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Operations Top Stories

Two Things You Can Do Right Now to Generate a Healthier Bottom Line

If you went around and ask studio owners one of the worst feelings they can experience, many would probably give the same answer:

Missed opportunities.

Studio owners share this pain point with other businesses, and it’s particularly pronounced with new studios. 

But that doesn’t mean more experienced studios don’t miss out on an opportunity every now and then. In fact, you’d struggle to find a studio immune to the issue.

However, new studios have a more challenging time when they can’t seize opportunities promptly. This is because missed opportunities hinder growth, which is the primary goal of every new studio.

Luckily, there’s a way to resolve the issue. And it comes down to executing key tasks every month.

This article will break down two vital components to make that happen. These components will help you run a successful studio and never miss an opportunity again.

The Captain’s Checklist

This checklist serves to keep your crew, i.e., your team organised and functional.

The captain’s checklist is entirely focused on what happens within your business weekly. And this person-oriented aspect sorts out the crucial tasks your team members have every week.

Essentially, this checklist serves to avoid the constant “Did you remember to do that?” questions. That’s because forgotten tasks can pile up quickly if you don’t have a system to organise them.

That said, coming up with a functional checklist will require some careful consideration on your part.

First, you’ll need to break down everything that has to happen during the week. Then, you’ll need to split all of the crucial tasks into different days. Finally, you’ll have to outline which team member is responsible for which task.

Clearly, the captain’s checklist is an excellent organisational tool. But it provides another great benefit: 

At the end of each week, you can take the checklist and check for any problematic entries. And once the month is over, you can compare all checklists to spot potential issues with specific tasks.

Essentially, the captain’s checklist doesn’t only tell your team who should do what and when. It also tells you how well your team is handling particular aspects of your business. As a result, you can tweak certain processes and establish better work habits that the team can stick to consistently. 

You can make your checklist even more effective by marking key performance indicators or KPIs. Finally, if you want to get into the details, you could create multiple checklists to handle the finer aspects of complex tasks.

At the end of the day, the captain’s checklist will be your best friend when it comes to organising your studio for maximum efficiency.

Start Harvesting Correctly

When we talk about harvest, we’re referring to the last three days of the month. These three days are a critical part of your calendar when specific actions will be necessary. 

In particular, you’ll need to do three things during these days:

First, you’ll send out a new offer to all of your lead lists. 

When sending offers to your newest leads and people who haven’t bought anything from you yet, you’ll give them the exact same offer that they received the last time. The purpose of this is to freshen up these leads with the same message but with a new wrapper around it.

For example, if you had a Valentine’s Day or spring head-start offer, you’ll send out the same content. The only difference will be that you’ll rephrase the offer to make it fresh.

The reason behind this approach is to take away the monthly operational drag that can happen when you need to come up with new service promotions every time.

Doing this regularly will create an atmosphere in which people will automatically raise their hands when the end of the month comes. Then, you’ll have an easier time bringing those people out and making sales.

In essence, this task will set your studio up for the upcoming month while closing the current one.

Second, you’ll do blitz rollovers. 

In other words, you’ll dedicate a day to focusing on anyone who hasn’t rolled over so far during the month. This even includes people who have just arrived.

The vital point here is to gather everything that worked previously and go all out to try and get everyone on board using it. After all, there’s no point in keeping things in the drawer at the end of the month. 

So, don’t hesitate to offer every incentive you can to get people to roll over. Take note of all the freebies, giveaways, vouchers, and every other resource at your disposal and use them to your advantage.

Finally, the third thing you’ll need to do at the end of the month is to take care of the bulk stuff.

This mainly refers to nurturing your important business relationships. For example, you should reach out to your joint ventures, schools, sports teams, businesses, physios, and anyone else that you talk with.

Ideally, you’ll already have a tally of what you’ve done on that front during the month. This will make it easier to share relevant stories with them and let them know that everything’s working correctly.

Now, this task will be made more straightforward by getting it done in a single day. This way, you won’t have to take note of every contact you’ve talked to.

Remember, these three things are essential to wrap up your month. But there’s one bonus thing you should do come the end of the month:

Put the time aside to plan out the next month.

Once you get all of this done, the harvest period will be over, and your studio will be ready to take on the period ahead in full strength.

Learn to Organise and Wrap Up Every Month

The captain’s checklist can help you bring a high level of organisation into your business, with precise tasks for every team member.

In addition to that organisation, if you make sure not to miss harvesting on the last three days of the month, you’ll enter every period as prepared as you can be. With these aspects covered, you’ll give your studio the boost it needs to become as effective as possible. 

Careful organisation will be your best friend on the road to success.

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Operations Top Stories

The Fortune Is in the Follow-Up – How Leads Work and How You Can Maximise Them

When you’re getting started with your studio, the first thing you’ll want to do is score some quick wins. 

This translates to getting a lot of leads and, by extension, new members.

…And that’s where the frustrations begin.

You want to get plenty of new members quickly, but you also want them to be the right type of members, right? Yet, when you look at the stack of names, emails, and phone numbers you’ve got, you don’t know where to start your search.

The frustrating part is that you know there are some potential members on your list. The issue is knowing how to bring them in and, even more importantly, keep them.

Ideally, you want to use the assets already available to turn a lead trickle into a full-fledged flood. 

This article will show you how to grab the opportunities in front of you and maximise leads for your studio.

Understanding How Leads Work

To make the most out of your leads, you first need to understand what happens when your studio starts engaging them.

First of all, it’s crucial to keep in mind that your lead campaign will never be 100% effective. In fact, 50% of the people who opted for an offer will never actually buy.

Another 35% will take between three months and two years to convert.

This leaves you with about 15% of people who will be ready to buy right now. Those are your quick wins.

Of course, leveraging the quick wins is a no-brainer. When you have people willing to buy immediately, that’s a slam-dunk case that won’t require too much attention on your part.

A similar thing applies to the 50% of people who won’t buy. The best you can do about them is keep warming them up and see if they change their minds at some point. However, that’s a task best suited for automation and something you don’t need to think about too much.

The critical part of your leads is those 35%. These are the potential members that might go either way – they either buy or they don’t. Furthermore, they are the leads that you’ve already paid for.

In other words, those leads represent the potential that your studio is sitting on, and that’s where you need to direct most of your attention.

Creating Your Lists of Leads

Building your lists is a matter of playing the long game. The principle at its core is to run specific campaigns to grow an evergreen list of leads ready to join.

Now, to create those specific campaigns, it would be best to segment your audience into particular lists. These should include:

  • Ex-members
  • People who’ve never been members, like the contacts you got from your website who gave their info but never bought anything
  • Unconverted trialers, or people who never rolled over or did sessions
  • Active members
  • Open-ended suspensions, or the members who made a pause due to a variety of reasons

These will be the main sections of your complete lead pool. 

Once you have them in separate lists, you can start reaching out. And the best way to do that will be in an articulated five-day effort.

The Five-Day Sprint

You might’ve noticed that there are five lists of leads and the corresponding number of days for your sprint. There’s a very good reason for that.

When you start to launch your follow-up sequences, you don’t want to do it at the same time for all of your leads. Otherwise, you might get into a situation where a lot of people will start responding and raising their hands at the same time. As a result, you could quickly lose track of who you’ve followed up with and miss out on some opportunities.

For that reason, you’ll want to dedicate one day to each group. And it’s worth noting that you might need to contact a person up to 15 times just to get them on the phone and eventually make the sale.

Doing the five-day sprint will make everything well-organised and allow you to keep track of the people you’ve contacted, as well as any feedback you’ve got from them.

As mentioned before, the way you follow up will depend on the type of lead. 

Building Your Follow-Up Sequences

If you want to make your outreach as efficient as possible, you’ll need to build tailored sequences for each group.

When contacting ex-members, you’ll want to send out a “win-back” offer. This sequence is pretty self-explanatory.

The second group is the people who’ve never been members. For them, you’ll want to create a massive level of engagement because you’re offering a new experience. Consistency is the name of the game here. After all, people will buy when they want to, not when it’s convenient for you. And that brings everything down to timing.

When it comes to the unconverted trialers, they’ll need some sort of incentive. It might be an extension, an offer to try again, or a special offer that feels like it’s tailored for them specifically.

For active members, it would be best to focus on those who might bring in referrals. Besides that, you should remember to answer any of their emails or questions.

Finally, the goal with open-ended suspensions is to connect with those people. You should get them on the phone, have a conversation, build a plan, and book them for their first session back with your studio. If needed, you might even offer some additional incentives like a price reduction for the first month. In essence, following up with these leads should be uncomplicated.

Use Leads Wisely to Build Up Your Studio

Leads are everything when it comes to growing your studio. You have to be able to bring in as many ideal-fit leads as possible and convert them efficiently to keep your studio business moving forward.

Remember that creating particular groups of leads and designing specific sequences for each one according to their wants and needs will be the best way to grow your number of members. 

Do it right, and your studio will start to thrive.

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Operations Top Stories

The Top 3 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Studio

Retention.

As you know, a large part of growing your studio has to do with getting your members to stay for long. After all, if they’re happy with your services, they may recommend your business to other people. Not to mention they’ll willingly pay the full price. 

You can use several strategies to improve your retention rate, such as auditing your newbie member acquisition process. Unfortunately, many studio owners overlook this step, causing their businesses to underperform. 

This article will dig deeper into why you can’t ignore auditing your newbie member acquisition process and two other mistakes you need to avoid. 

The 3 Mistakes

Mistake #1. Using The Word ‘Trialers’

As previously discussed, you want to audit your newbie member acquisition process to support your studio’s growth. But you also want to ensure your team is invested in the acquisition process by shifting their mindset. 

One of the shifts you should make is to stop calling your new members ‘trialers.’ It has a negative connotation because it means you don’t expect them to stay. 

Remember this:

Your new members aren’t trialers – they’re just new members. They’re yours to lose, and you will lose them unless you treat them as your customers. 

Unfortunately, many studio owners ignore this part of the acquisition process. They consider their new members as trialers, so they typically provide them with subpar services. 

What’s the result of this? 

A low rollover percentage, usually around 30%. They may hit 50% if they’re lucky, but they’ll get nowhere near 80% or higher numbers. 

You can only have a high rollover percentage if you audit your acquisition process and stop viewing your new members as trialers. 

So, adopt a different mindset.

Your studio’s new members are here to stay, and you need to make them stay if you provide them with high-quality services. 

Mistake #2. Not Changing Your Beliefs

The reality is that studio owners share certain beliefs that hold them back. 

For example, they’re not confident enough about their studio. While they become a coach or manager, they don’t think they’re cut out for it. 

Also, they want to help people, but they believe they will let them down. And they feel that they’re out of their depth because they can’t figure out how to approach their customers. 

If you share this attitude, you need to change it as soon as possible to prevent new members from leaving your studio. 

And the best way to do so is by getting coaching. 

Those who are experienced in this industry can guide you through client interaction and any other aspect you’re not confident about. 

As you train harder and harder, the conversation with your customers will be more authentic. They’ll trust you more and be eager to stay with your gym. 

Another belief studio owners have is that they need to talk to their prospects like they’re selling their services. They think this is the only way to persuade potential customers to become full-time members. 

But that’s not what you should do. 

Rather than cutting a deal with people, listen to their needs and accommodate them. 

Remember, you have something to offer to these people. But don’t make it sound like you’re only interested in selling your services. 

Instead, put yourself in their shoes. 

They want to exercise, but they don’t have support at home pushing them to sign up for a studio. Their family may not be interested in their well-being, which can be a huge setback. 

So, they need someone to provide the support… 

And that someone is you. 

Position yourself as a lifesaver. You can help your members become healthier, lose weight, gain muscle, or achieve any other goal. 

Once the conversation takes this direction, you’ve moved past the price and are now focused on the outcomes your prospect is looking for. They’ll realise your mission is to help them and not take their money. 

Such wholesome interaction is conducive to faster studio growth. 

Mistake #3. Not Converting at the Studio

Making sales calls isn’t the only way to get more members. Nevertheless, most studio owners only rely on this method to seal the deal. 

This is the wrong approach. 

Yes, making sales calls should be a big part of your sales strategy, but it shouldn’t be the only part. You should also convert at the studio. 

In fact, getting new members might be even easier on the floor. 

Think about it.

If someone walks into your studio because it’s an open week or you’ve set up an appointment, it means they’re interested in your services.

They think your studio might be perfect for them. But you’ll still need to convince them of that.

Not trying to convert is a wasted opportunity, which is one of the reasons most studios don’t grow fast enough. 

See, prospects enter their studio, but they let these prospects leave without attempting to sell. They’re reluctant to propose despite doing the hard work of getting prospects to visit their place. 

Here’s the thing:

Clients perceive their hesitance and lack of confidence, so they leave. 

This hesitation usually happens because selling is a weak spot for many studio owners. And they naturally avoid what they’re not good at. Also, they never address the issue and improve their skills, which makes them lose numerous members. 

Some owners also depend on their talent only. Talent may indeed deliver some success, but it’s not sustainable for long-term growth. 

The only way to overcome this obstacle is to invest in proper training. 

As you learn more about the sales process, you’ll know what you need to say at any given moment once your prospect enters your studio. 

Additionally, you shouldn’t be the only one who can make sales. 

You should have at least one or two converters on the team who are confident enough to sell on the floor. This way, you’ll always be ready to convert. 

Set Your Studio Up for Success

Mistakes can happen to anyone. However, you can’t ignore them and leave the growth of your studio to chance. 

Whether you’ve adopted wrong beliefs, treated your new members as trialers, or failed to convert at the studio, tackle the issue head-on. 

An optimised sales strategy and improved client interaction can make your membership go through the roof. And, of course, getting some guidance always helps.