Ooh, this is a sweet mic. Jeff, you’re saying this new microphone you’re selling, it’s going to improve sound quality, attract new listeners, make me more attractive, increase my hourly rate, slice my bread and doubles as a hammer? Is all that correct?
Jeff (00:00:14):
Yeah, I know it sounds unbelievable, but that’s correct.
Mike (00:00:17):
Well, I’m getting emotional here. Like I feel a deep visceral need to make this purchase. Not because I want to, because I need to. And I’m short on hammers, to be honest. So I’ll take a dozen. Have you got two dozen of these things?
Jeff (00:00:30):
I mean, believe it or not, but I got three.
Mike (00:00:32):
Ooh. Ah, OK. So I’m going to give you my credit card number, but I just realized that I do have to walk my Komodo dragons right now, plural. I have two. And I also have unicycle juggling lessons. And that’s not juggling on a unicycle. That’s actually juggling unicycles, which is way harder. So I’m going to get back to this after, if that’s cool. Well, we’ll finish it off.
Jeff (00:00:54):
Yeah, absolutely. I’ll be ready.
Mike (00:00:58):
Have you ever noticed that the people who respond to your Facebook ads are different than the people who come to your gym through other channels? If you’re running digital ads or if you’re thinking about starting, this is the show for you. We’re going to talk to you about how to deal with cold traffic. Today we’ll talk about what you can expect in a consultation with a cold lead and how you can increase your close rate. If you want to add $5,000 in monthly revenue to your gym, it can be done. If you want to know how, you can talk to a certified Two-Brain business mentor for free. Book a call at twobrainbusiness.com. Jeff Burlingame is a certified Two-Brain Business mentor. Jeff, how are you today?
Jeff (00:01:30):
I’m doing great, man. It’s good to talk to you. Loving your lumberjack robe.
Mike (00:01:35):
It’s like minus 30 with the wind chill here. I was just outside with my dogs, not my Komodo dragon. So I’m a normal guy. But yeah, I’m bundled up right now, big time. If you’re a gym owner, you’re out there, you might’ve noticed that sales are a lot harder to make as leads get colder. At first, warm leads come in, they’ve got their credit cards in hand and they’re chanting, I want to do the CrossFit over and over again. They’re just going to—that sale’s gonna make itself, they want what you’ve got. You’ve got to try pretty hard to lose the sale. The glory days don’t last. You guys have probably figured that out. As you get into Facebook advertising, you start attracting people who know less about you. They booked an appointment, but they might’ve done so while drunk and they don’t really want to show up for it.
Mike (00:02:13):
If they do, they don’t know anything about your business. They have no idea you’re a great coach. They don’t know about your programming skills and they couldn’t care less about your community and all its amazing members. They just know they saw some fitness thing on Facebook and they clicked on it and now they’re kind of confused and they’re standing in front of you. You’ve got to work for the sale. Today we’ll talk about that sales process with colder leads and we’ll give you tips on how to present services tied to ads. Now, Jeff, you are a certifed Two-Brain mentor, but I know you’re a sales expert. What qualifies you to be a sales expert? Tell me about that.
Jeff (00:02:43):
Yeah, so my experience with sales goes way back to my old college days. But yeah, basically like my first sales job was personal training because personal training you have to sell yourself. I mean, there’s no way to get any sessions to get paid for unless you get out there and you sell. And probably the hardest condition I can put myself in as a personal trainer would be selling on a college campus, which is where I started.
Mike (00:03:10):
There’s no money there.
Jeff (00:03:12):
There’s no money there. It’s funny, you end up selling more to like the professors than you do to the students. I did plenty of what we now call No-Sweat Intros with college students, which was quite a learning experience when somebody literally doesn’t have the money, it’s not just that they’re saying they don’t have the money. They literally don’t have the money.
Jeff (00:03:34):
They’re wrapped up in so much debt. It’s up to their eyeballs. It’s insane. But it was still a great experience. I got my first PT certification when I was 19, went back to campus that following semester and I started working at what we call our IM sports center at Michigan state university. So the main one, IM West, there’s like this really big one in the middle of campus. And you know, I pretty much would like. I walked in, I said, Hey, I want to do personal training. I met a lady there, she was really nice. I think her name was Patty and she like helped me get started and basically people would submit on little scrap sheets of paper that they were interested in personal training, like literally like Post-it notes, half sheet of paper.
Jeff (00:04:17):
You’re like, what the heck is this? And it would go into a file and then the trainers would fight over them and I would grab one. I was like, all right, I’m going to call this guy. And I would call them and say, Hey, when can you meet up? And it’s like a student. So then we book a time for the morning. Then they don’t show up because they’re hung over from partying the night before. And this was my grind for like a year and then I kind of gave up on it. But I had like four, I think I had four clients at some point in there. So it was like I was happy with that. I had no idea what I was doing with sales. I was just guessing the whole time.
Mike (00:04:46):
That’s a dirty start, like you got thrown into the toughest end.
Jeff (00:04:48):
Oh yeah, for sure. It was, again, it was great learning experience, but like we were doing as a part of the intro, we were doing a skinfold calipers on people, and I mean I had a view more overweight to obese clients and I thought this was what I was supposed to do. You know, I was getting a degree in bachelor—a bachelor’s in exercise science, and I was like, skinfold calipers, you know this, this is what you’re supposed to do. And I know how to do this, but like, people don’t want you to do that.
Mike (00:05:15):
They hate it. They absolutely hate it.
Jeff (00:05:17):
Yeah. So from there, like I bounced out of PT for a little bit and I worked at a sporting goods store, which will remain unnamed. And I sold the extended warranties on treadmills. That was like my next, you know, foot to the fire.
Mike (00:05:29):
That’s kinda like Cooper. Cooper’s got that back in his history, treadmill sales.
Jeff (00:05:34):
You know, and I didn’t know that until I read like his second book and then it popped out to me and I was like, Oh wow, we have the same experience. This is great. So that’s why I get along so well with the Two-Brain fam. But yeah, that was, you know, I became the top salesperson in the company for extended warranties a few times. That was nice. And then finally got back into PT, which is where I kind of stayed in the fitness realm there forward, you know, and started working at a sub-contracting personal training company. So again, not easy sales, like we were working inside of gyms that were pre-existing, had a preexisting membership base that people came there, they bought a membership and they thought, cool, I did the thing, I got this key card on my key ring and now I’m like, I work out at gyms. Like I’m cool. And then I would walk up to them while they’re on the treadmill and I had this little move where, you know, everybody has their headphones in.
Jeff (00:06:25):
I’d walk over and I’d do this. I’d grab my earbud that I didn’t have in my ear and then pull it out and they would mimic me and pull their ear bud out. And it was amazing. I had mind control dialed in.
Mike (00:06:35):
The Jedi mind trick.
Jeff (00:06:37):
So they would pull the ear bud out and then I had to like do my spiel, my little elevator pitch for why they should do an intro with me. So I mean like thinking about cold traffic that we’re talking about today, this came to mind when you mentioned the podcast. I was like, I’ve done that. I’ve dealt with that more so than we do in our gyms with an ad, you know, it’s like that’s cold traffic, but to me it’s almost like lukewarm.
Mike (00:06:58):
You’ve had a long hard road out of hell, I think.
Jeff (00:07:01):
Oh yeah. Like again, all good stuff. Like that training led me to, you know, overseeing four or five gyms when I was in Michigan under the sub contracting company. And then I moved with my wife out to Virginia for four years and I managed some really big box gyms. Not quite a franchise, but a big company based out of Chicago, that went East coast and New York. So I oversaw at some point 7 gyms, over two states, had seven managers, like four assistant managers and over 300 personal trainers. So had my experience with managing and selling with a, you know, at some months of the year, our monthly goal is like $3 million in personal training.
Mike (00:07:45):
That’s a lot of $50 sessions.
Jeff (00:07:47):
That’s quite a few. I’ve sold my fair share of 180 packs and 300 packs of sessions. And it’s, yeah, it was a grind, but I guess that qualifies me.
Mike (00:07:59):
It certainly does. And then you’ve also, you recently sold Friction CrossFit, correct?
Jeff (00:08:07):
Yes, I did, to two really great guys that started with me from the beginning.
Mike (00:08:11):
So you’ve dealt with some warmer traffic, like when you went through the CrossFit thing where people were coming in, they’re like, I saw the Games, I want to do the Games and you know, they give you their money, right?
Jeff (00:08:21):
Yeah. You know, right when we opened, I made the mistake of doing a Groupon, which was you know, a great idea. So I sold a lot of like $20 memberships. But then once we started charging what we were worth, we got some, you know, word of mouth, people coming in saying like, Hey, these guys are great. Coaching’s great. You’re going to love it. Their friend would come in and say like, yeah, my friends said I need to do this thing, so let’s do it. You know, card on the table. We call those lay down sales. You know, you can’t screw them up basically. And that’s like 20% of the volume of sales you get, unfortunately.
Mike (00:08:56):
Things have changed now like big time, you know, things—you know, CrossFit’s still cool, affiliate, functional fitness, all that stuff is still cool. But things, I mean, we’ve got all the Navy SEALs, we’ve got all the military people, we’ve got all the hardcore athletes now we’re working on their friends and family and you know, mothers, sisters, daughters, brothers, the whole deal. And then we’re working on people who don’t know anything about us. And we’re finding some ways to connect with these people. So a lot of us are running Facebook ads. We’re starting, you know, starting those campaigns or we’re working on them and we’re dealing with people who have literally never heard of a functional fitness gym. They’ve never heard of CrossFit, never heard anything. They just see whatever ad we’ve put up and whatever the picture is, battle ropes, whatever. And they click on it. They want to make an appointment to see you. Battle ropes actually works really well, if anyone out there is listening, that is a home run every time. So I’ll ask you this question right away. What’s the difference between someone who booked a No-Sweat Intro or an intro consultation after researching you and someone who’s just clicked a Facebook ad? Like what are these two different types of people all about?
Jeff (00:09:52):
Yeah, to me it’s a difference of motivation. So I think of like motivated buyers and unmotivated buyers. So you know, a motivated buyet is somebody who has that awareness level, they have an idea of what CrossFit is, or at least what the type of training is that you guys do. Maybe they know some people most likely that are doing it or that are doing it at your facility. So again, usually it leads to a lay down sale or at least like a very warm lead walking into your door. So pretty much you’re just like, OK, I have an idea of what the price is, you know, then you lay it out for me. And based on our conversation I’ll decide if it’s valuable enough to make that purchase. But most of the time they do. And then you have your unmotivated buyer, which is somebody like you mentioned the beginning, they’re drunk, it’s 2:00 AM they’re scrolling through Facebook.
Jeff (00:10:38):
They see your ad. They’re like, Oh, that looks cool. You know, I feel kind of insecure about myself at this moment in time. Maybe I should do this thing. And then they fill out the form. I mean, anybody running ads right now knows, they love it when they see the midnight to 3 AM lead that comes through, they’re like, yep, this is going to be legit, and they’re probably going to be excited. But then you call them and what happens? They’re like, I never filled that out.
Mike (00:11:01):
So they literally don’t remember filling it out or they’ll just deny that they did.
Jeff (00:11:05):
They’ll argue with you. Or they’ll be like, please don’t ever call me again. And you’re like, wait a second, like you invited me out for lunch. Why are you calling me the bad guy? I don’t get it. It happens more often than not. It’s hilarious.
Mike (00:11:19):
In previous shows, we’ve talked with Mateo Lopez of Two-Brain Marketing and he’s given us tips on how to get these people into the gym. And we’ve talked about like, you know, calling them and lead nurture sequences and things like that. So if you guys are interested, if that’s your problem, check back in our archives, you’ll find that stuff with Mateo Lopez. But now let’s say you’ve got these people, you know, so you’ve got these unmotivated buyers, they’ve clicked on something, they’ve, you know, probably tried to get out of it, but they’ve decided, OK, I’m going to come in now. They’re less likely—they walk in and they come into your building, what are you going to do? Like, how are you going to try set the tone with these guys? How are we going to try and motivate them? Moving them from unmotivated to motivated?
Jeff (00:11:56):
Yeah. So I think a very key aspect of that is the phase of discovery within our sales process. So, you know, the Two-Brain mentoring process, going through Incubator, we teach everybody how to do the No-Sweat Intro. And the key big piece of that No-Sweat Intro is discovery. And it’s really just finding out who this person is, what it is that they want to accomplish and why that matters to them. And by uncovering that, you’re uncovering their motivation. So, you know, just because I call them an unmotivated buyer just means that they start out that way. It doesn’t mean that they’ll finish that way, right? We can turn them into a motivated buyer by going through the appropriate process within the No-Sweat Intro. And once we discover that very necessary information, sometimes it’s enlightening to them.
Jeff (00:12:44):
Like they don’t even think about it that way, especially if you start asking the question of why, you know, like Ms. Jones, you mentioned that you wanted to lose 20 pounds. I guess that’s a great number and everything, but how’d you come up with that number? Like, why 20 pounds? You know, and then they’ll say something back like, I don’t know, it sounded like the right number. OK, well, let’s ask you this then. Why do you want to lose weight in the first place? What is that going to do for you? How is that gonna make you feel? And you start to peel these layers back. And you know, I always joke when I do sales calls that people are like ogres from the movie Shrek, peel these layers back if you have any hope of making a sale, especially with cold traffic.
Mike (00:13:20):
OK, we’re working the onion here to get to the motivation, figure why these people, you know, why the guy booked at No-Sweat Intro at 12:15 on January 1st, 2020 something like that, right? We’re trying to figure out what they really want.
Jeff (00:13:36):
Yeah. Sometimes they do that subconsciously. So a really good movie I saw recently a little little throw this in here. I watched some movie “Brittany Runs a Marathon” with my wife the other day. It’s a really good movie. Like the acting’s not maybe top notch or anything, but it’s pretty funny. It’s got its moments. But what it shows me is sort of that self sabotage that some people go through when it comes to fitness and health and your body and they turn to humor and they kind of joke about it or you know, they bury their feelings in alcohol or food or whatever. And you know, it’s very much like this mental anguish that they go through. But you know, the people around them don’t necessarily help either. So in the movie, like, the main character Brittany hangs out with her friend who is like skinny and, you know, quote unquote pretty, as far as like as an Instagram influencer and all this.
Jeff (00:14:32):
And you know, Brittany is overweight and doesn’t feel good about herself, but she just like goes out and parties with these guys and deals with it, you know. And I find that probably subconsciously, some of those 12 to 3:00 AM people that filling out that form, they’re just scrolling through and they’re like, you know what, like, I need to do this. Like, sure. The alcohol or whatever that they might be having at the time, you know, they may or may not be, you know, they might just be frustrated, you know? That might be influencing them to do it too, but subconsciously, like they feel like they need it. So to me, I always try to have a little inner monologue before they come in to build myself up to this. So I’ll just say like, I’m going to like this person no matter what.
Jeff (00:15:15):
Like I don’t care what they look like, I don’t care what they sound like, I don’t care, you know, if they’re grumpy or whatever. Like I’m going to find a way to like this person and we’re going to connect. And then I also try to tell myself that we can find a way to help this person no matter what. So whether they buy with me or not before they leave, I want them feeling like they’ve learned something or discovered something about themselves. And maybe they’ll take better strides forward after this and maybe join another gym, but at least they’re doing something, you know? And that’s what I want.
Mike (00:15:43):
And that’s cool. That’s like, you know, for me, I’m really poor at sales and like for me, I feel like I’m pressing people, I’m asking people for stuff and it’s just like, it’s not something I’m real comfortable with. The thing that helped me most, I’m still bad at it, but I’m working on it is Chris Cooper’s book “Help First,” and you kind of mentioned that where you’re helping these people, like obviously whoever these people are, we making the joke that like, they’re, you know, clicking when they’re drunk in the morning, that happens. But there are other people that are, like you said, very definitely they need something. They know that they’re unfit, they know they’re unhealthy or they know that they have a goal and they want to do something, want to make some kind of a change, and you hold the keys, like you as the gym owner, the salesperson actually hold the keys to that change and you can help them. So that idea for me really changes things where it’s not like I’m trying to push something on someone that he or she doesn’t want. It’s the idea that they want something that I can actually offer and provide. Right? And that of course there’s a monetary value attached to that, but that’s how transactions work.
Jeff (00:16:35):
Yeah. I mean, I inherently, sales is simply the exchange of some something of value for something of value, right? So I just, you have to understand that what you’re offering is extremely valuable. That your time is valuable, that the training methodology that you’re about to teach this person is valuable and that it therefore demands some sort of return of value. And we usually do that in the form of monetary cash. Right? That’s all there is to it. Sales is not this crazy thing of persuasion and trickery that it’s been built up to be through, you know, the classic, death of a salesman or car salesman type analogy. That’s not what we’re doing, right? We are here to help, but in order to do so, like somebody gots to get paid, you know.
Mike (00:17:22):
And ultimately I wanted the slap shop, you know, I didn’t want to chop onions the traditional way. So I bought the thing cause I wanted it, right.
Jeff (00:17:29):
Or the sham wow.
Mike (00:17:32):
This is great stuff. Like all those infomercials are great. I’m going to step back quickly and we’re going to take, I’m going to ask you this one: five steps, five ideas. Cold leads are less likely to show. How do you increase the chances? We have an entire show this, but I want your opinion and five things that our listeners can do right now to increase the chances when someone clicks, books, and you know it’s a cold lead that might not show, how do you do it?
Jeff (00:17:59):
So the one we talk about a lot in Two-Brain Marketing is speed to contact. The faster you can contact them, the more likely they are to show, right off the bat. So if you’re already waiting 24 hours, you’re basically dead in the water. If you can do it in 10 to 60 minutes, that’s amazing. Under 10 minutes is phenomenal. But as fast as humanly possible, and then don’t rely on maybe how you treat conversations or communication processes with your family, cause this is not your family. So you’re not going to leave a message and say, Hey mom, call me back when you get a chance. When it’s, you know, speed to contact with the consumer, we talk about double dials. So you know, you call them, they don’t answer. Do not leave a voicemail. Hang up and call right back.
Mike (00:18:46):
We tested this. Did you hear us? We tested this a couple episodes ago. It was with Mateo and I booked a No-Sweat Intro at Julie Johnston’s gym in Las Vegas. And just to see what would happen. I did the beginning of the show and within 10 minutes I got a call, and I didn’t expect it. So I just, I didn’t want to waste your time. So I turned it off. I got called back right away and Mateo’s like answer it, answer it. So we actually had the conversation, I told her like what we were doing and so forth, but that’s how fast they called me. We did another one with, Jack Wheeler and 360 Fitness in Red Deer, and he emailed me immediately personally cause he recognized my name and number but also his automated sequences hit me and they’re still running right now. So that’s how fast the speed to contact was in these great gyms from Jack Wheeler and Julie Johnston.
Jeff (00:19:27):
Yeah, I mean if anybody is going to crush it, it’s those two. So that doesn’t surprise me at all. So yeah, I mean, you know, double dial works. And then having like a sort of a fallback option usually on text, text is usually the next go-to as far as if people are actually going to read or listen or pay attention to you at all, email tends to get buried or spammed or something like that. You know, I don’t know how many people you know that really function on email super heavily anymore in this day and age. But yeah. So double dial, speed to contact, text them right after that. If they don’t answer that second dial, and then maybe send a video text.
Mike (00:20:03):
I like this, tell me about it. What do you do there?
Jeff (00:20:06):
Yeah, so it’s almost a joke at this point in Two-Brain Marketing, cause we want people to do this, but they refuse to. So usually what I tell people is like, Hey, you know, if you’re comfortable getting on camera, which you should be because you are in the area of business ownership, you’re in the area of building an audience and building an audience in 2020 requires you to be on camera. Deal with it. You know, I’m sorry to like just rip the rug out from under your feet there guys, but you got to get on camera. It’s life. So you know, if they’re totally uncomfortable, the problem is it will come off inauthentic, super cheesy and not work. It will work against you. So it is something where I say like, you got to practice getting on camera and try to make more videos and content for your business. And once you’re a little more comfortable, let’s you know, shoot me a video text and show me that and we’ll decide if you’re ready to do it.
Jeff (00:21:03):
But if you’re comfortable, video text that’s personalized to this individual that just filled out a form can have some amazing results. So Ms. Jones fills out a form, you double dial, you send her a text, say, Hey, I just want to get in touch to try and book this appointment for you. You know, because they’re interested right now obviously. And then you shoot the video if they don’t respond in the next hour or so, or you just hit the video text first. Again, if you’re comfortable doing that and just introduce yourself, you should have like your gym in the background. Basically what we’re doing there is we’re taking away some of the social anxieties of meeting someone new, going a place that you’ve never been before, new type of fitness facility you’ve never like seen or you don’t even have an image of your mind to relate this to. So it’s very uncomfortable for them. So we want to take away that social anxiety there and that sort of sets them at ease and then they’re more likely now to respond back. Now they know you. It’s like, Oh, it’s Jeff from Friction CrossFit. Like I’ve met this guy before, I’ve seen Friction CrossFit before in the background. Like, I’m not uncomfortable, I’ll respond, versus this, you know, no-name individual shooting you a text or calling you like, stop bothering me, guy.
Jeff (00:22:17):
So yeah, video text at work, if you guys can muster up the courage, trust me, it’s an awesome option.
Mike (00:22:23):
And Jeff, you mentioned that you’ll have your clients film the stuff and send them to you and then you can give them feedback. What Jeff’s talking about here is, you know, Two-Brain mentors, the staff works with clients all over the world and what they’ll do is they help them target their different aspects of their business for improvements. So, we’ve got the Incubator, it’s our 12-week sprint to get the foundations of your business in place. After that, we’re into the growth stage and that’s where we’re looking at the Two-Brain road map. It is this amazing, amazing tool where we’ll actually tell you step-by-step in a bunch of categories how to move the needle on your business. And it’s based on data. This is not made up stuff. We’ve targeted the best gyms in the world, found out what they do and we teach other gyms how to do it.
Mike (00:23:02):
If you want to work with someone like Jeff and add about $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue to your business, you can book a call to find out how that happens, it is at twobrainbusiness.com. Now I’m going to move on to the next thing here. Let’s just assume that you’ve had success and you’ve got this person, the person who’s going to come in, you’ve got a cold lead coming in the door. Talk to me about how you’re going to prepare your space. Like do you have a sales binder? I mean, what’s on your mind? You mentioned a few things that you tell yourself ahead of time, but what do you do with your physical space and how do you set the table for this?
Jeff (00:23:34):
Yeah, this is huge. So huge that we added it to the Two-Brain Incubator recently.
Mike (00:23:39):
Always in revisions, that thing.
Jeff (00:23:42):
Yeah. We don’t even let people do Two-Brain Marketing until they complete this checkbox here and it’s having a clean, organized space in order to perform that No-Sweat Intro, as well as, you know, have a sales binder or a visual presentation that’s extremely key. And a clipboard where you’re going to be able to like take notes on that No-Sweat Intro. So one thing I like to like really get people’s mindset straight on is that your potential client here, your prospect is not going to be upset if you’re like writing things on a clipboard unless you’re holding the clipboard in front of your face and not letting them see it. Then they’re like, you know, it’s kind of like the adage of a psychiatrist, you’re laying on their couch and they’re writing things in their notebook and you’re getting all antsy about like what are they doing? What are they saying? You know, we don’t want to let them build up that negative narrative. So show them that. Like, I like to sit at for this space, a pub table, which is fully, you know, it’s a circle, right? It’s rounded. I sit right next to them. I have the clipboard on the table with the paper on the clipboard and I’m writing notes so that they can read it, so I’m right handed. I sit to their left side and then I’m writing so that they can see everything as I go.
Mike (00:24:56):
Just not secretive.
Jeff (00:24:56):
Yeah, exactly. It’s not secretive. You’re not hiding anything. So there’s no anxiety being built up. Like it’s all about keeping anxiety low, right? If you guys have ever dropped in at a new facility, I mean I owned a CrossFit gym for five years and like if I drop in at a CrossFit gym right now, I get nervous.
Jeff (00:25:15):
So imagine somebody who never owned a CrossFit gym, never did CrossFit, maybe never worked out in their life, walking into a CrossFit gym and they’re probably a little anxious. So you need to like really bring that anxiety down and get them comfortable, get them trusting you. Because we are in the industry of high trust sales. You have to build trust. If you’re going to sell this high value program, you can’t expect to, you know, get away with just a little bit of rapport or high five and a handshake and then all of a sudden they’re paying you 250 bucks a month. It’s not gonna work, like that works for globo gyms because they’re charging 10 to 20 bucks. So in a globo gym, I can have a dirty space, dusty equipment, throw a high schooler in charge of sales and then that high schooler walks around the gym says, here’s the pec deck, here’s the leg press machine, here’s the treadmills, there’s the TVs, we get six channels, don’t worry, we get Grey’s Anatomy, you’re going to love it. And then sign this two year contracts.
Mike (00:26:09):
And I’m not coming after two months.
Jeff (00:26:12):
Yeah, exactly. You’ll stop coming in, but you can’t get out of your contract. If you want to we’ll charge you double the rate of the two years and you go, you’re welcome. So yeah, ultimately, you know, you’ve got to have that clean space organized. I like the pub table style with two bar stools or you have an extra person and then a clipboard sales binder and like you’re ready to run.
Mike (00:26:33):
And again, in the Incubator, we do teach you how to make these sales binders. We got a template in there that you can take a look at and it’s actually from Jeff’s gym, Friction CrossFit, Jeff’s old gym.
Mike (00:26:44):
And it’s a simple way that we just give you this thing that you can download. You take a look at it, you customize it for yourself. You can do whatever you want. If you want to add some design and pictures and so forth, you can do that. But we give you all this stuff so that you can figure it out. Essentially what we realized is that we need to teach gyms how to make sales because it’s not enough to just squat. We can now also teach people how to squat. But we’ve got to teach people how to get someone convinced that they need to squat. And that’s a huge, a huge problem. I mean, the quick aside that I’ve said before is like my gym, we survived a lot of times just on being good coaches. And we realized about three or four years ago that that wasn’t enough. And so we called Two-Brain for exactly that reason, to help us out. So now let’s go the other side of it. The person arrives, what is the wrong thing that you can do? Like, how can you blow this sale? We’ve got a cold lead. This’ll be funny. But how can you blow a sale right away? Just what’s the worst way to sink the ship?
Jeff (00:27:31):
So many ways.
Mike (00:27:32):
Give me the good ones.
Jeff (00:27:35):
so good ones that I’ve experienced from my team, and I won’t say any names cause they’re in Two-Brain now and they’re awesome. But my favorite things that I’ve ever seen would be like meeting the person with your shirt off while you’re sweaty. You’re mid-WOD, you know, you got this No-Sweat Intro. They’re supposed to be here like right at noon. It’s 11:55 and you’re like, I can finish this 20 minute AMRAP, it’s fine. And then you wrap it up, it’s 1159 and you’re like, OK, cool. You’re, you’re gasping for breath on the floor. They walk in the door. Now what? I mean, even if you throw a shirt on, at this point, you’re still sweaty and out of breath, so it doesn’t look great.
Mike (00:28:16):
Well, Jeff, I’m going to break in here and just tell you Ron Burgundy would disagree. Like Ron Burgundy thinks the best way to make the sale is to actually do this, right? You invite someone to the gym while you are working out and they walk up while you’re crushing curls or whatever and then you just show them the guns.
Jeff (00:28:30):
We can agree that that didn’t work out for Ron Burgundy.
Mike (00:28:34):
Not so well. It’s not going to work out in your gym either. You’ve got to wear a shirt. Don’t be sweaty. What else?
Jeff (00:28:41):
Yeah, so we want to establish trust, right? So this is high-trust sales. Some of the best ways we can do that is, you know, an exchange of, you know, a handshake, a warm welcome, you know, give them a bottle of water, offer them some coffee. I didn’t mention this on your last question there, but I think that’s a great way to do it. The opposite of that is also true. Don’t have a warm welcome that’s not going to do very well. So like, Oh Hey. Yeah. You got your intro at noon. OK, cool. Come over here. Sit down and yeah, I’ll be right back. I’m just going to go throw my shirt on cause I just finished my workout. You know, or another one with like, instead of having your shirt off, like you walk over with a bloody hand because you were doing like bar muscle-ups or something and you just tore your hand open.
Jeff (00:29:23):
Hey, don’t do that. That’s gross. No bodily fluids including sweat blood and other things. And then put a shirt on. Gosh, dang it. And then, yeah, need to have a warm welcome. So if you’re not doing that, that’s a problem. And leaving them hanging. So like nobody approaching them. There’s people in the gym, like you’re there, there’s coaches there. Maybe you’re busy wrapping something up. Your coaches are there, but they don’t even say hi. So all of my coaches would have to know that they have to go to introduce themselves right away. If somebody walks in the door, like, you don’t recognize that person, do something about it. Go talk to them and again, do that warm welcome for me if I’m like wrapping up with another No-Sweat Intro or I’m busy or whatever and I’ll be right with them. Right. And then I guess—there’s probably a thousand other things.
Mike (00:30:12):
I’ll ask you this one because this is one that we used to do right off the bat and I’ll ask you what the best practices are now. Gym tours, showing people your stuff.
Jeff (00:30:22):
Here are my things. So in Thor Ragnarok when he says behold my stuff, that’s basically what you’re doing and it’s not impressive at all. So the main way I talk about this to gym owners is that that person likely doesn’t have context. So you show them your fancy new Rogue Echo bikes or your fancy Concept 2 skiergs your, your wall of Skiergs and they have no context as to why that is valuable, important or noteworthy.
Mike (00:30:54):
It looks confusing and scary.
Jeff (00:30:56):
Yeah, it looks terrifying or worse yet, you’ve got a class going on, they’re doing Isabel 30 snatches for time and they’re just clanging and banging away. And this like nice little lady comes in and she’s never worked out a day in her life and she looks over and she’s like, Nope. And I’ve actually had that. I had a lady come in, she was in the gym for no more than 30 seconds. She did a 360, she looked at me and she said, this isn’t for me. I don’t even know her name. She didn’t even introduce herself. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself and she walked right out the door.
Mike (00:31:26):
But the irony is like that woman literally could do Isabel with, you know, whatever the scaled thing that would apply to her. Right. So like if she came in looking for strength and conditioning or weight loss or you know, increased health or whatever her thing was, you could have used Isabel to do that. You just don’t want to let her see it. You don’t want to let your, you know, your beastly guys doing 225 or whatever, you know, scaling up. You don’t want to let, let her see that. What you really want is to just tell her that like, Oh, you know, you want to improve your strength. I have a program that can do that and improve your conditioning at the same time. We actually have a workout called Isabel, we’re going to lift something, you know, from ground overhead 30 times. But I’m going to give you something that works. We can even do it with a coffee cup if you want, you know, and she’s like, huh, tell me more.
Jeff (00:32:07):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, if we can tell people and provide that context that we can meet you where you are and take you where you want to go, like that’s the big key concept that we need to get across. And unfortunately you don’t really get a chance to do that if you make all of these mistakes because you basically boned the sale before it even started.
Mike (00:32:23):
And you’re talking like, again, we’re talking like these are cold leads. So like I always, you know, they’re trembling, you know, like they’re looking for an excuse to bolt, right? It’s like approaching a dog that’s, you know, very hesitant to let you pet it, it’s one of those situations you go too fast or you give them any excuse, they’re probably going to bolt because they’ve always got that price objection in the back of the head right off the top anyways.
Jeff (00:32:47):
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, our goal is tried to provide a positive narrative. So before they come in, they’ve already set these negative expectations. And it’s your job basically to break all of those expectations. So you want to make sure, like you can’t provide that warm welcome, somebody else in your facility does, whether it’s your members or your staff, ideally, that you know, your welcome area is clean, that the lighting is good, that everybody has their shirts on and isn’t sweaty or bleeding. That you have a clean area that’s maybe private. You know where you can get away from the clanging and banging og the barbells and actually hear each other speak.
Jeff (00:33:25):
You know, we want to break all those expectations down. And you know, as Mike mentioned, yeah, like don’t waste your time on a gym tour. It’s not going to do anything for you. And in most CrossFit gyms we can do what? They walk in the front door and you say, well here’s a place now let’s go sit down and talk. That’s my gym tour, it was always one second. It’s like, here’s the gym. Let’s sit down and chat. Right? Cause none of this makes sense to you right now. I’m going to hopefully provide some context and help it make sense to you over the course of the next 20, 30 minutes.
Mike (00:33:51):
All right, so those are your don’ts. Don’t blow the sale like that. We’re going to get back to do’s. And this is an interesting one because we run Facebook ads and you know, in a Facebook ad you can’t present 17 different things. You can’t tell people about all these different things that you’re going to do for them. You’re giving them one thing, and for a lot of us it’s a six week challenge or something similar, 90-day transformation, whatever it is. We’re using some sort of something, like some compelling offer to get them to click and come in. But we also know that in the No-Sweat Intro, our goal is not always to sell the thing that they clicked on. It’s to sell the thing that will help them most, the thing that they really want, the thing that they really need, the thing that will change their lives. So there is a way that you can blow this and make a horrible, horrible presentation that makes this person angry and think it’s a bait and switch, false advertising. There’s also ways to help people realize that, yes, I clicked on the six-week challenge, but man, I need personal training over four months or six months because I have a marathon coming or whatever it is. So talk about this. How do we deal with people who have seen X in a Facebook ad but come in and maybe don’t actually need X?
Jeff (00:34:53):
Yeah, I think that’s a great point to bring up. The way I look at it is at Friction CrossFit, for example, like my guys Mike and Bobby shout out boys, they have never sold a six-week challenge and we advertise a six-week challenge. So the main thing is again, context, and it’s that discovery phase is so crucial. Once that person comes in and we start talking about like what they want, why they want it, honestly consumer amnesia kicks in and nine times out of 10, they don’t even ask about the six-week challenge once we get to the end. We literally like, it’s not even in our sales binder. It used to be we tore it out because we were like, Oh, we don’t even sell this thing.
Jeff (00:35:36):
So you know, it’s there because on an advertising platform like Facebook, you live and die by like quick decisions, decisiveness, right? So they’re scrolling through and they see six-week challenge. That’s something that has like the short timestamp stands out to them. As I said before, maybe subconsciously they’ve been thinking about changing their body, their lifestyle, their health. And it just pops in their head like, Oh, I should fill this out. It seems like a win-win situation. Great. So they do that. That’s how we win on Facebook. But once they come through, that’s no longer relevant. What’s relevant is what matters to them, what’s going to get them results. So we have to provide that context during the No-Sweat Intro. So once they come in, we would just do a really good job with discovery, enough so to say like, Hey Mrs. Jones, you mentioned you wanted to lose 20 pounds, but you know, what’s really important here is that you mentioned losing that 20 pounds will provide you with a higher level of self confidence, which you think is going to help you with your relationships.
Jeff (00:36:33):
It’s going to help you with, you know, being able to walk up the stairs with your groceries without running out of breath like you do every day. Overall you’d be more productive at work, you’d probably get better sleep. It sounds like this is going to be great for your life. Am I right? She says, yes. I say great. You know, in order to help you accomplish this, the best thing that we have to offer you is personal training, right? Or, you know, in the case of Two-Brain Marketing, we usually recommend starting with like a hybrid package and a hybrid package might be far above and beyond that little six-week challenge, which you use to entice somebody. So it might be more like a 90-day journey—
Mike (00:37:07):
And that’s personal training and nutrition packaged together. Correct?
Jeff (00:37:10):
It’s all together, right? The six-week challenge in their head is like, everybody’s running a six-week challenge, let’s be honest, right?
Jeff (00:37:16):
Everybody’s doing this thing. It doesn’t mean it’s right. It just means it’s the best thing as far as like quick decisiveness on the internet, that’s all we want it for. So we get them in the door with that, but then we can introduce something amazing like a 90-day journey, which, you know, people in the Two-Brain family absolutely crushed with, and that 90-day journey, yeah, it’s personal training at least at the start, maybe the entire time at higher-value packages, plus nutrition. Right? So we get that well rounded approach to health and wellness and then maybe some group kind of like peppered in there, a little Salt Bay the end and they get great results because of it. But it’s obviously going to come out more expensive or higher value than a simple six-week challenge where you know, their expectation there is like six weeks of working out two to three days a week and like I’ll be fit.
Jeff (00:38:03):
That’s it. Right? So we kind of shatter that expectation. We show them the 90-day journey and we say like, this is the best thing for you. And like worst case, they don’t go with that, my guys would always pitch a personal training package next, right? So it’s just like drop to the next highest value.
Mike (00:38:17):
And so, you know, to be clear, this is not a bait and switch, because that stuff is out there where the people are, you know, quote unquote selling things that don’t exist or they are creating these horrible things where you know, you get your money back if you do all this stuff that no one can possibly do, that stuff is out there. And that’s not what we’re recommending, what we’re talking about here is you’ve got a compelling offer that you can supply to these people. But you’re finding out what they really need and what most people really need is not a six-week challenge, right? If they want a goal of I want to lose 20 pounds and I want to, you know, or I want to PR my marathon time or I want to become healthier long term, what you’re selling there is a lifestyle. You’re not selling a six-week challenge. And the second part of that that’s really important to remember is that, as business owners, you’re really not looking for a six-week member. You know, like, that’s not really a good thing. What you really want is you want a 10-year member, and we talk about a Two-Brain key metric is length of engagement. Some of our gyms have insane length of engagement numbers like in many, many years because you have that client long term that is great for your business because this person’s paying a high ticket service for a period of months and years.
Mike (00:39:20):
But this person is also getting something out of it. He or she is changing his or her life becoming fitter, becoming happier, stronger, healthier, a better parent. All the other stuff that comes with that. So again, not bait and switch. This is just research discovery, right? In the sales process and then figuring out what this person really needs to find success. And I’ll throw this at you and you can tell me if you agree. I think it would be dishonest of you to listen to a client’s goals and then not tell that person the exact best way to get there. What do you think?
Jeff (00:39:48):
Yeah, yeah, 100% and I mean us being consumers ourselves, like you guys have had this happen to you already. Like take anytime you bought a car, a TV, an appliance, whatever, you know, any higher value product that you’ve bought, maybe some services that you’ve bought, you’ve probably gone in with one expectation. I bought a refrigerator last year. So it’s a higher cost, you know, appliance I walked in with one expectation, I walked out with a different fridge than I came in expecting to buy, but it was because it was better for my space. So there’s different measurements, there’s different amenities that would come with it. So I had to get something that specifically fit my space as well as my needs, with my family with like two girls so they could like, you know, reach the freezer. I can’t have like a freezer on top.
Jeff (00:40:33):
For example, though that’s like a cheaper setup for a fridge, I needed it on bottom, easy rollout drawer. They can get in and get their little frozen popsicles, you know, things like that. So, you know, you got to go with what actually works. Again, expectation that I had wasn’t right, but that’s because I’m not the expert. And in this situation, these people coming in to talk to you about the six-week challenge, they’re not the experts. They’re the consumer. You’re the expert. If you’re in the sales seat and you have to do your job, it’s your responsibility to show them the right prescription. We call it prescriptive selling. We don’t, you know, some people actually, I have seen this, a few people have a prescription pad that they use. I will say a key thing legally is not to say that it’s a prescription cause you’re not a doctor. But if you want to use a cute little prescription pad, I mean, sure. Why not? Like, it’s kind of cool. We usually just recommend at least at the very least a sales binder. The little pad is kind of cool to like have a little more customization added to it. But again, like I told you, nine times out of 10, right, they forget. Consumer amnesia. They forget they came in for a six-week challenge and they don’t care anymore because of how much care and interest you’ve provided and the high trust that you’ve built up with them. They’re just like, I’ll do whatever this person says at this point, right. Because they’re the professional in the seat. One time out of 10 they might say yes, so what about that six-week challenge though? And that’s totally fine.
Mike (00:41:54):
So then how do we do that?
Jeff (00:41:57):
Yeah. So we’ll just back up and say like, absolutely you can do the six-week challenge. I’m never going to prevent somebody from doing that. That is what would be bait and switch if I said like, yeah, we don’t offer that. Sorry. You know, I know it says that, but we don’t do that. I just did it to get you in here, right?
Mike (00:42:11):
That’s a one-star Facebook review right there.
Jeff (00:42:14):
That is getting wrecked on Facebook. Yeah. So what we do instead is we just say like, Hey, you could absolutely do the six-week challenge. However, based on your goals as I recommended here, I think the 90-day journey is going to give you the best, fastest, safest route to accomplish those goals. And I think you’ll be really, really happy with it. Would you still like to look at the six-week challenge though?
Jeff (00:42:38):
They say yes, you’ve got to go with it. Just go with it. I mean that’s fine. I always tell people with sales like all that matters really is what they do today. You know, as long as they do something today, I’m happy. If it’s not what I ultimately want for them, that’s fine cause it’s not me that’s buying it, you know, it’s not my life. But I will say when they buy that six-week challenge, I’m just going to put more effort into that, into, you know, getting them to continue with those services afterwards. I think you need to work a little bit harder maybe just to paint the long-term narrative for them at that point and just say like, look, this six weeks is just a jumpstart, right. From here, here’s what we could do. And just start providing context for like the next nine 90 days to 180 days to a full year at that point. So they have this long vision rather than this simple little six-week journey that they might go on if.
Mike (00:43:32):
I love what you said because if you make that sale, you then have six weeks to build a relationship with that client, educate that client, nurture that client, and then eventually you earn the right to have an exit conversation with a warm lead at that point who knows about your business, knows what you’re all about, and then it becomes very easy, especially that’s where you know your great programming, you great coaching, your great relationship building, all that stuff comes in where this person now says, oh, this is valuable. This is helping me. Six weeks is not enough for me to lose 50 pounds, but I lost seven. I can now continue with the service. I want to do your hybrid package and I really care about you and I know I trust you. Right? So that whole process is a slippery slope.
Jeff (00:44:06):
Yeah, I mean it’s definitely not a loss. I would never take that as a loss. Like, oh, they didn’t buy my highest value package, oh no. Like, again, all that matters is what they do today. And then it’s basically you get the next, you know, whatever number of weeks, if they buy the six week or the 90 day or whatever, to really invest in them and build up that high trust and they’ll do anything. I mean, that’s why we talk about athlete check-ins as like a great opportunity with current clients. You know, doing like goal-review sessions, you know, for example, and sitting down with them, you have such high trust with them at this point that they’re like, Oh, you think I should do a couple of personal training sessions? You think I should add nutrition? Great. I mean, I’ll do what you say because you know what you’re doing.
Jeff (00:44:47):
You’re the expert. Hold the seat of the expert. That’s who you are in this situation. And be the expert and write that prescription and tell them what they need to do and push them towards that and they’ll do it.
Mike (00:44:59):
So you’re in the expert seat right now, upsells and downsells in these appointments. What’s more likely, what are people going to see when cold traffic comes in?
Jeff (00:45:06):
Yeah, so it’s much easier to downsell than upsell. I’ll just say that. So what I mean by that is in the Two-Brain model that we follow for sales is top-down selling. So you need to start with that highest value. So I mentioned nine times out of 10 they forget about the six-week challenge. And that’s a good thing because a six-week challenge is probably like somewhere in the middle as far as our value goes.
Jeff (00:45:30):
So if I start at six week, I can only go down. You can’t go six weeks. All right. So the six week challenge, it comes out to about a, you know, two payments of $250. You know, how does that sound? Blah blah, blah. They say that doesn’t sound great. You say, cool. How about this 90-day journey? That’s $500 every month for three months. How’s that sound?
Mike (00:45:49):
Not as good.
Jeff (00:45:49):
Can’t do that. And you know, the other example I always use is like if you go buy a car, like I went and bought a truck, right? And the person at the dealership is not going to show me the cheapest truck to buy first. They’re going to show me something like, they usually ask your price range or whatever. So they get an idea of where you’re at. So they don’t just completely out of left field you, but they’ll say, OK, cool.
Jeff (00:46:14):
You can spend, you know, $50,000 on a truck. I’m going to show you this $65,000 truck, but you’re going to want it so bad that you might just go for that. And worst case, you can’t do that. So I dropped to a $55,000 truck and you buy that truck, right? Still above what you thought you were going to do coming in. Right. And that’s sorta a key aspect and we use that in our process with that top down. Yeah. Let’s just look at like what upsells are. So upsells are basically you have somebody who bought something and then you upgrade them to another higher value service or you add on to that service. This happens most often with current members. I mentioned a athlete check-ins a minute ago. So with athlete check-ins, you’re meeting with a current member paying you for that service, but you recommend another service like nutrition or PT, and because you’re the expert in that situation, you’ve built a lot of trust with them over the years and they want to see better results.
Jeff (00:47:09):
They go with that, right? That’s an upsell. At the point of sale during the No-Sweat Intro, it’s very difficult to do that. Right. I mentioned the truck example, right? And you know you’re not going to start with the rust bucket on the lot and say like, yeah, it was $5,000 but how about this one that’s $15,000 right? It’s very hard to the other direction. So typically at the No-Sweat Intro, you see what we call a down sell or I like to think of it as like a drop down sale. Right? So we’re going to drop down from whatever high value service we start at like your 90 day journey to maybe that six week challenge or personal training if that’s the next highest value. And then maybe to like your on-ramp program or something just to kind of get them into doors. And again, all that matters is what they do today.
Jeff (00:47:54):
So as long as we get them started with something today, I’m happy with that. And there’ll be happy too, I know it. But yeah, we dropped down or down sell as you mentioned, but we have to also reframe it so it doesn’t sound like a consolation prize. Like, man, it’s unfortunate you can’t do that 90-day journey. You’re definitely not going to get the best program that we offer, but that’s OK. Like I have this six-week challenge. It’s all right.
Mike (00:48:20):
Thanks for the purple ribbon, Jeff.
Jeff (00:48:21):
Thanks for participating. Here’s your participation ribbon. Yeah, like we don’t want to do that. So we say, Hey, that’s totally fine. Like that’s an option. It’s always available to you. It’s something you can go back to. We actually offer ongoing nutrition, personal training. You can add it any time. So why don’t we do this, Mrs. Jones, let’s check out this six-week challenge. I think it’s going to be amazing for you. And then we just drop down to that. That’s how you have to transition. It has to be better than the 90-day journey at this point. Because again, all that matters is what they do today.
Mike (00:48:52):
Well, and I’ve seen some gyms really cleverly frame this stuff like where you’ve got, you know, we’re not going to throw 700 prices at them, but they’ve got like three prices where it’s like you got the premium package which is $1,000 and you’ve got the bronze package, which is $400 and you’ve got in the middle, you’ve got the shiny gold package that’s like 650 and it looks, it’s not the big one, which I can’t afford, but it’s not the crappy one, quote unquote that looks like at the bottom end. It’s that popular one in the middle. And in reality that’s what these gyms are trying to sell most of. Is that middle package. So they’re actually using those things, those other programs exist and they are premium options and basic options, but they are framing that middle price, which is often what they really want to sell.
Jeff (00:49:28):
Yeah, absolutely. We call that price anchoring and option closing, it’s like a combo effort there. But you know, if you have three options available, people usually go with the middle option. That’s what price anchoring is for, the high anchor and a low anchor. And that’ll up your average revenue per sale, which is fantastic. A good benefit to have. And then, you know, option closing rather than saying like, Hey, how does this sound? Would you like to get started today? What do you think about that? And these other like very weak closing questions, we can actually ask which of these options fits you best, which is my favorite closing question that I’ve used for 15 years. And it is the most effective one in my opinion because it’s something that can be asked very confidently and something that is very assumptive. You’re assuming that they’re going to do one of them. Now you just have to figure out which one, and if you assume they start assuming too. So it’s where I actually extract the old adage of assuming makes an ass out of you and me. I don’t believe that’s true in sales. It actually helps sales a lot if you’re assumptive.
Mike (00:50:29):
The one that I really liked from Chris Cooper is a variation of, you know, OK, do you want to do this style of training with me personally or do you want to do this in a group? And it’s like, it’s one of those two things. Which one do you want? But we’re doing it.
Jeff (00:50:41):
Yeah, exactly. We’re going to do something. Yeah. That’s an example of option closing for sure.
Mike (00:50:48):
- Moving on to a couple of last questions here. Objections. When you get objections from cold leads and ad clickers, are their objections different than warm leads?
Jeff (00:50:59):
Yeah, kind of, but only—I guess we’ll say this, right? So just like in CrossFit, you know, basically those objections, vary by degree, not kind.
Mike (00:51:12):
Nice analogy.
Jeff (00:51:12):
Yeah. Essentially it’s all the same. All objections are essentially the same. It’s always price. Right. And the thing with price is that there’s this sort of social anxiety attached to it in that I don’t want to tell you that I can’t afford your service or I don’t want to tell you that I don’t want to part with that amount of money for your service. It’s still the same thing. But I don’t want to say that. Because we’re in high trust sales, we experience a lot of what we call excuses or smoke screens because they don’t want to make you feel bad cause you’ve worked all this time developing this great rapport or trust with them, they don’t want to come out and say like, listen Mike, I gotta be honest with you. I don’t want to do this thing. I don’t think it sounds great. I don’t see any value in it. I’ll see you never. Bye, and slam the door behind your back. Right. It’s not going to happen. They’re going to say something like, yeah, it sounds great. You know, I just got to confirm that with my spouse. Hey, you know, can I sign up next Friday when I get paid? Blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s all the same thing. It’s still inherently price or you know, not wanting to or not seeing enough value in it to part with that amount of money. So yeah, it differs by you know, degree just in that they are going to have a harder time seeing the value mostly. Right? So it’s still going to be price, but they’re going to say things associated with value, which are excuses, which are things like, let me talk to my spouse, let me come back next week, whatever. And they board that be-back bus, which is a one way ticket to nowheresville. You never see them ever again. And it’s unfortunate.
Mike (00:52:41):
You need to do a really good job to try and deal with this stuff,I’m going to guess, because you said if they leave, they’re gone, for the most part. So you need to do a really good job with discovery. You need to do a really job of building value and building a relationship with this person. So that this person who maybe has a price concern can throw that thing out the window because he or she sees the value in what you’re presenting, right? Meaning like, OK, I don’t want to spend more than $500 but for 550 I can accomplish all my goals and be healthier. And you start doing some math there you start thinking maybe this is actually a good deal, not a bad deal.
Jeff (00:53:14):
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, in the new road map we disclosed a new way to handle objections, which is a step by step process. And people should check out Two-Brain mentoring if they want to learn more about that. But essentially it’s very easy to handle objections. I handle every objection the exact same way every single time and I’ll repeat it four or five times within one sales process. And nobody notices because consumer amnesia.
Mike (00:53:38):
What is it? I gotta know.
Jeff (00:53:38):
Well, you know, basically four quick steps. First thing I do is I agree with them. And that takes away the argument factor. If you ever argue in sales, you lose.
Mike (00:53:50):
You’re absolutely right about that.
Jeff (00:53:52):
Very important not to argue. So I just say, Hey Mrs. Jones, I totally get it. You know, I would check with my spouse too. Right? Or, you know, I understand budget’s very important, right? So we just agree with them. Second thing is a confirm the true objection. So I’ll say what you’re telling me Mrs. Jones is that you want to do one of these programs, you just don’t think you can afford it. And if you don’t mind me asking, which one of these three are you saying you can’t afford? Another benefit of having more than one option on a page. So we can kind of narrow that down and then what you just mentioned in building as much value as possible, the third step is to revisit the value stuff, that’s back in discovery. That’s at the beginning of the No-Sweat Intro. You ask them what they want, why they want it. So I like to say, Mrs. Jones, remember why we came here today, right? You booked an appointment with me because you interested in trying to lose some weight. We determined that amount of weight was 20 pounds. And furthermore, more importantly, you wanted to lose 20 pounds because of how much better you would feel. How it would boost your confidence, get you better sleep, you would have more energy, you’d be more productive at work, you’d be able to play with your kids much longer than you are now. And that’s all very important to you. Am I right?
Mike (00:55:04):
And that’s in your notes, right? Like you’ve got that in your notes.
Jeff (00:55:06):
You have it in your notes, we take notes for a reason or you go, people neglect their notes all the time. And I’m like, what the heck are you doing? Write it down. Go back, talk about it more than once. That’s what we call the hot button in sales. And it’s kind of like the Staples easy button. You’ve got to push that button like a thousand times if you want to make a sale, especially with cold traffic. And then finally step four, we come back and we do the reclose, which is the exact same close as the first close. You just say, all right, you might drop down, right? We talked about downselling or drop down sales, so drop down to a better option for them today and you say, Hey Mrs. Jones, therefore, you know which one of these options works better for you.
Mike (00:55:43):
So a simple four-step process. Again, we teach people how to do this and we actually teach people how to practice this and go through it, review it with them and so forth. Because you know this for me, you’re talking about this easy process for you. 15 years of of hell and sales in colleges and so forth. It makes me squidgy inside. You know, I get nervous about this. I’m not great at this whole thing and I know there’s people out there that are definitely, you know, would rather be teaching a squat than making a sale. But it can be learned. Am I right? Like can people get better at this stuff?
Jeff (00:56:10):
Oh absolutely. Sales is easy. I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert because I did something crazy and went to a thousand clinics or courses or done anything like that. I never did a Dale Carnegie or any of that stuff. I read some books. I listened to the same audio books like 17 times in a row back at one of my jobs where I had to travel, you know, a couple hours a day in my car. So I did a lot of learning there, but most of it was just practice. That’s all it is. Sales is reps. It’s just practice, practice, practice. I talked to myself in the mirror a lot. It’s kind weird. I recorded myself on my phone. I role played with my wife, you know, do all sorts of different things like that just to get the practice. And sales is a system.
Jeff (00:56:53):
It’s not about being a smooth talker, right? It’s not at all because we’re not practicing persuasive selling. We’re practicing high-trust sales, so you can’t have trust and be persuading somebody to do something they’re not cause there’s no trust there, that’s breaking that trust. So it’s simply a system, right. I just gave you a system for handling objections, do step one, two, three and four, and you’ve handled the objections the same every time. So there’s like a little bit of a script, a little bit of a system to it and you just do the same thing repetitively.
Mike (00:57:22):
Have you seen your clients who have, who’ve implemented this stuff? Have you seen them improve? Go from like, my God, I can’t sell anything to having some successful sales?
Jeff (00:57:30):
Yeah, absolutely. Somebody posted in the Two-Brain group yesterday, which I’ll leave the name out for now, but she’s in the Two-Brain family. She’s in growth with us and I did a sales call with her in December and her whole team was against selling personal training. They thought they couldn’t do it and they started doing it. I was like, you gotta do this thing. So they got into it. They set it up. It took about a month to get everything together and they sold, I think four personal-training packages in a week. I was like OK, you can do it. Like sales isn’t hard. I know it’s scary at first and it feels like, Oh, am I going to be perceived as slimy? Like, no, you’re not. Just be yourself. Build trust, build rapport, be honest, don’t lie about stuff, and you won’t be slimy. Like you have to try to be a slimy salesperson, you have to cut all your moral values and just say like, I’m going to do whatever I want to do now.
Jeff (00:58:21):
And like, you can do that. But like you gotta try. I don’t think anybody who owns a CrossFit gym, at least that I know of or is in the Two-Brain family could be perceived as a slimy salesperson. There’s too high of a moral echelon that they’re following. You know, it’s just not going to happen.
Mike (00:58:39):
And we are in the relationship business as personal trainers. So, for most of us, I would almost say all of us, it’s, we’re building relationships with clients to help them with their health and fitness. We’re certainly not interested in bait and switch and slimy stuff and nonsense. That’s not going to help them because we actually do want to help them. I don’t know a gym owner out there in the microgym family that doesn’t genuinely want to help people. So that aspect of sales, the helping aspect of sales should come very naturally. And again, if you haven’t read it, I encourage you to pick up “Help First” by Chris Cooper. He’s written a bunch of books. This one is going to change the way you think about sales. It’s not selling, it’s helping. And really when someone comes to you and says, I have this problem with my health and you have a solution, you know, Jeff, does that sound like selling or does that sound like solving?
Jeff (00:59:26):
Yeah, that’s definitely problem solving. And that’s how I try to explain sales to everybody. It’s helping, it’s problem solving. That’s all you’re doing is you provide that solution. And yes, as I mentioned, you have to exchange something of value for something of value. So that’s dollars for services. It is what it is, but that’s the way the world works. And consumers get it. They’re not confused about that. They know that you have to exchange money for these services.
Mike (00:59:49):
It’s just simple economics. Everyone gets the deal and everybody gets paid and everyone’s happy. Thank you for listening guys. This has been sales with expert certified Two-Brain business mentor, Jeff Burlingame, and we are Two-Brain Radio. Please remember to subscribe for more. If you’ve got an opinion on the show, we would love to hear it. Please leave us a review. That would be spectacular. And if you’re a gym owner and you need some help growing your business, Two-Brain mentors can show you the exact steps to add $5,000 in recurring monthly revenue. You want to know more about that? Book a free call on twobusiness.com today. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back with more on Two-Brain Radio.
