Show notes
In this session I talk about why a sales funnel for personal training businesses should have an hourglass shape, rather than the traditional funnel. This is because a person becomes a member or client for the long term, and so there is an extra step - the retention stage - which is not present in other sales funnels.
You know so well already that it is important to take care of people after they have made a purchase, and not just focus on getting them to purchase in the first place. This extra step is necessary in order to ensure that customers or clients remain with the business for the long-term.
So I'm going to let you know how you can use the hourglass shape to get your sales funnel in order to increase you business.
It starts like this. Once someone has made a commitment to you for training, your work begins with the delivery process. As you add more people to the process, your business will start to grow.
Think of the traditional sales funnel.
It starts with the awareness stage, which is about getting people to notice the you. Then there's the interest stage, where you are building relationships, trust and credibility. After this, the desire stage is where you put an offer in front of the clients so they can buy. The action stage is where the clients make the purchase. After this, you then move into the retention stage. Here, you will start to build a client base that increases over time if the retention is good.
This gives the hourglass shape to your sales funnel.
Do not underestimate the importance of retention for a personal training business. Retaining customers is much easier than gaining new ones, as trust and relationships are already established.
Keeping clients also costs much less than gaining new ones, which is why building a strong retention stage is key. Sales funnels are a great tool for understanding the customer journey, but they don't account for the recurring payments required for a successful personal training business.
Therefore, you need to focus on retention in order to ensure continued success.
This is because the longer a customer stays, the more stable and predictable you personal training business will be.
Retention can be measured by a metric called lifetime value (LTV) which is the average amount of money a person spends on a business over the average amount of time they stay with that business. The larger the lifetime value, the better and. stronger the business. So if clients stay longer (your retention) they will spend more.
To increase retention, businesses need to wow their customers by delivering on what they promised, providing access to their products or services as soon as possible, and building deeper relationships with them.
All of these steps will help to increase customer satisfaction and make them more likely to stay with the business for longer.
Timestamps
0:00:00 - "Why a Sales Funnel for Personal Training Businesses is an Hourglass Shape"
0:01:31 - "Understanding the Hourglass Sales Funnel for Personal Trainers"
0:04:10 - "Retaining Clients in a Personal Training Business: The Benefits of a Recurring Payment Model"
0:07:10 - "Increasing Retention and Lifetime Value Through Improved Client Relationships"
0:11:45 - Building Rapport and Retention Strategies for Clients
0:13:35 - "Retaining Clients Through Loyalty Programs and Feedback"
0:15:28 - Retention Strategies for Trainers: How to Build a Bulletproof Sales Funnel
Highlights
Now, another thing that you can do well to help keep building your skills of retention is to try and learn from the clients that have discontinued and left clients, especially the clients that have left, not so happy. You need to try and meet them or call them, at least have a conversation to give you the feedback about the areas where you could do better and where you can improve. Not many will do it.. Not many will want to have that hard sort of face to face truthful conversation. But the more you can get to do it, then the better. Then you can take what they say on board and try and come up with solutions to those issues so that you can take that solution, stick it into your processes and your systems, and hopefully you'll fill that gap. And in future, no other clients will leave for the same reason.
What this all means is that you can increase this metric, which is called lifetime value. So in lifetime value or LTV, the average amount. So what is lifetime value? So basically, lifetime value or LTV is the average amount of money a person spends on you and your products or services over the average amount of time that your clients stay with you. So, for example, you might have people spending on average, let's say Rs10,000 per month to keep the numbers easy.
It's much easier and quicker to take a program from a current client and then make those small adjustments and tweaks that you need for the next phase of training than it is to essentially start from a blank slate after you've taken all that time to get to know your brand new client. So, typical sales funnels do do a really good job and they do apply to many businesses. So starting off your education at that point is a good idea, and to get that understanding is really important.
So on average, to gain a new client, it can cost you up to seven times more than it does to keep a current client. So if you just focus on the sales side of your business and you're not putting any kind of effort into the retention side of your business, you're going to really struggle. And also it's not efficient working like that. You could end up on this constant roundabout of clients coming in and going out and that can put a lot of pressure on you.
Keeping hold of customers with your personal training business is going to be really important. You see, with new clients, you have to convince them. You have to build a relationship. And doing that over and over again takes a lot more effort than when you have a current client. With a current client, everything is kind of in place. And if you've been doing your job and you've been adding value and you've been helping them get results, then them renewing is a no brainer.