MA Business Success 80: Full Proof Sales System

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Graham M:
Good evening everyone. It's Graham McDonnell here, and we've got the martial arts business success podcast. We're at episode number 80 and I've got Phil Britten joining me.

 

Phil Britten:
Absolutely always.

 

Graham M:
Well, we've got a pretty great episode this time. Aren't you going to go back a little bit on some of the topics that we talked about on previous podcast, dive in a little deeper? This is one to be honest with you is probably a couple of those key factors that you do in any business. It has to do with sales and getting those conversions or getting the students to see the benefit of being at your school. We talked about in a previous podcast about a foolproof sale system, but as the world grows and changes, so does the systems you need to have, or at least not necessarily changes the whole lot, choose to refine and tweak. Phil, what has changed form a customer client perspective as their buying habits over the last five years to three to two to one to what's happening this year?

 

Phil Britten:
I guess it all depends on the demographic as well, and your location, which is important. I think identifying who your client is, what area you're in is all you're really going to determine your sales process or your price point. How you then sell is going to again be dictated to any environment. I think it this day and age, the world that we live in, people want to feel, touch, hear you a lot more than what it used to be. Old sales, you could just have them walk in, you know, test any school, jump in. Now people are quite picky on price or I guess more safeguarded on where they spend their money.

 

 

Moreso, again, as I said, depending which area they live in, what demo they are and all that sort of stuff, but people want, I feel like, really want to know and trust you a lot more before they actually make that buying decision. That's why it's important that even before the sales process takes off, you know, the sales and marketing process should be really, really aligned. There should be no disjointed processes. It shouldn't be saying one thing and doing another. The sales and marketing processes are almost entwined into each other so that you are building trust right from the beginning, whether it's online, email this, whether it's out in the community, and then all the way through to actually joining up is massive rapport building, massive time spent on building relationships. We do that because we charge a high premium cost for our services. Some schools may charge a lot less so they don't have to go all out and roll out the red carpet.

 

Graham M:
Because look, we will dive in and give you a little bit of an explanation on how we walk through it here. I guess some of the questions that have come to us was about all these new marketing systems. Now part of even getting to the sales process, how do you get these leads in that they're certainly coming through the door? Some of these now are starting to be unqualified leads or you're finding that you're getting a lot more tide kickers, and what that means is people who are tide kickers with the safety and security of Facebook or email or again, any sort of through your website inquiry, stuff like that. How do we get over that barrier, their field? I know we've got a couple of strategies that when our [inaudible 00:03:15] three or four, five times trying to respond an email back. The person has legitimately said, "I want to do martial arts, tell me a bit about it." They tell them, and then you never hear from them again. How do we also get over that sort of speed hump or that roadblock there?

 

Phil Britten:
I guess you got to look at your funnel really. As I said, the sales process is a complete process from marketing from their first touchpoint all the way to when they become a member, and even when they're a member, you continue selling to them, you know what I mean? You just want your clients to keep buying stock and renewing their fees and all that sort of stuff, so the sales process continues throughout their lifespan. I think what you're trying to get at if I'm right is that no matter where or how someone comes through the process, if they do drop off, does that mean that we don't sell to them anymore? What do we with them then?

 

 

If we've lost contact, we've tried to call them, it's been five times, it's now three, four months gone. What do we do with them? Do we just hang them up on the hook and forget about them? Well, the answer's no. You've got to make sure in the world we live in and I guess the resources that we have with email marketing is that you go onto a email order responder where they're then being sold to in a different way. You sell to them one way in your marketing process, it's really to get them interested. You sell them in their sales process to get them over the line.

 

 

If that doesn't happen, then you're going to sell them in a different manner in an email order responder. If what you said and did did not get them across the line, how can we just keep adding value, adding value, adding value then maybe at six months, twelve months, two years down the track, they then might come back. The same goes for people who have become a member and then leave for whatever reason. They then go on a non-members email list. They are sold to or educated or updated on a consistent basis so that if circumstances change, they're ready to come jump back in.

 

Graham M:
Hey look, wise words there. Something, and this is a tip. This is a tip that you can actually apply and do straightaway. Something our guys do when they get initial email and they responded or they haven't gone into a order or responder list, but they've just tried their hardest, often the person behind that computer screen doesn't know who you are. What we get our guys to do is pick up their phone, often a star phone like an iPhone with a camera and whatnot and do a short 20 second video just explaining, "Hey, I'm Graham. You inquired. This is who I am. I'd love to see you come down to the school," and send that to them via their MMS so if it's a text sort of message that goes through or embed that and send it through the email because what they do is then they see a face behind that name, and a lot of the time then you go, "Wow." I go, "You've got that little bit of rapport."

 

 

The same token too, I know we do a lot of videos that we send out to these email lists, so the guys who haven't seen us for a while all see on a short video saying, "Hey, guys. We miss you. This is what we got going on." Rather than just having a written text, of course that's there, we also have a video as well too for those who resonate and respond with that, so that's a really easy way of taking two seconds out of your process to maybe get over that roadblock and get you that higher conversion when it comes to emails and whatnot. What else is working for us in our sales world? Talk us through, we've got the person now, they've committed, they've made their appointment time. What do we do to help build that rapport and really kind of get them invigorated about our school and our sort of systems?

 

Phil Britten:
Something that comes to my mind, and I know it's a new process and we talk about sale systems and what's new and what's working for us is that we did find as always, it doesn't matter what business you're in but specifically martial arts, there's going to be a drop off at different areas, and there's either going to be a drop off in your introductory process, a drop off in their trial area, or there's the cancellations and stuff like that. What we tried to do in combat for 2017 which is a quite interesting process, we're still in it, so we don't how well it's working, but it seems to be working quite well is we have a greeter. If somebody has booked in to come to their appointment and specifically come into their class, their first class, of course it's quite overwhelming. Someone comes into your school, they meet the programme director or the sales person and they get real one on one service. Then they come back to do a class and it's like, "Whoa, this is really overwhelming." They get a little bit lost.

 

 

What we've done in 2017 is included a greeter, so we have someone during that sort of sales class, to begin class, meet and greet. They're literally out the front door, they've got a clipboard, knows how many people and who's coming and they're basically going, "Hey, John, how are you? [inaudible 00:07:44] you're here for your first class, well done. My name is Shihan Phil Britten. Welcome to your first class. Let me just take you down to where the class is waiting," and it's just that wow factor to have this greeter. It's that red carpet service we talk about. What we charge a lot, you're going to get a lot of value and get a lot of service. That greeter is really to make sure that a parent and a child or the student if it's an adult has just a really amazing experience from when they walk into that school to their first class, during their class, and as they leave as well. It's like an usher, having your own personal assistant.

 

Graham M:
I couldn't agree more, and I know there's going to be a couple of viewers and listeners go, "My school's small, so I do that anyway." Of course. As you grow, we still want to make sure that we make that connexion and that sort of family feel to everybody. As a large school that has near on 900 members, we don't want people to walk in and get lost, which is why we have people there design specially to make sure we welcome them and they feel like they are number one. That really helps to be the rapport and helps them come back. I know that there's plenty of things when it comes to the sale sort of systems and the process.

 

 

I know some of you guys do group intro, just do one on one intros, things like that. What we do is we position ourselves as a high end martial arts school. Therefore, we need to make sure that we treat everybody as flying first class, and therefore, we do our intros either as a family, in other words, if there's two or three or four, yes, great, but we don't often pile other families into that same one. We don't do group intros. I'm not saying that they don't work, but when you look at the price bracket and you start to charge a premium, you may find that you need to position yourself and make sure you've got someone dedicated to obviously assist and help and meet the needs of that person and really going to help to show them the benefit.

 

 

I guess, Phil, we've got a big thing when we talk to our team. We label it the sales team to a point, but we really don't sell to people, do we? We obviously assist and help because at the end of the day, they've got to decide to buy. We just show them the benefits of what we do. If they're the right fit, they'll choose our school. If we're not the right fit or it's not something that aligns with their values, they'll probably move on. We do everything we can to sort of make sure that doesn't occur, but that's the way it goes. Now, what about the stats? I guess the stats on the conversions nowadays, and I'm talking a lot about comparing five years ago, two years ago, to what is now modern and the numbers that we're getting through the door but also the conversion rates that go with it.

 

Phil Britten:
I just want to give that extra tip before we go to stats because you're the numbers man, Graham, before I lose in my mind another great strategy because we are a high end martial arts school and there's all that whole thing, do you give the price up front, or do you wait until you've built value and do it at the end? This is a strategy that's worked really, really well for us, and we got, I guess, the idea a while ago, but our fee structure is very, if you've been online and you see any of the sort of [inaudible 00:10:41] or phone companies or online type sales pages where they've got the options, they've got let's just say basic, intermediate, and advanced costs.

 

 

It goes bronze, gold, silver, platinum, whatever it may be. There's always one that's highlighted a little bit more, and it's not the high end and it's not the low one, it's in the middle. It's what they recommend. Because they've recommended the one in the middle, you sort of get funnelled into that being the right choice for you. It's no tricks or anything like that. It's just a better way to guide your client into what you want to buy. When we have the client coming into our school, we go, "Look, we're a high end school. This is what we do. Blah blah blah, educate, educate. When it comes to our fees, we do have a fair range of different options. We have fees that start from here, low end, all the way to the highest end point."

 

 

Right now, they're running their buying strategy. They're going, "Geez, that's cheap. Geez, that's expensive. Where am I?" Then we go, we talk about that more later. The most important thing is we're going to go on a tour and check out the skills and see where you're at. Now they're running this buying strategy throughout the introductory lesson. They're going, "Geez, where am I? I hope I'm not at the top. I hope I'm at the bottom." Throughout the introductory lesson, we go through, amazing value, et cetera et cetera, and then we sit down and go, "Look. After consideration with the skills we did, where you're at, your age," you know, all that sort of stuff, "I recommend this." Which is smack bang in the middle. Just like the online sales page.

 

 

People are going, "Well, thank God we're not at the top, and it would've been nice to be at the bottom, but that sounds fair." It's a really cool strategy. Happy to give some advice if you guys want to reach out. I do know that we have that type of structure in our online course, the complete martial art's bootcamp. I'm sorry, the complete martial art's solution. If you're interested in getting these strategies, it's all within their courses.

 

Graham M:
Because look, one fun thing just to wrap it is the stats and the conversion rates. I know that this is a sore point for a lot of people. We don't bullshit our numbers, and I know there's a lot of people who don't think that they do, but we count absolutely every single lead that we get, so if we do a campaign and it's a cold call campaign and it's at a school fair and we get 100 leads, we'll count them as 100 leads, and there's a lot of people that don't. They just go, "Oh, that was a fair, so that didn't count. The legit leads are the ones that come through your website and all [inaudible 00:13:04]." We count everything.

 

 

When I give you some of the numbers, some of you guys maybe go, "Whoa, that's low." Realistically, it's a pretty good turnaround when you got a good income that you make from it or again a return on investment sort of point of view, so when we talk about 80% signup rates, a lot of schools are not necessarily at that sort of echelon if they're counting all their numbers. Again, that's the challenge to you guys. Just go back and have a bit of a look. Do you count everything? For us, we find a pretty good conversion rate between 45 to about 55% conversion rate, and you maybe just go, "Wow. Gee, that's a little different than the standard of the 80%."

 

 

Well, when you think about having 100 people come through that lead funnel, but you get a hold of 75% of those guys and 75% of those guys book into your course, you start to find your numbers drop, but hey, that's just about being legit and getting tight and understanding where your drop zones are. Again team, it's really important for you guys and I guess the stats is a whole other detailed podcast because I know some of you guys want a bit more info on that.

 

Phil Britten:
I think just to mention what you're saying is like a school like our size and the business level we do, if we were just a smaller school and we were working on just referrals and just a couple of handful of things, then you're going to have a really good conversion rate because they're really good qualified leads. The way we market, we do Facebook, online, we're doing brand spacing in shopping centres. Our leads are mammoth. That's why they come down, of course, you know, they all go. We're still selling and marketing to them all the time, so any lead's a good lead, but they are cold. Some of them are warm, some of them are hot, but that's just the nature of beasts when you do have a beast in the school.

 

Graham M:
Just to give you an idea guys, just as we wrap up, we have on any given month here at our big school about 200 inquiries. 200. That is a lot of people wanting to come through. Now, not everyone qualifies. Not everyone's the right type of fit, but it kind of gives you an idea of when we count and our numbers and conversions as we go forward. I'll let you guys work out the math behind that 45% conversion rate as we go forward. Again guys, we try to dive in a little deeper on the sales system simply because it's something you need to continually look at and continually revise, not just set forget. I know we've got a couple of shout outs to a couple of sponsors and associates that we love to work with.

 

 

I'm wearing their shirt tonight. I've got the guys from Hyper. You know, a big shout out to Jason and Roland, the guys who put together a brilliant programme to add value to your school that is separate to probably your normal martial arts stream, so guys, if you follow the link which we've got on the page here, it's a great way to get in there. There's a discount for being aligned with us. Again, I can't recommend enough because we're actually using them. We've got on average 20 to 25 adults training specifically in this programme and equally the same number of kids for each and every class that we train. Team, get online, get in there, download, have fun, and also put in the code TIMA, T-I-M-A and you'll get the discount that's applied there as well.

 

Phil Britten:
Cool, and also just lastly, team, just to wrap up, we talk about, speak a little bit about the content that's in our online course. Some people go, "Well, I'd really love to see what's in there, see what the value is," so this year we created a promo code purely just for our podcast. This is called try five for five which means you try five days of content and five days of access for just five dollars. All you need to do is go to our website, go to the complete martial arts solution, and type in the coupon code Try5, T-R-Y 5, the number 5, and you'll get five days of access just for five dollars. Have a peek on [inaudible 00:16:41] and see what's in there.

 

Graham M:
Great. Well, look, thanks guys. We look forward to see you guys next time. Any questions you have or any suggested podcasts, send them through admin at TIMA.com.au. We'll see you soon.

 

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