Leads, Conversions, Service, Testimonies and Repeat!
- By Brian Keane
This Is How You Build Your Business.
Where are you customers coming from? How many that enquire are actually signing up with you? How many love your service? How many recommend your service to others? If you can answer those four questions, then you will be able to grow any business from this point forward.
As someone who has worked in the fitness industry for years and now as a consultant for personal trainers, self-employed business owners and entrepreneurs, the similarities between fitness and business is staggering.
To get somebody in shape: be it leaner, fitter, faster, bigger, stronger etc. – first you fix the persons diet, then you adjust their training program and afterwards you focus on their recovery and sleep. Finally, you may add in some supplements if you think it will benefit them. Business is exactly the same!
Instead of focusing on diet, you focus on your lead
generation.
Instead of focusing on training, you focus on converting those leads to paying clients.
Instead of recovery, you focus on providing a great
service in order to build up a portfolio of testimonies or even a word of mouth
referral scheme (based on your business model of course). But it’s the same thing!
We know as fitness or health professionals that random training and random eating = random results.
Random lead
generation strategies and random conversion techniques alongside random services
and testimony systems = random business results.
If you do things randomly in fitness or health, you get overweight or unfit. If you do random things in your business, you go out of business!
It’s not all bad news though. The good news is that building your business is relatively straightforward and simple. It’s not necessarily that easy because you still have to apply it to your personality type and individual business model; but it is pretty simple.
I call it The 5 Step Approach For Building Your Business and it works regardless of what industry you’re. The tactics i.e. your customer group, your location, your pricing point etc. might be different but the strategy is the same.
In my business seminar, I go into much more detail on this topic. I limit my business builder seminars to 20 people for this reason. I use the businesses in the room on the day as examples; but here’s a best practice approach that you can apply straight away to your own business.
1. Leads
Some people call this stage ‘enquires’ but to be honest, they are more or less the same thing. To understand leads better, just ask the question, where are you potential customers hearing about you?
After that, its about them establishing if you are the person that can help them with their problem or pain point. For example, somebody overweight needs help with diet and training. Personal trainers or nutritionist have the solution to that problem.
One of the reasons that podcast, blogs and social media can be so effective for lead generation is that they bridge the gap between the customer thinking ‘I have a problem I need help with’ and ‘this person is the guy or girl who can help me’. Your job in business is to constantly bridge that gap.
Lead generation
comes in so many different forms as I mentioned: podcasts, social media, blogs,
word of mouth, testimonies (see point 4), amongst others.
However, the key is to get very clear on who it is that you are trying to serve. Afterward, you just have to find where they focus most of their attention and then put your message in front on them via that channel. If this is something you struggle with check out a past blog Using quality content to build your business and social media following. Part one of that blog talks about the importance of finding your avatar i.e. your perfect customer so you know where to prioritise your lead generation strategy.
2. Conversions
The next step is your actual conversion on those leads. How many of the people who have enquired about your service or product have actually bought or signed up?
Lets do some simple math to show you the importance of high conversions.
Sample program price €100
100 leads,
5 people sign up = €500
20 leads,
15 people sign up = €1500
I’ve spoken on my business podcast about the ‘quality’ of your leads (normally in relation to followers on social media) compared to the ‘quantity’. Your conversion or ‘quality’ numbers don’t lie. Focus on the quality of your leads, not just the quantity.
This is
also one of the reasons why some social media influencers still live at home
with their parents. They have huge amounts of leads (normally because they look
great themselves) and get a lot of people enquiring about their services etc. but
very low conversion due to not understanding their demographic or potential
market. Remember, high level of leads + low conversion = low revenue. Low of lead leads + high conversion = high
revenue.
Conversion strategies
vary business to business. Some work better with a written sales copy (largely
what I do with an online business), others with a conversion phone call or a 1:1 meet up prior
to the customer signing (this what I did when I worked as a €100 per hour
Personal Trainer).
Find what
works best for you and you business and then double down on it.
3. Service (or product)
This is the
simplest of all to explain. How good are you at what you do? If you provide a
great service that helps people get from A to Z, then you’re 99% there in this
area.
4. Testimonies
The next simplest step is to follow up on your great service with a testimony or even a word of mouth referral. If you provide a great service, you’ll create what I can ‘superfans’ – people who tell everybody how great you are and what you do.
That comes
down to the bread of butter basics of being good at your craft. Again, you may
want to include some incentive scheme to get people to give you testimonies,
but that comes down to your current business model once again.
One thing is clear though, a good testimony will get you more leads than any Facebook or Instagram ad ever could. People listen to other people and people buy from people who are like them. If Sarah lost 50 pounds working with you, its safe to say that John or Mary who live beside her will be asking about you as they have the exact same problem.
5. Repeat
And repeat.
That’s it.
From now until the day you leave, sell or retire from your business, this is how it will go. True, the lead generation strategy may change based on public attention or technological advancement and you may be testing and tweaking your conversion techniques for the next six months; but once you get this 5 steps dialled in, its just about refining it from there.
It’s like perfecting the squat or deadlift. The first time you ever did those movements, you probably had to start with just the bar but gradually you increased the weight as you refined the movement. You may even change up the angle from time to time– front squats, kettlebells squats, sumo deadlifts etc. but you always come back to the bread and butter basics.
Your leads, conversions, service, testimony and repeat are your bread and butter. Get that right and not only will your business survive, it will thrive as well.
My next full day business seminar is in The Clayton Hotel in Galway on Saturday 7th September. For more information or to get your tickets, click the link above.
Lyndsey Barnwell
“Loved this seminar! I literally gained so much from it and was buzzing to get
to work to make changes. I had the cost
of the seminar made back with my very first
change to my day to day workings! Reccomond it to anyone!”
Shane Walsh “Couldn’t recommend this highly enough. Brian goes through your business and makes recommendations that work. He’s changed my business both on the online side and the facet to face side. The fact that he has put his recommendations into practice himself, you know they work!”
