I had my first 30-day period of well over 100K in gross contracts. This isn’t my EFT projection for the year – it’s all paid in full sales. 70K of that was immediate cash on hand sales. We did so well that e-onlinedata shut down my cart for a few days because I forgot to respond to their calls. And when you add in actual paper cash, and the value of the contracts in recurring revenue to come, we crushed the 100K mark. Now keep in mind that this was between both my bootcamp locations.
What’s good about it is that it wasn’t because of any single promotion. It was the sales through the normal operations of the bootcamps. Yes, I have tons of overhead and a big, high-paid staff. But I’ve been beating every month’s numbers and bringing in tons of new members. I know there are a lot of hater types floating around online, so one of these days I’m going to show you some hard figures backing this up. Why? Because after so long about talking about how cool I am, I feel like over the past year I’ve proved it, and I’m kind of feeling myself. I remember once buying a fitness guru’s info product because he showed proof of how he did something like 90K in sales in a little over a month. What’s funny is I use absolutely none of the hard-selling sit-down tactics in his tape. Over here we’re more like Frank Kern, with a “buy my shit” attitude. We promise the world, but then once they’re in, we back it up. We also form a community, something which I’m getting better at doing every day.
I’m also dialing in my promotions, finding out what doesn’t work and what does. I’ve tried anything and everything, and have finally found a good mix of promotions that saves me a lot of money and is bringing me big returns. One of the biggest sources of new clients has been internal promotions for new members. The other has been my recent promotions on daily deal sites. I’ve put them both together into what I’m going to talk to you about today.
It took me a while to get on the daily deal sites and I grew my business without them. But as of late, I started to use them and I’m a big, big believer. I know a lot of folks talked about how they suck, how giving away a month or three weeks of boot camp for $50, and considering you have to share 40% or 50% of the money with the company, doesn’t sound too appealing.
In my opinion it is, and here’s why: because it brings you in leads, qualified leads, that are paying at least a little money which means they are more prone to pay again, and nearly 1/3 never show up. About half of those that do show up drop out after the first week. Whoever’s left are very strong potential customers. So in that way, you’re actually seeing a lot more money per person than you’d think. I consider it advertising that YOU get paid to do.
But the earnings and deals from the daily deal doesn’t end after the client shows up. If you play your cards right, the process never ends. If you sell 100 daily deals, you could end up getting more than 200 paid leads. Let me show you how.
It all starts with a packet I give to each daily deal member (or any new member period, for that matter) that comes in. First of all, I make this packet look very attractive. Even though our product is fitness, which is an intangible product, whenever someone gives me money, I like to give them something tangible. In my opinion, there’s something mental about the fact that they pay you money and they walk away with something in their hands. Again, in my opinion, I think this takes away from buyer’s remorse and also creates more value in the mind of the consumer.
A lot of what I do is just based on my understanding of human engineering. If you study Gary Halbert’s work, that’s a term that he uses over and over again. Trying to understand and get into human engineering: how people think, why they do what they do, what their hot buttons are, and most importantly, why they buy. I study as much marketing as I do and try as much shit as I do just to understand human engineering even more.
So first off, I make this a good looking packet. It’s a large, crisp, white envelope with an attractive label on it. Everything I do, I try to do with style.
Inside each packet goes a Cliff bar. Cliff bars are delicious, they pose as healthy, and I feel they result in a warm, fuzzy feelings that they feel in their stomach. I’m engaging as many of their senses as possible.
There’s a welcome letter. In the welcome letter I tell them about the program, what to expect, and how our memberships work.
The way this perpetuates into new leads is through the five passes I include in each one for them to give out to their friends and family. This pass offers the same promotion that they joined on, but this time, I get to keep all the money. You’d be surprised how many times people bring in people on these passes. Every Living Social person I bring in might bring in two or three more friends with them. And guess what, those people get the Living Social packet too, so the process goes on and on. It really never ends.
From one Living Social lead in extreme cases I’ve gotten over ten paid prospects because of this referral engine. How? Because she brought four people in, one of her people brought three people in, one of them brought two people in, and so on.
Also in here is a measurement voucher. Sure, we have measurements as part of our program like I’m sure you do, but this just makes it look like it’s a little more important. It creates a feeling of value around the service, instead of something simple that’s being given out for free.
Also inside is a t-shirt voucher. In my opinion, this is a lot cooler than just giving them a free shirt. It creates involvement. And our shirts look real cool, people love them, and I feel it bonds them more to the business. We sell the shirts, and do sell quite a few of them. We make a lot of additional specialty gear like tank tops, tight legging type pants, and booty shorts that we sell too.
Also, I have a sample price for our two top-selling programs, our 6 month and our 12 month program. This is a technique that I got from Sam. He told me how it’s important to present your consumers with your prices at the point of sale, just to prepare them. I agree. Even though I haven’t given any value to the member yet, I like to hit them with the full price just to get their mind prepared for what’s to come.
I know in some people, getting the price this early creates sticker shock. This is okay because they’re at the start of their deal, and are going to have to ride out with it whether they like it or not. What I hope ends up happening is that once they start the program, they find the price is very justified.
Then the last thing I have is our schedule, which is very important for the members to have. I want to make sure that they have it at all times. .
So there you go. That’s one way that I give everyone a very warm, very fuzzy feeling when they come in from a daily deal. This envelope gives them all of the info they need, a lot of cool prizes, and immediately gives me a way to get more and more referrals from them.
If you think we’re in the fitness business you’re wrong. We’re in the business of making people feel good emotions. At one point does that end? Is it only the training? Is it the environment? Is it the other members? Is it YOUR energy? Is it YOUR appearance? I think it never ends and anything you can do to add more value to the experience is going to increase your conversions and your sales. That’s how I feel a welcome packet contributes to that experience.
Now this packet is in no way complete. There are a few things that should and will be added such as testimonials, social proof such as news clipping, etc. All of those things will build more trust and increase conversions, and I’m working on adding them in.
One thing that I don’t do enough of is track, so I can’t give you any hard figures on exactly how many members per new client this type of promotion gives me. One of the reasons I don’t track all that much is because when a tactic is bringing me floods of clients to the point where I can’t handle them, I don’t feel the need to go back and count the nickels and dimes. If you chose to, take my word this tactic is huge, brings me tons of new leads, and it if you do something like this at your boot camp or fitness business, it’s going to do the same for you.
wow i’ve got to admit I am impressed. Definitely going to be implementing some of this during my groupon deal that’s running this Memorial day.
Excellent post Kaiser, thank you. I’m going to implement this this week.
Awesome stuff Kaiser. Congrats bro on all your success!
That pretty genius Kaiser, love the idea of the packet, do you think it would work better than say a welcome book? pretty much the same thing put all together – I think the packet idea where it’s all spread out would work much better…
Thanks for sharing
John.
Awesome Post! Great info.Thanks
Awesome post Kaiser…understanding of human engineering is a talent…and thanks for sharing
This really good! I love the bring your friends in at the discount rate, the cash up front, and the vouchers! One question on the vouchers though…Can you explain the redemption process?
We do orientations very similar to this with added goal setting, nutrition plan, cardio blueprint, referral program, foam rolling tutorial, body fat testing, weight, measurements, and take them through the mobility warm-up…having the voucher for the BF and measurements would be great but we don’t have time to meet individually with so many people. We do this in our PT section of our business…they meet with an in-house registered dietitan but the Bootcamp floods with people when we do promotions.
Anyone have ideas on how we could take this idea and make it work?