Up your close rate with this sales call framework – that writes the sales script for you (Part 2) (Interview with Tim Drummond)

Highlights from the interview

[02:44] – Example Coaching Call that helps clients to see your value

[09:18] – When “No Response” is the best response, and understanding what an objection is to really overcome them

[13:36] – 10% Rule that makes a prospect really like you, that most trainers don’t follow

[19:03] – Use the “Bridge” technique to Create the Desire to Take Action & Sign Up

[30:02] – How do you use questions to increase sales through a sales page or chat bot

[40:00] – 3 Ways to get more info on Tim’s teaching techniques

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About our Guest

To know more about our guest, visit the first part of our interview.

The difficult client coaching technique that leads to transformational results (Part 1) (Interview with Tim Drummond)

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Edited transcription of Fitness Business Secrets Podcast, Episode 42

How Tim Gave Up Futures Trading to be a personal trainer

[02:44] Kristy:Interesting. So, could we do an example call because I think some people are going to be able to walk away and say, I should ask questions, but I think it’s such a new concept really in a way because we’re taught to just provide information. That I think there might be an aha there, if we can just, they can see that.

Tim: I’d give them a few steps of things that you could actually do with your clients.

1. Learn when to pause

So the first thing is if you’re in a session and a client asks you something, pause, shut the fuck up. Stop thinking that you need to be the person that tells everyone everything because you’re really knowledgeable. And just pause and just say to them, what do you think? And that’s it, what do you think?

2. Watch out for clues from their reactions

And you’ll sometimes see a reaction that’s new.  Sometimes you have to do it with presence and, they might be like, 

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Well, let’s just work on this. What do you think?”

And the question might be. “Should I work out twice this week or three times? 

Just don’t say anything. It’s better to be effective than,

“So what breakfast should I eat this week?”

“I’ll tell you what, let’s try something new. Is that cool?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think you should?”

They will react. Your clients will react because it’s different. Now, if you start at this in Week 1 of the program, they would just get used to it.

3. Ask them what they think…but include things to keep in mind with the question.

So just simply asking your client, what do you think? 

Now you could think, well, why do I do that? Because they feel good. They’ve come up with the answer. They’re way more like, okay. 

So you said that you’re going to work out three times this week. Yeah. 

How are you going to make sure that happens? Because I know that in the past it’s been a bit of a struggle. So then you can do it like that. 

4. Use a  Health Coaching Scorecard to become clear on next set of goals

We do something called a Health Coach Scorecard. We have a five-day mini course and we teach a, it’s a simple document, two documents, two pages, and basically anyone could do this. It looks at 10 different things around flexibility or strength, weight loss, confidence in the gym, confidence outside of the gym.

So it’s starting to take this outside of just working out and how it’s affecting their life. Then we did in one column, it’s where you were when we started working together. The next column is where you are now. And the next column is where you’d want to be in 12 weeks. 

Where you were when we started working together	Where you are now	Where you’d want to be in 12 weeks

And you could sit down with your clients and you could do something like that.

And you could even say it like, “Hey, I’m working on some stuff with this guy that I’m working with online, called a mini-course. I’d really love to be able to go over this with you. It’s some really cool stuff and you can lie and not lie, but you can. Don’t lie.”

So you can say,  “I know that he did, you’ve seen some real success with his clients, or I imagined it would be amazingly successful for my clients,” or “I’ve done it with two people today and it was really helpful.”

Okay. And then you could just sit down and then there are questions and basically doing a little mini-coaching session. Now, depending on how confident you are doing it and how much sort of self-awareness the client that you’re speaking to has.

5. Reflecting to feel good about what you helped them achieve

The last thing is the last few questions at the bottom is, 

“What surprises you the most about the above?”

What’s really cool when you do this is that it’s good for trainers because let’s say you’ve been training someone over six months, half the time they don’t even know how much they’ve benefited from your help.

So it’s a feedback loop where they’re like, Oh my God, I didn’t realize how much more confident I am outside of the gym. And I didn’t realize that this is down to you and all the money that I’ve paid you. So it’s even more valuable now they don’t realize this. And then you ask them, where do they want to be?

So, which is the most important to you? A lot of the time, what personal trainers are really bad at, to be honest, they’re really good at getting clients strong. They’re really good at getting clients flexible. They’re really good at all of that, but they’re not very good actually getting to lose weight and I had loads of clients that didn’t lose weight for years.

So then you can say what’s most important to you? 

Again, this is all written out by the way. So if you’re not totally confident, you can write this out and you can try to do it with your clients. You could do it online as well, by the way. There’s no reason. Now you could, which one’s most important to you. I’d still like to lose weight.

6. 3 Things to do in the next 12 weeks

Okay. Then it’s what are three things that you can do in the next 12 weeks to help you achieve that? And then shut up. 

Specifically, what can you do? Not me. Ask yourself what can you do? Because it’s putting an emphasis on them doing the deed. Because in the end, they need to be the ones that do it. 

And then the last question is what would change in your life in 12 weeks if you hit that goal? 

Now some of this stuff is what people should be doing anyway. So then they write like, I’d feel more confident. I’d go out. I’d start dating. I’d have more energy. I’d have energy for my kids, all of this stuff. 

So that’s a 10-15 minute framework that you can build into just your current clients.

7. Why it’s often better to not have the answer

The other thing that I would say is a bit more, not unusual, but is start practicing asking questions in all environments. 

So instead of just telling people things, just ask like,  they’ll get sick of it at one point, by the way.  So I could say to you, “You can get…” then you can change every sentence that you say into a question, or I could say to you, “Did you…” then you can change every sentence that you have into a question.

The way that those two statements or questions interact with the writing is very different. So I think the best way of doing it is to choose one of those three or do all three and actually see what happens and how your clients react to it. Because I just got fascinated by it. I was like, my God, they’re actually loving doing what I said or what I asked them.

I’m actually like, this, if you want to understand sales, will make you a lot of money.

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When “No Response” is the best response

[09:18] Kristy: Could we do a thing with sales. Can we try to do, because I’m sure that that’s really curious. I think everyone struggles with sales and they just want to just buy. So I think, yeah.

So let’s just say, and let’s assume there were, I’m a virtual client and we do our initial call and commonly, I’ll say I’m doing a lot of things right. I don’t know why I’m not losing weight. You might have an idea and maybe you can try to sense something, but yeah, let’s just, let’s just say we talked a bit and then you’re like, dude, you asked me if I want to sign up. And I’m like, I don’t know. I have to think about it.

Something like that. 

Tim: Cool. 

Kristy: Okay. Yeah. Well that sounds interesting. Maybe. Let me think about it. Let me ask my partner. I do want to lose the weight, but it is expensive. 

Tim: This is what I would actually do by the way. 

Kristy: Oh, really? Okay. So that’s an interesting tip. 

Tim: I would just sit there and say nothing.

Kristy: Okay. So you’re just gonna sit. 

Tim: Well they started speaking. They will because they won’t be able to handle the tension but I can, I can just sit here for literally three minutes. So it’s probably a bit more advanced. So all that I would say, what exactly do you mean?  So I’ve just asked? 

Kristy: Okay. And is this something you would do in the beginning or the end or in the middle?

Tim: The point where, what you’ve just said, I need to do this and the objection. Objection. I would always say what exactly do you mean? Because it’s expensive. What fit pros often do. And I’m going to take a couple of steps back before this.

I love the question. It’s awesome. So I’m like, it’s expensive. I would just say nothing, literally nothing. And then it’s almost, if you imagined that you were doing this on the phone, the person would eventually go “Tim, Tim?” Yeah. And then I say nothing again. They don’t know. Then they wouldn’t because it’s just, they’ll see me on there.

Understand what an objection is to really overcome them

Tim: And, and what they’ll tend to start doing, and this is more advanced is they’ll stay and just start just explaining themselves. And I don’t need to react because it’s just information. It doesn’t mean anything. What a lot of fit pros do is panic. And just want to get off the phone, right? Oh my God. I feel terrible. I have been rejected.

You haven’t been rejected. You don’t know yet. And so what even if you were. 

So I would say, what exactly do you mean? 

So it’s a bit more in-depth sales stuff, but I would specifically say early on in the call because normally, by the way, objections are just not the truth.

It’s not that you’re being manipulative. They’re just not true.

That part of objection is just a very easy way of basically them being unsure. It’s not helping anyone because they’ll get off the call and they’ll go away and they’ll get back into their own little head and they’ll be all the same.

But the biggest problem with people buying fitness is inertia. They’re scared. They failed so many times. So before the call or in the call, the main body of the call, I would probably say something like, and it depends who it is. I’ll probably say, somewhat male or female, but it’s not always like that. It depends.

I would say,  your partner is really supportive of this am I right? They’d say yes. Cool. Just so I know if we do work together, I don’t know if we’re going to, but would you need to ask your partner for permission to do this? And so what you get at that point is generally the truth. So if it is, I do need to ask my partner, then cool. 

But it’s the truth or more likely to be the truth at this point. 

Objections aren’t normally just things that aren’t necessarily true. They’re just, “I need to think about it.“

What exactly do you mean, and then I’ll shut up.

 So a lot of sales is about, first of all, having a such structure and a system, you take people through most of the time. 

Objections happen because the other parts that came before haven’t been followed.

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10% Rule that makes a prospect really like you, that most trainers don’t follow

[13:36] Tim: So we have, I teach a six-block sentence system, which is that is open the rapport. And it’s what we call

1. pain and pleasure 
2. what we call bridge, 
3. close and objection handling. 

I don’t want to have to deal with the objection handling. And if you understand your marketplace well enough, your marketing, you understand how to take someone through the call.

People buy from emotion and what objections normally are just they don’t know.  This a lot of the time.  By the way, people will default to no if they’re unsure. 

So you probably know clear enough about what your process is, what your offer is, how you can help them, what most fit pros do. And this is a big tip.

I would record your sales calls. And listen back to them afterwards. You should probably be speaking 10% of the time. Hm. Okay. Yeah. I generally would be speaking probably 5%. 

So I’ll give you an example of the coach I first worked with, I watched him about three years ago. He’d sold  $20 million worth of relationship advice.

Specifically, he did it, women. One of the things that he said is,  there’s one program you had, which is how to get a second date. And he was always, and this was both why is by the way, whether it be men or women. And it was like, people would go on a first date and it should be worried.

What if he hates me? What if I get rejected? What if he doesn’t want to see me again? And only would just do is say,  “What do men like talking about most? Can you ask questions?” Yes. “Can you listen?” Yes. Then just go on that cook date, ask questions, listen, and they’ll talk. And they’ll think you’re the most interesting person in the world.

And they will more than likely want another date because they just, Oh my God, this was the most amazing. Oh, it was so interesting. No, no, he wasn’t. He didn’t say anything. He just left and it’s the other way round as well. So when you’re on a sales call, what people really buy from is emotion, rapport, trust.

So by creating an environment where you’re not talking that much, so you need to understand their current pain and they need to understand it. You need to ask questions that go five layers deep. Asking Why is that important to you? Why is that important? 

Could this sex life question lead to your next big sale?

Kristy: It’s the five why’s you just keep asking why? 

Tim: Yeah, I will. I teach my guys to ask anything. Anything, one guy has just come on board. He was immediately already selling these programs for  1400 pounds, which is about $1,800. He just sold once a day for 2000, which is about $2,500. And one of the questions said that you needed to ask is, because he had a little call with the guy just to see what his troubles were, whether we might be able to help him.

And then he has another call and this guy was really insecurity. Just come out of a relationship. He was really overweight, blah, blah, blah. You need to ask him about his sex life. And then he was like, what? I can’t do that. Why not? But, well, what if he tells me to fuck off? I’m like, well, so what. 

Kristy: Wait, what was the question?

Tim: You need to ask him about sex life. So, and he was like, and I said, would you ask someone if they were your client around things that are probably the things that are gonna motivate them more than anything else in the, probably the things they don’t always feel. The best about it. If you’ve been in a relationship with someone and it’s split up because you’ve got overweight and you don’t feel confident about yourself or whatever, it’s not a nice place for anyone to be.

So, if we can help people see that, by the way, we can help you lose weight and look for all this, it’s a motivation to go. I’m going to stop eating donuts. So I just said to him like you, any of my clients have yet, but he’s not in a relationship was like, he’s not now, but. You need to ask him, did it affect your last relationship?

And so you can’t, you can just go in pretty hard, but I’m just like ask him how his weight affects his confidence. Yeah, not great. 

Example:

“Do you think in any way it affected your past or the last relationship that you had?”

People would answer it.

“Did it affect your intimate relationship?” 

And you’d be surprised .

Now, I’m not saying everyone jumps straight to this, by the way, this guy knows stuff about sales, but you can ask these kinds of questions. People need to feel the current situation. T

hen you go to pleasure, which is , one question that I ask is 

“What’s the first thing that you would do when you lose the two dress sizes?”

And it opens space for them to just say whatever is it. 

And often what people say in that point is 

“I don’t know. “ So then I would say even something like, yeah, if you had to know or just, just go with me, come on. What would you do?”

And then a lot of the time, people would talk about holidays, they talk about going shopping. They would talk about going out with their friends.

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Use the “Bridge” technique to Create the Desire to Take Action & Sign Up

[19:03] Tim: I did this with brides and I’d literally get them to close their eyes. Tell me everything that’s going to happen in the day. How’s it going to feel? How’s it going to look?

They already had that mental picture in their head, which made it much easier to do with brides. With other clients, it takes a little bit of time to just ease that out of someone which takes a bit of confidence in learning. And so what you’ve then got is where they are now, the emotional reality.

And you’re painting an emotional picture that they could get to if they actually lost the weight. 

Then you get to what we call the bridge, which is basically you just ask someone to say, 

Ask: “Do you mind if I just sum up a little bit where we are?”

 Yes. 

1. Pain: And then you take them through what they’ve said about the pain. This is what I’m hearing that you’re saying, blah, blah.
2. Desire: And this is what I’m hearing that you’re saying you want to get to blah, blah. Is that about right? 
   1. And they’d say, yeah. 
3. Bridge: Okay, cool. So, what do you think you need to go from the 14 stone that you are now, down to the 12 stone that you want to be, or whatever you Americans would use pounds mush and then just ask them.

Hmm, that’s funny because most of the time, yeah, I know. And what I’ll give you some examples, what women will tend to generally say is,  I just need help with food, okay, cool. Specifically, what do you need help with? I do have a  few, little ways of presenting some of this with metaphors and stuff, but you’re often looking to get specific words that they want help with.

What to do when a client doesn’t know what they want from you

 A lot of women will say something like, Oh, I just need someone to kick my ass. And I’ll be like, okay. 

Because I want words that mean something because I’m going to present them and need them later on. So I say, well, what do you mean specifically kick your ass? Because I don’t want to literally do that.

And then they’ll say something like, well, and if they don’t,

 I’ll say to me that sounds a bit like accountability. 

Yes. 

Okay. So you feel like you need some accountability? Yeah. Come on. 

Write that down literally. 

And they’ll say yes. Hmm, one and I’ll give you the best example I could use here is that a lot of fitpros will tell people at the end, Oh, and I’m going to give you a mindset program.

And it feels like they get excited about mindset and the client might pretend, Oh my God mindset sounds amazing, but no, clients don’t know what the word means. They’ve got no idea what it means. And in fact, most fit pros don’t actually know what the word means and they couldn’t describe what it means to do anything with it.

So, you sit there and at the end of the call, “Oh, and I’ll help you with your mindset.” And the client sounds like, “Oh, that’s amazing.” But they don’t know what that means. So you have to use words that they understand and link them. 

So if they’re not totally sure you say, look, do you mind if I tell you a couple of things that some people in your situation need or that I think you might need?

So a lot of what we work on is mindset, but mindset merely just means about those times when you doing really well during the week. And you’re just struggling with a little bit of motivation at the end of the week. 

And by the way, they probably told you this already, and you have a couple of drinks because you want to relax and it turns into a few more and then you eat.

Like you said, you eat  a whole tub of biscuits, then you wake up the next day and you feel  really guilty. So you just scoff the ice cream all day and then you get to Monday and you want to start again. 

Does that sound like we’re going to work on fixing that? Do you think that would be useful if we could do that?

And they’ll say yes.

 So you think mindset is a really important part of what we’re going to do together 

and they’ll say yes. 

So then I’ll write it down. So at the end of the call, when I say, here’s what I’m going to help you with. And I used the word mindset, they’ve got a mental image of what that actually is.

They know Oh yeah, and they probably don’t consciously know this. So when you present them back at the end, what the program entails, the logical answer is,  yeah, I want to do this. How do I do it? 

Kristy: Yeah. So you start off with where they are, which is pretty painful probably. You get them to share with you, then you jump to envision, imagine then you create, you get the bridge, hopefully, get them to say the bridge, but sometimes they might start to say a bunch of things that are not specific.

So you might summarize and then ask specifically what are you’re looking for. But if they are still not able to articulate. You might say,  for example,  you might want this or do you want this? So you get some agreement, you write it down and then you do explain something right here where you might bring up a term mindset and then explain what it is because you’re right most people don’t know, or everyone has 20 definitions of mindset. So you define what you mean by mindset and you get an agreement. If it is mindset, which probably is of  what needs to be done. So you see, you get the agreement along the way. 

How to create an extremely converting sales pitch on the fly tailored for each client

Tim: Yeah. We call it a shopping list, which by the way, it can sound really when I first got told this, it almost felt a little bit unethical.

What? So you’re just literally going to ask the person what they need help for. And then 10 minutes later, you’re going to go well, awesome. Listen, my program is definitely white view. Here’s what you’re going to get. And you literally just tell them what they told you they need.  

The unethical part would come in there if, for instance, someone said, well, I want to probe why I have to go to the gym, and I can eat donuts for breakfast every day. Okay. And you wrote that down. And then at the end of the thing, you said, look, my program is perfect for you. I’m going to help you lose two dress sizes and you can eat donuts for breakfast every day.

And you never have to go to the gym. That’s unethical, right. If, what they’re saying that they need so that you can deliver that that’s totally ethical. You just understanding how to be better at communication. So a lot of what you said there is right. One of the things that you do before is you ask, ask questions.

What have you tried before that didn’t work? I got a personal trainer. Okay, awesome. Why didn’t it work? And now we’ll usually defend their personal trainer. It’s always amazing, but he sounds amazing, but yeah, it seems to me like, Oh, I lost the way. Amazing. I guess, do you mind if I just quickly say something?

Yeah, I guess that it was really good, but from what you’re saying to me, you put a reasonable amount of it back on and I’m being very careful with the language I use. So I’m assuming that if we did work together and I don’t know if we’re going to do, but if we did. Would you want to get something that not only helps you lose the weight but keeps it off for the longterm?

Hm. Yeah. Cool. And then I can say, so what would you say that perhaps wasn’t, didn’t help you with that and then they’ll get over their defensiveness of the person  works or works with, or whatever, or diets that they’ve tried. They’re just telling you what’s happened.  When I go back to what you’re normally.

Okay, cool. So then again, How to present that back. So when you fact find a property, what have you tried before that didn’t work? Are you able to get that shopping list a lot easier? Because you already know. And so you can be much more guiding plus if you’ve asked questions,  what you tried before that didn’t work.

5 Questions to get your lead to ask you for the sale

When you asked what helped they need, they’ve already explained what the problems are. 

“So, I’d like a training program that I could do them. One of the things that I didn’t get from my trainer is that I didn’t, I just worked out with him for an hour a week. I didn’t get any other guidance.” 

“Okay. So if we were to work together and (I would always say things like don’t know if we’re going to), would you feel that you would want some structure to do the workouts?”

And obviously what we’re talking about here is doing online. 

“So…it seems to me like, you’d want some workout structure, what would that look like?

Sometimes it’s even like, they would say, “Oh, he gave me all, but I didn’t do it.”

“So what would you need for me to make sure that doesn’t happen?” Again, this is where words like accountability come in.

So when you say at the end, I would like to know __blank__, but it sounds to me like that __like this__ that you want to do?

 Yeah.

I say you Okay. What would you like to do next? So at that point what they’re doing is they will come towards you. 

Well,  how do I do it? How do I start? Or how much is it?

Cool. And then you don’t necessarily answer that straight. You can go round a bit, but then eventually,  

“look, do you mind if I just, it seems like you want to do this. Yes.  Do you mind if I explain exactly what it is and why it’s right for you?”

They’ll say yes. That’s the part where I start telling and I stopped asking questions and I’m very strong.

This is what it is. This is why it’s right for you. Are we doing it? 

Are you selling the ‘red boat’?  The biggest mistake that fit pros make that kills a sale.

Kristy: Okay. I was going to ask you, I was like, there must be a point where you tell them what it is and why you’re special, right? Okay. So that’s, that’s about when you built that rapport. 

Tim: We call it don’t sell the red boat. So what a lot of fit pros do is they sell the mechanism of what they do and you get features, et cetera.

The analogy that the best analogy I’ve heard is I went to the Maldives and it’s like the most amazing place you’ve ever been to. Literally like you see in the pictures, turquoise seas, sandy beach, the most amazing food and scuba diving and all this. It’s like what fit pros do is they try and sell the flight 16 hours in a tin can.

 I wasn’t buying that. In fact that was the bit I disliked. The bit I wanted was the endpoint. And what fit pros do is they sell the journey. No one cares. In fact, they don’t really want it. What they want is what it’s going to do for them. So avoid selling, like we call it the red boat as well.And I’m swapping metaphors. The only time you really need to describe what your program actually does is right at the end. And it’s not important because it doesn’t really matter. It certainly doesn’t matter on their buying decision. So why at the end, when I explain what the program is, because I’ve got a system, maybe a minute tops.

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How do you use questions to increase sales through a sales page or chat bot

[30:02] Kristy: That’s great. And I know we’ve spent a lot of time together. I have one last question because this is fantastic.

Have you found you’ve been able to use this or integrate some, this is a little trickier through your marketing,  let’s say your sales page. Because let’s say we’re online and let’s say,  they’re sending out,  they’re doing paid ads, and they’re just trying to get people interested in their program.

How would you integrate that system into a page that you can’t or if you can? 

Tim: No, that’s a great question. You definitely can. At one point, I was selling programs to my clients. So personal trainers, not massive price point, but about $4,000. And that was sold without a webinar, sold without a sales call. And it was sold without a VSL. So no squeeze page. And it was sold via messenger. 

And basically, it’s a what I learned was called a T3 and it’s basically a sales call written down. You have to know your market place incredibly well, their pains, their pleasure, their objections. You have to know what they could be because the bottom you like, or you might be thinking one, two, three, and here’s why that’s not true.

And, and so all of this persuasion covers marketing and sales. It’s just a process through both of them. And so if you understand, for instance, if I wanted to sell a new program and wanted to sell it on a squeeze page, the first thing that I would do is I would get on the phone and I would send it to at least five or six people. And I would record those calls because then I would know all of the words, the phrases, the struggles, everything that I needed to know about my ideal client because I do clients, by the way, are the ones that buy.

So I’ll give you a small example. I have a member talking to someone and they were like, Oh yeah, I want to work with you because you’ve been in the trenches. You didn’t necessarily think that much of it, but it’s, and then I heard it again. I was like, Oh, and then I started  writing my marketing. And then loads of people started saying it to me because I was writing it in my marketing.

Do you want my help at one point and everyone should do this. Do you want my help? They have to tell you they do. Otherwise, they’re probably not going to buy from you. So I’m like, do you want my help? And they say, yes. You do? They say yes. Sure? Yes. Why me? And they should be able to tell you why you otherwise, they’re not going to buy your stuff because you’re not anything important. 

So when I asked why me, they would tell me all the reasons why they want to work with me and whatever the reasons are. So then I can take everything I’ve learned on the sales calls and I can create my marketing.

Daniel Priestley talks about having a PhD in your clients’ problems. He’s the guy who founded something called KPI. And it’s messaging. You need to stand out better than everyone else, but  I’ll give you an example, men are really bad at selling to women. They’re really bad at selling fitness for women.

Some get it atrociously wrong, some get it just a little bit wrong. And if you were a woman, you would know, it just doesn’t quite feel right. And you might not even necessarily be able to explain to that guy what doesn’t feel right and you probably wouldn’t be able to get it through his head, he would change that.

We’re not that great in empathy. So it’s nuances like that. If you’re really good at understanding, listening, asking the right questions in sales, in these, and when you’re coaching your clients, by the way, because they’ll tell you everything you need to know to become an incredible marketer and marketing does the same thing.

It’s just like, it’s a story where they are, where they want to get to. What they feel like is going to stop them. Your program, because you do need to put a bit more about features and what your program does, but your program should just answer the struggle of where they are, where they want to get to. And the struggles that they see, the problems, and this is why my four steps, blah, blah, blah does this, this and this. Hmm. 

Kristy: Yeah. 

Tim: That makes sense. 

Why surveys don’t always work

Kristy: Yeah. That’s awesome. That was great. So yeah. That’s such a nice number to just call five people because usually, it surveys a hundred people. It’s so hard to get that survey, but if you just talk to five people, that’s realistic, a market survey.

Tim: So I love surveys, but the problem with surveys is that they don’t actually prove that much because surveys, and again if you really look into the depth of this, people make decisions without even knowing why they make decisions. So there’s some research which I was reading, I’m not reading the research, but some stuff about it that they looked at people solving maths problems and the person knew the answer because they can see where the logical parts of their brain on where the, what lights up.

They knew the answer four seconds before they consciously knew the answer. And I’m just like, shit, man. What does that mean? It means that someone subconsciously already knows the solution before they rationally know what it is. So how does that affect sales? Well, they only know they’re going to do it before they rationally know they’re going to do it.

Everyone buys from emotion. So what people tell you that they’re going to buy is very rarely what they actually buy. And that was one thing that my, the relationship coach taught me when he did surveys and this specifically to women. What they said they were going to buy and actually what they dead buy was totally the opposite. 

How to confirm a survey’s results to avoid pursuing the wrong thing

Tim: And to a certain extent, a lot of people wouldn’t even admit to buying what they did actually buy because they feel like they shouldn’t have to do that. So surveys are great, but what you really need to, we call it to validate your offer is to be blunt someone’s credit card details.

That’s what validates your offer and your program and your copy and your marketing or whatever you’ve done. Not surveys. The first thing that I did when I started working with brides and anyone can do this, by the way, maybe they don’t want to work with brides, but anyway, I just asked everyone I knew, my clients, anyone, who’s getting married in the next year, they will suggest I’ve got 10 people.

I met three or four of them in person. Did the rest on the phone, literally just interviewed them about what they would want in a program. I already knew a little bit about buying this point. And I could already tell that they want it to buy it. And then we got to the end of the interview, which was by the way.

And the person was like, how do I do it? I didn’t even try to sell them anything. I just asked them. 

The best way to guarantee a bond & trust with a prospect

Kristy: So, was that process a way to gather information on how to write your marketing and you approached it, you just wanted information, but still at the end, they also became customers or something.

Tim: Yeah, we do this with our guys in my program, the internship, we ask them to go and do calls now. The energy that you bring into these situations for me is important. And it’s ethical as well. You are going out and you are asking for information, you’re asking for someone else to help you. What you realize though, is that, and this is a bit of a deeper coaching thing.

Most people never get lessons to and not properly. And if you, we’re talking about relationship dynamics, ask most women, does your partner actually really listen to you? And the answer is and I’m not gonna ask you because this is life. But the answer is because they don’t and no one ever really feels listened to.

So just listening to someone. It creates this amazing bond that people just, so when you understand someone’s problems better than anyone else, they also assign you the solution.

So by just asking someone what their problems are, they assign you the solution to all these problems. And you’ve probably uncovered things that they didn’t even know, or they’ve not consciously said out loud.

So that is it. You’re just doing an interview. And then look, here’s the thing. This was really you do me a favor. I want to say, thank you. I really appreciate that you take your time out. Yes, of course. That’s a conversation that we can have, but this wasn’t about you jumping on the phone and then ended up buying something.

So do you mind if we do decide that that’s something that we want to go down, do you mind if we do it separately, we’ll figure out another time that we can speak and we can actually have a proper dive into let’s say something like whether wherever we could actually work together or not? So I think there is a little bit of an ethical thing.

You don’t want to be a bait and switch where you’re  bringing them there on false pretense and then trying to sell them shit is not particularly cool.

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3 Ways to get more info on Tim’s teaching techniques

[40:00] Kristy: Right? Yeah. That would be a pitfall to make sure not to do, and then otherwise though, it’s a really good way to start to get a feel for the market and possibly if it happens, get some customers.

So I love that. This has been incredible. I’m already thinking about different ways to improve my marketing and conversations with people. So thank you so much for being on the show. If they wanted to reach out to you, they’re interested in your program, how could they reach you?

Tim: Yeah. So you can either add me on Facebook. The Volift. If you add me on Facebook, you have to actually say hello, as I will say hello. And if you don’t, then I’ll probably delete you. Don’t be weird and ask me, and then not talk to me. And so there’s that one. And number two, I have a group on Facebook, which is called the Institute of fitness behavior change.

We might go to put the link in, I’ll go in there and do  loads of content. The aim of the group is how to understand becoming a behavior change coach. Incredibly well for people who want to build an online business, you can use it in person, but generally speaking.

So we do a lot of things around behavior change, but then we also really dovetail in lots of ideas around persuasion. What we talked about today. Persuasion influence, which covers a lot of things around sales and marketing. But our main focus is  we want to teach people to build ethical, legitimate, high ticket programs where you actually should be charging that money and you get results with the vast majority, 90% of your clients, as opposed to  30%, which a lot of people do when they sell expensive programs. 

So you can come there. We do a five-day mini course as well, which is an introduction to behavior change. We run them every two weeks. They’re free. It covers what I actually talked about earlier. So we basically teach people to sit down with some of their current clients and just start practicing this stuff. What happens out of the end of that is normally like three things. The client realizes, Oh my God, you’ve helped me with all this stuff. I didn’t really realize it. And you’re amazing. And you feel great. The trainer does. 

Number two. It helps you set goals going forward. So they look, this is what we’re going to do for 12 weeks. And number three, to be honest, if you decided that you wanted to you in the right place in your career or your knowledge, they often turn around or sometimes turn around and go, this is amazing, could we do more of this? And at that point you can say, Hey, yes, I just said to you, by the way, let’s do that separately. Because it is something I’m thinking of launching at some point soon. And if you have confidence to do more coaching, you can have a conversation with some of your current clients and you’d be surprised how much more help.

So yeah, those are the three ways.

A 12-week course that’s exclusive but free in his facebook group

Kristy:  The Facebook group is free for anybody who wants to check it out?

Tim: Yep. Both of those are free, the course, so many courses on the group. Some of the things I’ve actually talked about today, the nine box coaching call structure, exactly how to actually deliver a behavior change coaching call is what I realized is that there are people that teach the principles of behavior change, but no one’s actually creating a system where you actually know what to, what you would actually do on a call. So, yeah, trial and error. I created that so that you can find that in a group, you can have it for free.

My whole system is called the 12-week blueprint is how, what you do each week through those 12 weeks. You go in the group and if you use the search function, you’ll find that you can have that. It’s free and loads of sales stuff in there to actually build an online business without spending any money by just going into people that have  $3,000 programs just from looking at what we have there.

Kristy: Oh, you have to check that out. That sounds amazing. I’m definitely going to join. That’s great. Well, thank you so much. It’s been awesome. Hearing your secrets. I feel and actually one more question. Are people in your group who are also not fitness pros? Is it any  coach in general or is it mostly fit pros and health coaches?

Tim: You’re right. There’s a midline between actual coaches and life coaches and health coaches, but in between those. 

Kristy: Well, in the way,  personal trainers are the most common life coach, really like life coaching. There’s not as many, but there’s a lot more trainers and people just tend to not willing to pay for as much life coaching.

So trainers end up being really the life coaching. So that would make sense. 

Yeah. So, awesome. We’ll put your links to your profile in the show notes. So you guys can reach out to Tim, join his group, lots of free stuff. And then if you’re interested, I’m sure he has a bunch of other programs too.

Well, thanks so much. And it’s been a pleasure having you, Tim.

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