Imagine you’re an independent gym owner in Ireland.
You don’t own a multinational brand, and you’re not part of a giant franchise chain.
You own a microgym serving your community, and last month, 65 people joined your gym.
You didn’t just get 65 leads.
You got 65 new clients.
They signed up, and you get to change their lives with fitness.
That’s what happened at a Two-Brain gym on the Emerald Isle.
And it could happen at your gym, too.
Here’s why I roll out Top 10 leaderboards every month: Someone out there is building the gym you want, and they’ll share exactly how they did it so you can have the same success.
This month, we’re diving into the most important marketing metrics in the gym business:
- Set rate—How many people booked an appointment from your website.
- Show rate—How many people booked an appointment and showed up.
- Close rate—How many people booked, showed up and signed up.
Set Rate
This is where the funnel clogs for a lot of gyms.
They run ads or post on social, and people click through … but then nothing happens. They don’t book appointments.
That’s a website problem.
Here’s what set-rate excellence looks like:
Set-rate solution: If people aren’t booking appointments, don’t try to solve the problem by spending money on ads. No amount of advertising will help. Want more clients? Fix your website first.
Show Rate
Show rate tells us how good you are at nurturing leads.
Here’s what our top performers accomplished:
These numbers exist because these gym owners followed up with leads. They didn’t just fire off one email and hope people would keep their appointments.
Instead, they made calls, sent texts, created video messages, issued reminders and used tools like Gym Lead Machine to respond 24/7.
Compare these two approaches:
- Video message: “Excited to see you tomorrow at 5! Here’s where to park, and here’s the front door. Come on in, and I’ll be waiting with a gift. See you soon, Tom!”
- Nothing.
It’s obvious which tactic will produce more shows.
Set-rate solution: If you want a plug-and-play guide, go to GymOwnersUnited.com to get my ebook “10 Lead-Nurture Strategies to Unlock Hidden Profit.”
Close Rate
Close rate tells you how many people signed up.
It’s my favorite leaderboard, but not because of the money. Each of the 357 people who signed up to train with our leaders represents a changed life—a better life.
Yes, the owners add clients and earn more. But I know why you started a gym, so be sure to recognize that the numbers on this board represent real people who are losing weight, getting stronger and improving their health.
These gym owners didn’t “sell” in the old-school sense. They coached people to commit using Two-Brain’s Prescriptive Model: The person walks in and the coach listens, prescribes and helps them commit to accomplishing their goals.
Close-rate solution: Don’t wing it. Rehearse before every consultation. One of our top closers does this every time even though he has a decade of sales experience.
Tips From Our Leaders
Our marketing stars don’t keep secrets. They share their tips so you can change more lives, too.
Check it out:
Nurturing
“When they click your ad, you now have their contact info, and it’s my job to get them in the door, so I focus on that now.”
“We did a really good job of reaching prospects as soon as possible—within 10 minutes. When they do message us back, before we book their appointment, we try to create some rapport and emotional responses from them to be excited about that appointment.”
“Sometimes they just book the appointment through Kilo and GLM, which I think has obviously helped as far as lead nurture goes. Before I was using Gmail, and it was cluttered. I had a full inbox and it was hard to manage.”
“When someone books and we don’t know who they are, mentor Nick Habich mentioned on Office Hours to reach out and say, ‘I’m between clients and saw your booking came through, and I wanted to introduce myself.’ We confirm the time and give them an idea of how the No Sweat Intro goes to build trust.”
“When we are lead nurturing, four hours before the appointment we confirm: ‘Hey, Person, just wanted to confirm for 4 p.m.’ If they don’t confirm, I’ll usually call them an hour before the appointment.”
“Our client success manager is great at following up with No Sweat Intros—she messages each person early on the morning of their appointment as a reminder, which definitely helps with show rates.”
“It’s pretty rare for someone to come in for an NSI and not sign up for at least a membership. The hard part is always getting them through the door in the first place—but when they show up, we usually have a high chance of success.”
“I have a counter app on my phone. I use this to be consistent in my follow-ups. As of today, I’m at 217 prospect follow-ups this month. If it’s a slow time, I’ll do 30-40 follow-up attempts per day sometimes. I do follow-ups by email and text.”
“Phone call is my favorite. If they don’t answer, I’ll send a video text. For April and May, I did 400 follow-ups for the month.”
Professional Sales
“I rehearse every NSI before the actual appointment. I watch Nick Habich’s videos in the Toolkit.”
“We use an assessment room for the NSI.”
“We’re an access gym that also offers coaching. Sometimes we have walk-ins who want to sign up for a membership on the spot before doing an NSI. When that happens, we’ll still book them in for an NSI afterwards to upsell programming or coaching.”
“I have a sales background—door-to-door in college. I have noticed that the new leads through Facebook are colder. I revamped the sales process for these new, colder leads: I keep track of every single contact point on a Google sheet. I call the leads immediately to set up the NSI and follow a script on the call.”
Product-Market Fit
“We’ve evolved over three years in business with our marketing and website. We market now more toward PT, and we are bringing in the avatar for this particular product.”
“Turning on lead ads has really increased the leads. We’re a bit different in that we are targeting moms of kids, as this is a sports performance gym, but Leighton Bingham helped us craft the ads.”
“We are a kids sports performance gym, so we are not selling to the person who will attend the gym, and we actually start with a workout. My partner does the welcome, gives the tour and asks how we can help (one-one or group?). Then I talk to the parent about schedule, and the kids do a workout. The trainer makes them laugh and builds rapport during the workout. This is a fun and evaluative process, and my partner gets the child to say how much fun it was—this makes the close that much simpler.”
“For a value-add follow-up, I send a video of athletes to the mom.”
Staff Development
“It came down to our team really nailing their roles. We’ve got three of us focused on lead gen, NSIs and retention, and everything clicked.”
“My gym manager runs most of our NSIs and is very consistent with conversions.”
“We’ve trained staff to go through the workout with the kids, and sometimes we have two or three going at the same time. Then I can stagger the close with the parents.”
Four-Funnel Marketing Concept
“Our paid ads didn’t perform that well last month, but our referral funnel more than made up for it.”
Focus
“To an extent, I can’t control how many people sign up, but I can control how much effort I put in.”
3 Critical Questions
If you’re wondering why your gym isn’t growing, ask three questions:
- Are people booking from your website?
- Are they showing up for appointments?
- Are they signing up?
If you answer “no” to any of those questions, you don’t need more leads and you don’t need to burn more cash on ads.
You need to fix your funnel and learn to coach people to commit.
We teach our mentees exactly how to do this because you can’t build a world-class gym until you know how to get people to walk through the door and commit to changing their lives with your services.
