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Sales has been an ongoing theme in my recent episodes. Or it certainly feels like it has. I think that’s because of recently launching my Pure Programming course and also prepping several of my business clients for their own launches or increases in sales.

Fact of the matter is – if you own a business you need to make money, and many of us in the health and fitness industry did not get a degree in marketing and or sales. And perhaps you don’t have any experience in sales. I know I certainly didn’t. And I also had no interest whatsoever in sales when I started my business because I associated sales with a scammy preconception.

My only experience on the consumer side of sales at this point was at Globo Gyms when they try to sell you on a complementary personal training session after signing up as a member. Or walking into American Eagle or Hollister and being bombarded by the sales associate before I’ve even looked at anything. Or the typical car salesman. Those are the ones that stick out in my mind anyway. I will say that I had positive experiences at Apple because they are not paid on commission. (We asked). So there feels like there’s far less ulterior motive going into them finding you the right product for what you need. 

Which truly brings us to sales. And what it means for you as an online health and fitness coach.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself for More Successful Sales

1. What is my result?

The problem you solve – your promise

I remember the first time I had a colleague look over my sales page for a new service. Due to the fact that I don’t use sales calls, my sales pages need to be very clear when it comes to what it is that I am offering. She asked me what the main take away was from the program. Such a simple question, and some thing that I didn’t know. But it hadn’t made it onto the sales page. One of that should literally be the biggest boldest sentence at the top of the sales page.

We so often just create a service or start coaching without a clear result. And I know that it can be easy for your brain to go to things like losing 10 pounds in ‘x’ amount of time or get strong and gain mobility. But you do have a result and you need to make that clear. Typically we all have a tangible result of some kind. Immeasurable result. Clients being able to lift more weight or gain range of motion, they lose fat or body weight. Or they gain muscle mass. And then there is an emotional result. And this can look a lot of different ways. But I like to think of it as where they were when they started with you from an emotional and mental standpoint, to where they end up during and after the process of working with you.

The feeling of being incapable to feeling capable. The feeling of being lost to having direction. Feeling neutral in their skin. Feeling more ease, or joy. These are also results that you can market within your program. It doesn’t have to be these typical fitness industry results that are so often marketed. And there’s nothing wrong with weight loss or gaining strength, but I think that you probably have more than that to offer your potential clients.

So if you can identify 1 to 2 main takeaways and results from your service that is going to help you more clearly sell that service.

And if you’re unsure on that, ask your current clients or look back on testimonies, or do some market research with your audience if you haven’t started taking clients yet.

You can also just decide for yourself what you want it to be. As long as you can actually deliver on that which brings us to number two.

2. How do I provide that result?

What is my client journey?

Your process – the how.

Whether you think you have a process or not, you do. If you are going to promise and or claim that working with you and implementing your coaching practices you’ll get someone a certain result, albeit a feeling or a physical change, you’ve got to know how to communicate how that person is going to get from point A to point B.

Is there an assessment or certain things that you look at with a client before getting started? Do you take a different approach than other coaches? What type of progression do you use? (if there is one).

If you are a coach who uses macros with your clients in order to help them lose fat, is it possible that you might start with a reverse diet so that you can get to the highest possible calories in order to diet down from?

What are the possible directions that you can go with a client based on the information that you get from them in some kind of application or intake form? And can you bring your audience behind the scenes into that process? Because that allows people in your audience to see themselves in the shoes of a client. And communicates that you have a process or a method that you use. Even with individualized coaching.

If you don’t do individualized coaching, then there is still some kind of method in place. You were selling a templated program or a course. How does that progress? What is maybe the first topic that you cover? Second topic? Third topic?Why are they in that order? How does that get the potential client from where they’re at before they work with you to where they will be after working with you?

If you’ve never written out your process or your method, that’s totally fine, start messy. And refined it as you go. Like I said you probably have repeatable things, tactics, approaches that you use with each client. Maybe you just haven’t clearly identified those yet. But once you do it has the potential to lead to clear communication in your sales and in your messaging. It’s just one more area that you can remove a roadblock from someone who might be an ideal client but maybe felt like they were clear on your result or the processes that you use.

Because remember we have different types of buyers. Some people need to know the nitty-gritty details, and some people just need to know the result. If you can be clear on both of those, then we’re making sure that you’re not leaving any potential clients in the dark. For those particular reasons anyway.

Speaking of potential clients…

3. Who do I help? 

– Remember from past episodes that you can look at this from two perspectives, and I think that you should. Whoever you help obviously needs to be in search for the problem that you solve or the result that you offer. But also we want to have an ideal client avatar because that affects our messaging. Do you work exclusively with women or men, moms or dads, parents, military personnel, millennials, high achievers, CEO’s, stay at home spouses or parents, past athletes, people over 40.

There are some of these factors that will change how we speak to and communicate with these ideal clients.

So yes, obviously you don’t work with all humans over 40. But maybe you work with women over 40 who want to lift weights.

No matter who your ideal client is, there is benefit in speaking to one singular person consistently within your messaging. For one, that leads to consistent messaging. And you don’t need to worry about only speaking to one person because think about people that you follow on Instagram, there are singular people who have 250,000 people in their audience who relate to that one person. That doesn’t mean that there are 250,000 of the same exact person, or replicas of a person in that audience. It just means that 250,000 people resonate with that person‘s messaging. Does that make sense?

That’s what having a singular ideal client does for you.

Yes, you are going to attract people who are very very very close to being your exact ideal client. Emily, who, is 32, dedicated to her relationships, is a nurse, got into fitness after high school and college, tried CrossFit for a bit, and is looking for some thing that’s less intense.

But also, you will attract people from different walks who just relate to your messaging or your philosophy which is rooted in your ideal client. People who want to be or identify with what you’re putting down in your content.

So that wraps up three questions to clear on if you want to optimize your ability to sell your product to your audience.

Sales is communication. Even in the online space. Maybe even more so in the online space. In the more you sell, and the more that you attempt to understand your own offer and your methods and your ideal client, the better you are going to become at selling. So just like with strength and fitness, it’s putting in the reps. You aren’t going to get better at selling by not practicing selling. And if you can may be reconfigure what you thought about sales before to simply being able to communicate what it is that you offer and who it might before, I hope that that Helps you in your sales process. And may be feeling more comfortable.

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