Increase Members with Zen Planner’s Prospect Funnel

You have the best program in town. Your website is optimized for SEO and when someone searches for a fitness business online, your gym is always at the top of the page. Every month, dozens of prospects fill out your online lead capture forms. But those prospects aren’t walking through the doors to sign up and business growth hit a plateau.

If this sounds familiar, you aren’t alone. There is a lot of the helpful content available online that is completely focused on marketing your business and putting your information in front of people who are looking for the right fitness business to fit their needs. But the majority of those prospects who raise their hand to say they are interested aren’t going to walk through the doors without a little encouragement. So how do you bridge the gap between prospect and client?

The most successful fitness businesses, regardless of their specialty, have one thing in common when it comes to converting those prospects into members: a prospect follow process that is set in stone and followed all the way through for every person that shows interest.

Regardless of specific terminology, that process almost always follows the same steps and is broken up into three parts after the person enters your system as a prospect:

1. Initial reach out attempts to schedule a no-commitment appointment
2. Schedule, confirm and send reminders for the appointment
3. After the appointment, reach out to prospects who didn’t sign up for a final decision

Each of those steps should have a set number of maximum reach out attempts in the form of phone calls, emails and text messages focused on the the goal of each step. Zen Planner offers a fully customizable prospect funnel that can fully automate your process making sure that no prospect is left behind. Emails and texts can be timed and sent without lifting a finger and call reminders can populate based on a prescheduled process.

If those maximum number of attempts are made for a prospect during any of those steps, it’s time to move on and focus your attention on the new prospects who continue to funnel in through your different marketing channels. In recent years, modern communication methods, online marketing and telemarketers definitely changed the consumer mindset. According to HubSpot, it took on average 3.68 call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes between 8-10.

Paul Lucero used to spend hours every day working on manually following up with prospective students at Ludwig Martial Arts. After utilizing Zen Planner’s prospect funnel, Lucero not only saves time, but also has doubled their lead volume. “Implementing the prospect funnel saves me an hour and a half every day. I recommend Zen Planner to all of our affiliates,” say Lucero.

Remember, numbers don’t lie. Measuring the success of your prospect funnel starts with following it for every prospect. If you aren’t seeing the results you are looking for, experiment with reach out methods, volume and timing. Just like any type of fitness training, results won’t be seen unless follow a plan to get there.

Looking for additional marketing advice? Get your copy of our 10-Step Marketing Guide for Fitness Businesses.