionally on a Friday. You know, after lunch. And I was making sales in, you know, 10 minutes on the phone, still going through all my list of questions that I perfected over the years to understand people’s pain points. But people were like, “Yeah, this is fine.” I was like, “Hang on a second. I can do this on the phone. And there’s literally no downside here. It’s a quicker sale.” You know, I see a lead come in, and I’m sitting on my balcony. I get a notification on my cell. I can call ’em up straight away. I’m calling them within five minutes. And if you think about those cold leads, when they see your ad, they’re in an emotional state. So they’re in a buying state because they’ve got a problem that’s affected them. They’ve decided they wanna do something about this.
Ronan Mahon (05:18):
If they get a phone call five minutes later, the likelihood of them actually signing up is much higher. So I was like, “We can just do this on the phone.” And we have got our close rate down. Usually 15 minutes is the average call and you’ve got somebody signed up. And then I got a bunch of sales tactics that are used to ensure that the person is much more likely to sign up. So it got to the point where like 50 to 60 percent of cold leads were turning into a sale, which is huge.
Mike Warkentin (05:48):
Okay. So cold leads. There’s a ton in their listeners. I’m gonna put a couple things in perspective for you, and then we’re gonna dig in further. So first of all, what Ronan has said is that he started with his marketing and he tracked his metrics and realized certain things were starting to not work as well. And that’s gonna happen with marketing. You have to track your metrics. If you look at previous shows here, our marketing experts will tell you you always need to track things and then make changes when things aren’t working. See if they work. If they work, leave them. If they’re working, make more changes. So that’s the other thing: Ronan worked with a marketing agency. You can do that or you can choose not to do that. And Chris Cooper has written an article that I’m gonna link in the show notes that tells you if you should you work with a marketing agency. And it’ll help you make a decision for your specific business because there’s lots to consider there.
Mike Warkentin (06:29):
Ronan had success, which is fantastic. And then the pandemic–it forced a lot of gym owners to adapt their marketing and change things. The cool thing here is that Ronan decided to start doing sales on the phone. And when we were talking before the show, I messaged him and I said, “Man, there’s a trade-off. Like, you don’t get a face-to-face contact with someone in your sales office, but you do get to contact them faster.” And he messaged me back and said, “That’s actually no trade-off at all because the speed is what matters.” And if you look at our shows back in the day, Mateo Lopez, one of our marketing experts said, “If you contact people ASAP, like within minutes, you’ll make more sales.” He said, “That is the number one thing you can do.”
Mike Warkentin (07:09):
The second thing you can do is contact them relentlessly—you know, 10, 20 times. And you’re not harassing them because they wanted to buy something from you. You’re doing them a favor. He said, “If you do that, you are going to get results.” So this is kind of an evolved process, but no matter where you’re at in your marketing journey, you’re gonna take something from what Ronan has to say here. But you need to track your metrics. See what works for your business and then see what happens. So now let’s dig in a little further here, because this is really fascinating. So when I looked, I saw our leaderboards—we track everything at Two-Brain—and I saw the July leaderboards for set show and close. And I saw that you were on all three, and I saw you had a huge number of appointments and your show number was exactly the same. Now that almost never happens. I thought it was a typo, but now I know that you’re doing something slightly different. So tell me about this. When a lead enters your system, how do you have time to contact them right away? Like, is this your job? Do you assign it to someone else? Like how do you make sure that that lead is contacted right away? And what happens when you contact them?
Ronan Mahon (08:08):
Yeah. So really good question. It really depends on where you’re at in your gym or your fitness business growth. So we’ve got like a team of staff now who do the majority of fulfillment. I still have a couple of PT clients. I coach. I still fill in and take a class every now and again. But my job is to ensure that the leads get calls as quick as is humanly possible.
Mike Warkentin (08:32):
So you’ve assigned yourself the role of, I guess, head salesperson we’ll call it.
Ronan Mahon (08:35):
Yeah. Well I’ve worked in sales my entire life, so it makes sense. Before this, I started out as a real-estate agent for a couple of years, recruitment agent for a couple years, tech sales for a couple of years. So like I’m not shy about sales.
Mike Warkentin (08:54):
That’s good to know. I’m gonna work you for tips right away.
Ronan Mahon (08:56):
<laugh> Well, I can give you tips straight away. So nobody is good at sales until they practice. OK. So I’ve closed over 2,000 people in the last four and a half years on front-end sales. Okay. So it’s practice. So even when I used to run sales teams and I had like the junior guys in that we were looking after, the first day, I would just give them a list of leads, poor leads. And I would say, “Hey, I want you to try your best not to close any sales with these guys today.” What was I trying to do, I was trying to get them comfortable with being on the phone, just talking, you know? And they’re like, “Hey, you don’t want me to sell to this guy?” “Yeah, I don’t want sales.” I just wanted them to call them, try not to sell to them and see how the conversation goes. And then straight away you know the guys who are gonna be able to sell and the other guys who aren’t gonna be able to sell. So nobody’s good at sales until they practice. You know, when you’ve got a new client in the gym, you know, they’re not gonna be able to deadlift on day one if they never done a deadlift before in their life. So it’s the exact same with sales. It’s just practice, practice, practice. And then you even start to listen back to your calls, and you start to go, “Okay, what did I say this time? That was different that time.” And you start to know some like tonalities in your voice or you start to figure out, well, “What are the questions I’m asking?
Ronan Mahon (10:14):
What are the responses I’m getting?” And then it becomes more conversational. So yeah, everyone sounds like they’re reading off a script when they first start sales, but when it becomes more conversational that’s when you’ll notice a difference. And I first realized this as like a 22-year-old. I was working in real estate. Okay. Now I’m in my forties. Now I kinda look a bit younger. So when I was like 22, I looked like a 14-year-old, and I’m trying to sell properties worth like 500,000, 600,000, over a million. And nobody’s taking me seriously because I’m this like young-looking kid. Sure. I’ve got a suit on or whatever, but I’m still this kid trying to sell these properties. So I remember one day this guy walked into the showroom. And I’d say he was in his late fifties. And I noticed that he had a scarf on, and it was a green, white and gold Irish flag scarf. And there was a football match on that day. So I went up and I said, “Hey, you going to the match today?” And he goes, “Yeah, absolutely.” I said, “Where are you sitting?” And he told me. I said, “I actually grew up beside that stadium.” So we started having a conversation. And then I was like, “Are you just browsing around or looking to buy property?” And he said, “I’m looking for something for my daughter.” 15 minutes later, I’d sold a property worth half a million.
Mike Warkentin (11:25):
And it all started with a conversation about football.
Ronan Mahon (11:27):
It started a conversation about football. Cause I’m taking the sale out of the sale. So I got like a great opening line that just works so well. It opens people right up. So we get ’em on the phone: “Hey, how are you?” And people, you know, they’ll tell you how they are, and then they’ll ask you back. And I’ll give them some story. I’m like, “Well, today’s not going so great because this, that and that happened. And you know … . But anyway, less about me and more about you. Where are you at with your fitness? Where do you wanna get? How can I help you?” Like that question just opens everything up, and it takes the sale out of the sale because they’re talking about themselves, and they open up, open up, open up, and then we can start to drill down on the pain points pretty quick. Cause I wanna know where they’re at now. I want them to think about their future, where they’re gonna get in the future. And I’m the solution. “So how can I help you?” Or maybe I’m not the solution, but I need to find out.
Mike Warkentin (12:24):
One second here. I’ll pull out a couple of things because I want listeners to get grab onto this stuff. So sorry to interrupt. If you are selling a high-end service like fitness coaching, you should look like a professional fitness coach. If you’re on the phone and you’re drinking a beer on an island, you can definitely not wear pets. That’s totally fine. But if someone’s coming in to see you, you should look like you know what you’re talking about. You are representing the value that you are asking them to invest in. Okay? So a lot of people back in the day, they were sweating after a workout and staggering into the sales office: “You wanna sign up?” That’s not the way it goes anymore. Look like a fitness professional. So whether you’re selling real estate, whatever it is you’re doing, look, the part. That’s a huge one.
Mike Warkentin (13:01):
The second thing: Ronan is starting conversations. Chris Cooper has written a lot about conversation marketing. It’s a very, very important part of lead nurturing and the actual sales process. So conversation starting is a huge one. I’m gonna put a link in the show notes: Chris has 10 questions that he borrowed from Bob Burg’s book “The Go-Giver.” And there are questions that just start conversations. I’ll give ’em to you in the show notes. After that conversation start, Ronan is acquiring info and he’s making it all about them. Not telling them, “Hey, here’s my tour. I’ve got this many Assault bikes. Look at how cool I am.” He’s talking to them, finding out their point pain points and applying his solutions to that. So there is a process here, and he’s got it dialed in. He probably knows by heart, but you might have to document it first. And the first few times it might sound like, “Okay, so tell me about your struggles.” It might sound a little robotic, but that’s why you get the reps in a thousand times. And it becomes natural. So sorry to interrupt, but that was a quick summary for our listeners. Now get back on your track there and tell me what else you do.
Ronan Mahon (14:03):
Yeah, no, that was great. And I think to your point, get the reps in. Like it doesn’t matter if you’re selling two in 10 people. That’s amazing if you’re selling one in 10 people, that’s amazing. But that’s gonna go up to three in 10 and then four in 10 and then five in 10, you know? So you gotta get the reps in. So my second question, I wanna find out a bit more about their goals. So I give an open-ended question, but then I kinda give multiple choice. I give three multiple choices because if you give three choices, psychologically people are more likely to pick one. So I’ll say, “Look, tell me a little bit more about your goals. Is it more about weight loss? Are you looking for strength? Are you just trying to improve your fitness?”
Mike Warkentin (14:41):
And that covers almost everyone out there, right?
Ronan Mahon (14:44):
Yeah, absolutely. You get the occasional person who’s like training for something specific, and I’ll generally refer them to someone else. Cause that’s, that’s not what we do.
Mike Warkentin (14:54):
And you’re putting them into what we’ll call “avatars.”
Ronan Mahon (14:57):
Correct. Qualifying them in or qualifying them out. And if I qualify them out, even if it’s on price, I always recommend three other local gyms. They’re gonna be cheaper. Cause at least that way you’re still benefiting the individual. Most people are obviously gonna go “weight loss.” That’s generally why people are calling you up in the first place. But that, that helps you with, as Chris says, your prescription. You know, what are you gonna prescribe that person at the end? After that, let’s look. I’ve got my little list here. I wanna make sure I don’t miss anything here. So yeah, you gotta be a little bit of a therapist. You’re going, “Well, tell us about your history. What’s worked for you in the past?” Cause we wanna find out what sort of exercise they’ve done, what they like, will it work for them in the future? And they start describing themselves in the past, and it reminds them of where they want to get in the future. Cause I’ll repeat back: “Now, okay. This is what you said you did in the past. This is what you said you are now. This is where you wanna get in the future.” So they, they see this as a gap, and we can plug that gap with a solution.
Mike Warkentin (15:54):
You’re showcasing a journey, right? Like you’re showing them Point A and Point B. And now there’s gotta be some expert that leads them on the path to get from one to the other. And that would be you.
Ronan Mahon (16:04):
Yeah, absolutely. Right. And you gotta position yourself at as the expert. And that’s where I suppose my next thing comes along: I generally find the missing link for most people is nutrition. And I say,
“Well, have you done any nutrition coaching before?” Some people have. Most people haven’t, and that’s the missing link. And that’s where I like to jump in with a story about how I became a personal trainer. So I mean, I started lifting weights way back in the ‘90s, which is a long time ago for some people, not for others. But yeah, that’s when I started my journey. I played sports right up until I was 35. I played rugby until I had a bad back injury. But at about 28, 29, I was living over in Australia. I was working in a like highly stressful sales job. I wasn’t sleeping at night. I was drinking a lot of beers, eating the wrong food. I was still hitting the gym but put on a lot of weight. Anyway, I took an extreme step of quitting my job, doing my personal training qualifications. Cause I knew something needed to change. I wasn’t losing the weight still. I knew it was the food, but I wasn’t doing it. I went to work in a gym, specializing in nutrition. Soon as I got the nutrition right, the weight fell off. Then I was working for another guy. We were teaching boot camps down on Bondi Beach in Australia, which was awesome. And he starts running a six-week challenge. Okay. This is back, I dunno, like 2011, 2012. But there wasn’t a huge amount of nutrition around the challenge. Let’s say we had like a hundred clients doing a six-week challenge. It was crazy, but it was awesome. A couple of clients knew that I worked in a gym specializing in nutrition. So they started asking me about nutrition. So the first guy I worked at lost 16 kg—or two and a half stone in—in six weeks. And people started reading that nutrition was the missing point. So that is the story I will tell on the phone if I know I haven’t got someone ready to sign up just yet. Cause that presents me—
Mike Warkentin (18:01):
You’re showing proof.
Ronan Mahon (18:01):
It’s social proof. It’s not just my story. It’s the story of thousands of other people I’ve worked with over the years. So it’s showing that social proof and people go, “OK, this guy is the guy who can do it for me.” Now, the next thing, this is where a lot of people make a mistake. They’ll go in and they’re gonna sell their cheapest program for that person. They’re gonna sell their group training package. I say, “Okay. Well tell me what’s your preference. Do you want do personal training or do you wanna go group training? Because some people prefer the one-on-one more accountability, better results. You tell me, what are you looking for?”
Mike Warkentin (18:32):
You wanna know something, Ronan, that I messed up for about a thousand years? I just assumed that every person who came to my gym wanted to do group training. I didn’t even ask the question. I just put them in group classes. Yeah. How much money did I leave on the table? Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just that question, listeners, will make you more money.
Ronan Mahon (18:49):
And now I’m gonna talk to you about process once you’ve made the sale—the upsell process. So what we started to do now is everyone who joins the group training program, they get a personal training session to start with. So step one, you gotta do a personal training session. We do an assessment, we check your squats, your lunges, your push-ups. We show you how to do advanced movements before you go into the class so you can move through a confidence. People come in, they do their introduction sessions. It’s a paid intro. They’ve already paid up. So like, you know, your consultations that you normally do for free, we’re now getting paid for them. Cause they’ve already paid up front—except it’s now a new opportunity to upsell. So I had a girl in today for our first session and I was like, at the end of the session, “Did you like it?” She says, “Yeah.” “Oh, what do you think? Would you prefer to do one-on-one coaching or group training?” And she’s like, “I’m not sure. What do you think?” And I said, “Let me run through the prices.” So we had like our top-tier price with our middle-tier price, which is two personal training sessions a week plus access to group training and nutrition coaching. So she goes to the middle option. So now we’ve just upsold, you know, at a 50 percent higher price, and she’s gonna get better results because she came in for a face-to-face induction session. So we’re able to upsell.
Mike Warkentin (20:06):
So I’m gonna interrupt you one more time. I’m sorry to do this, Ronan, but you you’ve giving me so much good stuff. I wanna frame it for the listeners. These are hybrid programs, right? So not just group training. Not just personal training. There’s options to do both. Those are high average revenue per member programs because you’re combining, let’s say, I’ll just make it up, let’s say $205 group membership plus maybe a monthly personal training session, which then takes you up to $255—and that could be any different number. But you’re combining programs. So that is a huge one. The second thing is you are doing these one-on-one intake sessions. We have data Two-Brain has collected, and the longer and the more intense, and I don’t mean “intense” in terms of hard, but like the more touch points you have in your onboarding program, the better your retention will be and the higher, your average revenue per member will be. So he’s built in this one-on-one connection where you now get a chance to really help this person find out what they really need, offer them a service that’s going to benefit them and upsell the person. Because when we talk about marketing, we’re talking about it from a “help first” perspective. That’s Chris Cooper’s book. We’re not trying to scam the client. We’re not trying to promise them nonsense. We’re not trying to take the money. We’re trying to get them the results that they want in the shortest amount of time. Speed costs money. If you can supply it, you are worth more. So continue on that plan. Sorry to interrupt again, but you are crushing it.
Ronan Mahon (21:21):
That’s all right. I think you mentioned something there that’s key: speed to results. I mean, you know, I guess a lot of fitness entrepreneurs would look at someone like Alex Hormozi out there. You know, the guy who founded GymLaunch. He talks about speed a lot, you know? Uh, so it’s speed. The first phone call, it’s speed to get them the results. People will pay more for speed. And that’s why people go get liposuction and pay like four times the amount they’d pay for a gym membership, you know. So speed to get results is key. It offers value to the clients.
Mike Warkentin (21:54):
You’re talking about speed—it’s come up twice. You respond immediately to sales, to leads. That’s where speed kills in the first place. And then it in the second spot is in giving them a shorter path to their goals.
Ronan Mahon (22:07):
Correct. 100% correct. And if you can give them a shorter path with better results, they’re gonna upsell. And that’s why that individual today, this is what I’m saying. Don’t make any assumptions about the price point because he client who came in today was a schoolteacher. Now a lot of people would assume that a schoolteacher would not have a high salary and therefore would not go for the personal training package. But that’s exactly what she wants. I don’t know what she spends her money on on the weekends. I dunno how much she has in her savings account. So don’t make an assumption based on the individual. Ask them what they want. Some people might want that one-on-one attention because they want accountability. And that she said, “I need accountability. I need someone to give me accountability.” Even though if you do our group training program, you have an accountability coach. You’ve got a nutrition coach and you’ve got your physical coaches. She wanted that extra layer. So no assumptions need to be made about the individual.
Mike Warkentin (22:58):
No assumptions!
Ronan Mahon (22:59):
Ask questions. Just keep digging. It’s all about questions. And then you can change the prescription. You know. “Maybe we thought this was right on the phone,” but when you see them face to face, you now know that something else is needed. And so many times we’ve had clients come in the door, they’ve done their induction session, and at the end, I was like, “Are you ready for group classes?” And they’re like, “No, can I get three more PT sessions before I hit group?” “Of course you can.” You know, and so many people have come in for group and started on PT packages, you know? So that’s absolutely key. So no assumptions.
Mike Warkentin (23:44):
So you going through this in 15 minutes. You get a lead, let’s say you get a lead in the next, you know, minute on your cell phone. And maybe you’ve got your notifications off because you’re talking to me, but let’s assume you got that lead. You would call that person back probably within a minute.
Ronan Mahon (23:59):
If I can see the notifications straight away, yeah, absolutely.
Mike Warkentin (24:02):
So you’re gonna hammer that, and you’re prepared to then go through this process. I mean, you’ve probably got it memorized, but I’m sure it’s listed somewhere for other people that do it—a sales script. And you’re gonna go through this, and in 15 minutes you are going to have a small conversation. You’re gonna ask them your five questions and get as much info as you can. And then you are going to likely close them within 15 minutes, correct?
Ronan Mahon (24:23):
Correct. Yeah. Okay. I’m gonna give you another example from today. So I get a lead in—
Mike Warkentin (24:30):
How many sales did you make today?
Ronan Mahon (24:33):
There’s three, three, so far today. Three so far today,
Mike Warkentin (24:36):
So far. Day’s not over and you’re still rolling. I love it.
Ronan Mahon (24:39):
Day’s not over. That was, I would say, 45 minutes of work. One annual membership. Uh, well actually four if you count some of the back-end sales that are just like off the back of the program. So probably 45 minutes of work for thousands in revenue. Here’s another tip that people aren’t using effectively enough. So I get a lead from a guy who’s out on a hike. Okay. He’s obviously got his phone out. He puts in his details. And you know, he’s seen, seen the ad or whatever he saw, you know, he’s on his phone. He’s not in the house. He’s outside. He’s on his holidays. I call him up, and he tells me what he’s looking for, but he’s not sure if he wants to go down the route of all personal training or group training. He thinks it’s group training. OK. So he’s like, “Look, well, let’s get our induction session in.” So you know, I asked for his credit-card details. He’s like, “I’m out in a hike. So I don’t have them.” I said, “That’s no problem.” So over in Europe, WhatsApp is pretty popular. It’s kinda like iMessage, same sort of thing. So I said, “No worries. Okay, well, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna shoot you a G pay or an Apple pay link so that you can literally pay on your cell. Now that means you’ve got the spot locked in for you, because if it’s not locked in, you know, we have to fill that spot with somebody else who’s gonna look for it.” So you’re creating scarcity there. I send him a message, but then I send him social proof. I go, “By the way, here are five of my clients and the results they achieve.” So this guy’s looking for weight loss. He sees the before and after pictures, and he clicks purchase. His details are saved on his cell. So automatically he’s paid—that’s got your $60 commitment, you know? So we charge like 60 bucks for, you know, an intro session. And then from there he’s committed. He’s paid. If you don’t get the money up front, he could drop off. Cause the emotions change over time. So this guy’s in an emotional state and wants to purchase, wants to buy, wants to change his lifestyle. We’ve given him the prescription, but he doesn’t have his payment detail. Boom, send him a link. He can pay on a cell. Cause we know he is on a cell and he’s coming in Thursday. He’s not gonna not come in now that he’s paid the money.
Mike Warkentin (26:43):
So what you’ve done there is you’re trying to close right on the phone because the “be-back bus,” we’ve said, when people leave and they say, “I’ll get you later,” they often don’t. So you’re trying to get them right on the phone. In certain cases, obviously you cannot do that. But what you’re doing then is you’re giving every single reason to this person that you can to get them to sign up. So in your case, you are sending them the payment link, which is just easy: click and do it. But you’re also sending along social proof in case they waiver. They’re like, “Oh, this guy did that. This guy lost weight.” And they see five different things that say “I can help you do what you want to do,” which then motivates them to click that payment link, book that spot. And you have created scarcity. We’re not lying and saying, “Oh, you know, you have to buy right now,” but you are saying, “I am gonna fill this spot. I have a great service. I am a great salesperson. People are contacting me. I am gonna fill this spot. If you want it, lock it down.” Now the person buys. And the upshot of all of this is that you are giving the person what they want. And then you have an opportunity to change their lives through fitness. We know without doubt as gym owners and trainers that we can do that. That’s not a lie. It’s not nonsense. We’re not selling plastic wraps, weird powders. We’re selling actual results through fitness and nutrition and coaching, which we know gets results. You have mountains of social proof. I have the same thing. Every gym owner has it. So that’s outstanding stuff. You said you sold three today on the phone. Is that right?
Ronan Mahon (28:05):
Yeah. Three today on the phone so far, yeah.
Mike Warkentin (28:09):
And what was your average? If you don’t know, that’s fine. But what was your average response time? Was it minutes for each one of those leads?
Ronan Mahon (28:18):
Yeah. When I’m available. It was like over the weekend. I had a bunch of stuff. You know, cause I do like to take some time off every now and again, probably cause we’re almost at capacity. So I can take the foot off the gas a little bit when it comes to sales. Yeah. Like 15 minutes is the average response, time to a lead, and that’s too slow. That is too slow. That’s because I’m still doing fulfillment. If I was operating a hundred percent effectively, I wouldn’t be doing any fulfillment of sales. That said, we’ve had a couple of coaches who are moving overseas recently. So you gotta, you know, you gotta fill in. That happens. That’s just part of life.
Mike Warkentin (28:54):
Yeah. But I’m sure you’ve got a plan to fill those roles so that you can sell more. Correct?
Ronan Mahon (28:59):
Yeah, absolutely. But like we are literally almost at capacity. It’s almost gonna be one in, one out.
Mike Warkentin (29:05):
And that’s the best problem to have because at that point you can, if you want to, you can raise your rates. If it’s that exclusive, then you are obviously worth that, and you only have a certain number of spots. They’re worth more. Scarcity. Do you happen to have an idea off the top of your head what your average sale would be from the three today?
Ronan Mahon (29:24):
The average sale price? Yeah. So let’s have a look: $1,000. I would say average sale price is hitting around, let’s say $900 or 900 euros. So that used to be really good a few weeks ago, before, before the Euro started crashing. It used to be pretty high in Canadian dollars.
Mike Warkentin (29:49):
So right now the Euro is at par with the US dollar according to Google right now. It would be more in Canadian dollars. So that’s a $900 average sale. It’s pretty outstanding because a lot of people, their ARM is way low. We say that an average revenue per member target, your first target, should be about $205. $900 is pretty sweet. So that’s a huge one. Were these brand new leads or were they leads that you’d been nurturing for some time?
Ronan Mahon (30:22):
These are all pretty much leads who’ve registered in July or August. So pretty much brand new leads.
Mike Warkentin (30:29):
Okay. And you closed them all on the phone in less than 15 minutes?
Ronan Mahon (30:32):
Yeah. So I closed on the phone, but they came in and then there was the upsell after the session.
Mike Warkentin (30:42):
Okay. So we have so much good stuff here. So what I wanna do in the last couple minutes here is I wanna put together a very short training plan for a gym owner who’s out there and listening to this and saying, like, maybe they’re not at your level. They don’t have years of real estate and other sales experience. They don’t have the reps. Someone out there is just saying like, “Holy crap, this sounds amazing. I want to start doing this.” What would you do? And you’ve trained salespeople before. So how would you get a gym owner from Point A—”I wanna sell more”—to Point B—”I am selling more”—in the shortest amount of time. What are the steps?
Ronan Mahon (31:12):
Yeah. Okay. Well this is gonna sound cheesy because obviously I use you guys as mentors. But like our revenue like jumped so much when we started using a mentor service. But even when I looked like back originally, like, you know, I knew how to sell, but I didn’t know how to market. And I knew how to coach people. So I had two outta three. So I hired an agency to help me with sales. So get someone who knows how to get you leads. Two: call the hell of those people. Even if you don’t know what you’re saying. And ask them questions. Cause most coaches already know to deliver. You’ll start having conversations. Don’t sell anything to anyone. Let them decide what’s for them. Okay. Listen to what they need. These are the key things. So you need to get leads. Like that’s the first thing. You need to carve time for sales, and if you can afford to, get someone else to help with the fulfillment so you can focus on your marketing and your sales. Like if you can’t market and sell, you don’t have a business.
Mike Warkentin (32:14):
You can’t help anyone.
Ronan Mahon (32:15):
No. You can’t help anyone. You’ve gotta be able to market and sell. That’s primary fulfillment. So listeners, get some help.
Mike Warkentin (32:22):
Yeah. Listeners, if you’re lost, what Ronan mentioned, mentorship will help. And again, we’re plugging Two-Brain Business obviously, but I have seen the RampUp program. And what happens in there is we teach you the basics of stuff. How do you sell? How do you market? And again, there are multiple levels of marketing. Ronan is at a very high level, and you can get there. But at the basic level, we’ll teach you how to do things to start. And then here’s the key. We’ll also help you with staffing. How do you even find the time to do this stuff? And I’ll give you one shortcut: hire a cleaner. Just hire a cleaner for whatever dollars an hour. This is called “climbing the value ladder.” You’re gonna hire that cleaner, whatever time it frees up, let’s say it’s four hours a week, you would spend that on a higher value role. Sales is a very high-value role. Think about this. If you’re not doing four hours of sales this week and you could hire a cleaner for $60, I don’t know, something like that, one sale is going to be worth more than $60. You are making more money for your business. All of this can be taught. So if you’re out there and you’re lost, you’re spinning your tires, all of this can be taught. This episode is going to give you a ton of stuff to think about just on your own. If you wanna go further, you can absolutely do that. Ronan, let me ask you this as a closer? Where do you go from here? You’ve had a couple staffing things. You’ve gotta make sure that you get out of fulfillment. Is that the main thing that you’re gonna target next? Or how do you ensure that your sales process gets even better? What’s next?
Ronan Mahon (33:42):
There’s others in the business who do sales. I’ve gotta business partner who does sales as well. So that definitely helps. The next step from here is looking at financial freedom and investments—like how can we leverage the profits to make more money? It’s not just about like getting multiple gyms and stuff like that. You can actually become less profitable if you do that. And again, that’s something Chris teaches as well.
Mike Warkentin (34:12):
True.
Ronan Mahon (34:13):
Yep. It’s looking at creating financial freedom and, you know, maybe even generational wealth. It’s taking the next step on the ladder.
Mike Warkentin (34:22):
And in Two-Brain terms that is called Tinker, the Tinker Phase. And that is where you are. You have one stable business and you are going to expand. We teach you how to do that in our Tinker program. Look that up. Ronan, you have done a ton of work here for me, a ton of heavy lifting. I really appreciate it. You think you can continue this trend on these leaderboards?
Ronan Mahon (34:41):
Uh, I hope so. Yeah. I gotta teach the guys to just follow the sales process. And then speed is key because we had a bunch of leads come in over the weekend. They didn’t get contacted straight away because both myself and my business partner had stuff on. And you can see the conversion rate is down already. Whereas the leads that have come in so far, the conversion rate is up this week. It’s the ones that came in on Saturday and Sunday that the conversion rate is down. So who’s to blame for that? Hey, I wasn’t on top of this. That is my fault. I didn’t put a system in place to make sure those leads were called quicker. So I gotta take full responsibility of that. But yeah, I’d like to keep it up at the top of the leaderboard.
Mike Warkentin (35:22):
So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna let you go and get those leads. You message me later in the day and tell me if you close a few more because I’d love to know. Thank you so much for sharing your secrets, Ronan.
Ronan Mahon (35:32):
No, Mike really appreciate you having me on the show. Great to chat.
Mike Warkentin (35:36):
That was marketing leader Ronan Mahon from Ireland. He is on Two-Brain Radio. Thanks for listening to the show. Please hit subscribe on the way out, wherever you are watching or listing. Now here’s Chris Cooper with a final message.
Chris Cooper (35:47):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. The Gym Owners United Facebook group has more than 5,600 members and it’s growing daily. If you aren’t benefiting from the free tips and tactics and resources that I post daily in that group, what are you waiting for? Get in there and grow your business. That’s Gym Owners United on Facebook or www.gymownersunited.com. Join today.
