Sales Strategies Unleashed: New Approach to Sales

You find a problem. The bigger the problem, the quicker the person will move. You then say, you might teach them something and say, we have a USP, a system, a process, a program, a trainer, a person. You always remember this phrase. And the benefit to you is no more problems. Skinny Steve is embarrassed on the beach. Being skinny is not the problem. It's being embarrassed. That's the problem.

All right. Welcome back to the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. I'm your host, Richard Toutounji. I'm really excited for today's episode. I've been trying to get this guy on the show forever. And it's one of those things that we finally got around to it. Now, my next guest is a guy called Steve Jensen. For those in the fitness industry, you probably would've heard this name before. He's been in this industry for a very long time. He's won multiple awards. He spent over 30 years doing pretty much what he loves. He's been on stage with Tony Robbins. He's also referred as the Sales Doctor, Dr. J, and has a reputation around the world for his inspiring presentation and selflessness, passion for teaching. He's regarded as an international expert in sales and communication training and mentoring implementation strategy. What does that mean to you? I'll tell you what, the sales game has changed quite a lot over the last 30 years. And what Steve does, he, you know, he really goes into this And he studies what changes when you bring AI into the world. What changes when you bring digital marketing in the world? What changes when people don't answer their phones? And so Steve has, has shares his knowledge quite freely. And, you know, he has a program called the Sales Academy, and he's also been a role of honor in the fitness industry. He's spoken on stage all around the world. And he's a good friend of mine. We talk up and we catch up a lot. Steve, welcome to the Marketing Muscle-Up Podcast Show. How are you?

Oh, terrific to be here, Richard. What a great intro. I'll take you on tour with me.

So good. Now talking about tours, Steve, is it right that you've been on stage with Tony Robbins? I mean, I've seen some pictures of this, you and him on stage. Take me through, just take me through a really quick snippet of how you got involved in this industry.

Look, the fitness industry was all a mistake. There was no fitness industry when I got involved in fitness industry. So there you go. There was no clubs at all. So I needed a place to train. Look, I went to uni and did all the stuff at uni. And then I decided that I wanted to be an athlete because I represented in a few areas. And I said, oh, that'd be great. So I thought that going into the banking institution and computers was a great idea. So I didn't actually do my doctrine that I did. But anyway, it was long story short, I got some scholarships and I just went to work, but I was really passionate about exercise. So I decided to open up a place to train. That's right.

As you do.

Yeah, as you do. A friend of mine had a place just above the Commonwealth Bank, tiny little place and said, oh, you can put your stuff up here. It was their storeroom.

Wow.

So I put some carpet in there, drove all the way to Queensland. Long story short, Everything was a few bucks back in those days. Anyway, I remember my very first sale after I painted all the stuff with gunmetal blue and put mirrors on the room, went to Brian's Glass and have all the mirrors that were all bendy. I bought my gramophone records with my gramophone and even did conduit. And yeah, I just wanted a place to train really. And I thought it would be fun to have a few people there. So I Put a little stencil together and put some. We didn't have computers back then, and put some junk, 200 pieces of paper in people's letterboxes and come in and join for two or three bucks. Anyway, a lady came in and she wanted to lose weight. I said, "Gee whiz, okay, sure, we can do that." Had a lot to do with your diet. No, just talking because my background was in exercise. I had done lots of stuff and all that sort of stuff. Bottom line was she said. She didn't want to pay a few bucks a training session because that's all I wanted. I didn't have to pay rent or anything. And she said, oh, how can I join for a year?

Wow. Yep.

And I said, what for? So I quickly did a quick amortization and did a derivative because I was pretty quick with math back in the olden days. And I said, oh, how about $195? She said, oh, that's cheap. I went, done. And that's how I got into sales. And then after that, it grew. It was just, it was no, We didn't have to do any marketing back in those days. Anything new, everyone came. It was like a discotheque, you know. And anyway, that grew to quite a lot. It became quite large, 20+ and dojos and stuff like that and sold the clubs and started doing speaking. And then I got, well, Rob Salisbury introduced me to the big stage and he was the reason that I was introduced to Tony and got on on stage with him and also some other fantastic people that were mentors with mine and with Tom and a few of the guys. So it was a great opportunity and took away my fear of public speaking, I can assure you.

Well,

that's how I got into it, mate. And then I then started, I wanted to help clubs after I got out of the bank and stuff and I wasn't, that wasn't gonna be my gig. So I just started helping some friends because I sold the clubs. I knew what we do. We had very successful clubs. We had our gym bank card stuff going and—

Yep.

We never shared anything because back in those days we had to— you were stingy. You didn't share a thing because they were competitors.

Well, there was no learning like this, coaches or programs or YouTube, nothing like that, right? You had to figure out yourself. No internet. Yes.

No internet. I remember when the fax came along, I thought that was a revolution.

All right, Steve, now you're showing your age. The fax.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah. Now, Steve, like I mentioned before, you've been in this game for a long time now. The thing that I like about this, right, is, you know, there's so many people out there that have done well in a gym, right? And then they said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna teach sales, right? But you do sales very differently, Steve. It's not just like, hey, this is what I did, copy, here's some cheat sheets, good to go. Your sales training is very, very, very, very different to most. You know, they call you the grandfather of sales, the godfather of sales, Dr. J. Because you are talking about things that are very deep. We're talking about NLP, we're talking about strategies, we're talking about leadership skills, soft skills, hard skills. These are things that people don't generally grow up with. Like some of us are easier to sell than others. We are natural at it, but a lot of people in the fitness industry aren't natural at it. Can we just dig a little bit there in, in, in, in what sort of skills would help somebody in the fitness industry? You know, to really make a change and maybe show us an example or something, Steve, like that?

The question is very appropriate right now because we've almost come full circle.

Yeah.

When someone gets involved in the fitness industry, they predominantly don't say, hey, I want to be a salesperson. All right. They might be a great coach, they might be a manager of something, but they have had no training in that. And back in the olden days, there was nothing, there was zero. And you're correct, it's a combination of lots of things, of soft skills, hard skills. And I believe selling is leadership.

Right.

You have to have a mindset and you have to have a leadership mentality. In other words, someone comes with you with a problem. They don't come to be your best friend. We can, we called back in the old days, we create massive rapport. So that's okay. That's not the case now. You take enough rapport, but what you have to understand, the soft skills and the hard skills need to be learned. The problem is if you teach someone the soft skills, this is a hard skill, people get overwhelmed. And when people, an overwhelmed mind can't learn. So what we did, we made it fun. And when we're laughing, we're learning. So we combined the soft skills with the hard skills. We didn't have to explain how it worked. We just made sure they learned it. And it's a show-tell-do modality. Yes. And we all know that once never enough. It's just like training. You do one set of dumbbells and you've got a sore arm, but if you do it regularly, you get the growth. And this is how we actually created the model. When we started, I had training in my clubs all the time and we were very, our team were very good, not because of me, because of them, because they really took on the culture. They loved training, they liked practicing, and it was just role play on the run, so to speak. Everyone was a great communicator. Nowadays people say, oh God, do role play or whatever. But when you're laughing, you're learning. So what we decided that we would do it regularly and it was a magic sauce. Learn something once, be informed. Learn and do something on a regular basis and become a master. So we put that into our— when we started training, when I sold the clubs and stuff, I was going to help some people. So we put the same ethos in place. We wouldn't train someone with one-off or rah-rah session. We do that at convention and that sort of stuff. But we say, no, we've got to break it down and teach you things properly so you can implement. See, training is an absolute waste of time. It's a waste of time if you don't have a champion that's going to implement. It's the implementation and what we found in our training all around the world. was the training was great. We made it fun because then they wanted to come back for more. But it was what was done in between the training, the implementation, the accountability. And you know what? Success breeds success. And so we combined the soft skills with the hard skills because the emails I get from 10, 20 years ago aren't just saying about how great their sales are. It's how they— it's changed their lives because the communication is better with their kids and their grandkids. And it's their life skills really.

So your hard skills is the tactics and the soft skills is how you're executing that in your practice. Is that correct, Steve?

Yes, the delivery. For instance, you know, eye patterns, understand the soft skills. Say you can read an eye pattern, you can read the body language, adjust yours accordingly so it becomes consciously competent. And then if someone's talking really fast, furious with no gaps or whatever, you know, there are certain behavior that you've got to adjust your behavior. And if everything is going fine, Well, that's fine, but it's a break glass model. Questioning skills is a combination of both, but they're generic skills. What we then need to do is put them into a tool that's very, very specific for the club or studio or leisure center. And then that tool is then designed because, and this is one thing I want everyone, they take nothing away from today, mate. One of the big mistakes and is a huge mistake is very talented owners, managers who know what they're doing really well. I mean, they just tell people what to do. You've got to make more calls. You've got to have, you've got to make more sales. You've got to build rapport. You've got to use it. You've got to overcome those objections, mate, blah, blah, blah. And they just tell. Just telling them, the person understands the language, but they don't know how to do or they might have forgotten. You have to ask them a question. How did you think you went? Okay. How do you— how are the results going? Okay. What do we need to do differently? Would you like me to show you how to do that?

So waiting for the response, not just telling, telling, telling, telling.

Absolutely. And then you gotta do it. I've gotta do it. I'll show Richard. Okay, let's look at what you did. Okay, show me what you're doing, Richard. Okay, let me show you differently. And you break it into chunks. This is called leadership. It's not called management. You manage process, you lead people, and you've got to take the time. People say, I'm too busy. Well, don't have a business. If you want to get into leadership and managing people, get good with your time so you can lead your people. Do the PDR, do the practice, and then get a champion in your team to do that PDR and then acknowledge and praise.

PDR, is that practice drill rehearsal? Is that correct?

Practice drill rehearsal. No, we don't call it role play because everyone turns their nose up at it now.

Hey Steve, I want to share with something. Sorry to interrupt you. So, so many years ago, you probably forget this, but, but talk about practice through rehearsal. And, and I want to kind of share this story because I really think that this is the difference between, you know, you say people are sometimes naturally at it, you know what I mean? There was an event, one of the first events you're at that I was presenting at was a 3-day immersive that we ran. And one of those days I said, Steve, I've, I've got to do a presentation for actual sales. I'm going to get on the stage and I need to sell. I need to sell. And I don't think— I tried it the day before and it didn't work. And then he said, oh, Richard, you got to go outside. You got to practice the pitch. And I showed you the pitch in literally 5 minutes, not really fast. He said, Richard, that's awesome. Go out. But you got to practice that 3, 4, 5. I think he said about 6 times.

Yes, 6 times. Yep. You're spot on.

I think I might've said, I think I maybe heard 3 times. So I said, all right, I'll go do this. You were really forceful and you said, listen, Richard, you got to go out there and you got to practice. And, you know, sometimes we, we're too busy for ourselves and we go, oh, I'm too busy. And I wasn't busy. You know what I mean? There was someone else presenting, so I had the time. But anyway, I went out there and I practiced maybe 3, maybe 4 times, Steve. I didn't do the 6. 80%, 70%, I landed among the stars. But anyway, then I came out and I, and I did the presentation and it really felt natural. You know, it felt natural to talk. It felt natural to present. And then we had our biggest sales Ever just from that. And so that the PDR, the practice drill rehearsal, really makes a difference. And that's kind of, you know, first of all, thank you, Steve, for that. And it really changed the way that, you know, I look at sales. And I think this is the problem that, you know, we're having. And I want to kind of like dig a little bit more of, you know, what people can get away, you know, what we can do to just, just to increase our conversion because You know, we work together a lot, Steve, in marketing. We can generate leads, but if somebody can't convert the leads, and even if they've gone through the hard, you know, the blueprint, the structure that we give them, but sometimes it comes down to the soft skills you're talking about. If you can't have a conversation, if you can't look someone in the eyes, if you can't, you know, know when to say, you don't have a business, Steve.

No, you're spot on.

So what can we do just to, you know, improve our percentage of sales just by 20% On something you can share with us today?

Well, you guys are really great at your matrixes with your measure. We do measuring tool. First thing is you gotta measure. People actually measure number of sales in their membership. If you don't measure the activity that's actually creating that membership, you have a problem. This is a big problem in our industry. I'll show you a couple little things here, but go right back to basics. How many leads did you get? How many have been contacted? It's not call to contact, it's lead to contact. Is that lead management?

Lead management.

Are you contacting that person? Now, once you contact that person, what are you saying? Now, if you have a prompt and it's not a script anymore, which means you have to learn what's on the questions. These are called leader questions on the telephone. They're called leader questions and the skill is learning the questions you ask after they give you the answer. And it's no longer being really insipidly sweet and being so nice and laughing at the jokes and, oh yes, oh, we got a great club. Come on down and I'll show you around. I mean, that's just so old school. We've got to find out if they're going to be a fit in your business because they're ringing up you with a problem. Get enough rapport, find out what their problem. People pay to have problems solved. It's Skinny Steve or it's Fat Steve or whatever it may be. I'm ringing up because I'm not feeling very happy with myself, but I'll just ask you about price. We all know that. And by the way, it's shifting. did again. Back in the old days, people never give price over the phone. Nowadays they can find it on a website. So you've gotta be able to create some value before you invite them in. And something that we've actually got a test set going at the moment. Back in the old days, it was absolutely taboo. So if you find compelling argument, got enough rapport and know that you are an expert or your team are, that's a big deal. Don't just have a phone call, invite them in. They've gotta know that you are different. And you use that word different at the beginning. How are you different? But the big rock is, it's all about price? No, it's about value. The only way you can create value is have expertise. Now, if you ring up 10 clubs, anyone listening to this, 10 clubs and have a listen, ask yourself, is this person pleasant? Maybe. Do they know their stuff? Did you like them? How much would you pay for the information they gave you over the phone? Last one, would you show up? Excited to join. And this is not happening. A lot of money is spent on marketing, but when we actually get that person, boom. If we get a phone call in or book a call like you taught everyone how to have your marketing where they don't just give you the details, it's book a call.

Yep.

Well, make sure you're ready with your prompt to make sure that you know the prompt. You don't have to read the prompt. You just gotta know it's a reminder of what to say and you gotta make sure you can have a conversation. So if you're not having conversation, guys, you're not making sales. And let's just take the word sales away. How many people do you want to help and are they a fit? And they want to put the phone down and say, I can't wait to meet Richard, not, oh, I'm just going to have a look at the club. If that's the case, you have a problem.

I like that. And that's where the marketing and sales comes into action. I mean, I can't wait to meet X, I can't wait to meet this person because they've seen them online, they've seen the concept.

Yes.

And they want to do that final thing. You've always taught me the concept that you should never ask for a credit card until you're 97%, 98% sold already. And I think that's where sales has adjusted from probably where you started, Steve, like, yep, here's the 12 months versus where it is today. You talked about lead management. I want to touch on that a little bit more and tell us what you think lead management is. And I think this is a subject that I certainly get a lot. Oh, we put an inquiry in and then, you know, I'll test this all the time with new clients coming in and I just go their form and I put it in and then, you know, about 2 days later I get a call and I go, who are you? I totally forget. You know what I mean? Tell me about lead management, Steve, because it's such an interesting conversation.

Lead management is the holy grail if you want to drive your business. See, com marketing are the experts I don't know anyone better that does, creates leads. However, if you don't actually contact that lead and actually know if I've got this lead, how are we managing that lead? How quickly did we get hold of that lead? Now I know some people are personal trainers and they haven't got the time to get hold of them quickly, swiftly. But there's lots of ways to actually have that person call. You could have an answering service if you wanted to. You could go to voicemail. Well, they'll call another club. So how quickly do you get hold of them? Number one. In the older days, it was 2 to 7 minutes. Then it became 1 to 2 minutes. Now it's within 30 seconds, 60 seconds. Now, if you don't contact them within 2 to 3 minutes, you're gonna call, you're gonna have to dial the telephone 7 to 11 times. 7, that's dialing of the phone. Well, guys, how much time are you spending personally or your team spending just dialing the phone and getting ahold of nobody? Have you heard this? I can't get ahold of anybody.

The leads are crap. Facebook's bad.

Absolutely. So we're not managing that lead. Once we get that lead, you've got 5 days to get hold of them. The first 3 days are the most important. And we do have a process called, if you don't have Book a Call, which everyone should have Book a Call. You've taught it for a year or 2 now. It was revolutionary. Advertise, Book a Call, go to the calendar, goes into Richard's calendar. You then got a much higher strike rate if they booked a call that's convenient for them, not you trying to call them when they're doing pickup or going out for a beer. That's number one. But if you don't have that, you've got to then do your matrix where you've got to call straight away, leave a voicemail message and the voicemail needs to be up-tempo, not I'm just calling, you inquired about the club, you know, I'll be here till 3 o'clock. No, it's got to be upbeat. You've got to know what to say. We teach this. But you've got to have— it's very simple, easy to do, easy not to do.

Tell us what to say, Steve. So this is a really point I want to touch on. So let's say, for example, we don't have the booking call, the lead comes in, we call them maybe 2, 3, 4, 5, let's say 24 hours after. How do I be upbeat on the call? What should we say specifically? Someone's inquired about our services. I mean, you said, don't, oh, this is Richard calling from the club, interested. There's got to be something else, right, Steve?

So firstly, you've got to have the person making that phone call upbeat, not like you're on 10 Vs. And then you've got to say, oh hi Richard, it's Steve here. I'm sorry I missed your call. I know you're really excited about getting involved in health and fitness and so forth. We've got some great things happening at the club or the studio right now, and I'd love to have a chat to you and answer any of your questions. Look, I'm going to be here till about three thirty today, so if you feel free to call me on one two and three. I will call you a couple more times throughout today because we do like to follow up promptly and look out for my SMS. Okay, we'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.

Okay. I liked how, first of all, I just want to break that down a little bit. The first few seconds you said, hey, it's Steve here looking for Richard or something. And like straight away it feels to me that it's like a friend, or even if I was to call and say, hey, Steve here, Richard here, like you'd get put through, right? It's that friendly upbeat. I mean, upbeat. I mean, that's a key, upbeat. I mean, you just got to actually sound positive. Is that what you're saying, Steve?

Yeah. Positive, happy, happy, not off the Richter scale, but happy, confident, not off the Richter scale, but just have to be, you know, just be yourself, but just be a little bit up because it's gonna be, it's recreation really. Let's put it into place. And we don't say, hello, it's Richard here from ABC Club. No, hi Richard. Hi, hey, ring ring. Oh, hi Richard, it's Steve here. Sorry I missed you. So if I just say ABC Club, you're gonna turn off instantly.

Early.

And also, by the way, that text message I told you to send, never say Richard from ABC Club or studio.

Okay.

Always say it's Richard. I left a voicemail message. Got some good news for you. Let me know a good time to call a bit of still safe telephone tag. Book a call. Oh, it's Richard. from ABC Club at the end of the text. Now those sorts of small nuances make you big bucks.

Well, this is what we're talking about. I mean, this is gonna change your conversion rate from 10 to 30, you know?

Absolutely.

Just by changing the tone analogy of the message.

More conversations. The other thing is when you're calling someone from a lead, and this is a big deal, we've been doing it for about a year now in our Sales Authority Club and it just changed overnight when we got, well, the people that did it straight away, When you call someone on your mobile or from your landline and they don't know it because of all the scams that have been taking place, remember about what you need to do is you send them a text. Hi, it's Steve here. I'm going to give you a call in about 10 minutes. Steve from Impact Training or whatever. Then they get the text. So when they see the number, they don't just— Avoid it.

But the name comes up automatically then, right? Maybe from this person.

Maybe. But at the end of the day, send a text beforehand. Yeah. And by the way, if you do a voice to SMS, which is very popular now, just straight on voice into your SMS, always send a text message afterwards, please. Because if you just rattle off your number, It's more difficult for them to just get hold of you. So just send a text. I just sent you a voice-to-text. Here's the number. Just click the button because people are lazy. They'll click the button and then call you. Always have book a call link.

And what are your thoughts on leaving a message on Facebook Messenger? Should you just use text message? Can you use Facebook Messenger? What sort of platform is best? Like if they're lead coming in from that text.

Yes. Look, something that you guys teach all the time and it's something the industry are very slow. It's very slow on the uptake in some cases is like if they've got a lead coming in and what you're gonna do is you gotta start a conversation. Now, if it's a lead that comes in from an opt-in box, it's the same process. But if it's a lead on Facebook where people just liked your post, you gotta start a conversation. Don't just go in and say, oh, would you like to come to my club? One of the things that you guys teach very, very well is with your email stuff is if you send out propaganda and asking people to book a call or come in for a tour, it's not gonna work.

You

gotta have some proof. And if they have with a question, then if they said yes, then you ask them a question with another email. If they respond, then you say book a call. See, that's a com marketing and that means you started conversations, mate. We just have to, in our industry, have to have more conversations. Don't sit behind the computer now, whether it's on Zoom and we've got a lot of clubs presenting on Zoom now, like we're doing that now.

Very interesting. The game has definitely changed. And so when you're moving into this process and you're not naturally sales orientated? Is it like, I guess I'm talking to, let's say, a studio owner, right? Or a personal trainer. And the story, Steve, is like, I'm a trainer. That's what I do. What do you think about the concept of, well, changing the fitness industry? We're all on that side, but other industries, you know, calling within 60 seconds, you know, making sure that there's a sales team, making sure that happens. But sometimes I just feel the fitness industry thinks that we're a little bit over here and we're a little bit better than other industries. Yeah, other industries have been going for many, many years and they understand the value of a lead. For example, like I know, you know, in what we teach is you train $30 to $50 to spend on Facebook for leads, right? And we look at the independent, they go, oh my gosh, I can't spend that. But when you have a franchise that invested, you know, quarter of a million, half a million dollars into a gym or a million dollars, they're prepared to spend on that. So I guess I just want to talk to those people who are going, I just don't have sales. Or if I have sales, it's not consistent. Do you know what I mean? Like, do you see that, Steve? Because I see a little bit now, like we've got to— I just think this industry needs to really, you know, if you're in business, be in business and understand that you've got to do a couple more things than maybe just what you learned in your training course. What are your thoughts on this, Steve?

Look, you're spot on the money. Look, things have changed. There's a lot more automation now. If your product is low end and it's easy to, and you have a high budget and people can see what you can do in it and you've got lots of USPs and it's like an offer too good to refuse, people can just pop online. But there's not many businesses in the fitness industry that are $7, $8, $9, $10, $12 anymore. So if it's a low cost and a high turnover, it becomes a retail sale. You just got to market well, speak to comms. If you say, if you're in the fitness industry and you're not in sales, well, you have a hobby, a personal trainer who's training people.

Wow.

Hobby. You got to give great service. It's a hobby. You're a personal trainer. You want to keep your client. Now, people might say that's customer service. No, you give them the service and the outcome and the support. And most of the time they stay because of the support, not just because of the result. You'll get great results and they'll connect with you. That's the art of conversation communication. Call it a sale. It's keeping that retention. Everyone's screaming, I'm losing clients, they're canceling. Why? We're not expensive. It's not expensive. Electricity is expensive. And we're spending what, $20, $30, $50, $60? People go to the pub and that'll be gone in about half an hour.

Mate, the Taylor Swift concert tickets, just, you can't even get tickets for that. They're $600 a ticket at least.

So I believe that everyone, if you're on reception, people are not just reception, they're the face of the business. They have to understand the sales cycle. They don't have to do the sales, but we have to understand the process and there needs to be training involved and there needs to be support. Train, as I keep saying, We do training, sure. But no, no, what we do really, really well and what people need is what between the training, the support, making sure that they're implementing, helping them with other things other than just sales. And that's why we created, with your help, mind you, you were the man that got me onto it to create our community. And that was just the same when we were doing in-house training as well. Everyone has to learn how to communicate in the fitness industry, whether you're a group exercise instructor, Whether you're a HIIT trainer, whether you're a personal trainer, whether you're a manager. Your manager might not sell a thing. You might teach your people how, you gotta be able to teach them, but also you gotta communicate well with your staff to get them to be engaged, to want to do it. So everything's about getting an outcome. Have a mentality called what's next.

What's next?

The what's next mentality. Someone joins, what's next? Someone didn't join, what's next? Salesperson didn't close, what's next? Incoming call, couldn't get hold of the person. What next? Have a what's next mentality, not it could be in the bin. Fine. What's next after that? It's a really great way of having a mindset shift.

Love it. Steve, I want to pick your brain again before we wrap up. USP, you talked about it. Can you explain what it is? Because you've done this to our company many years ago when you came and gave some in-house training to our team and our client, you know, our team were blown away when we really discovered the USP, like what we could do with marketing. It just went to a whole new level. Take us through like a journey of USP. How can somebody grab their USP right now and start to use that in their sales or marketing?

It's a great topic and you guys do it really, really well. You've encompassed it in the whole process. A USP is unique selling proposition or position. What makes you different? Now, people say, oh, we have this, we have that. Well, every— remember, everything is a feature. Feature, it's a red brain modality. They think about a class, they think about a time, they think about the location. Unless you have convenience or fun connected to it, you've got a problem. But you have to be different to your competitor. Every business needs to have 5, a minimum of 5 USPs. Every USP that you talk about should be to fix a problem. So you have a problem or you might say, Skinny Steve can't get any size. He has a problem. Well, how's your nutrition? Well, it's not very good. Hey, I might teach you something about nutrition. And then I'm gonna say, oh, by the way, the good news is we have the 1-2-3 Nutrition Program that's combined with our program. The benefit to you is it'll help you Get more size so you'll stop feeling uncomfortable at the beach. And that's what you're wanting, isn't it? All of a sudden you become an expert, but never talk about your USP without linking it to an emotion.

So you need to find the problem that the client has.

Problem. A USP is a thing, has to be tangible. And if it's gonna be a USP, guys, you've gotta say we're the only, the first, we're the biggest. And by the way, if you don't have any, Make them up. Make them up. Put a name in front of something. You've got the 7-step process or the club's name and it's yours. And what does it do? USP. Problem? We have a USP. The benefit to you is no more problem. I'll say that again. A person has a problem or has a concern or question, you find a problem. The bigger the problem, the quicker the person will move. You then say, you might teach them something and say, we have a USP, a system, a process, a program, a trainer, a person. You always remember this phrase, and the benefit to you is no more problems. Skinny Steve is embarrassed on the beach. Being skinny is not the problem, it's being embarrassed. That's the problem.

Got it.

Then he's gonna be— that means you'll no longer be embarrassed and start to feel proud. And that's what you want to go to the beach and feel proud, don't you? Okay, well, let's make that happen. Not let's join the gym. He don't wanna join a gym. He wants to go to the beach and be proud. People buy the feeling, but they only will relate to that if you've connected to something that's unique in your business.

And that we have to connect that thing, don't we? And, you know, as the fitness professional, if you're running it or a sales team, we have to find and connect that problem up.

That's right. Take the

action

to teach that. It's just done in chunks. Just teach it, put it into your business and it'll become part of your culture. That's why, you know, little chunks of information with your team is better than trying to go into overwhelm. I'll say it again, an overwhelmed mind can't learn or can't make a decision. That's in the sale as well.

Love it. Love it, Steve. I think we have to get on another call because there's so many things I want to go through, but I want to, um, an easy process to what we talked about today, which is like, you know, looking at that lead process and lead management, as you call it, and taking that lead through. Um, how do you know, like, from a, from a marketing perspective, this is a marketing podcast, like, what are your thoughts on you know, how much people should spend on marketing, or, you know, should we rec— should we be focused on the, the outcome that they're gonna get, how much a client is worth? Is that, is that a concept? You know, you've been involved in, in a lot of different gyms over your, your, your career. I just wanna sort of ask you a real selfish question. It's like, well, what, what should somebody spend on generating a A business, leads, I should say. What should we be spending allocation to this? Just so we can get some information out to people that are just going, I don't think I need to spend any money on leads. What are your thoughts?

Well, firstly, if you don't, I think first you've got to learn how to do it. I mean, I sing your thunders because you are the best. They've got to learn from you guys. The consequence of How much is it worth? Well, how much is a member worth to you?

Now,

if you've got a $100 joining fee, would you give that $100 to get a lead to get that sale?

And

they're gonna pay a couple hundred bucks a month. So you multiply that by 12. Would you spend $100 for that membership? Well, the answer is yes. So at the end of the day, it's a pay-to-play world now. All the free stuff out there doesn't work and you've got, it's almost, and they've got to get someone to show them how to do it. And by the way, I don't believe that people need to, should go and just go to a, listen to a cassette or a download and just think they can do it. They need to be trained how to do that. But how much does it cost? You say $30 and some, you've got to spend. So you've got above the line marketing. which is all your external stuff. Then you've got your below-the-line marketing. Back in the olden days, they say, you know, 5% to 7% in marketing. Nowadays, it's anywhere between 20% to 30% on gross revenues on marketing.

Yeah.

And then if you're spending a bucket of money on marketing and you're not spending any time or money on training the people to convert, you're almost doubling the cost of every sale. So end of the day, Get Calm Marketing to make sure that you understand. By the way, you have some really good tools to show them how much to spend. But if you're spending $30 a day and you're not contacting your leads, come back to the lead management.

Yes.

Well, that's gonna be, well, that's in the bin. That's $30.

You know what I like to do, Steve? This is what I like to do. Got my wallet here, right? I like, this is what I used to do back in the day when we had had some studios. Like, I'll take a— if you're on YouTube, you can take a $50 note like this, right? And in our game, sometimes leads— I've got a $100 bill here if you're listening to this on podcast. And I'd put those and I'd go, okay, well, a lead is costing this, right? Like, not saying all leads cost that, like $50, but let's say a lead, you know, when we're talking about New Zealand clients, sometimes you get leads for $4 and sometimes a lead is going to cost $50 and a studio might cost $30. But at the end of the day, whatever it is, let's say it's $30. You gotta understand that you're gonna get $20 change from a $50, and that's $30. So if you are giving someone $30 at a shop and they don't, and you stand there in the line and they say, no, no, I'll get back to you and come back tomorrow and pick up your thing you bought for $30, people think you're crazy. And that, that, you know, when you, when you wave money, real money, cash, and you go, oh, I just blew $50 today because I was too busy or I couldn't be bothered to call the lead in a fast period of time. Well, I think we've got to fix that problem because then that $50 is going to make the return.

No question about it. And one of the things that, you know, we used to have it back in the olden days, going back a while now, we did have little cards for our telephone prompts. We have sheets now and I used to see them in the bin. I used to walk home, take them up, and I used to pick them out of the bin. I used to bring it up. I remember one sales meeting, there was quite a few throughout the week, and I put them all there. I said, these are worth about $20 each. Now, if it was your $20, what would you be doing? So I asked everyone a question. I said, if you saw $10 on the road, would you pick it up? They said, yes. I said, what if it was $10, it was in a garbage bin and it had a— and it— oh, sorry, $20, it was the garbage bin, but it had a beetroot sandwich on top of it, would you pick it up? Everyone said, yes. I said—

I reckon I'd do it for $5, Steve. I'd do it for $5.

I said, what if it was $50 in the gutter? It's been raining, all the leaves and crap's all on it. Would you just leave it there? They go, no, I'd pick it up. I said, yeah, so why are you throwing these away? I said, this is what it costs. I went, I don't wanna see any gold cards in the bin and I want every lead with an outcome and exhausted lead, called them. This is back in the days where we didn't record things. Lead contact. Wrap up on this. How many contacts per day And in our Sales Authority Club, one of the big things is the big rock is I ask them all the time in our planning, we say, what's the minimum number of contacts you or your team have to make per day to prospective members? Whether it's a follow-up, whether it's a referral lead or it's a lead box lead, whatever. How many contacts per day? Not how many dials. Everyone talks about dials. Guys, put it in the bin. How many contacts per day that you're going to book an appointment with, right? Or book a Zoom. The other one is how many calls are you gonna contact with members that just joined to do a momentum call? A momentum call is to check in to see how they're going. And it's just say, just wanna check up, see you've got everything when you joined, everything's good. Yeah. And then you go through your recommendation model. That's a different conversation. So if you had 10 prospective contacts a day and 5 momentum calls a day and your contact to booked appointment was 60%, well, you're gonna have 6 appointments, aren't you? But if booked, but then if your show rate's only 50%, so if your conversion's low, You're only going to have 3 people. Then if your close rate is 50%, you're only going to make 1 sale. So where's the big rock? It's in conversion. But contacts, ladies and gentlemen, how many contacts per day? You should never have a manager, any club that's not having a BAM, a bare-ass minimum of contacts per day.

Love it. This is really getting me excited to, you know, just on sales and business. And I think You know, sometimes I think we can get down on all the things we have to do in our business, but I think this is a really good conversation. Now, Steve, I know you have something special coming up, and I wanted to touch on this earlier, but every year— well, I think this year is the first year, I'm not sure— but every year you run a very exciting apprentice program for people that are wanting to come into your world-renowned program, Sales Authority Academy, and you put these open, you open these to partners and we're one of your great partners, which we're super thankful for. Take me through what this is because I want to speak to anybody who's listening to this and literally going, hey, I need this. I need some weekly, you know, BAMs. I need my ass kicked. I need to make sure that I'm on track because, you know, we always get busy and like what you do is you're not teaching, you're You're rehearsing and making sure they're— take me through how this works and who might be applicable for this exciting opportunity.

Okay, mate. Look, it's our 4th year of our Sales Authority Club. We put it together with your help. I must say a big thank you to help clubs and studios to have not just training, but the support to implement and have one-on-one sessions and coaching. We have our events just like you, just like you do online. and also Belly to Belly. It's called the Sales Authority Club. And what we're doing is because we're celebrating our birthday, we're giving 12 months free. It's a scholarship for sales training and full support. Now, there are some conditions though, mate. And as you guys do, it's for somebody that wants to show up.

Okay.

They've got to be able to Turn up online at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday and a Thursday, right? For 1 hour. Wednesday we have Q&A. We actually have a fantastic session on the first Wednesday of every month called Marketing Q&A with Com. And then it's Q&A. You spitball, all the managers and the owners come on and they ask any questions and the community help each other. And then we have training. Then it's training where we do our PDR. And then every quarter we have a full day on a Friday and then we support it. We have our one-on-one coaching afterwards as well as all our video programs. So what we're doing is we're giving scholarships away for 12 months for free sales training and support. Now, out in the abyss, we're giving 5. However, for our partners, we give you a special URL. You send it out to anybody that wants and it's for an owner.

Owner, yep.

It's for an owner who has a team or 1 or 2 people that they want because they'll have a— they'll get the owner and their 2 other team members can come in. So you can do your PDR. So there's 3, but they've got to show up, right? But, and they'll go for full 12 months. They'll get all our coaching, get the one-on-one sessions as well. But it's for an owner that has a team that wants to increase the sales. And The Big Rock is not just sales training. It's the accountability and the care factor that comes afterwards is the implementation. So if anybody would like to enter, Richard's got all the details. Just put a couple of questions.

I'll put that in the link there, ask some questions. But Steve, tell me, like, you know, they say to— when these kind of things, you know, you pay, you pay attention. What is this valued at? Because I mean, the value on this is huge. I don't— I think we need to explain the value on this because This is not a, you know, this is a 12-month opportunity to pretty much change your entire business and up your sales. And, you know, I know all your guys are completing 100% success rate on these things. So—

Yeah, last month we had every single club and studio crush their BAMs and their targets, and they grew. Everyone all grew, all of them. So it was great. Look, we kept the investment plausible. The value of the 12-month membership in the Sales Authority Club is over $8K. It's to pay for it before— we've got a price rise coming up in the next month or two. So it's $697 per month. So that's all it is. Now we're gonna give a full scholarship away, plus for, especially with our partners, the other people will get some smaller scholarships as well. So if they wanna taste the chocolate, so— Normally it's $697 a month for one principal or an owner with 2 people. If you have one principal and 5 people, we have another one called Boost, and that's usually $1,297. But most of the clubs and studios go into this $697.

I think that's huge value. And I think there's the call, guys. If you want to take this opportunity, click the URL. I'll put this post in this email if you're watching this, and if you're watching it later, definitely try the URL and book a 10-minute chat if it's in a year down the line. But guys, it's an amazing opportunity, and Steve's drawing out a winner every week for the next 4 weeks.

That's right, every week. Yes, over $8K worth, and we'll do an onboarding and get you all ready to rock and roll. We've got our quarterly coming up online, and then we've got another one in November. So That will be belly to belly. So good. Love it.

Love it. So guys, hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you have enjoyed this episode, go and check out, go and check out the link that is in the email. Otherwise, you can check out impact-training.net. Always book a 10-minute call and just say, hey, I heard you from the podcast and I need to speak to Steve and his amazing team, Darren and Rebecca, and they will help you out to really grow the business. So Steve, this has been a huge, huge valuable Podcast. I'm so glad we got to this, um, podcast because, yeah, we catch up a lot and, um, we just don't record the things. So this is really good, and I think there's some really great insights there. And I just, um, you know, my intent with these podcasts is to just take one thing away. You know, these are free podcasts, but I mean, the valuable information that you gave us there, that's, you know, that's 30-plus years of, um, your expertise in this industry, not just working fitness, working all industries. So Huge thank you for you and your time. And I think I'm gonna have to get you back on because I've got too many questions to ask.

Okay, more questions. And looks always great spitballing with you, mate. We always have fun and you always ask the great questions that not many people would even think of. So thanks for the opportunity to tell us about our celebration as well. Appreciate it, mate. And thanks for your support much.

Thank you. Appreciate that, Steve. Guys, if you enjoyed this episode, all you have to do is You wanna share it with a friend and say, hey, I've, I've heard this cool guy, Steve Jensen. Where was I? Share it with your friend and say, this is great. That can help their business, even if it's not just in fitness, in any industry. And if you have liked this episode, go and subscribe. And if you wanna watch this on YouTube, where I like to watch my podcast, go to YouTube and check us out there. I'll catch you next time on the Marketing Muscle Up Podcast Show. Bye for now. Bye.