I want you to steal my formula for fitness franchise success.
Yes, I know that sounds weird but stick with me here…
I founded Fit Body Boot Camp, my fitness franchise, on four pillars—four parts to the “formula.” I didn’t just randomly pick these four pillars; they’re present in every successful franchise and business you find out there.
Who knows? Maybe down the line you’ll become a Fit Body Boot Camp franchise owner. But for now, let’s see what every successful fitness business does that makes them a ton of money.
Strong Franchisor-to-Franchisee Support
Pillar number one is your support system. Now when I say support system, one of the biggest things that most fitness franchises are looking for is support from the franchisor. You want to join a franchise that will give you all the resources and support you need to thrive.
If you think about the Curves gym business model, or any kind of big franchise model that came and went, they phased out because they grew quickly but lacked support for their franchisees.
Now by support I mean delivering done-for-you marketing systems, creating websites for your franchisees and optimizing them for the top 30 keywords for driving traffic, crafting lots of press and media releases, and getting more traffic and eyeballs onto those websites and into those locations.
Before, the model used to be, “Hey, here are the processes. Go do it yourself.” Well, as a business owner, it’s hard for you to not only service your clients, but also to do all the back-end stuff: your website stuff, your marketing stuff, your client retention stuff, your referral generation stuff. Today, you can get massive help with all of those things when you link up with a solid franchise.
When people tell me, “Hey, what’s so unique and special about the Fit Body Boot Camp franchise model?” I simply tell them, “Look, the support you get is unlike anything else. Not only do you get your own in-house business coach here at the Fit Body Boot Camp headquarters, but you also get all the done-for-you marketing systems we provide.”
The support you get from the headquarters is critical. If you opt to go the franchising route, find a franchise that will set your business up for success.
Proven Business Systems
The next crucial piece of any successful fitness franchise is its systems. You can actually look at the word “systems” as “save yourself time, effort, and money”. It’s important because without systems, your business flies by the seat of your pants.
What do I mean when I say “systems”? I mean the process you use when someone emails you a question about the prices of your boot camp or personal training program, or the process you use to get them to actually come in and go through a consultation.
If a business owner doesn’t have those systems and processes, then they’re flying by the seat of their pants and they’re probably giving people different answers. Odds are, clients, prospects, leads are falling through the cracks.
But if you do implement systems into your business, you’re going to close more people and run your business more efficiently than ever before.
Yet another thing we pride ourselves on is creating done-for-you systems that Fit Body Boot Camp owners can take, implement, and instantly deploy at their locations to get results. We not only give them systems for leveling up their trainers, but we also give them systems for how they should interact with their clients, what to do when a client wants to cancel, and even what to do when a client wants to bring a friend in for a referral.
Every system is documented and processed. Therefore, you’ve got a turnkey process that you take and implement immediately, which is what everybody’s looking for, and you can teach those systems to anybody you hire moving forward.
Dominant Sales and Marketing Strategies
Pillar number three is your sales funnel. This time, I really mean marketing and sales. Marketing is everything you do to get leads and prospects to show interest in your program. Of course, sales is the part of the process where you convert prospects or leads into paying clients.
At Fit Body Boot Camp, we’ve got over 35 lead generation strategies for you to deploy and that we deploy for you, which is really powerful. Now, we know that not all marketing strategies work in every location, which is why we’ve got over 35 marketing strategies for our franchisees to choose from. Odds are, there are only two, three, maybe four things that work best for you
And that’s just to get leads…
Now once you get leads onto your email system and they get to know, like, and trust you, we then teach you a sales process to convert those people into paying clients. Now, we don’t believe in hard sales, we don’t believe in coming off like a used car salesman. The best sales process for the fitness industry is what I call “being an assistant buyer”.
An assistant buyer is just someone who helps your prospects come to the right decision that what you’re offering is right for them. That process has worked really well for us and for our Fit Body Boot Camp owners; it’s enabled many of our owners to cash in on six figures or more of annual revenue.
Outstanding Service
The last thing you absolutely need in your fitness business is strong service. If you have the first three pillars but not the fourth, then you’re going to get frustrated.
Here’s why. You can have the support of the corporate office, you can have all the systems in place for your business, you can get leads and convert them into paying clients. However, if you’re not servicing them right, if they’re not happy with their experience and they’re not getting the results that they were promised, you’re going to have holes in your bucket.
That’s when businesses begin to lose clients as fast as they gain clients. There’s really nothing more stressful and frustrating than that. Deliver service and happiness to your clients every time they come in for a workout.
We run something called Fit Body Boot Camp University that every Fit Body Boot Camp owner goes through. There, we teach them how to service their clients and provide them with an experience that they can’t get anywhere else. I mean, that is the reason why they keep paying us $197, $247, $297 a month, month after month, on an ongoing basis.
These are the 4 pillars you need if you want to start and scale your fitness franchise. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Committed to your success,
Bedros