Making the sale is, for many owners and trainers, the hardest part of operating a boot camp. They don’t have a problem with the training, they can handle the numerous challenges that come with operating a successful fitness boot camp business, but they are deathly afraid of making the sale and closing the client.

And this fear bleeds into their marketing efforts. They can’t write powerful, engaging copy because they aren’t comfortable making a sale. And whatever marketing campaigns they create don’t seem to have the ‘umph’ required to make people take action.

So when I coach these owners and try to show them how they can get the confidence and the tools they need to become effective salespeople, I usually find their consistent failure  stems from the same recurring problem: they are selling the wrong thing.

Think for a minute about what exactly you are buying when you purchase a membership to a big box gym.

You’re getting access to a massive, state of the art facility packed full of the most powerful fitness and weight loss tools available. Dozens of machines of all different types and purposes, everything from treadmills to stairclimbers, ellipticals and bikes— whatever you can think of, it’s there. Hundreds of free weights, bench presses, and anything else you need to get ripped. There’s even racquetball courts, yoga studios, Olympic sized swimming pools, saunas, hot tubs, showers, lockers, bathrooms. It’s all there.

And what does your boot camp offer? Well, virtually none of these things. It’s a fraction of the size and has little more than squishy mats and giant ropes hanging off the walls.

So how do you make a sales pitch that can compete with everything the big gyms have to offer? Hopefully it’s obvious by now that you shouldn’t be selling any physical thing that your boot camp offers. Clients can access whatever you’ve got and ten times more at their local gym, so that strategy isn't going to work for you.

So what should you sell, then? How can you compete with these seemingly overwhelming odds?

Actually, it’s easy.

Why do people workout? Why do unhealthy and overweight individuals suffer through the grueling hell they experience at your boot camp. To get fit, right? 

Clients don’t come to you for your TRX. They don’t wake up at 4am because they just can’t wait to get their hands on them kettlbells.

No, people flock to us because we can change their lives. We give them what they really want: a new body, energy, confidence— complete and total transformation.

When a newbie signs up for boot camp, they are signing on to an accountability system. Their getting nutritional evaluations, personal attention and genuine concern from trainers, their getting check-ins, check-ups and they’re being held accountable all for one, simple reason: to get results.

That, Fit Body Boot Camp Owners, is what you need to be selling your clients.

Not your facilities, not your training, not your revolutionary this or innovative that, it's just all about the results.

And the reason why this is so powerful, why you absolutely need to be making use of this technique, is because the big box gyms are powerless to compete with this tactic.

Who cares if you’ve got a thousand of the best workout machines in the world if you can’t guarantee they are going to make any kind of difference in a person’s life. All their fancy facilities and equipment can never promise results. All you get form them is access to the tools, but now the power to use them.

But you and your Fit Body Boot Camp absolutely can promise results. Why? Because YOU are going to ensure results; that is what a client is buying into.

With this in mind you should have everything you need to destroy your sales. Not just because you can feel secure and confident believing in the value of your service, but because you are know equipped with the most powerful sales tool available to us.

If we wanted fancy equipment we’d get it, right? That isn’t the point of what we are doing and I think anyone who has invested in our model understands that. But what owners often fail to understand is that this business model is our greatest asset and most appealing feature. 

And while keeping this in mind is going to give you the much needed boost you need from the sales floor, it’s also exactly what is going to kick start your marketing efforts.

Use this message to compete with the big gym advertising. Focus your marketing message on your clients and their transformative results. Use those human billboards, get before and after pictures of your challenge successes, and broadcast to your community that Fit Body Boot Camp is your city's epicenter of weight loss and complete body transformation.

Start selling the right thing and you’ll finally say goodbye to all those limiting beliefs holding back your performance.

This entry was posted on January 19, 2015 at 8:05 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Boot Camp Marketing, Closing and Sales Techniques by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet