5 Ways For Your Online Fitness Business To Focus On Buyers – Not Selling
For your business to be taken seriously raise your credibility and authority
A common mistake that fitness business owners make is focusing how they can sell more online rather than on getting people to buy more.
There is a difference. A big one, in fact!
The first approach is YOU-based – it’s about what you’re going to get out of it; the second approach is customer-based and it’s about making them comfortable with buying from you.
Below are 5 ways to achieve better results by focusing on the latter:
Demonstrate Credibility and Authenticity
If a stranger came up to you in the street and said they want to sell you a house for half its market rate, you’d probably keep on walking and with good reason. You don’t know them, what they are saying sounds too good to be true and they haven’t proven that they are credible.
Online, you are in a faceless crowd of businesses and unless you demonstrate your own credibility and authenticity people will not buy from you.
The number one fear of people buying online is being scammed – and without showing visitors that you are who you say you are and can deliver what you say, your chances of success are slim.
Online video testimonials, industry certificates, awards, press cuttings and bios are a great way to do this.
Demonstrate Authority
People want to know that they are buying from an authority in their field, not just somebody who wants to sell them something.
Demonstrating your knowledge of a subject via free white papers, reports, blogs, video, FAQs and on social media sites, starts to build your level of authority and will get people trusting that you really know your stuff.
Connect with Your Visitor
Most successful online marketers know that in order for people to buy online, they need to feel a connection to the person selling. That’s made easier with online video because you can look them in the eye and talk to them in a much more personal way than through text.
But it’s more than that. It involves you, at the very beginning of your marketing campaigns stepping out of your own mind and entering the mind of the customer: who do you want to buy from you? What are their likes, dislikes, problems and issues?
The more information you know the more you can make the connection to their own lives and their own problems and position your business as a part of the solution. They need to see this as soon as they land on your website.
Take the Focus off Traffic
A lot of focus is put on getting traffic to your site; of course this is important and great SEO will help you achieve that, but if they are landing on a website that is not focused on converting visitors into sales, it’s not going to help your business much. Traffic does not guarantee sales.
There needs to be a balanced approach between traffic and creating content that walks your visitors through the buying process, step by step, providing convincing information they are after in easy-to-find and concise ways and leading them by the hand through the steps.
Enhance Website Usability
Make sure that users can navigate your site easily, quickly and in a logical process; many people bounce away from websites because they are confusing – make sure this is not you by thoroughly testing it with friends, family and colleagues before you go live.
Also, keep “call to action” buttons prominent so that visitors don’t have to search far before taking an action.
Just by following the above guidelines your fitness business website will instantly become more customer-focused and less sales-focused – encouraging buyers to buy.
The 3 Mandates Of Leadership – For Australian Fitness Businesses
Your vision as a leader makes the future bright
A recent Anthony Robbins seminar I attended in Sydney included some useful steps for leadership and it got me thinking about how they apply to our Australian fitness businesses.
Called the 3 Mandates of Leadership, they are presented below with some possible interpretations about how we may apply them.
As always, mandates, guides, steps, advice and tips are only of use to use if we apply them; otherwise they are just “nice to know” information.
The 3 Mandates
The 3 mandates are as follows:
- See things as they are not worse than they are
- See it better than it is
- Make it the way you see it
Most Australian personal trainers who see their businesses taking a downturn and stuttering along can take the above lessons and start to fix their problems, if they choose.
I have always loved the quote ““If you think you can or you can’t, you’re probably right…” and this ties in with what we are talking about in the 3 mandates.
Of course it’s referring to the mindset and attitude. If we have a negative mindset then things will always look black; if we have a positive mindset it will look bright. The choice is in our control.
See Things As They Are Not Worse Than They Are
If the problems of your personal training business are that your clients are difficult to hold onto and you always seem to be too tired to take the necessary steps to build your business, because you’re working all the hours God gives you already, then let’s see that situation for what it is.
Firstly, it’s certainly not the end of the world and you’re not alone with this problem; many PTs experience the same, including myself in the past.
Next, understanding that your problems can be fixed and it’s not that difficult, is an important realisation that eludes all the nay-sayers who “think they can’t.”
Don’t over blow your problems as it will take others around you down too and don’t make excuses– normally it just takes some clarity and some direction to start taking steps; remember that your realisation of the problem is the first step to solving it.
Congratulations! You’ve just uncovered an opportunity, not a problem!
See It Better Than It Is
The opportunity you’ve uncovered can now be visualized; visions are what separates the leaders from the pack and you have recognised what is wrong – now imagine what it would like ideally.
Leaders focus on what they want and are not bound by the fear of failure; they do not linger long on what is wrong.
How would your business be designed, given all the time and money was made available to you? Would you have your own gym with 10 personal trainers working with you, fully booked and loving every moment of it? What would you be doing? Would you have more spare time to enjoy the fruits of your hard work? Would you travel more or spend more time with your family?
That’s what you’re aiming for – it’s important to have a vision and to see where you want to go; it will inspire others on your team to follow you; then it’s time to take the steps to get there.
Make It The Way You See It
This is the step that separates you from the mere “dreamer”; dreamers get stuck in the imaginary world, but successful people make that imaginary world happen with a series of actionable, concrete steps.
The steps are the final but most important part of making it happen. Remember if you “think you can” you’re probably right. Thinking you can will lead you and those around you to finding the necessary steps and taking them.
The human mind! What a wonderful thing…so much in this world comes down to your own attitude; we as personal trainers love to have mastery over the body, but it’s only half the story – how about we spend some time mastering our own psychology too?
Then we can actually create and achieve our visions of running successful Australian fitness businesses!
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The Grinch That Stole Your Fitness Business
Learn how to be a happy fitness elf at Christmas
While most Australian business owners have got the smell of turkey in their nostrils and are planning celebrations over the Christmas and New Year period are you wondering why the Grinch has stolen your fitness business and how you’ll cope with the impending lack of work?
Where’s The Work Gone?
It can be a challenging time for personal trainers and others in the fitness industry because, being peak holiday time for many Australians, clients often go away for a few weeks.
Others tune out of the “get fit” mindset to let their hair down or do some well-earned vegetating; some clients want to save money for the expensive upcoming holiday season, so fitness gets put on the “back burner”; and people put things off until the New Year, so referrals and new leads also slow down too.
Then, of course there are the clients who want try “something new” for the New Year and may not come back to you at all!
Yes, your business can really take a hammering from all angles as things grind to a halt!
If you’ve already engineered your business to a point where you can well afford to take a break and enjoy the holiday season, with the peace of mind that your clients will all be back in a couple of weeks, that’s great. Congratulations!
For the rest of you, there are a few things you can do immediately to help the situation and there are some longer-term strategies that you can look at, so that your business doesn’t suffer next Christmas and New Year period.
What Can You Do Now?
It’s not Christmas yet; there’s still time to keep the Grinch from the door, with a few of these steps:
- If you haven’t already done so, make sure you send out Christmas/New Year cards to your clients congratulating them on all their hard work and the results they achieved this year; reminding them that you’re eagerly awaiting to help them with further progress after the break.
- Pre-book clients in for their first session in the New Year – even offer a New Year’s discount if they are wavering; you may have to tempt them back into their routine after the excesses of the break!
- Make plans for the year ahead to let them know you’ll still be around and are expecting BIG things from them! Make a What’s On guide with suggested special events so that they have something to plan ahead for and look forward to.
- Present a weight loss challenge in the New Year – many clients will be feeling guilty about how much they ate! Let them know they can “bank” their guilt with you and you can help them work the fat off again!
What Can You Do Long-Term?
Long term, you should look at additional revenue streams for your business so that you’re not solely dependent upon client bookings affected by holidays; ideally you want to be in a position that you are looking forward to the holiday break after a year of hard work, not worrying about making ends meet.
We have talked about this before: take a look at your business and get thinking about how you can make extra revenue – from info product or supplementary products to your personal training business; maybe in the exercise field or related health and beauty fields – whatever can generate income when the PT side of your business experiences downtime.
Follow our weekly blog articles for more great tips and coaching on running your Australian fitness business and developing yourself as a PT business owner.
No Matter Where You Go, There You Are!
You cannot hide from you!
Think about that for a second – no matter where you go, there you are!
This simple truth is often missed by many fitness professionals – who seem to think part of their fitness regime is to endlessly run away from their problems!
That’s like trying to hide from yourself and we all know how successful you’ll be with that venture! Unchecked problems have a nasty habit of catching you up and overtaking you.
The reverse mindset is one for success; we always teach our personal trainers to take personal responsibility for their actions, face problems head on without fear or procrastination and to be accountable.
What You Resist Will Persist
This mantra can be applied to many walks of life, physically, emotionally and mentally. Physically when we resist something we are creating an energy that can intensify the very pain we are trying to avoid.
Mentally and emotionally, when we resist something it can result in the very characteristics that intensify our fears and make our problems worse: impatience, stubbornness, anger, guilt, shame, arrogance, procrastination.
These universally negative characteristics impact our state of mind and can create energetic stresses that affect our physical body long after we stop feeling the emotion– negative energy can be stored by the body and can manifest itself in sickness or disease.
We need to get into the habit of not resisting but facing up to our problems, fears and feelings; we will see big improvements in our life once we learn to recognise problems, deal with them and then let them go, rather than being fearful of them, dwelling on them, resisting them and creating all the negative energy that goes along with this.
Accountability
Once we learn to let go like this, tackling our problems becomes much more natural to us, because we identify them as only temporary states rather than permanent obstacles.
This makes us more accountable for our actions, starts to free us up to focus more on our long-term goals without the constant niggles in the backs of our mind that preoccupy our time and energy.
This mindset also allows us to break our goals down into actionable steps – which makes us far more likely to actually achieve them.
Avoidance of Avoidance
A key part of accountability is not to avoid doing what needs to be done; too many of us will make excuses (to ourselves!) why we didn’t do something rather than being accountable and getting it done.
Again we are trying to hide from ourselves here and it will come back to bite us in the shape of guilt or shame. This is our conscience reminding ourselves what we should have done and it creates negative energy again; other people may instead blame others and take on the “victim mentality”
Avoiding the “Victim” Mentality
I’m sure you’ve met people who think the world is against them. These are classic cases of avoiding accountability for actions. They are the opposite of what we are trying to achieve – someone with this mindset will be angry towards others and will never achieve the life they want; they take the easy path of blaming others for their woes.
Final Words
We have actually touched on several interconnected subjects here – acceptance of oneself, personal responsibility and accountability, facing problems without fear and achieving our goals.
It all starts with each fitness professional having the courage to create a mindset of being accountable for his or her actions; this will help you tackle all the hurdles in your personal and business lives and will see you flourish.
After all, the buck always stops with you and it’s your face that always looks back at you when you look in the mirror!
How Priority Management Saves You From Majoring in The Minor
Priority management - get the big rocks in the jar first!
If you are a fitness professional who regularly spends your days running around – busy, busy, busy – feeling like you’re getting somewhere, only for the truth to hit you at the end of the day that you are no further ahead, try introducing some priority management into your daily diet!
Here we look at how procrastinating over the major things and mis-prioritising the minor things can be two of the most harmful and limiting things you do for you and your business.
Procrastination
One of the main reasons for not achieving our potential is delaying doing what we need to do to get there.
Why would we possibly do that?
Because of fear; because inaction is easier than action most of the time; because we think we don’t have time; because we spend time doing what we want to do rather than what we need to do; or because we are not recognising the importance of the action to our life … we have not managed our priorities well enough.
Some of the side-effects of procrastination include:
- Stress – things that need to be done, but are delayed, sit inside us like a dark energy that hangs over our every mood. Remove this energy and we will feel less stressed.
- Poor focus and concentration – if we are constantly thinking about something that needs doing then how can we concentrate on what we are doing now?
- Lack of Satisfaction – when we know we should have done something but have put it off, it eats away at us and we don’t feel satisfied. Compare this with the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction we feel by doing something we know has value and benefit.
Often you will find the fear building the longer you procrastinate; then when you get round to doing the thing you should have done last month you ask yourself why you didn’t do it before; it wasn’t that bad!
As soon as we prioritise what we need to do and realise that there is more fear and pain associated with the actual procrastination than with the task or action we need to be doing, then all the reasons to delay disappear.
Priority Management
Priority management helps you major in the major things!
To use Steven Covey’s analogy of putting rocks in the bottle – we select all the big rocks first and get them into the bottle, because all the smaller rocks can be added afterwards and will fill up the space around the big rocks; if we do it the other way around, we don’t have space for the big rocks – and that’s what leads to unproductive days and a feeling that we are running round in circles.
Personal Empowerment
What are the big rocks in your life and your business? Work that out and you are already on the road to managing your time better.
Combine this with the realisation that delaying putting the big rocks in the bottle will only cause more stress and dissatisfaction in your life, and you are in a really powerful position to move forward.
In fact, when people start prioritising and making space in their days for all the important stuff, the smaller stuff is often seen as unnecessary; more large priorities are created, so you get to the situation where more of your actions are working on the important areas – this is where you really start to take off and fulfill your potential; productivity improves in all areas of life and business.
Summary
Don’t forget that your priorities remain fluid and can be changed; regularly re-assessing what areas need to be worked on will keep driving you on to better things.
Remember, priority management is not about replacing the things you like doing with what you should be doing; it’s about you recognising and taking pleasure in the most important things in your life, breaking your longer-term goals down into action steps to help you get there and bringing you a heightened sense of achievement, fulfillment and happiness.
Share some of your procrastination and priority management experiences with us below – good and bad – come on, don’t delay!
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