How to Get Your Leads to Walk Through the Door
A Step-by-step Guide for Fitness Businesses to Convert More Leads with a Bonus Follow-up Worksheet
Good news – your marketing worked! You have a new lead’s email address! That’s a great start. Now you need to get your lead to walk through the door. To do that, you’ll need to convert the lead from cold to warm. Upon initial entry into your sales funnel, most leads are cold. Regular communication and well-timed, informative content can warm up a lead, but you have to strike the right balance.
Too many calls, texts, and emails, and the lead could immediately unsubscribe. Too little and they might disappear.
You also want to adjust your content and level of engagement depending on how the lead discovered you.
Leads that opt in via your website and have been regularly opening your emails are warmer than leads that entered through a Facebook ad. Leads who purposely find you are more qualified because their need has brought them to you. Your job is to encourage those warm leads to make an appointment and to communicate regularly with cold leads to make them warm.
In this guide, we can show you how to do both! We’ll cover:
- The importance of responding quickly
- How to get to know your lead
- How to handle questions about pricing
- Tracking your communication When and how to follow up
- A new lead follow-up worksheet to audit your current follow-up efforts.
STEP #1: Respond Quickly
Before communicating, check a lead’s temperature by seeing how familiar they are with your gym. What was their funnel of entry? Are they engaging with automated content? Where are they in the sales funnel? (Within Zen Planner, we track emails opened and the links clicked.) It’s also a good idea to look through any previous SMS history or manual communications.
- With cold leads, your goal is to keep teaching them about your gym. You are winning if the lead asks for more information.
- With warm leads, your goal is to get them to come into your gym. You are winning if the lead asks to book an appointment.
Regardless of their entry funnel and temperature, you should always communicate with leads in a timely fashion. Try scheduling a phone call within 12 to 24 hours after hearing from a lead. If you can respond instantly, even better. Ideally, you want to catch them while they’re feeling the emotions they felt when they reached out. Offer to answer any questions they may have to demonstrate your care and attention. This initial response could either stop or move your lead further down the funnel. Being both timely and attentive is important if you want to keep the conversation going and move forward.
Why so quick?
- You know where they are. It’s called “presence detection.” If they just came in via your website, they are probably still on their phone or computer.
- You are still on their mind. It’s called “top-of-mind-awareness.” Do you remember what websites you were on two days ago?
- You have a WOW effect. Responding promptly creates the impression that you care and are attentive. These are two attributes most people want from a gym.
STEP #2: Get To Know Your Lead
Find out your lead’s goals and challenges and ask deliberate questions to determine if there’s a fit between their fitness situation and what you offer. Then make an honest assessment.
Pro Tip
- Try “Would it be okay to ask you a few quick questions first to make sure that what we offer would be a good fit for you?”
- From here, you can nurture the conversation by asking questions like: “What are you currently doing for your fitness?” (Are they already paying for a gym membership?)
- “What are your goals, and how will you feel when you accomplish those goals?” (How can you help them?)
- “What is your biggest obstacle?” (Is it time vs. financial?)
STEP #3: Focus On the Solution
Ultimately, when communicating with a lead, you want to reinforce the idea that you’re offering a solution to their problem. Focus on showing them value versus selling an everyday gym membership.
Answering the Pricing Question
One of the trickiest conversations to navigate is when a lead asks for your gym’s pricing. The good news is this means you have a legitimate warm lead! But before giving them a straight-up answer, consider how you can further nurture this question to get them in your door to learn more. The first emotion they have when hearing your pricing (while still being uneducated on how your gym can truly help them) may be enough to turn them away before you have a chance to tell them how your gym can help them reach their goals.
You can approach this situation in a few different ways. It may be wisest to give them the cost per day versus the cost per class. A lead coming from a cheaper, globo-gym scenario may react better to a price-per-day membership. A lead coming from a more expensive, small-group fitness scenario may have a better reaction to hearing the price per class. Thinking about how a lead will feel when they hear the pricing is key. Always emphasize the value of the membership, showing the lead all they’ll get for their monthly (or daily) fee.
Pro Tip: Answering the Pricing Question
Ultimately, when communicating with a lead, you want to reinforce the idea that you’re offering a solution to their problem. Focus on showing them value versus selling an everyday gym membership. If they reply the cost is too high, try something like: “I completely understand, we all have to work within a budget. But there is a difference between a purchase and an investment. With a purchase, your value tends to go down. With an investment, your value is returned to you. Your health should be an investment, and we can help you deliver a return on it. It makes sense to invest in yourself, don’t you agree?”
STEP #4: Track Your Communication
If you fail to pique the lead’s interest and engage the prospect in a conversation regarding a pain point, they will turn cold. If, over and over, you detect annoyance, or if you’re constantly being interrupted by the question “How much is it?” you’ll want to reevaluate your communication.
It could be something you’re saying is causing your leads to shut down. By tracking your touchpoints, you can refine your communication process. Check in with all communication efforts to see what trends are working (engaged leads) versus what tactics are losing their interest (disengaged leads).
STEP # 5: Following Up with Leads
You don’t want to run the risk of your lead brushing you off, so use a set communication schedule with a tested and proven cadence. Most people give up on leads too soon. Email is something you have to do properly, and is the backbone, but phone calls and texts are the secret to high conversion rates. A recent study showed 77 percent of leads never received a phone call. At Zen Planner, we nurture your active leads for 21 days. During that time, we have nine touchpoints. This might be more touchpoints than you’re comfortable with, but it’s essential to follow up early and often.
The worst mistake you can make is completely neglecting to follow up. As high as 78 percent of customers buy from the first responder, 80 percent of sales are made after at least five follow-ups, and 92 percent of salespeople give up by the fifth follow-up. We know that 22 percent of conversions across all Zen Planner accounts happen after the two-week mark. According to a recent study by the Harvard Business Review, 71 percent of qualified leads never receive any type of follow-up. This represents a missed opportunity (and revenue)!
Bonus Tips: Lead Engagement & Communication
Tip One: When to Communicate
Rapid follow-up is essential, but did you know sometimes of the day and certain days of the week are more effective when responding to leads? Here are some useful statistics on timing from Dr. James Oldroyd from the School of Management at Northwestern University:
- Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call (by 49.7 percent over the worst day)
- The best times to call a lead are between 4 and 6pm (114 percent over the worst time, right after lunch)
- The best times to call to qualify a lead or set an appointment are between 8 to 9am and 4 to 5pm (164 percent better than 1 to 2pm, the worst time)
- The odds of calling to contact a lead decrease by over 10 times in the first hour
- The odds of calling to qualify a lead decrease by over six times in the first hour
- After 20 hours, every additional dial your salespeople make actually hurts your ability to make contact to qualify a lead
Attempting to call after 20 hours may result in a negative response. Instead, can you warm your lead up with a different form of communication other than the phone? What other approaches can you try after 20 hours?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, it’s important to know that after 20 hours every additional call may actually be hurting your outreach efforts. This trend is noteworthy when creating your follow-up framework!
So, the sooner the better! Imagine Sam comes into your funnel on a day you are in the office (with no fires) and gets a call back in 30 minutes. Now imagine Julie comes into your funnel on a day you’re busy with multiple fires from coaching, picking up kids, and even an unexpected vet visit. You finally remember to call her three days later.
Your odds of converting Julie are now several thousand times less than with Sam! Having a new lead framework in place, or at the very least employing methods of automation, is important so that no lead is left behind. (Our obsession with this topic created one of Zen Planner’s mottos: #noleadleftbehind).
If Julie searched “gyms near me,” she probably contacted up to half a dozen gyms in the area. If you wait three days, she could already be working out somewhere else, or at least have a consult scheduled. According to a study by Lead Connect, 78 percent of customers buy from the business that responds to their inquiry first. The longer you wait, the more likely your lead will not only get left behind, but it will also get picked up!
Tip Two: Be Ready for Rapid Fire
To connect with new leads right away, you are going to need automation, either in the form of a text or an email alert that notifies you or your staff of a new lead. Automated emails aren’t necessarily going to get your lead in for a consultation, but they will buy you some time before you can get in contact with them personally. Make sure the automated content has an easy-to-use and highly visible self scheduler call-to-action so the lead can book their appointment even without you!
Even more data:
- 80 percent of sales are made after at least five follow-ups
- 92 percent of salespeople give up by the fifth follow-up
- 22 percent of conversions across all Zen Planner accounts happen after the two-week mark
By immediately send an auto response email saying “Thank you” it:
- Communicates to the lead that you received their information
- Allows you to set expectations with the lead
- Gives you a chance to set your gym’s “voice” or communication style
- Offers additional information about your gym and why you may be the best fit
- Indicates that you are keeping up with today’s customer experience standards
Next Steps
Convert Your Leads
Attracting leads through marketing, advertising, and word of mouth is important, but to grow your business you need to convert those leads into members. Our guide to getting leads to walk through your door will help you implement a system to ensure no leads are left behind.
Once you know how to follow up quickly, how to answer questions about pricing, and how to track your communication, you’re set up to make leads feel welcome and confident about becoming a member. Try it out and see how your conversion rates improve!
After you convert your leads, don’t stop there! You want those new members to stick around for years, bringing friends and family to your gym along the way. Something that involved and long range sounds overwhelming — and exhausting — but the key to converting leads and retaining members comes down to one simple strategy: consistent messaging and regular, targeted communication.
How Can Zen Planner Help
Knowing the information is one thing, but finding the time and resources to implement it is another, and it’s here that many business owners falter. We’ve found very few gym owners have the time it takes to maximize the value of their leads while also building loyal relationships with their members and winning back former members.
That’s where we come in!
At Zen Planner, we can help you save time and build your business with bulletproof marketing strategies backed by world-class software, training, and support. To learn more about how Zen Planner can grow your gym, book a free demo to see if we’re a good fit.
Schedule Your Free Demo!
About the Author: Zen Planner
