Fit Business Insider – Personal Training Business – Fitness Business – Fitness Marketing

‐ By Pat Rigsby

I was looking back through previous blog posts and again realized how much valuable information there is here.

There is easily enough FREE information here to build a Multiple Six-Figure Fitness Business.

Instead of asking you to go back though every old post to find what you’re looking for, I decided to take some of the best strategies directly tied to money making and put them together here.  So here you go – over 6500 words worth of pure cash producing information.  Enjoy!

On Generating Leads…

Use the Chamber of Commerce – Hopefully you are already a member of the Chamber of Commerce.  If not, change that as soon as possible.  Once you are a member – reach out to other Chamber members and provide them a special offer for their employees.  Here is an example letter you can use:

Business Name

Street Address

City, State, Zip

Dear Fellow Chamber Member,

As a fellow local business owner, I understand and appreciate your commitment to the success and growth of your business. I also know that to obtain great success, businesses must support their employees in being healthy and active. Therefore, I am offering a very special benefit to my fellow (City Name) Chamber of Commerce members!

(Your Business) will provide all chamber members with a set of free 14 Day Trial Memberships (or other special offer). These memberships entitle your employees to 14 free days of fitness and a great chance to check out what (your business) has to offer. What’s more, this offer extends to their entire family! And, if your employees choose to continue with (your business), I will discount their monthly rate by 25%.

Perhaps the best part of this offer is there is no cost to your company. With (your business) as your partner, you can promote a healthy workplace and not spend a penny! To order your free memberships, simply email me at (email) or call me at (phone number)

(Your business) is the leading local (type of fitness business), helping people throughout (your community) lose weight, improve health and enjoy a better quality of life.  I look forward to helping your team enjoy those same benefits.

I thank you for considering this opportunity! More importantly, your employees will thank you!

Yours in Health and Fitness,

(Your Name)

Lead Boxes – A lead box program can generate a steady stream of new leads if run effectively. Here’s a strategy to ensure your lead box is a powerful, cost-effective marketing tool.

Starting Your Program – The first step when beginning a lead box program is selecting the type of lead box that you’ll use. Many companies sell lead boxes, so comparison shop before choosing one, and don’t let price alone be your determining factor. There are many cheap lead boxes that look cheap, and there are inexpensive lead boxes that look professional. A cheap lead box will not generate the same lead traffic as a nice-looking one.

The header of the box needs to have an enticing offer, like the opportunity to win a free month of your bootcamp or a free month of training. Remember, you have to have a strong headline and compelling copy to get prospects to enter their information.

Site Selection – Once you’ve decided exactly who your target market is, site selection becomes easy. Box locations need to have good traffic flow to consistently generate enough leads to make a site worth maintaining. They also need to be places where your target market does business. Chiropractor’s offices, spas, dry cleaners, salons and other types of business that cater to your ideal camper good targets.

Site Procurement – Approach either the owner or the manager and offer a service of benefit in exchange for site procurement. This could be a free slot in your fitness bootcamp, a free lunch and learn for the business or a few sessions for the owner. Don’t hesitate to give up something of value so the business owner or manager feels good about what you do. This can help the person better promote your lead box.

Then select a high-visibility area for the lead box. The lead box location must not interfere with the owner’s business in any way, or negative reactions can occur that will reduce your rapport with the business. The importance of maintaining a good relationship with the business is vital.

Lead Box Servicing & Following Up – You need to keep the lead box attractive and well-stocked with lead pads, and have a working pen attached to the box at all times. The impression that the box creates is directly tied to your business. Leads from the lead box must be picked up at least once a week. Once you collect the leads, come back and enter them into your database. Then immediately follow up with the leads.

If managed properly, lead boxes can result in a new group of prospective campers or clients at a minimal cost so don’t ignore this underutilized strategy.

 

Business of the Month –

Target & Contact Local Businesses – Pick 2-5 per week and call them letting them know that their business has been selected as your business of the month.  Tell them that each employee as well as their family members gets a free month of your services. Follow up with a visit to their location passing out questionnaires and vouchers for their free month.

Develop a ‘Flip’ – Create a special offer for the employees and their families that will encourage them to continue on working with you.

Follow Up – Stay in regular contact with the participants and make sure they know that your special offer will expire at the end of the month.

This strategy is a great way to generate new prospects in your community and build relationships with local businesses that can eventually help you reach their client / customer base as well.

 

Local E-Mail List – I’d collect emails at every talk I give, at every health fair I attend and at every opportunity I come across.  I’d put fishbowls in local restaurants and let people subscribe to your newsletter and be entered to win a free lunch.

And every person in my network would be on the list.  Every fitness pro should have an email list of at least 500 people.   No exceptions.

On Doing Business With Current & Former Clients…

Offer Package Deals – Like McDonald’s (and you wonder why our county is fat) offering the customer a #1, #2 or #3 (and probably a half-dozen other package options), how about having a package deal where everything your client needs to be successful is included for a discount of $X. You can offer training, nutritional coaching, supplements and even a foam roller and training journal – a complete package to guarantee the client’s success. Even if the client starts thinking that they don’t really need everything, the package deal is so good they’ll take it.

This is a great strategy to get clients to try things they might not normally have been interested in – like supplements or nutritional coaching.

Offering Cross Sell and Up Sell – There are always other add on products or services you can sell your clients like the McDonald’s approach of ‘would you like fries with that?’

If you only offer training sessions, you need to find other products or services to offer as cross sells or up sells. It may mean creating a deluxe version in which you give provide six nutritional during the first six weeks of your clients program to lay the groundwork for their long term success. It may be selling them nutritional products to help them recover from workouts and increase the likelihood of them complying with your nutritional recommendations. You might even form a strategic alliance and sell someone else’s complimentary services, like a dietician or massage therapist, if you don’t have anything else to sell your clients initially.

Often in the sale process it is easy to get caught up in the sale and to forget to cross sell or up sell. I suggest you make a checklist so you and your staff remember to offer the cross sells and up sells at the point of sale – every sale.

Having Payment Terms – Having payment terms to allow the client to make bigger purchases can dramatically increase what a client is willing to spend. We recommend all fitness pros use EFT billing for everything so clients can break their investment into monthly payments, just like their mortgage or car payment. With this approach a client that might not have been able to invest a lump sum of several thousand dollars can get the services and products they want and only have a monthly investment of a couple of hundred dollars.

Serve More Clients Per Hour - To see more clients per hour, means you’re generating more revenue per work hour. You do this by either offering semi-private training, switching from 60 minute sessions to 30 minute sessions or provide large group stuff like bootcamps or group weight management.

This seems obvious since everyone is doing bootcamps, but what about during non-peak hours?  Can you work with 6 people instead of 3?

An underappreciated benefit of any of these approaches is that it increases your ability to handle a greater number of clients during the hours that are most popular.

If you could double or triple the number of people that you work with during peak hours and non-peak – your profits will skyrocket.

Increase Value Per Client Hour – You increase value per client by having more niche offerings and becoming better at getting results and improving your trainer’s sales skills.

If you can position yours staff as experts’ for a particular target market by working with a specific group of people and a track record of getting results – you’ll be able to charge significantly more.

Needless to say – if you improve your trainer’s sales skills you’ll be able to charge more per hour as well.

Increase Your Prices – Just do it, add 5% to all your prices today. A small percentage of clients will object but the extra profit from the other clients that don’t care and are happy to pay the slight increase will more than cover this. Sell by adding value and selling the benefits. Making your service unique so by doing this there is no other product or service to compare it to.

You have very little to lose and a massive amount to gain… so increase your prices by 5% today.

Here’s a easy an effective way to raise rates or lock clients into longer deals:

Step 1: The foundation of the Triple Threat Money Maker is raising your program rates.  You should be raising your rates periodically and there is no better time to do this than now as we head into New Years. A rate increase of 5% is very reasonable – even conservative for group training or bootcamps.  For 1 on 1 or semi-private, adding $3-5 per session is easy and will virtually never be met with even a hint of a complaint.

Step 2: Notify your current clients that the rates will be increasing January 1^st by whatever amount you determined was right – however, they can lock in at their current rate by committing to a 12 month membership (6 months is fine too if you’re only selling month to month memberships now).

Step 3: Contact all of your former clients and your prospects and tell them about the upcoming rate increase.  Let them know that they can lock in at the 2010 rates if they enroll in a 12 month program before the year’s end.

That’s it.

Well, that’s not exactly it…here are some details that we’ve used to make this work like crazy:

• Use a variety of means to contact your clients.  For our clients, we sent letters and emails as well as making personal calls and in person notifications.  We wanted to make sure that all of their questions were answered and they were not only willing to make the long term commitment – but they were excited about it as they felt like they were getting a great deal.
• We used the same type of approach for former clients and unconverted prospects.   We sent letters, emails and made phone calls.  We’ve also even used voice broadcasts to remind people on the final day of the offer.
• It’s always worked best when we’ve intensified the push during the final days of the offer leading up to the deadline.  People are procrastinators so we always make sure that we hit everyone with a call during the final 48 hours and at least one email the last day.

With this approach you’re going to make more money in 3 different ways and none of it is a short term boost:

• You’re going to get current clients to commit for 12 more months – which is longer than the membership lifespan of the average bootcamper.
• You’re going to get a surge of former clients and unconverted leads who don’t want to miss out on the deal – and they’re all committing for a 12 month term too.
• All your new clients – and the current ones that don’t want to commit – will be paying you more each month.

Not to mention that when you get the new surge of business you’ll have more people to get referrals from and make back end offers too…

So there you go – the Tripe Threat Money Maker – a simple way that you can lock in more money this Holiday season.

 

On Referrals…

Make it a Condition of Doing Business - 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.

Your Community’s Best Businesses - 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.

“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 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.”

“Thank You” Postcards - 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.

Send a Gift To Work - 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.

 

Physician Referrals - If you want to set yourself apart from other fitness pros in your community – send a health & fitness report to the client’s physician. This professional courtesy is designed to create a line of communication between the doctor and you – and as a bonus, it positions you as a credible resource for the doctor when he / she is making recommendations to their patients. The report might include the following:

• Weight
• Bodyfat Percentage
• LBM / Fat Mass
• Resting Heart Rate
• Blood Pressure
• Muscular Strength Assessment
• Flexibility / Mobility Assessment

You can add other assessments or statistics based on what your assessment process consists of.

You can send this report each time you update your assessment. This single approach can set you apart from other fitness pros and fitness providers in the eyes of your community’s medical professionals.

Referral Stimulator Email - Very simple to do – just send a personal email to clients and ask for referrals. Here’s an example:

Subj: I Need Your Help!

Dear Ms. Jones,

I think you can help me with a problem I have. I don’t know if you realize it or not, but marketing for new clients can be pretty expensive. And after I spend all that money on marketing, I’m still not guaranteed to get one single new client.

“Word of Mouth” marketing is still the best type of marketing. And frankly, I’d rather reward you for sending me new clients than spend all my money on radio or newspaper. Many happy clients have mentioned that their friends, acquaintances, and family members have expressed an interest in improving their health and fitness. With this in mind, I came up with my new…

Referral Reward Program!

Here’s how it works:

For every referral that you send me who becomes a client, I’ll give you 20% off of your monthly rate for the next 3 months.

So if you refer just 5 people you’ll get your next 3 months of training FREE!

 

I know that I don’t have to offer rewards for referring friends, but I think it’s important to show that I value you as a client and appreciate your referrals.

When you think about people that you might refer, keep these ideas in mind:

-        People you work with

-        Friends listed in your phone or email address book

-        Neighbors

-        People you know from your hobbies and other interest

-        Family members

-        People you do business with

-        People who attend your church

Hopefully, that will jog your memory a little. If you just spend a few minutes thinking about it, I’m sure you’ll come up with quite a few people you know who would like to experience all the benefits that you’ve experienced from working with me.

All you need to do is reply with the people you think of who might be interested in finding out more about my services and their contact information.  I’ll contact them and offer them a free gift of 2 week weeks of my fitness bootcamp as a gift from you.

Thanks for your help and I look forward to rewarding you soon!

Pat

“Bring a Friend” Sessions - If you run bootcamps, this is the most simple referral system you can put in place. Just announce a “Bring A Friend Week” in which all of your clients can bring a guest free of charge to participate in a week of workouts.

Announce the event about a week prior to the actual day and continue to promote it leading up to the event. You can combine this with another referral system and offer incentives for any guest that becomes a client or offer the guests a preferred rate. Have a way to capture the contact information of each guest and continue to market to them via a newsletter or promotional material. Have a free report and a special offer for upcoming events available to them at the conclusion of the session.

This works almost as well with standard one-on-one or semi-private training, it just takes a little more preparation for the actual sessions. You can develop a standardized entry-level program for the guests to follow for their workout.

If you want to really take this to the next level – hold a contest with prizes for the camper or client that brings the most friends during the week where you give them their next month free.

Asking For Referrals at the Point of Sale – There is no better time to ask for a referral than when someone is new to your business. They are excited about how you’re going to help them achieve their fitness goals and they’ll probably feel even more confident about coming to work with you if they can bring a friend.  Create a special offer, perhaps giving them 20% off their monthly rate for every person they refer.  Then either ask them for names and contact information of people they’d like to share a 14 day free trial with or provide them with 14 day free trial vouchers.  Our experience is that if you can get the information and do the follow up yourself – you’ll do better.

12 Months Of Referrals – Every fitness professional knows the importance of generating referrals as it relates to business growth – so why do so many struggle to implement referral programs in their business?

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. It should be 12 weeks in length.  This is a great referral generation machine because people will ask for help from friends and inevitably tell them what they are involved in.

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 kind of an unusual object for a fitness business 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!

On Selling…

Evaluate your sales system – Without an effective sales system an increase in leads isn’t going to help you much.  You need to have a systematic approach for presenting your offerings to your prospects that will give you the highest possible outcome when it comes to generating clients and increasing revenue.  Here are some tips:

• Use a script.  Every presentation should be the same.  Develop your best approach and use it every time.
• Use an alternate choice close.  Present 2-3 options and ask the prospect which one they want to get started with.
• If you’re ideal offering is a 3 session per week bootcamp, make sure there is a 4 or 5 session per week option.  This will make the 3 session per week bootcamp look less expensive by comparison.

Bottom line: bad sales system = bad income.

Everything Leads To A Sale – Sometimes I have to remind the trainers we work with that while sending press releases, getting on TV, making blog posts, writing articles, creating product and all the rest are great…they’re all just a means to lead to you selling something.

See, sometimes we have to keep our eyes on the prize. If you don’t have enough clients or campers are you waiting for something to happen…or are you making it happen.

When Holly & I were living in the basement while we were getting our training business and health club ramped up – I was laser focused on selling training. I didn’t leave the gym without getting two new clients.  It meant some late nights, like they say – if the want is strong enough you’ll find a way.

Even before that, when I was first running a training department in a Gold’s Gym, the company had a bonus of $250 if you sold 12 deals in a pay period.  My goal every pay period was 36 deals and I considered that $750 part of my regular income. I knew I needed 3 deals a day to make it happen – and was relentless on getting my 3.

So keep doing all those things…

Keep blogging, sending press releases, writing articles and the rest. But don’t lose sight of the fact that selling is what pays the bills.

Proper Framing Leads To Bigger Sales -Want an easy way to selling bigger deals? It’s two simple steps, but I’m not sure you’ll believe me if I tell you.

Here goes:

Step 1: Offer no more than 3 potential options to a prospect. Something like this:

1 Session Per Week

2 Sessions Per Week

3 Sessions Per Week

It could be 2, 3 and 4 or 3, 4 and 5…makes no difference to me. You know what you’re currently selling. Just reduce it to 3 options.

Step 2: If you’re most popular program is 2 sessions per week but you want to sell more 3 session per week packages, add a package bigger than that to your price sheet.

If you already have:

1 Session Per Week

2 Sessions Per Week

3 Sessions Per Week

Then switch to offering:

2 Sessions Per Week

3 Sessions Per Week

4 Sessions Per Week

You’ll immediately sell more 3 session per week programs. It’s all simple psychology.  Too many choices have been proven to cause indecision and high priced offerings make offerings priced lower seem more reasonable.

That’s it…two easy steps to more sales bigger packages and programs sold.

Sell Something – Get small commitments first.

There was a time in my personal training career that I’d average three closed sales a day.

Unfortunately many trainers don’t do 3 a month.

But the trick was to close the ones that weren’t ready to commit to bigger programs on something.

Or, if I was doing a speaking engagement, close the attendees on something small. Get a ‘yes’ first.

Once someone has invested a little with you it’s much, much easier to get them to invest more.

But only if you deliver great service during that initial purchase. So if you’re having trouble getting people to enroll in ‘big ticket’ programs, get them to at least invest in something small first.

Then after you’ve built a little more rapport and have delivered great service and value, present your bigger offerings.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how little resistance you get then.

Be Able To Define What Makes You Different – You have to let prospects know EXACTLY why they should do business with you instead of the trainer at 24 Hour Fitness, join Curves, enroll in Weight Watchers or buy the Ab Lounger. Saying you get results isn’t enough. Do you think your competitors say they don’t?

Have Social Proof - If you have a studio, put up a ‘Wall of Fame.’ If you run a bootcamp or work in a club or in homes, put testimonials on your webiste. Use testimonials in your marketing so prospects are pre-sold. Help people feel confident that you are the solution to their problem(s) by showing them you were already the solution to other people problems that might have been similar.

On Time Management for your Fitness Business…

There Is No Perfect System For Time Management – No combination of tools and strategies is ever going to be perfect.  I use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, my I-Phone, a Franklin Covey Planner, a small Moleskin Notebook, my dry erase board and Basecamp as the tools in my time management & organization system.

You may use Outlook instead of Gmail.  You may prefer a Blackberry instead of the I-Phone.

Doesn’t matter.  They’re all tools and they’re all flawed.  So here’s what you do:

Make a list of all the tools you use (Post It Notes count too) and how you use them.  Then identify the areas your system is letting you down.  The idea is to get better – because it will never be perfect.

For me, when I looked at my system I found that I sometimes forgot ideas that I didn’t jot down when I was networking or out and about.  I didn’t want to carry my planner everywhere and I type too slow to list everything in my phone.  So I found the small Moleskin notebook that I could always keep in my pocket and eliminated one bottleneck in my system.

Schedule Everything That’s Important – If you’re not spending enough time marketing or carving out enough quality time with your family – you’re probably not scheduling it.

Anything that is important deserves you to dedicate time to it.  Otherwise it will always get pushed to the bottom of the list.

Set Tight Deadlines – Procrastination is a battle almost all of us face, but it’s amazing how efficient we can be when we have a deadline coming close.

When you were in college and were assigned a paper, if you were like most people you didn’t spread the workload evenly over the time you had available – you crammed most of it right at the deadline.

When you’re getting ready to go on vacation you’re a model of efficiency, getting more accomplished the day before leaving than you typically do in a normal week.

So set tight deadlines and hold yourself to them.  If you need to write an article or a blog post, set a kitchen timer and focus on getting your writing done before the bell rings.

In fact, I started writing this with only 53 minutes of battery life left on my computer with a goal of finishing before the screen went black…

Every Offer Doesn’t Need To Be Accepted – You don’t have to answer the door just because someone knocks.  You don’t need to answer the phone whenever it rings and you don’t need to respond to every email the minute it hits your inbox.

Taking that a step further – not every opportunity presented to you needs to be accepted.  Just because it has some potential upside doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for you right now.

There will always be people knocking, calling, emailing and offering – and all of them will be asking you for your time.  Just because they ask doesn’t mean you need to accept.

Plan Ahead – The most important time management strategy I employ is planning out every day the evening prior.  If you don’t plan out what you need to accomplish you’re leaving the day to chance and you’ll likely be allowing everyone else decide how you spend your time. Not good.

Get Help – Every day there are low return activities that you do and there are high return activities.  Here’s how I’d quantify each for the purposes of this post:

Low Return Activities:

• Activities that could be outsourced for significantly less than your hourly worth. If you can make $75 per hour training or can generate $1200 worth of new business public speaking – then you can certainly delegate $8 an hour work to free up your time.
• Activities you don’t enjoy at all.  If you really don’t enjoy some facet of your business, find someone who can do it effectively.
• Activities you are bad at.  If you’re bad on the phone – outsource Business of the Month calls & confirmation calls.

High Return Activities:

• Activities that generate significant revenue – close to or exceeding your hourly worth. Most marketing activities, sales, delivering service, program design, retention work, etc.
• Activities you enjoy. If you enjoy mowing your lawn, mow it.  Doesn’t really matter if you could earn more doing something else if it really makes you happy.
• Activities you’re best suited for.  If you’re the best person at program design in your business or the best salesperson – those should be among the last things you delegate.  Delegate the lower skill activities first.

You don’t have to spend a lot to start delegating.  Offer a few hours to a client or a camper that would like to earn some extra money or train for free.  Then your job is simple – you need to more than make up for the money you’re spending delegating with the new time you’ve freed up.

Finish – One of the biggest time wasters of all is not bearing down and finishing stuff.  As I’ve often said – ‘You Get Paid For Done’, so until something’s finished it seems like time wasted.

So the solution is simple, when you start a project – put the blinders on and finish it.

Alright – that’s it.  Hopefully you picked out a couple strategies that you’re not currently using and are going to start using them in your fitness business now.  If so, do me a favor and share them below.

Dedicated to your success,

Pat