As far as I’m concerned, referrals should be at the core of any good fitness pro’s marketing system.  The only problem is that using the same referral strategy over and over can get stale fast – so here are five ways you can keep the referrals coming in without sounding like a broken record.

Fitness Referral Strategy #1: Make it a Condition of Doing Business

Description: Make it a mandatory part of being your client. I know – it sounds easier said than done – but hear me out. This is especially effective if you have an in-demand service. State from the onset, as a condition of working with you, clients each need to refer 2 friends. Obviously, you have to be tactful about it.

Here’s an example of what you could say:

“If I do everything I’ve promised and you lose those 20 unwanted pounds, will you provide me with 2 referrals of friends, co-workers or family members that could use the same benefits?”

So, at the very beginning clients know what they’re in for.

Fitness Referral Strategy #2: Your Community’s Best Businesses

Description: What you do is compile a list of other types of businesses that also serve your ideal client. After you’ve developed a comprehensive list of these types businesses, search through your database of clients, friends and contacts for people that operate businesses in these categories. If there are business categories that you have no contact, look for a mutual friend that can serve as a liaison to a successful professional in that category.

Now rank the professionals in each category as to which you’d prefer to affiliate yourself and your business with most. Send the “Tier 1” professionals a letter suggesting that you’d like to invite them to be a member of “Your Community’s Best Businesses” and receive referrals from several of the other premier professionals in the community. Let them know that your goal is to create a network of the best local professionals in hopes of best serving each member’s customers or clients and providing high quality referrals for the members.

This group would meet once a month and you would serve as the host / leader (another way of subtly enhancing your perception among group members.) Each member would be able to present for 10-15 minutes as a means of educating the group about their business and how it would be of benefit to their customers / clients. Each member can make special offers to customers / clients of fellow group members, do endorsed mailings, etc. To increase the perception of this group, you could launch a website (youtownsbestbusinesses.com), do a newsletter or provide testimonials of happy cross-referred customers.

This involves a little more work than most fitness referral strategies but done well, it could easily provide you with more business than you could ever handle.

Fitness Referral Strategy #3: “Thank You” Gift Cards

Description: After a meaningful moment during a client’s time with you – perhaps after they’ve met a goal or finished a 12 week program – hand them 3 plastic gift cards and tell them: “Here are 3 gift cards that you can give to friends, co-workers or family members that would like to enjoy the same results that you have. It entitles them to get $100 off of our (name of program) program as a gift from you. And as a way of saying thank you for being such a great client I want to give you $X off of your next program as well.”

Fitness Referral Strategy #4: “Thank You” Postcards

Description: Similar to the Thank You gift cards – after a meaningful moment during a client’s time with you – perhaps after they’ve met a goal or finished a 12 week program – hand them 2-3 pre-printed and stamped postcards that detail a special offer and tell them: “Here’s are 3 postcards that you can address to people important to you that you’d like to see benefit from changes similar to the one’s you’ve made. It entitles them to get $50 off of our (name of program) program as a gift from you. Simply address each postcard to someone important to you and sign them and I’ll be happy to put them in the mail. And as a way of saying thank you for being such a great client I want to give you $X off of your next program as well.”

Both of these “thank you” strategies can be very powerful, but you need to make sure that your current client gets the credit for the gifts they give to their friends. If they don’t get something out of giving the gift to their friend they’re highly unlikely to do so. So when a gift card comes in, be sure to ask who provided the new prospect with the card.

Fitness Referral Strategy #5: Send a Gift To Work

Description: This is a great method to use, especially if your client has just graduated from a program you offer or achieved a specific goal. Send a big bouquet of balloons to your client’s work congratulating them on their success. The balloons don’t need to have any logo or writing on them… they just need to have a card congratulating the client on their success.

What will happen is that everyone at the client’s place of work will ask who the balloons are from. The client will tell everyone about you and how much you’ve helped them. The balloons act as a talking point about how happy the client is with their trainer (you).

There are at least 3-4 dozen other referral strategies that I’ve seen work – and I’d love to hear about what’s worked for you. If you have a referral strategy that you love – please share it below.

Dedicated to your success,

Pat

My guess is that they don’t set deadlines to implement what they know.  So I’m going to set some deadlines for you.  Here are 12 months worth of referral generating ideas.  All you have to do is follow the formula and watch your referral business grow!

Week 4 – Set up an ongoing referral program. If you don’t already have one, you should do so immediately. There is no excuse now not to have an ongoing referral program in place. Simply come up with a reward that you will provide to clients and members of your network that send new business to you.  The optimal approach is to reward the act of referring prospects to you and also rewarding the referring party when their referrals become clients.

Week 8 – Run a Transformation Challenge. 12 weeks in length is a good starting point.  This is a great referral generation machine because people will ask for help from friends and inevitably tell them what they are involved in. You can model Ben Warstler’s contest model and don’t hesitate to give away Prograde as a prize.

Week 12 – Begin including a 21 Day referral offer with all new client or camper purchases.   Include an offer that gives them a discount on dues for each new person they refer during their first 21 days.

Week 16 – Begin a campaign of integration marketing. While this won’t boost referrals per se, it will get an influx of steady new prospects into your business. Integration marketing basically is trying to integrate your offerings into other businesses marketing and sales processes.

Week 20 – Begin sending out birthday gifts to all of your clients. You can collect their birthday at the enrollment process in an unobtrusive way, letting them know that you need it to send them a birthday gift. However, this should always be optional. On their birthday, send them a gift card or some free Prograde for themselves and a friend.

Week 24 – Set up a campaign associated with the next major holiday. Tell your clients that they and a friend will get a discount on a program or product during the holiday period.

Week 28 – Send out an email or card to all of your clients saying that you’re doing a new client drive this week, and would like to know if they have any family or friends who would be interested in doing a free trial with you. Give them some kind of gift or incentive for every person they bring in. In addition, make sure that they have a gift card that they can give to their friends or family to entice them to do business with you. In other words, you’re not just having the client tell the friend about you, the client is giving a free gift card away that will bring them back to your business.

Week 31 – Add a bring a friend function to your business.  If you run camps or group training this is easy.  Just have a day or even a week each month where your clients can bring friends to their sessions.

Week 36 – Run another Transformation Challenge.  Use what you learned from your initial Challenge to make this an even bigger success.

Week 40 – Begin giving plastic gift cards to your clients. A plastic gift card with a magnetic strip on the back is a better tool than a coupon so it will set you apart from the competition. Your clients will then have the opportunity to provide these to their friends and it will have a significant perceived value. Whenever a member of your network or a client provides someone with one of these cards this also gives them a chance to tell your story in a very unobtrusive and natural way.

Week 44 – Hold another referral contest. Incentive your clients by giving them a cash reward or a big prize like a mini-vacation. Just think big and create a huge buzz. The possibilities are endless.

Week 48 – Conduct a one-time-only tell-a-friend offer or incentive. For example: Tell 2-3 friends about us, and you can get this free Weight Management class. The important thing to remember here is that if you said that the one-time offer is one-time only, you must stick with that. This means that next time you conduct a special offer or opportunity, your existing clients will know that when you say One-Time, they’d better jump on the bandwagon now or they’ll miss out!

Week 52 –Run another Transformation Challenge.  Use the before and afters from the first two and leverage the success of those events to pull in sponsors and publicity.

So there you have it – a full 12 month calendar to make sure you are maximizing your referral efforts.  All you need to do is implement!

Dedicated to your success,

Pat Rigsby

Pat Rigsby is a Co-Owner of the International Youth Conditioning Association & the youth fitness franchise Athletic Revolution as well as a fitness industry consultant serving thousands of personal trainers and fitness entrepreneurs. Sign up for his fitness business free newsletter to discover proven marketing, sales and business strategies, along with blog updates, news, and more! While you’re at it, follow him on Twitter.

If you want a Six-Figure Bootcamp, then you need to have a systematic approach to generating referrals.  Here are three strategies that you can implement immediately – and they’re guaranteed to produce big time results!

Bootcamp Referral Strategy #1: Send a Gift To Work

This is a great method to use, especially if your client has just finished their first month or achieved a specific goal. Send a big bouquet of balloons to your client’s work congratulating them on their success. The balloons don’t need to have any logo or writing on them… they just need to have a card congratulating the client on their success.

What will happen is that everyone at the client’s place of work will ask who the balloons are from. The camp member will tell everyone about you and how much you’ve helped them. The balloons act as a talking point about how happy the client is with the camp.

Bootcamp Referral Strategy #2: Ask at the Point of Sale

This strategy is great because new camp members are excited to tell others about their decision to join and are primed to invite people they know. Here is the copy for a handout you can use every time a new member joins your camp:

Would You Like Your (Your Bootcamp Name) Membership FREE For The Next 3 Months?

Dear New (Your Bootcamp Name) Member,

During the first 21 days of your membership we are offering you the opportunity that will allow you to reduce your membership dues by 20, 40, 60, 80 or even 100% by simply telling friends, family members and co-workers about (your bootcamp).

Here’s how it works: Every time you refer a friend, family member or co-worker to (your bootcamp) during the first 21 days of your membership and they join, we will reduce you membership dues by 20% for the next 3 months. 

If you refer one person, your dues drop by 20%.

If you refer two people, your dues will drop by 40%. 

Refer three people and you dues drop by 60%

Refer four people, you dues drop by 80%

Refer five people and your next 3 months at (your bootcamp) are FREE!

Here are four simple ways you can refer people:

1. Offer them a complimentary 14 Day (your bootcamp) Membership Pass.  Be sure to write your name on the pass to get credit for the referral.

2. Bring them with you.  We’ll let them try out the camp for free and when they love it and decide to join, you’ll get the credit.

3. Tell them to come by or call to receive a 14 Day Trial Membership. It doesn’t get any easier than that.  You just tell your friends, family members or co-workers to call or visit the camp and mention your name when they are claiming their trial membership.  As soon as they convert to a full member, your dues drop by 20%.

4. Provide a (your camp) staff member their name and contact information and we’ll do the work for you.  If you know anyone that would enjoy more energy, better health or would like to drop a few of those unwanted pounds, give one of our staff members their name & contact information.  We’ll give them a complimentary trial membership on your behalf and do all the work for you.

Because of the volume of marketing we do, we can’t reward you with reduced dues if those you know join and don’t mention your name.  So make sure you tell anyone you know about (your camp) to make sure you get the credit (and the reduction on your membership dues) when they become a member. And – as a bonus – anyone who you refer will be eligible for this program too!

New Member Referral Opportunity Ends:________________________

Bootcamp Referral Strategy #3: The Magic T-Shirt

It’s amazing what people will do for a free T-Shirt.  I’ve seen people humiliate themselves for a T-Shirt. I’ve seen people wear themselves out doing things they probably wouldn’t have done for $50…for a $5 T-Shirt.  Well, we’re not going to ask them to do either of those…we’re just going to ask them to give us names of a few of their friends that might like a free trail of our camp.

So here’s what you do: Order a few T-Shirts for your camp with your business name and logo.  Tell your camp members if they’d like a T-Shirt, all they need to do is to give you the names, email addresses and phone numbers of 5 friends, co-workers or family members that they think would be a good fit for your camp. You’ll contact their referrals and give them a Two Week Trial Membership to try out camp as their guest and you’ll give them a T-Shirt.

We did this for our health club and got almost 50 leads the first day!

So there are three strategies that can each easily add a couple dozen campers to your business.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  If you want a camp that generates six-figures or more for you this year, then you want to be sure to apply tomorrow as soon as we re-open the Bootcamp Blueprint.

We’re going to keep the doors open for 72 hours, but over 100 areas are protected by Area Exclusive Bootcamp Blueprint Members – so you want to act fast before you get locked out.

Dedicated to your success,

Pat Rigsby

Pat Rigsby is a Co-Owner of the International Youth Conditioning Association & the youth fitness franchise Athletic Revolution as well as a fitness industry consultant serving thousands of personal trainers and fitness entrepreneurs. Sign up for his fitness business free newsletter to discover proven marketing, sales and business strategies, along with blog updates, news, and more! While you’re at it, follow him on Twitter.

We got 48 new leads for around 8 T-Shirts. (Might have been 9…I’m not sure.)

But let me back up a second.

About a week ago I was talking with our Club Manager, Lisa (who is awesome, I might add), and we were trying to decide the best approach to ask our current members for referrals.

We run a variety of referral systems, all with success, but the most effective is when we simply ask our new members to give us the names of friends and family members we can offer a free trial to. So we decided to try to do the same with existing members, but we needed a ‘hook’ to get them to give us the names.

Enter the T-Shirts.

Lisa and I decided that if we offered our members a T-Shirt in exchange for giving us names & contact information of people that they felt like would benefit and appreciate a free trial to our club.

So we ordered up some T-Shirts. They came in two days ago and simply posted the offer on a dry erase board in the front of the club today so that members would see it when they entered.

The result: 48 new leads on Day One.

I suspect that we’ll get about that many each of the next few days as well.

All for a few T-Shirts…that cost us about $5 each.

Maybe you ought to go order some T-Shirts;)

Dedicated to your success,

Pat Rigsby

Pat Rigsby is a Co-Owner of the International Youth Conditioning Association & the youth fitness franchise Athletic Revolution as well as a fitness industry consultant serving thousands of personal trainers and fitness entrepreneurs. Sign up for his fitness business free newsletter to discover proven marketing, sales and business strategies, along with blog updates, news, and more! While you’re at it, follow him on Twitter.

If you have any tips of your own to share – leave a comment below.

On Developing Marketing Materials

1. A good headline makes or breaks you.

2. The first paragraph has to be great to get the prospect to continue reading in any copy.

3. The P.S. is the next most important component of successful copy.

4. Test, test, test.

5. Marketing materials are most effective when presented to people that already know, like and trust you.

6. Use testimonials with pictures.

7. Have a strong call to action.

8. Recognize that marketing materials are just a means of getting prospects in front of you.

On Forming Strategic Alliances

9. Don’t be afraid to ask.

10. Show how you can help them first.

11. Create a win/win situations at all times.

12. Only work with people that have the right customer / client / patient base, run a business that you feel comfortable associating yourself with and aren’t assholes.

On Referrals

13. Earn the referral by providing great service and an extraordinary experience.

14. Ask for the referral in multiple ways.

15. Reward the referring action. It’s your job to close.

16. Reward the referral again when the referred prospect buys.

17. Remember how much it would cost to acquire a new client through advertising when rewarding a referrer.

18. Use Transformation Challenges, Walls of Fame, Referral Contests, Bring a Friend Days, Point of Sale Referral Systems, Referral Request Mailings and a variety of other means to keep the referral mindset prominent in your business.

On Conversion Rates – Turning Prospects Into Clients

19. Offer a powerful guarantee. At Minimum – 100% Money Back.

20. Have a powerful USP that appeals to your niche market.

21. Have more than one type of offering – Semi-private, bootcamps and group weight management all can help you convert more prospects – as can different tiers within the same offering.

22. Make it easy to buy – use EFT billing so payments can be spread out.

23. Have plenty of testimonials handy – social proof is crucial

24. Try before you buy – as opposed to what some people think, free sessions are a great idea. If your average package is $1000, wouldn’t you expect someone to want to know what they’re spending a thousand bucks on?

25. Use a sales script. If something works – stick with it.

26. Test different sales presentations – we changed 1 step and increased our average transaction value by $400.

27. Spend more time listening than talking.

28. As Jimmy Labadie says…find their pain.

29. Educate on value, not price.

30. Don’t be afraid to ask for the sale.

31. Don’t be afraid to ask for a BIG sale.

32. Target better prospects. That doesn’t always mean more affluent prospects. Target prospects that are a better fit for you and your business.

33. Track everything – close rates, avg. deal size, etc.

On Maximizing Lifetime Client Value

34. Give better service. Every day you need to be ‘on.’

35. Underpromise and Overdeliver.

36. Stay in regular contact outside of normal sessions with phone calls, emails, etc.

37. Add complimentary services – nutrition, massage, etc.

38. Add complimentary products – supplements, foam rollers, etc

39. Use longer term contracts.

40. Keep a lot of client data – b-day, anniversary, kids names, hobbies, etc.

41. Schedule the next appt. today if you are running a 1 on 1 or semi-private business.

42. Send a weekly e-mail newsletter.

43. Send Greeting Cards – Birthdays, Holidays and cards for reaching goals – or cards to just say ‘thanks.’

44. Post-purchase reassurance – make calls, send cards and make sure the client continues to be happy they chose you.

45. Have new special offers each month. Make sure that every client is presented with these offers.

46. Run Transformation Challenges and offer a special upgraded package for the duration.

47. Sell consumables – supplements need to be re-purchased again – DVD’s and foam rollers don’t.

48. Raise your prices. You can do it in small increments too. A $2 or $3 increase per session will get no resistance from clients but add a lot to your bottom line over the year.

49. Have a scripted up-sell at the initial point of sale.

50. Have scripted up-sells at specific point during each client’s program.

51. Use automated billing.

52. Suggest your most expensive program first.

53. Treat everyone like you want to be treated.

Dedicated to your success,

Pat Rigsby

Pat Rigsby is a Co-Owner of the International Youth Conditioning Association & the youth fitness franchise Athletic Revolution as well as a fitness industry consultant serving thousands of personal trainers and fitness entrepreneurs. Sign up for his fitness business free newsletter to discover proven marketing, sales and business strategies, along with blog updates, news, and more! While you’re at it, follow him on Twitter.

So Pat explained to you the thinking behind a solid reactivation campaign, and I’m gonna show you a couple of ways you can set up a reliable and effective system for managing it.

Reliability is paramount here – as we can’t afford to have people slipping through the cracks – and that wouldn’t be much of a system would it?

Efficiency is equally important, because we can’t commit all of our time to a single campaign, right?

The first thing you’ve got to have it a complete list of your former clients. If you have a client management software you use, that should work well. We’ve also always kept a backup excel spreadsheet that had the names and info of any clients who had decided for whatever reason to leave. It’s very important to include dates on the spreadsheet, the cancellation date as well as the date they began using your service. This is where reliability comes into play – you have to manage this list over time and make sure the correct data is entered when a client cancels. It’s not a complete list if you only remember to add someone to it sometimes – and that means it’s not reliable. So keep a complete database of your past clients.

Now you’ve got to go back to Pat’s article and decide what offer you’re gonna make? He told you about how well some of our campaigns did – you should be able to put together something pretty successful as well. But you’ve got to have a solid offer involved, otherwise you’re wasting your time.

Now you’ve got to find an efficient means of delivery for that message. We’ve used Send Out Cards (www.cardsendersystem.com) for a long time in all of our fitness businesses, and know that a lot of you do too. It allows us to create and send a custom greeting card to a large group of people all at once, by pushing a few buttons. That’s efficiency at its best. It allows Pat to create a marketing message he wants to send to a group of any size, and our Office Manager can set it up and send it out at any time. Pretty good leverage, huh?

You could also create a letter and do a mail merge type function and enter the names of the recipients, and fold and stuff them into envelopes, etc. This isn’t a terrible secondary plan if you don’t use Send Out Cards, but it does cost a bit more, and takes much more time to manage. (Plus it’s not nearly as cool as the custom cards with SOC!)

Whatever you choose – make sure that it’s RELIABLE and EFFICIENT!

Now watch the video!

Be sure to comment below and let us know your fitness business reactivation campaign success.