Seven Sales Tips to Acquiring a High-Value Client

SEVEN SALES TIPS TO ACQUIRING A HIGH-VALUE CLIENT

When it comes to money, people are weird.

Or at least everyone’s relationship with money is slightly different, and things often get weird when you’re trying to convince someone to give you money.

Like it or not, if you are going to become a successful fitness coach, you’re in sales, so you might as well embrace this fact and get as good at it as you can.

But before we get into the sales tips, let’s consider what we mean by selling high-value clients (as the title of this article suggests):

By high-value, we mean clients who pay $300 or more, where they receive a premium service from a professional coach they have a real relationship with. A coach who knows the client’s wants, needs, training and health history, goals, priorities (ie what’s really going on in the person’s life).

Six Sales Tips from Madlab Professional Coaches (who earn six figures)

1. What are you Selling?

One of the big mistakes coaches make is focusing on their gym’s features and benefits with a prospect, rather than on what they’re actually selling.

For someone to put their trust in your hands and pay $300 a month, what you’re selling is a personalized relationship with a coach who can offer coaching that will help solve problems that the client has. That’s why they reached out to you in the first place: They have problems, or pain, and they want those solved.

In the Madlab system, the client is essentially receiving an individualized solution in a room full of people who have similar lifestyles, values and goals.

2. One-on-One

The prospect’s first day absolutely needs to be done in a one-on-one environment with one coach and one prospect, where the bulk of the time (or even the entire time) is spent chatting, conversing, and figuring out through honest dialogue whether you’re a good fit.

Nobody is going to open up about their real fears, issues, motivations or apprehensions if they’re tossed right into a group workout…

The main goal of this first one-on-one consultation should be to find out WHY the person is there, discovering their problem or pain, and showing them you have a solution to their problem. (and if you don’t have a solution, you should be the first to admit it and refer them elsewhere).

Do this and you’ll watch your close rate go through the roof.

3. Change Your Mindset About Sales

Change the way you think about sales, and the whole game will change for you.

Sales don’t have to be slimy or uncomfortable or weird. Instead, it is a conversation between two people to get to the bottom of something—to discover if you have a solution to the other person’s problem. Yes or No.

Adopting this mindset takes the pressure off and allows the sales conversation to be a natural, organic conversation between two human beings.

4. Set Your Expectations At The Start

To avoid the cowardly, ‘I’ll think about it,’ line at the end of the introductory session with a prospect, make it very clear that your expectation is to receive a yes or no answer by the end.

To avoid the person getting to the end of the consultation and telling you they need to ask their spouse, consider asking, Is there anyone else who needs to be involved in this decision before you meet with them. If there is, reschedule for a time where both people can be present to make the decision together and give you a hard yes or no at the end.

There’s nothing worse than the line, ‘I’ll get back to you.’ If someone tells you this, you know you have done absolutely nothing to create a trusting, open environment where the person feels comfortable telling you the truth.

You’re not going to sell everyone, but you can create an environment where the person looks you in the eye and clearly says YES or NO to training with you.

5. Ask The Tough Questions To Find Their Pain

Finding out the prospect’s wants and needs isn’t just discovering the person wants to “lose weight” or “get more fit.” Dig a little deeper than that to find out what’s really driving them.

The key here is to ask as many questions as possible and never shy away from asking the tough ones. The moment the person opens up as she tells you her daughter won’t let her watch her granddaughter alone because she’s overweight and out of shape and can’t be trusted to look after a 3-year-old is the moment you know you have a new client.

Don’t beat around the bush: Find out each person’s real, vulnerable story, and you’ll lay the foundation for a trusting, long-lasting coach-client relationship, where you can actually help the person reach their goals.

A side note on goals: Your goals for the person in front of you don’t matter. Theirs do. Your opinion of fitness is likely very different from theirs. Meet the person where they are at, and look at where THEY want to be. Knowing their experience and expectations tells you where you can be valuable to them as a coach.

6. Acknowledge Weirdness

Sometimes the moment you tell the prospect the price, they recoil and get weird. Like asking the tough questions, what’s stopping you from acknowledging this by asking them why their energy just changed?

Address the elephant in the room—that weird look in the prospect’s eyes—and call them on it. Ask them what just shifted for them, why they just became hesitant.

Or, if the person openly expresses concern about the price, ask, ‘Is price the only thing that matters?’

This puts it all out there in the open and gives you the chance to explain what you do to help show value to the client regarding why your rates are what they are. If they value what you’re offering and you can show them a solution to their problem, they’ll often be willing to spend more money on themselves than they thought they would when they walked through the door.

Choosing to pay for something is all about values and priorities: If you can offer a real solution the person will see the value and the price becomes largely irrelevant.

7. Do I Really Want to Work with You?

Finally, as a professional coach it’s worth noting that you’re not going to want to work with everyone.

If you’re going to dread the session each time the person shows up—if your reaction is, Oh fuck, I have to deal with this human being again when you look at your schedule in the morning—they’re probably not the right fit for you.

Trust your gut. If you can tell you’re not the right fit, there’s no reason you can’t recommend another coach or a different training facility that might be a better fit for the prospect. It’ll save you a lot of pain in the long run.

Remember, if your goal is to keep this client for five, 10, 15-plus years, you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you

If you found this article helpful and would like to see exactly how these types of strategies could improve your sales and dramatically increase your revenue on a consistent basis,

GO HERE

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