How to Turn BJJ Trial Students Into Lifelong Members: Proven Coaching & Sales System

Recorded coaching session (YouTube) led by Nate Tilley with Adriana and partners, teaching BJJ academy owners how to convert free-trial visitors into long-term members. The session covers practical in-person sales techniques (front-desk greeting, rapport, the 'four W's' to pre-qualify prospects, assigning an experienced partner for first-day trials), common failure modes for trials, and ad/creative strategies (awareness vs conversion, women-targeted B-roll performing strongly). The video also includes service pitch for Nate's academy-scaling offerings and examples/proof points from client campaigns.
Chapters
What's up, guys? In today's video, I'm going to teach you exactly how you can turn a stranger into a customer for life with my exact process. And we're specifically going to be looking at how you can do it. If you're a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy owner and you want to get more students so somebody comes in for a free trial, how do you give them a great experience and then turn them into a member for life? From white belt to black belt. So if you're in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, this is going to be a great video for you. And if you're in sales, it's going to be a great video for you, too. By the way, we work with some of the top Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academies out there, like Atos Ascentra, logos show your role. And we have helped them to add thousands of new members and people to Jiu Jitsu. So make sure to, like, comment, share, and subscribe for more videos just like this. And I'm going to give you a sneak peek into the behind the scenes of one of my coaching calls that allows my clients to have extreme success with lead generation on social media. So without further ado, I'll see you in the video.
Today is going to be a session where we're going to just be talking about how to dominate with Brazilian Jiu.
Jitsu leads, appointments coming in, trials, getting.
The maximum amount of people to show up, and all that good stuff.
So these sessions are going to be dedicated to just all around, how to get more BJJ appointments in the door, how to close more trial appointments once they're in the door, and any other questions regarding advertising and how it pertains.
To Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
So one really important thing that I.
Want to talk to you guys about today is how to actually master a trial appointment. Okay.
I see so many gyms that I work with, and they get people in the door. We've literally had it to the point where we've had 40 people show up in one month to different gyms that we work with. And they're like, maybe we signed up a few people. How could that be? How could you get 40 people in your facility but not sign anybody up? Well, I've also worked with other gyms. I won't name anybody, but. And nobody's on the call. But I worked with them for a long time and the ads worked great. People showed up. After they showed up, we would reach back out to them and we'd say, hey, how was your Jiu Jitsu appointment at XYZ Gym. And they would respond and they would tell us, oh yeah, it was good. I was there. And we couldn't figure out why this, why this client was always complaining that no jujitsu appointments ever closed. None of them ever signed up, and it was a total waste of money for them. And so I'm sitting there thinking like, man, what is going on? So what we did is we started calling the people that showed up to this academy and asking them about their experience. So it'd be like, hey, this is XYZ Gyms quality assurance department. We just wanted to reach out to you because we saw that you visited our academy and we want to know in depth how the experience was. And just to let you know, I am a third party, so you can be transparent with me, we're not throwing anybody on the bus. We just want to know how your experience was. And we did that for five different accounts. And one of the ladies, she said, I showed up and I was very confused. Nobody greeted me. There's people running around everywhere. The kids class was ending, so they're all running off. And the adults class was coming on. And I got partnered with a brand new person too. Neither one of us knew anything. The class ended and people just started to talk amongst themselves and I just kind of like exited the building. What kind of experience is that if I'm trying to run a business, what kind of experience am I giving to people if I'm just going to let them come into my gym and let them go in with the culture? You have so many things that could go wrong. So sales is about control. You have to be able to master a stranger. You have to be able to master the room, you have to be able to master the environment if you want to actually close a deal. And so the way that I would recommend and we called other leads from the same person and it was kind of the same thing. And so we asked the client, hey, are you pitching these people? And they're like, oh, who's supposed to do that? I thought they'd just sign up. Most of our members have just signed up. Most of our members just sign up. They want to be here.
They'll sign up.
And it's like, yeah, if they're a blue belt or a purple belt or a brown belt that knows you, or they're a referral from a friend, sure they'll sign up. But when you're inviting strangers, complete strangers, off the Internet into your place of business, you have to treat them differently. Nobody knows Who Andre Galvao is. Nobody really knows who Michael Era Jr. Is in when a white belt that that information doesn't matter. What they want to know is how Jiu Jitsu is going to impact their life. So going into that and going off that preface. And guys, by the way, if you have any questions whatsoever, you want to mention something, this is a collaboration just as much as a coaching experience. So I'm going to be here just ripping off what I've seen. But go ahead and drop something in the chat. Feel free to engage if you have a question or comment concern. And you can also click the react button to raise your little hand if you want to come off mute. And we can talk back and forth on some stuff. But I'm going to keep going into this because I think this is really important. So my dream, ideal scenario, okay, when you have a trial coming in, let's just assume we've done everything right to get the person in the door. We call them on time, we confirm their appointment, everything's good, they're in the door, they filled out the waiver, they're here. Awesome. Now, one of the first things that you want to do with somebody, let's say you don't know anything about this person, okay? They walk in your door, they're a stranger. How many times have you walked into.
A business and you're a stranger?
I've done it, you know, I could probably 10, 15, 20 times, I don't.
Know how many times over my life.
It's awkward every time. Like, even if even though I know Jiu Jitsu or I do Jiu Jitsu, if I go to a new gym and I'm a practitioner, I've been doing it for half a decade or whatever it is, I'm still kind of like, who's, who's friendly? Like, is this a nice environment? I'm a little bit scared. Are they going to be hostile?
You know, am I going to be.
Way better than them? Are they going to be way better than me? What's happening here? There's all these questions. So imagine how that feels to somebody that's never done grappling before. Like grappling. A lot of Jiu Jitsu gyms think that they can just bring people in the door and they're just going to be sold on Jiu Jitsu. But the reality is, like, people need to be sold on Jiu Jitsu, not sold on your trial membership for 200, 300 bucks a month. They need to be sold on. Why Jiu Jitsu? What Jiu jitsu.
How?
Jiu jitsu.
Okay.
So when I bring somebody into the door, the first thing that I'm doing when I see anybody walk through the door, I'm at the front desk is I'm giving them a great greeting. Hey, what's up? You must be Mike, Right? Mike. What's up? I'm Nate. Good handshake, eye contact. These are all the basics. If your guy at the front counter isn't doing this, you got to get a different guy, because, like, it's how you represent your business. It's the handshake of your company. And that first impression, based on that first impression, it's going to set the whole tone for the entire experience for them. So Alex Hormozi, which some of you guys might have heard about before, he. He grew a fitness agency up to multiple millions of dollars in revenue. He's exited it for $40 million and kept a third of the company. And he knows his stuff when it comes to gyms. He worked with thousands of gyms, teaching them how to bring in people, trials. And this guy said that every time somebody would come in, he would say the exact same thing word for word. He'd be like, over here. Is this. That's Bob. And he'd make. He said he'd make the same joke he. Every single time. Okay? So, like, whatever that is for you, you're gonna discover, but you need to make sure that you greet them with energy and enthusiasm. Not over the top, like, you don't need to be fake, but you need to come in, and you need to make sure you greet them nice. Now let's say, okay, so they're in the door, shook the hands, waiver signed up. Little bit of rapport. Hey, man, so what do you do? You know, are you coming from work? You got kids? Like, just find out, like, a little bit about them. Where are you from? Here. You know, these are the basic questions.
All right?
In sales, there's like, four W's that you want to always know, okay? And the first W is where are they at right now? So, like, what is their current life situation? Where are they currently at? Are they training? Are they exercising? Have they ever done martial arts before? Do they have any kind of background in martial arts? Are they working? This is really important. A lot of you guys just bring people in. You're like, oh, here. Here's your gi. Here, Try it out. You don't even know if they're financially qualified. Ask them if they work somewhere. Ask them how much they. Not how much they make. But like. Oh yeah, so you're a construction worker. Oh, I heard that pays pretty good. That's awesome, man. You pretty busy too. Figure out their schedule and their budget early. Okay. And the reason is because when later in the conversation they say as an objection they don't have time or they don't have money, you've already pre handled that. If you're getting objections right after you present the price, that means that you didn't do the pre work.
Okay.
The pre work is you should already know where they work and roughly kind of how much they make. Based on the industry, you should already know what kind of hours they have. Because if they are unemployed, maybe they have all the time in the world, but they don't have any money. If they're working, but they're working night shifts, maybe they're going to be able to do mornings. So you have to be able to decide and define logistically. Is there a sale here? Like can they buy? Like, like not will they buy, but could they buy? And once you know that, then you start going into the second w. Where do they want to be? So where are they now? Where they want to be? Why did they walk through that door? You need to find out. You need to find out why this person came all the way to wherever your gym is and showed up through that door. What's the motivating factors for them? Everybody's got different motivating factors. And if you try to put everybody in the same box, you destined to fail. You have to understand each person individually and know why they walked through the door. Maybe somebody's struggling with confidence. Maybe somebody's recently had like really bad situation with self defense. Like you, you never know what somebody's stories. Maybe somebody just saw an ad and they want to try it out and based on where they're wanting to go, that's going to lead the conversations that you have Now. I would highly recommend to assign a blue or purple belt, maybe even a brown belt at your academy that is okay with working with gear on their first day trial. Because there are so many things that need to be explained in jiu jitsu and we just brush over it. Like you don't have to explain the fact that I'm gonna grab you in maybe a sensitive area. Like you have to kind of explain like, oh yeah, jiu jitsu. It's kind of, you know, so we're.
Going to do it like this.
Yeah, you reach right in pants. Yeah. This is ultimate leverage. Like you got to make these things normal because so Many Jiu Jitsu trials and people running Jiu Jitsu trials, they pretend like there's not giant. There's like 16 giant white elephants sitting in the room in a Jiu Jitsu academy, and you guys just try to ignore all of them. You have to identify the white elephant of, like, close quarters, like, space with people, and especially if you're selling to women. Okay. By the way, on Facebook, side note, 80% of buyers are women. So any of us can run a women's Jiu Jitsu ad, and we're gonna get tons of ladies showing up.
Hey, if you're a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academy owner and you want to grow your academy, we're currently accepting applications for schools that want to install our scaling system. And no, this isn't like a lot of the marketing stuff you've seen before. Somebody's never done Jiu Jitsu before, and they just think it's a good industry to go into. No, Jiu Jitsu saved my life, and I have a power passion for bringing more people to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, so I actually do this on the side. I have a very, very profitable business called Shift Social that works with dealerships, and I have another business called Roas where we work with coaches, consultants, speakers, and authors. So I don't need Jiu Jitsu academies. Okay. I'm sorry, but they're not like, the biggest pay, like, in terms of money and economically, like, it doesn't make a lot of sense. But here's the thing. I want to work with you because I want more people to start training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So if you're watching this video and you got value and you want to work together to some capacity or. Or you want to talk, click the link below and you can apply for a done for you service and a whole program installed on it that's actually going to help you to grow your academy. Like Logos is able to do, ATOS is able to do and many other academies that I've worked with. My Jiu Jitsu gym was one of the first places I ever ran ads for, and I was able to help them get a return. And that's what springcasted my entire career. Now, seven years later, I'm here, absolutely crushing it. But I have a passion. I want to help more Jiu Jitsu academies. So it's a very affordable, very economical system that we're going to actually teach you how to use. And over time, you're going to get more students. You can expect to double your students. You could Expect to have more trials than ever, more website traffic. And I say that with absolute, utter confidence. So click the link below if you want to get information on that. I would love to see you again. I'm Nate Tilly, training under Michael Liera Jr. I'm a purple belt out here and I've been a purple belt for three years. And I would love to help your academy grow and I'd also love to come train with you if we're a good fit. So click the link below and we'll get back to the video.
Now, we've been fine.
We've been seeing that you can run adult ads for like adult bjj and the adults will click through that to sign up their kids, too. So sometimes, like when you have kids in adult class, you can kind of kill two birds with one stone by having a script that covers both. So it'd be like, are you curious about jiu jitsu, but don't know where to start for yourself, your kids or your family?
You know, in Westminster, Colorado, the only thing that I would adjust, like not add or omit or anything change from your video norm is I just think that we could in the future, when we do a version, I think we could do a version that's a little.
Bit longer and explain how those in person sessions.
Because when I see, when I hear this course is going to teach you, I want to know afterwards, like, wait, it's a course, is an online course. So that's the only thing. And it's.
This is being super critical because I.
Think it's an amazing video first off. But I think that maybe in this.
You could go a little bit more like.
So in this course you're going to learn all the fundamentals and it's an in person cohort. Maybe you don't say cohort.
That's a new term for me.
But it's an in person group where you're going to be training alongside of other beginners who are just starting. You guys aren't going to be thrown in there with everybody else or going to dedicate this exactly to you starting.
Out your jiu jitsu journey.
I think that can be a video that accompanies this video. I, I like the video. That's right. Hook and call to action.
But I, to Mike's point, it's like.
This video, standalone, it's perfect.
It's going to drive intrigue.
Perfect.
But you need to have sometimes like.
Another video that people see after that one that like really nails at home. Like, you don't Launch them at the same time. You wait like two weeks or something after a lot of people have seen the first one and then you launch the second one. And the second one would be like right into it.
So it might be like B roll and it might be like, so what's all included in logos? 12 week intro program. First we're going to do this, second we're going to do this. And it's like small groups basically. You tell them every little thing, every little thing like that they're going to get and all the things that are included and then click below to sign up.
If that video clipped to a landing page, redirected to a landing page. Know what I mean? To have that video that you're talking about, the fun, like a more explanation of a. You know, the video that includes the details. Yeah, you've already got the lead.
I think we should follow up with Norm's idea though. Just because I feel like people see our videos all the time and like it's not just first time people hitting our, our links. It would be good to put into the community more what we're trying to do and not just the sale like I think including you know, like a few more like videos and ads where we're not just hitting with the, the introduction and call to action. Instead like people are scrolling through our stuff all the time and I think hitting them with some more color like that would, you know, if nothing else just be good for the overall kind of feelings of logos in the community. You know what I mean?
You talking about B roll? Yeah. Okay.
Like awareness, consideration, conversion.
So a lot of people already have the awareness and the straight up offer call to action is like. It's like trying to do all three at once. But since this is a longer play, more people are knowing about us. Maybe they're really scared of trying Jiu Jitsu. Adding like Mike said, like more color to that is. Is really cool. Different ways of, of just showcasing the academy.
You can have certain videos that have like a very creative and really no call to action at all. Just more like Nate says, it's more brand awareness.
Right.
And kind of like explaining through art what you're doing. But certain videos like the one that Norm did, it's perfect for every. What however many of those creative, you got to have one that says, hey, would you like to join?
You know, I'm not saying get rid of any of the. The call.
Yeah, no, no. I'm just saying I agree.
Let's.
Every video you do. Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course.
Yeah, like we get so many. I think it would help with not as much the people that first see the, the video is for all the people that say, oh, we see the videos all the time. You know, like that brand awareness break, separating it from all the other ads I see where it's like 15 people trying to join Jiu Jitsu, come to Sanctuary, BJJ or whatever. Right. I think we need to separate, think about separating from that too.
You know, sometimes we, we forget that people are like already more primed than we expect. We always go back to like level one. But like a lot of these people, like, are probably already more nurt. You know, like things like this is where they actually need to see. So I'll show you guys. Like, this is this one. Doubled booking rate. Single handedly. We targeted it to just women and it's getting like $8. And these are, these are website leads. So these aren't lead forms. These are actually leads on their website. And this one is crushing this one with no call to action and just straight B roll and like opening up the vibes and showing what it's actually like is crushing this one with a direct call to action. And like, like there's like, first of.
All, she's not in a gig. There's no martial art. I mean, yeah, it's not done the way norms is true.
But yeah, so I mean, that's you guys talking.
Yeah, she says, like, hey, come join Jiu Jitsu.
But like, you know, this is. Yeah, I mean, it's working really well for booking women and the women show up a lot too. So I think emulating the same thing for adult classes makes a lot of sense. And now that we have access to Jeff, who's amazing, this type of thing, like more of the stuff that we're running these days is more along those lines. And then of course, we do have the direct call to action ones. Hi, my name is everything. Like, we've got parent testimonials here. Imagine if we could get this for Westminster.
Yeah, blend that in. Norm, get with Jeff.
Yeah, Yeah, I think Adriana, who's on the call, I don't, I don't know if she's still listening, but I think she's actually the one that makes these videos.
Hi, yes, I'm here.
Ah, nice.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Yeah.
These videos are amazing. This, this is working really well. So we just wanted to show your proof of concept and it's, it's really working on the outside question, Nate, how.
Is the, the female One that you showed, the one that's doing really, really well versus the men. Just curious. Men versus women on that same B roll style.
It's. It's dominating like it's.
It's crushing the women.
One is the women is crushing the men.
Not the male one. Not the young kid, not the young boy that was. Was training the kids.
That.
That's for kids class. And it was slower on the actual web forms. So we're rocking the women. And then we have like a direct call to action with Professor Galva on this page where he's cell phone videoing it up here. And this thing gets a ton of leads too. This one 386 likes.
What's up, San Diego professor here. Both time IJJF and ADCC Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt world champion. And also I am a Jiu Jitsu hall of fame in both federations. Yes. Also fifth degree black belt, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And the reason I'm doing this video here is to invite you to train in the best training facility for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Yes. Do you want to transform your life?
You want to be better?
You want to get confidence? Come and check us out. We have this amazing, incredible facility where you can learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu straight from the main source. World class.
Yeah, it's really good. So, yeah, you got to put out a lot of offers, you got to put out a lot of messages, and you got to keep rocking it. But guys, I got to run to my next meeting. They're actually in the waiting room.
So this was fun.
Super awesome.
We'll do this.
Thank you, guys.
We'll go into the CRM a little bit more next time. We went into the trials this time, but thank you guys for being here. Super stoked. Let's keep crushing it. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Nate, everyone.
You're welcome.










