| When I first speak to a new coaching client one of the very first things we discuss is whether they know and track their average number of leads per month. I know when I began my training business years ago I didn't. You see we all begin as technicians, good at what we do and usually not much of an understanding of the simple principles that guide a business. If this sounds like you then these next few paragraphs are sure to change your life in the months to come. If you don't track your monthly leads -- aka people that inquire about your services -- this is a good place to start. At first you might notice this number varies a lot from month to month. This would generally be because most people at this stage are running a primarily referral based business. The good news in this is that these leads are generally highly qualified and almost all will become clients. The bad news is that your business is capable of much greater and more sustainable growth if you begin to understand how to use other channels to create even more leads. If your business is small under six figures or up to $200,000-300,000 annually a good first benchmark is 20-30 new leads per month, basically one per day. In my own business we generally have a target of twice this amount. So where do these leads come from? And how do you ensure that you reach that target every month? You begin to plan consistent campaigns through different channels to ultimately be able to loosely predict the results of future campaigns. Let me explain... Everyone should have an email list; if you don’t, start one today. Add every client, past client and continue to add every new contact and inquiry to either a prospect or a client list. Email marketing will produce an average of about 10 leads per month for many of my coaching clients with lists of just a couple hundred prospects. Knowing this I'd urge you to run a short-term trial email campaign once every few weeks to begin your predictable lead generation. Social media has become another central lead generation channel. It's cheap, it offers "finger on the pulse control," and once you understand how to mobilize the audience you literally have thousands of new prospects at your fingertips. For my coaching clients this is a typical 5-10 leads a month. Next, think offline and internal. Whether you have 10 clients or 100 no matter how many referrals you are generating now if you're not subtly asking once a week, running challenges at least every 90 days you can generate more. Referrals can easily add 5-10 new qualified prospects a month. And let's not forget one of my most favorite channels, one I see highly under utilized: community strategic partners. Our whole world functions on relationships, and sad but true I'm not someone that enjoys networking. That aside I learned early the importance of heading out into my community to meet other businesses and add value to people's lives; 1-2 'lunch and learns' each month is an easy way to add 5-15 new leads per month. No matter where you are in your business if you simply heed these words and work to repeat and use what's listed above it will be almost impossible for your business not to grow every single month. Cabel McElderry, now known as the Profitable Personal Trainer, struggled as a solo personal trainer for nearly eight years before learning the strategies he needed to transform his barely six-figure business to a seven-figure (and growing) training studio in just a couple years. His studio (One-to-1 Fitness), now 5 years old, has won multiple awards for business excellence. Cabel has been recognized as one of the top 100 fitness entrepreneurs in North America and is currently one of 50 nominees for Optimum Nutrition's Canadian Trainer of the Year. Cabel still trains a handful of clients as his passion to help others will never fade but has also evolved. Cabel now also mentors fitness professionals in an effort to help them achieve similar or better results than his own. www.ProfitablePersonalTrainer.com |
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June 25 2013
