Mike Warkentin (00:00):
You might be a great coach, but you can’t help anyone If you do not have any clients. That means you gotta learn to sell. Not what you signed up for? Here’s a hard truth. Your first duty as a fitness coach is to tell a prospective client “you need to start working out with me.” If you don’t, that person isn’t gonna get fitter, and that person will not get healthier. Today on “Run a Profitable Gym,” we’re gonna talk about sales. Now, it’s not slimy, dirty, horrible sales that we all hate. This is selling to help people—help people get fitter, help people get healthier. I’ve got one of the world’s top gym owners here to give you some tips. Before we go further, please hit subscribe. I literally believe that you can use this show and all the episodes around it to improve your business and create the life that you want. So don’t miss a single one. Hit subscribe now.
Mike Warkentin (00:47):
OK, on to my guest. Nate Muller owns Green Lake Strength and Conditioning in Seattle, Washington. His gym appeared on all three of our sales leaderboards in May. The first leaderboard is set rate. That’s the number of people who book sales appointments to come see you and talk about joining your gym. The second: show rate. That’s the number of people who book appointments and show up. It’s almost never a hundred. Some people get very close; some people have really bad show rates. No one on our leaderboard did, of course. Final: close rate. That’s the number of people who book appointments, show up and buy something. Now, Nate was on all three leaderboards. In fact, his stat were 36 people set appointments, 33 showed up, and 28 closed. Those are huge, huge numbers. Can you imagine having 28 new clients at your gym? So Nate told me he’s gonna share his secrets with you. Nate, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Nate Muller (01:34):
Hi, Mike. Thank you.
Mike Warkentin (01:35):
I can’t wait to dig into this. I always love it when I get to do this show and there’s someone who is on all three leaderboards because it shows kind of excellence across the board. So I’m just gonna dig right in, and we’re gonna get to the details here. Bring me to the top of your funnel. What is the number one thing that you did to get so many appointments booked in May? Like where do these people come from?
Nate Muller (01:53):
Yeah, good question, Mike. So, most of my clients are coming from web search, although it is pretty close to people just coming by my location. I’m lucky to have a pretty high-traffic location, the visible front. And so I bring in quite a few that way, as well as by referrals.
Mike Warkentin (02:09):
Ooh. That’s a good one.
Nate Muller (02:10):
Yeah, so those obviously help as well. So obviously that all starts with having a great service. But going back to the web search, I do believe that one of the main reasons I’m doing as well as I am on web search is actually due to following up on asking my members for reviews. So that’s a big part of my weekly routine.
Mike Warkentin (02:28):
Okay. So I’m gonna dig into a couple of things there. Do you put ads behind this web search? Like are you popping up in Google as a sponsored thing?
Nate Muller (02:36):
I don’t really. I’ve played around here and there, but that’s not a significant portion of my incoming.
Mike Warkentin (02:41):
OK. So organic search brings a ton of people to your website. What are they looking for? Like, what are they searching for? What are some of the things that bring them to your website?
Nate Muller (02:49):
Yeah. Well, so, interestingly enough, most of my people are just looking for the name of our business. But there’s a decent mix in there. After that, they are actually looking for generally a CrossFit gym in my area. We’re not actually CrossFit, but we come from CrossFit toots. So that’s a big hit. But then a lot of them are just looking for “gyms near me” in Google local search, which I think is where I’m performing really well due to those Google reviews.
Mike Warkentin (03:17):
Yeah. So you’ve done a good job of building up some organic SEO, search engine optimization, as we call it, and people are finding you when they’re looking for “gyms near me,” which is a huge, huge deal. John Franklin, our marketing head, talks about that all the time. If people see your gym when they search for that, that’s huge. But, even better, people are actually searching for the name of your business, which means that they somehow know about you. So you’ve mentioned a few things. How do you think they’re finding out about you?
Nate Muller (03:41):
Yeah, so as far as finding out, I do think that’s where referrals come in in a big way. And then also my location I do think is a really good opportunity. We’re right on a relatively busy corner and people see us. And then that’s where, again, kind of tying it back to those reviews, I think you have to support that with good, authentic marketing—I think in the form of those customer reviews is really key.
Mike Warkentin (04:07):
OK. So I’ve hit referrals on this show a whole lot, and the basic principle, listeners, is you get customers inside your business to refer their friends, family, coworkers, people in their orbit, and we have an exact plan at Two-Brain that you can follow—literally a template that helps you do this. It’s systematic. Referrals don’t just happen. We make them happen. I’m not gonna spend a ton of time on this because I wanna ask you, Nate, about the other side of this: reviews. How do you get people to leave so many reviews? Because we know Google has told us these are huge when it comes to SEO.
Nate Muller (04:37):
Yeah, so this is my own home-brew system, and it’s rather straightforward. I dump a giant list of all of my clients by the date they started. I started this about two years ago. I start at the top of that list, and every Monday I ask five of them for a review. I send them an email personally from me. I say, you know, explain, “Hey, it’s important. We love having you at the gym. It’s important to our business that we get reviews. Would you write one, please?” I usually get one to two reviews out of every five that I ask for. The next week I come back around to those five people that I ask for a review. If any of them have not yet given me a review, I send a follow-up email. And in that one, I redirect them to Yelp reviews. I just say, “Hey, would you, you know, would you write a review on Yelp if you can’t do it on Google?” I don’t incentivize them. I don’t promise them anything. I just say it’s important to us. And if they don’t do it, then I leave ’em alone. And I just keep chipping away at that list at week in and week out. My understanding, I’m not an ex SEO expert. I’m not sure anyone really is. I know there’s a lot of dark magic there. But my understanding is it is important not just to get reviews but to keep ’em coming in and keep that volume steady. And so that is why I’ve decided to kind of do it five at a time to just kind of constantly beat that drum. And again, I think, you know, just getting one to two reviews per week can really make a big difference to your overall score.
Mike Warkentin (06:01):
Yeah, I really agree with you. And again, I love what you said about the dark-magic SEO. People claim to know. No one really knows except for the head Google employees and so forth. But what we do know, or what we suspect, is that a steady stream of things, constant interaction, constant engagement, lots of things happening is much better than a flurry of activity and then nothing. Right? So sometimes if people do these massive campaigns and they’ll get like 40 or 50 reviews at a time, that’s cool. But what happens when a searcher comes to that page and sees reviews from like two years ago and there’s 40 or 50 of them? It’s not the same thing as a constant stream. So I love what you’re doing there, and again, who knows if Google approves of that as well? But I suspect that engagement, just like it is on social media, constant engagement, constant publishing, constant interaction, is a much better thing to keep the snowball moving than flurries of activity. So you don’t just outsource this to a staff member or bot? Like you personally email your members and ask for this?
Nate Muller (06:54):
Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (06:55):
I love that. So as a CEO, this is valuable time. Do you think this is a great use of your time? It’s a dumb question, but what do you think?
Nate Muller (07:01):
No, it’s a good question. I mean, I do think it means something different coming from the business owner. So that’s why I’ve continued to keep this task myself. I have some plans to spread it out a little bit and automate it a bit, but I’m pretty tentative to automate it because I just don’t think people respond as well to automation. You can tell the difference between being emailed by a bot—even though I use a template every time. It doesn’t take me that long. But I literally click send on every single email.
Mike Warkentin (07:26):
Yeah. And I’m sure from time to time you’re like, you know, “Oh, Tim, I saw you back-squat 220 yesterday. Congratulations!” I’m sure you can tack that stuff on.
Nate Muller (07:35):
Exactly. Yeah, it does give me that opportunity to personalize it just a touch. That makes a difference.
Mike Warkentin (07:39):
And that touch, I would suggest, is probably the most important part because the template, the cut and paste, you know, people can smell that kind of stuff. A little bit of human touch is gonna make a huge difference. And it’s like, “Oh, he remembered that and he’s congratulating me. I might be more inclined to leave review.” So when someone leaves review, do they get kind of crossed off the list and taken outta that pool? Or how does that go?
Nate Muller (07:59):
Yeah, so I manually keep an eye on that, too. That’s probably the most annoying part of the process is actually just remembering to see that they wrote a review. I always reply to their reviews to thank them. I thank them in email, and then I have to go back to my spreadsheet and mark that they did it so I know not to bug ’em again. But again, for the overall value that I’m getting, as best I can tell, I’m the best reviewed gym in Seattle. So seems to be worth it after a few years.
Mike Warkentin (08:23):
Do you know offhand how many reviews you’ve got up there?
Nate Muller (08:25):
I think I’m around 180 right now.
Mike Warkentin (08:27):
Wow. That is huge. And they’re all spaced out at intervals of like a week or so?
Nate Muller (08:31):
Exactly. Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (08:33):
Here’s a question I gotta ask: Do you ever get a bad one?
Nate Muller (08:36):
You know, I’ve gotten one or two. And I try to respond really professionally when I do. They’ve never come from me asking—that’s usually when we made a mistake, right? And that’s one thing I’ve noticed is that people respond well to just admitting your mistakes and trying to make the best of it, right? I’ve seen other business owners that, you know, get defensive and try to argue with a bad review. I really respond publicly to them and say, “Wow, like, we, our expectation is do better than this. I’m really disappointed that you had that service, and let me follow up and see what I can do.” In fact, actually we’ve only had one like straight-up bad review since I’ve taken over, and that was what I did. And admittedly it took some time, but that guy became a member and changed his review from a one to a five star. Really, and I never asked him to do that either. I already was aware of the issue and, and following up with him anyhow when he wrote the review. But then I continued to kind of persist and not take it personally and just work through it with him. And he’s become a great member.
Mike Warkentin (09:39):
Ooh. So I’m gonna point out two things for listeners here. The first is get reviews—do whatever it takes. A simple system that Nate laid out is just email five members a week and ask for reviews—Yelp, Google, Facebook, whatever. Get some reviews. That is a huge thing that you can do. It’s very simple. It doesn’t take a ton of time, but it will have measurable results: organic SEO without spending money. There’s a huge value on that. The second thing that you can do: If you get a bad review, don’t sweat it. You can definitely look at it professionally and say, “Is there something that I can take from this to improve my business?” If there is, do that and take those corrective measures. After that, respond professionally, move on. And in some cases, that’s gonna make it be enough to make that person happier and change it. In other cases, that negative review may stick there. But if you went to a gym website and you saw 179 positive reviews and one negative one, what would you think? “One unhappy person, maybe a little bit of a jerk.” whatever. It’s buried with the other reviews. So don’t sweat that one bad one. Now Nate, I’m gonna ask you what exactly are you doing at your gym? I’d like to know the basics—like where are you at, what do you sell? Who’s your ideal client?
Nate Muller (10:48):
Yeah, good question. So our ideal client is someone kind of in their middle ages, kind of 35 to 45. We obviously serve all adults. We’re primarily focused on adults right now. And they’re working professionals, generally. They’re a parent, maybe with young kids. They’re very busy, and they wanna come in and get a good, efficient workout and not get hurt, right? So they’re not trying to win any competitions. They’re not trying to, in a lot of cases, they’re not even trying to set PRs or anything. And they might even be here for their mental health as much as they are for their physical health. So that’s kind of our core client. What we offer them, we have a few services. Our primary service is strength-and-conditioning classes, right? So it’s functional fitness. We’ve really tried to take a lot of the competitive elements out of what most people know of functional fitness. So we don’t have leaderboards or RX weights. We just have workouts. We do have a workout of the day that most people are doing. We also offer our individualized design program that’s meant to meet people really exactly where they’re at and design a program just for them.
Mike Warkentin (11:49):
Is that PT—like one on one?
Nate Muller (11:50):
It’s not one on one. So it’s kind of in the way that you deliver one-on-one training. It’s most similar to semi-private training, if you’re familiar with that. But it’s a little bit different in that you have a coach developing a program for you. Like in semi-private training, it might be delivered by any one of a couple coaches. In our gym, it’s kind of shared semi-private training in a way. So we have run classes of four to six, but a little more teaching the member how to do the things on their own. So not counting on a coach to literally walk them through every exercise, but building a program, building accountability—that is our big area for growth right now. That’s a newer program for us, and that’s where I’m really trying to build my business. I’m currently at about 250 active members on the group side, the regular group strength and conditioning, and that’s about as many as I can handle in those classes. And so I’m really trying to grow the individualized design program.
Mike Warkentin (12:44):
Okay. And how many square feet have you got?
Nate Muller (12:46):
We’re about 4,000 square feet. So not a lot of space. Staff members—about a dozen.
Mike Warkentin (12:52):
Okay. So you’re maximizing like 4,000 square feet with about 250 people and about a dozen staff members. How many of those are full or part time?
Nate Muller (13:00):
They’re all part time.
Mike Warkentin (13:01):
Okay, cool. And you’re full time. Do you still coach and do things on the floor or are you the CEO?
Nate Muller (13:06):
I’m more in the CEO role. I coach a little bit again to just to stay connected, but I coach, you know, two to four classes per week depending on who’s sick or you know, outta town or whatever.
Mike Warkentin (13:17):
Okay. So I wanted to give people a lay of the land, just so when people listen to you, they understand exactly what you’re selling, because it’s not uncommon in the microgym world what you’re doing. Very similar. You’ve got some group stuff. You’ve got some semi-private stuff, which is personalized programming, delivered maybe in a small-group setting, but people are getting individualized programming. We have lots of podcasts on semi-private training. So if you listeners are interested in that, check some of those out. Now, so we know how you’re getting people: They’re contacting you either through referrals, which are, you know, slam dunks for the most part, or they’re coming at you from Google, which is fantastic as well. Three of the bookings didn’t show for you, but that’s a huge number because I’ve had times when I’ve had like, I don’t know, 60 leads and seven show up—something like that. So what is your process for ensuring that people don’t leak out at this stage of the funnel?
Nate Muller (14:02):
Yeah, so that one is automated, and they get an automatic text three days ahead of time and one day ahead of time to remind. Then we do also follow up. So in the event that someone doesn’t show, we do follow up. So when we do look at, you know, the three that we missed, those mean they missed throughout the month and we never even got ’em back in. So we probably have more than that that missed their first appointment. But then we work really hard to try to get ’em back in. And again, we try to be understanding. We aren’t like, “Blah, blah, blah, you didn’t show up.” We’re like, “Hey, bummer, we know life happens. Please, we’d love to talk to you. Come on back in. Here’s how to reschedule.” So we do have a follow-up process as well if people do miss.
Mike Warkentin (14:42):
So, listeners, follow up. Don’t just assume that a booking is gonna show up. You can automate this process. You can also add in human touches. There are people that I know that, when they see a booking show up, they’ll send a video text confirmation: “Hey, I saw you were on our website. I can’t wait to meet you. These are the details. Text me at this number.” Whatever—send. And some of that can be automated, but other times they’re doing it manually. Whatever you’re doing, make sure that you are telling your leads “I can’t wait to see you” and follow up. And if they don’t show up, they’re not gone. You can keep after them. Now, Nate, does it feel weird at all to like quote-unquote “hound someone” when they haven’t showed up? Because for me, that was tough to get over. How do you feel about that?
Nate Muller (15:18):
Yeah, I’ve tried to remind myself that, especially since we don’t do a lot of lead gen, like these people went through a lot of trouble to find us to decide they wanna work with us and create an account and all that. They’ve done quite a few things to even get to booking an appointment with us. So yeah, I try to just remind myself it’s like they wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t want this. And we are all busy. And so I just kind of think about it as helping them achieve the goals that they clearly expressed interest in by keeping us top of mind for them.
Mike Warkentin (15:50):
Such a great way to put it. Because if someone goes through the steps to book an appointment, to talk to you and to come to your facility, that person wants and likely knows that that person needs what you are selling. And if you don’t follow up with that person, you’re not doing a very good job as a gym owner. And it’s not hounding them; it’s actually helping them. Chris Cooper wrote an entire book on this. It’s called “Help First.” I would encourage you to read it. It’ll change your mind about the sales process. Let’s get into that. Now in the sales, I’m gonna just check my stats here. So you got 33 to show up and you closed 28. A huge, huge number. How do you do it? Talk to me about that sales meeting. What goes on in there?
Nate Muller (16:26):
Yeah, so it’s just an interview, right? So we are really trying to get from them why they’re here, what are their goals, what do we need to know about them, how can we help them feel welcome, right? So when we did start with Two-Brain back in October, I just looked back, we revamped that. So it had been a lecture of sorts beforehand. So we kinda lectured them on how great we are and what we offer and all this stuff. And we really flipped it around to be just a really more of an interview of them to try and make sure we know why they’re here and make sure it’s a good fit for them. And that’s kind of how we pitch it to them. It’s like, “Hey, we wanna understand you and your goals and make sure we’re a good fit.” We do occasionally refer people out, right? Like those few that we miss usually are just a legitimately not a good fit, and we’re okay with that. So when we did switch to that, I did look back, and we moved from like about a 70 to an 80 percent close rate by just flipping the interview process or flipping it around.
Mike Warkentin (17:21):
So a measurable bump. Just by changing things around, you bumped up your close rate by 10 percent. That’s huge.
Nate Muller (17:25):
Yeah. On average it moves from month to month, right? Obviously. But yeah, it was great, and it made it feel less salesy, honestly, which was kind of fun. Like at first I was like, “I don’t know.” I just tried it out ‘cause it was recommended, and I wasn’t sure. But in the end it was like, “Oh, this actually feels nice. Like, I just let them talk and tell us why they wanna join the gym, and they get to do all the selling.” I don’t even have to do the selling anymore. Like they do it for me. It’s great.
Mike Warkentin (17:50):
And that’s the beauty of what Chris has put forward, listeners. The Prescriptive Model is what it’s called. You have a conversation and you listened to find out what these people wanna accomplish. You tell them how to accomplish it through your business, and you slide over the price with a pricing binder. We have templates that we help our clients use. You can create your own—make it very simple. And there are some things that we can do in there, but again, it’s a simple presentation. It’s not 35 pages of scrolling. You don’t let them choose their own path. It’s as simple as, “I wanna lose weight.” “Our platinum package involves personal training three times a week plus nutrition services, plus online coaching of some sort.” Whatever. “And here’s the price: $550” or whatever it is. “Oh, I can’t afford that.” “Could you afford something for $400?” And there’s a whole system that Two-Brain teaches you. But the point being it’s prescriptive, and it’s all about the client’s goals. And something that you said, Nate, is really important. I didn’t realize this originally. If you are talking too much in a sales meeting, that’s a huge mistake. They need to be talking. Do you agree with me?
Nate Muller (18:47):
Oh, absolutely. There is that stat of like—it’s not stat. It’s the thing I’ve heard that, like, people tend to like you the more you let them talk, right? So yes, you gotta let them talk so they can enjoy their time with you.
Mike Warkentin (19:00):
And when you were giving the lecture—cause I did the same thing. It’s like, “Here’s this. Here’s our stuff. Check out our thing. Let’s do a workout together—none of that gets to the root of their problems. I never asked these guys like, “Why are you here? What do you wanna accomplish?” I just figured they wanna do this hard workout, they wanna see my cool equipment that I’ve placed in such an amazing manner and so forth. None of that mattered. If I had just said “why are you here?” I would’ve known so much more. You know, your lecture, was it all full of like ex.-phys. and like “how great we are” kinda stuff?
Nate Muller (19:28):
Yeah, we would talk about our workouts—and we do deliver a nice unique version of functional fitness, and I think there are some key points that are different about what we do versus others, but it turns out nobody really cares about that in the sales process, right? So we’ve now moved that into our on-ramp process so they can, you know, understand why they’re here.
Mike Warkentin (19:47):
That’s where it belongs.
Nate Muller (19:48):
Yeah.
Mike Warkentin (19:49):
So do you do these sales meetings or do you have staff that does them?
Nate Muller (19:51):
I’m slowly transitioning outta doing the sales. So for a while I was the primary salesperson, right? I’ve bounced around where someone was doing it for me. I was doing them. I’m now trying to work myself out of that sales process. I have three other people now helping me with it through different times of day. I guess that probably is a reason we’re able to have so many is that I have built up a big enough sales team across a wide enough range of hours that I do think that makes a material difference in how many people were able to bring in. So I have people serving appointments in the morning and in the evening and throughout the middle of the day. And so, you know, that just makes it available to more people to get more people in.
Mike Warkentin (20:28):
So, listeners, I’m gonna give you a quick summary here. Set rate: What Nate is doing is he’s using referrals and organic marketing to get people to book appointments. He’s got lots of appointments, lots availability with his sales team. So people don’t have to be like “I can’t make Thursday at noon.” They can pick when they want, and there’s a person available. Show rate, he’s automated much of that. You can figure out ways to do that. That involves a personal touch or automation. Whatever you do, you’re following up with leads, making sure they show up. In the closing stage that is in the sales office: let the people talk. They’re gonna tell you their goals. You’re gonna lay out the prescription for how they accomplish them. Then you’re going to give them the price. They’re gonna sign up. And then you go through an onboarding process. Again, Two-Brain has resources that lead you through every step of the way here. So if you’re confused by it, a lot of it you can find in our blog, but there’s even better stuff for our clients. They get done-for-you resources, plug-and-play consultations with sales experts, all this other stuff. Now I gotta ask you this, Nate, ‘cause this is a huge one. A lot of people who are good at selling—and I’ve talked to other gym owners on the show who are amazing at selling—when they try and pass that off to staff members, everything goes poorly. So how did you ensure that your close rate didn’t plummet when you offloaded some stuff to other people?
Nate Muller (21:37):
Yeah obviously I trained them first, right?
Mike Warkentin (21:41):
Not to me! I screwed that up.
Nate Muller:
So I gave them a good template. I walked through it with them. We practiced some on our own. I had them sit in on some of my appointments to watch. And then I do track it, right? So I do use the Two-Brain template to look at my sales data across not just the overall month but across each of my salespeople. And I’ve kind of turned that into a little bit of a fun game with our people. ‘Cause I have made it clear to the sales team that nobody’s getting a bonus based on their close rate or anything, but we do look at it every month, and we kind of like just give high-fives to each other on how we’re doing, fortunately. And so, you know, there have been months where somebody seems like they’re slipping or whatnot. But in the end—usually when I dig in, and I then will follow up on the people that they miss and I’ll look at the notes—I’ll look and like “this person really mostly just got a few of the bad appointments that just weren’t good fits.” Usually where we see this sales rate slipping is more to do with that than anything in the process. But, you know, I’m keeping an eye on it, and I’m talking to ’em and sharing knowledge. I encourage sharing knowledge between people. Like if somebody on my team figures out something new, you know, I want them to share it—as I do as well if I notice something going well or not.
Mike Warkentin (22:51):
Listeners, I’ll give you a couple things here. If you have referrals booking appointments and you’re not closing a high percentage, something is broken in your sales process, OK? ‘Cause referrals are the warmest leads you’re ever gonna get. They’re slam dunks if they know someone inside your business. You can only screw that meeting up. So if you have referrals and you don’t have a high close rate, you need to work on your sales process. The second thing is— and regular listeners of the show will know this—Nate’s just talked about systems. He’s got a system for tracking metrics, for reviewing things, for addressing issues, for congratulating people when things are going well and adjusting and incorporating feedback and optimizing. Systemize, optimize—all of these things. I need a gong on this show. And every time a gym owner, a successful gym owner, shows up, I ring it when they say “I have a system.” Because not a single successful person does not have a system. So if you do not have a sales system, you need to get one. Nate, talk to me about one thing. Let’s give people an actionable thing. Make it simple. What is something that a lister can do today, someone who’s like “I’m not very good at sales.” What can they do today to take that number, whatever number it is, and improve it? What would you give them?
Nate Muller (24:01):
I definitely would start with downloading the Two-Brain template. I’m pretty sure it is freely available, isn’t it?
Mike Warkentin (24:07):
Which one is this? Tell me which one are you referring to.
Nate Muller (24:08):
The No Sweat Intro template—the questionnaire template.
Mike Warkentin (24:12):
So there is all sorts of stuff. Yeah, I’m gonna put a link to the Prescriptive Model for listeners. So I’m gonna put a link to the Prescriptive Model, and it’s got everything that you’ll need. Some of our clients-only resources are behind a paywall, obviously for our clients. But this one article is gonna tell you the system that the majority of our clients use in the sales meeting. So take me a little further from that, Nate.
Nate Muller (24:32):
Yeah, so definitely give that a try and just start working through that, right? Like upend whatever it takes. Upend your sales process to make it into an interview if you’re not already doing that. That is definitely a big change. That was definitely a big change for me. And again, it makes it so much more fun, honestly. Like you get to hear good stories from them. You get to have a great chat. So definitely start there. On that sales process, obviously, rewinding back to the leads process, I would try that Google review—unless you’re in Seattle. Don’t do that. <laugh> Try asking for reviews, and get a system together on asking for your reviews. I do believe that’s a big part—that helps with getting them in the door and having them warm, right? ‘Cause they get to see real words from my real clients to make them feel like this is a welcoming place.
Mike Warkentin (25:22):
So there you have it. Summary of tips: Ask your members for Google reviews. Do that according to—hit the gong!—a system. Do that regularly. Second, you can follow up on leads. It’s simple. You can automate that in a second. And then third, try the Prescriptive Model in your sales process. If you are not a believer and you don’t wanna be taken and say “it’s snake oil” or whatever, try it and track. Track the stats against your normal process. See what works better and make some changes. Nate noticed a 10 percent improvement—10 percent more leads closed in your sales office is measurable money in your pocket. You can’t go wrong with that. Nate, this has been great. I’m not gonna rant anymore because you’ve given people simple, actionable stuff to do, and I want them to take action. So thank you so much for being here today.
Nate Muller (26:05):
Great, thank you, Mike.
Mike Warkentin (26:06):
Great, great stuff here. Guys, if you do this stuff, your set, show and close rates will improve, which means your bottom line will improve. You’ll have a better career, a better life. And you’ll have more staff members and have happy clients. Take some of these steps today. That was Nate Muller, and this is “Run a Profitable Gym. Thanks for listening! Please hit “subscribe” on your way out wherever you’re watching or listening because I believe that you can use this show to grow your business every week. Now here’s a final message from our founder, Chris Cooper.
Chris Cooper (26:31):
Hey, it’s Two-Brain founder Chris Cooper with a quick note. We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners just like you have already joined. In the group, we share sound advice about the business of fitness. Every day, I answer questions, I run free webinars, and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym. I’d love to have you in that group. It’s Gym Owners United on Facebook or go to gymownersunited.com to join. Do it today!
