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April 17, 2025 12 mins

Struggling to turn gym leads into paying members? Your sales funnel might need some first aid.

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” marketing experts John Franklin and Matt Temby break down sales data from three gyms, identify gaps in their sales processes and explain how to fix them.

The pair dial in on three key lead-tracking metrics: set rate, show rate and close rate. They explore why one gym has trouble getting leads to set appointments, why another has so many no-shows, and why a third struggles to close high-ticket sales.

John and Matt walk through changes each gym could make to improve their sales, such as contacting leads faster and asking better questions during the sales consultation.

Tune in to hear real-world examples of sales-funnel remedies, then find and fix the weak points in your gym’s funnel.

To learn more about improving your sales process, check out Matt’s last two appearances on the show, linked below.

Links

Sales Process Overview

Handling Objections

Gym Owners United

Book a Call  

0:01 - Intro

0:39 - Setting more appointments

5:13 - Getting leads to show up

6:07 - Closing more sales

8:28 - Increasing high-ticket sales

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello and welcome to this episode of Run a
Profitable Gym. I am your hostfor the day, John Franklin ,
the CMO here at Two BrainBusiness. And joined with me is
my coworker Matt Tembe , thehead of sales. And uh, if you
want to help more people growyour community and make more
money, this is the episode foryou. So Matt , here we have

(00:23):
three different sample gymsthat are based off of actual
gyms within two brainin . We'veanonymized some of the data and
we're just gonna break downtheir metrics and we're gonna
try and figure out where theyhave gaps in the sales process
and how to fix it. So gymnumber one got 57 leads over
the last three months. They hada 19% set rate, a hundred

(00:48):
percent show rate, a 91% closerate. Their current bottleneck
is they're struggling toconvert leads into no sweat
intros or sales appointments,which makes sense with that 19%
show rate. Seems very low,especially when I see 57 leads
that under 20 leads a month.
I'm assuming all that is comingfrom organic. So they gotta be
relatively warm leads that arefinding 'em through, you know,

(01:10):
Google my business or somethinglike that for sure. And so they
want to improve their set rate. So talk me through what you
would tell this person to do ifthey wanted to get their set
rate from 19, let's say to 29%.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, so for these guys, set rate is the biggest
lever where they're gonna seeROI . And so this means having
somebody on their team that isresponsible for lead nurture,
right? As you alreadymentioned, these people are
probably coming in through anemail inquiry or it's going
directly through their website.
So they've done a good job ofbuilding like brand presence

(01:44):
and awareness , uh, but they'rejust not getting to these
people fast enough. So I'mguessing that this is probably
an owner that is wearing all ofthe hats in their, in their gym
and like they're just droppingthe ball with one of the most
important things that theycould actually be doing. Or
they have a team that doesn'tunderstand the urgency, so it's
picking up the phone anddialing. You can use your gym

(02:05):
management software to trackwhere somebody's at in the
process. The , the one downsideto using a CRM , uh, a customer
relationship management toolversus like a Google
spreadsheet is that you can'tsee where each prospect is at
over the course of x number ofdays. So for my gyms, we track
over five days , uh, did wecontact them in the morning and

(02:27):
do we contact them in theevening? And so somebody is
responsible for that every day. And so it's just very quick
for me to audit in the morningto see did we contact these
people or not. And that'susually where there's, there's
gaps in the system. So theyneed to put together a process
for tracking where each ofthese 57 leads are at when they
got contacted. And somethingthat would be really good for

(02:48):
the owner to be heldaccountable to themselves is
documenting the time that thatlead came through. So that's
very easy to find through yourwebsite versus the time and the
date that they actuallycontacted them so that then
they can say, Hey, I'mgenerally contacting people
within 12 hours. Great, can wego from 12 to six hours? Can we
go from six to two hours? Thefaster you contact these

(03:10):
people, the more likely you areto be able to set them.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
So to put a visual on what Matt is talking about
it , he actually creates aGoogle spreadsheet within his
gym where you have every singlelead with their own line and
you source where that personcame from when they came in.
And then you actually justfollow every touch point ,
right Matt? Yep . And thenthere's , so that's what we're
looking at here.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, there's a color coding system so that ,
that each team member that ispart of this process knows
exactly where somebody's at.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
And then you keep track of all your text calls,
just like the total momentum inthe sales pipeline here in a
separate spreadsheet, right?
Yes . That's what I'm lookingat here. Okay, cool. So when
Matt says, you know, you wannanurture your leads, one of the
steps that goes along withnurturing the leads is actually
knowing where the leads are inthe pipeline and tracking that
data for 57 leads. So less than20 a month, that should be

(04:04):
relatively easy to use. Iguarantee if that gym owner
puts in a tracking system likethis and ensures that they're
nurtured in a proper sequenceand that nurturing is happening
faster than it likely is now wewill see that set rate climb up
here. Cool. For sure. So that'san easy one and and a common
one, right? That's probably oneof the more common ones we see
People just like don't wannanurture the leads or, or they

(04:25):
do some sort of nurture butit's not very robust. Right?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Okay, cool. Let's move on to gym two . So gym two
in the last three months got153 leads, so that's a little
over 50 a month. So that wouldlead me to believe there . They
do paid ads. Is that a , isthis a paid ads Jim ?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
It is, yep .

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Okay, cool. With a 42% set rate. So more than
double the previous gym. Thatdoesn't sound bad. That's
pretty solid for for paid ads.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, for paid for paid ads. That's great.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, and 60% show rate, which is so-so definitely
like could do better on that.
And a 66% close rate, which isdefinitely low. They said their
current bottlenecks are poorobjection handling in a poor
sales presentation. So what areyou helping 'em with Matt?

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, so for these guys, they do have a gap in the
show, right ? So they need toput in more steps into manually
confirming these appointmentsafter they've been booked and
something that you can do. Soin , in one of my gyms, if it's
for personal training, 'causethis is an access based gym
where we do a lot of personaltraining, we do incentivize
them if they come in for an NSIand then they sign up, they get

(05:34):
a t-shirt that's like, youknow, it's exclusive for like
the personal training clients.
So you could do something likethat. Again, all of the gyms
that we're working with withintwo Brain are coaching gyms. So
that is an incentive that youcan say, Hey, I have something
here for you at the gym whenyou come in. That definitely
help improve that. But just themanual touch points , if you're
leaning on your automations forpeople to show up, people know

(05:57):
when you are using automationsand they don't want to respond,
they're never gonna respond tothat or very rarely will they
respond to that. So knowingthat there's a human that's
actually gonna be waiting forthem is really important. Now
for the close rate for theseguys , uh, they had not updated
their sales script since 2022.
It is 2025. And the biggestthing, John , I'm not sure if
you wanna pull this up in theNSI form for gym number two,

(06:20):
but the first thing that I'dpoint out, and this is what a
lot of gyms do unfortunately,is the first question that they
have is what are your goals?
Goals are important as part ofthe discovery process. Again,
you you can go back to apodcast that we recorded last
year about this, but what'smost important is what is the
pain that they're trying tosolve? What's the problem that
this person has and how can weimprove their quality of life

(06:42):
by solving that thing. If youdon't start with the problem,
there is no sale to be madebecause the problem is their
current state, the goal is afuture state and it it's hard
to have a strong emotional tieto it because you don't
actually have it. And somepeople have never had that
thing that they're workingtowards. So you need to start
with the problem. So I wouldchange the first question and

(07:02):
then they, they really don'thave any, any deeper discovery
questions here underneath,obviously they don't have the
problem, but if you scrolldown, they only have a , a
couple questions there and thenthat's it. So they're not
spending enough time indiscovery, which is then
leading to having a hard timeobjection handling. 'cause
they're just not getting enoughconnection with this person.

(07:23):
And so the person doesn't feellike either they trust the, the
person on the other side of thedesk to solve their problem.
And then the other piece islike, they're just not good at
objection handling.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
So for the people listening along, so it looks
like the flow is you ask whatare your goals? Why are they
important to you? Why are youready to make a change now from
one to 10, how committed areyou to actually making this
change? And then it goes on tolike a general health
assessment. And so Matt kind ofalluded to this, but when we
see, you know, a Jim telling usstruggling to handle
objections, that usually meansone of two things, what Matt

(07:56):
said, they're, they're usuallynot asking the right questions
during discovery. So they'renot getting enough information
when they go into the pitch. Sothere isn't trust there or they
don't know how to structure thepitch in a way that's actually
gonna help solve the prospect'sproblem. Or they're just kind
of like rolling over, right?
Because I think we talked aboutthis before, Matt, there are
plenty of people who areconditioned to just say no, no
matter what you pitch them ,uh, even if it is something

(08:17):
they actually wanna do. Solooking at this and hearing
your assessment, I'm assumingthat this is a discovery
problem. Alright, so we gottaask better questions here.
Let's move on to gym threehere. We got 43 leads in the
last three months. That's , uh,just under 15. So that's leads
per month, which is gonna beorganic 65% set rate . So

(08:40):
they're doing a lot better thangym. One was 84% show rate,
which is definitely aboveaverage and a 79% close rate,
which is also solid. So when welook at the current
bottlenecks, I see not sellingenough personal training and
price objections. So whiletheir process looks pretty good
on the outside, to me at least,I believe when you were

(09:02):
coaching them through this,their issue was they have too
many people taking them up ontheir lower ticket stuff when
they'd benefit more from theirhigher ticket stuff. Is that ,
uh, the correct diag, the , thecorrect diagnostic of the the
problem here diagnosis?

Speaker 2 (09:16):
It is, it is. And then the other thing that I
just point out is when you'relooking at a sales process, it
is married to your marketing.
And so truly the the biggestproblem that I see for this Jim
, is that they don't haveenough leads. So that means
that they're not doing enoughmarketing. And so they, if they
can generate more leads, likebased on the numbers that they
currently have now, I wouldn'tgo crazy if they're gonna turn

(09:39):
on paid ads. They don't have,the owner is doing all of the
lead nurturing, they're doingall of the selling. So they
only ha they know that theyonly have so much capacity. So
if they were doing maybe doublethe leads per month, that is
still reasonable for one personto handle that entire process.
Their percentages might go downby maybe three to 5%, but

(10:01):
overall, if they were doublingthe leads, their gym is gonna
grow significant significantlyfaster. So for price, for
pricing objections, this isprobably a confidence thing.
Um, a lot of times gym ownerswill, they're, they're gonna
default down to like the lowestbarrier to entry just because
they don't have a lot ofexperience with sales and then
they're not selling enoughpersonal training probably in

(10:23):
most situations this is becausethey're not leading with the
thing that is most valuable.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
So let's take a look at what the bottom end looks
like here. All right . Sothere's a little more clarity
on what you get for personaltraining. Yep . Why do you
think they're struggling a lotmore versus group training? Is
it just the discrepancy inprice or you think it's just
not selling with convictionbeing okay taking the down sell

(10:50):
and probably should sellpersonal training?

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, I mean, I haven't gone through the actual
sales conversation with thisowner, but it, it probably is
conviction and not staying inthe pocket when your objection
handling long enough tochallenge that person to make
the best decision forthemselves. A lot of times ,
uh, we just want to help theperson across from us, but
instead of helping them most wewill settle for helping them at

(11:16):
all because we're, you mighthave a scarcity mindset if this
person's gonna get up and walkout the door, I'm never gonna
see them again. They're gonnago to the, the gym across the
street that I already know hascheaper prices than I do. But
it , at the end of the day,it's not about pricing, it's
about value. And if you havethat conviction, somebody can
feel that. So , um, that'swhere I would spend more time
if I were them and I'd work ongenerating more leads.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah. 'cause at under 15 leads a month right?
They get three extra a month.
So that's one more every 10days, that's a 20% improvement,
right? Yeah . And they got asolid funnel, so some of those
are gonna trickle into closes.
And so if you need help withobjection handling, we did an

(11:57):
entire podcast on it and we'lllink to it down below. Matt, I
know we're getting close ontime here. If people need more
help, what should they do?

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, they should book a call. You can do that
through the two brain websiteand they should talk to our
team so that we can understandwhere their problems are at in
their gym and then we can walkthem through how mentorship can
help them solve those problemsand , uh, have a better quality
of life as a gym owner , bothmaking more money and then
having more freedom of time.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
And that's gonna do it for this week's episode of
Run of Profitable Gym . If yougot value out of this, be sure
to like and subscribe and sharethis , uh, with the gym owner
in need. We'll catch you nextweek. Gym owner. Uh , thanks
for tuning in .
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