 Welcome to the build my sports big show where we talk about how to create build and scale your own local sports training business Let's go. It's time to get started with your host Ben neighbors. The show starts right now Welcome back to the podcast in today's episode. We're gonna be talking about the recipe for Attracting committed clients. This is my recipe that I have been using for this past several years and I wanted to go in depth in Today's episode and I feel like it's gonna be very beneficial for you if you have a pen and a Piece of paper to follow along This is broken in to three stages and I'm going to go very deep into each stage So this way I know you can implement this within your own business with confidence Okay, so the first stage if I want to Attract committed clients and if you want to attract committed clients is you need to have a pre-qualification process and really what this means is You have a way of pre-qualifying clients before they step onto the field or onto the court wherever you train Before you accept them as a client You have to have a process down where they are selling themselves to you Instead of you selling yourself to them and that is a mindset shift that I had to take I would say in the early days when I started training players when parents would call me I Just assumed that they wanted to train with me and they would automatically be accepted into my program I hadn't even met their kid yet. I had only had one phone conversation with their parent I knew very little about their kid and I would show up to the field and I would realize that this kid is a nightmare to deal with And I'm sure this has happened to you. This has probably happened to you a lot And I don't want that to continue to happen And the way that you can eliminate that from happening is you have a pre-qualification Process and the way that that looks is very simple You have a phone call. It's a scheduled call Where you call the parent? Remember, you're not talking to the kids. You're talking to the parent The parent is the one who's going to be buying. So you have a scheduled call you call them and you have a list of questions Personally, I have it's basically a script that I follow. This is something that all of the inner circle members have access to you can go check that out on our website and I stick to that and what I do though is I ask questions I'm asking the parent questions the entire time. I'm Qualifying them into my program. I'm seeing, you know, what type of parents are they? What type of kid do they have? What is their kid really struggle with and why do they want to be in my program? these are the things I figure out in that phone call and My goal is to ask enough questions to see if they are the right fit for my program and ultimately what this does is it allows me to be picky with who I train and Towards the end of that call. That is where I sell my program and I only get to that point if I know that This parent is the right fit. If they're not the right fit, they won't know a single thing about the investment They won't know about what the next steps are. They won't know anything. I'm not going to sell something to a parent That isn't the right fit and you can probably understand why I would do that because I'm not going to Want to spend any more time with someone unless I know that they are the right fit, right? So the way I break down my call is very simple at the beginning. I want to learn everything about them I do not spend any time talking about me or my past accomplishments or how many players I've trained. I Don't do that. I actually spend Probably five percent of the conversation talking and if they are the right fit towards the end I will talk and explain in great detail everything that's included with my program and what the next steps are and The next step is for their child to come to the evaluation process, which is step number two here And the evaluation process. This is for me. This is where I get to determine, you know, who is this kid? What are they good at? What are their goals? Are they comfortable around me? Am I going to be comfortable around them for the next 12 months? And if you know anything about me with my private training program, it's a 12 month commitment I'm not going to train players who are there for just a couple months or a couple of sessions I will know within five minutes if this player is the right fit for me And I know this because I do something very specific at the at the beginning of the session once I meet the parents after I meet them me and Johnny will go over to where you know, the the practice is set up and Johnny will sit down and I'll talk to Johnny. I'll ask Johnny some questions and there's three Really important things that I go over and I'm going to tell you what I do Okay, so the first thing that I do is I'll sit Johnny down and I'll just ask him, you know, how things are going and I want him to feel comfortable around me I don't want him to be nervous. This is the first time he's around me. Most kids are nervous around coaches So I want to break the ice immediately and the way I can do that because I ask enough questions in Stage one and the pre-qualification process. I already know things about Johnny So I can bring up things that he's comfortable talking about Then from there, I will talk and ask three, you know, I go over three really important I Would just say philosophies about my program that I know he has to understand if he doesn't understand I won't train him So the first is I contact and I will go into depth about, you know Why when I'm talking I want him to look at me and why when he's talking I need to look at him And I talk about the importance of that and why every time I see him when he's at my session Not only when he's with me, but when he's with his teachers when he's with his parents why he has to have eye contact And why that shows that, you know, he's gonna be respecting me and why I care about that because if he's not Looking at me when I'm talking I feel like he's wasting his time And I will be wasting my time and I go deep into that and I tell him stories about How it was when I was younger when I was really shy and how I never looked at anyone So it allows him to get to know me just like by giving him a story and by me showing him one of my philosophies About what I expect and that's an expectation If I'm telling a kid that and they're not looking at me when I'm telling them like what I want them to do I will immediately go to their parents and tell them that we're not gonna be training like that's how blunt I am. I'm not gonna want to spend any more time with a player unless they are going to Follow suit with what I'm having them do because again, I'm around them for 12 months There's no way they're gonna respect me After session one and I'm gonna be wasting an entire year with someone Where I could technically be doing nothing during that hour I'd rather be doing nothing than spend time with someone who doesn't want to be there Okay, now the second thing is I talk about the willingness to fail again kids are Nervous they get nervous around trainers and they need to know that they are allowed to mess up and that That failing is good So I go deep into that and I tell them a personal story about you know How it was for me when I was younger and why you know I thought failing was bad in sessions and practice and why when I overcame that that's when I got better And so this what allows them to come into my space Knowing that you know what if I mess up today, that's fine It's okay Ben's not gonna get mad at me Ben's not gonna yell at me and I that immediately makes the kid feel comfortable and It allows them to know that you know when they do mess up. It's okay Because they might be conditioned by you know a screaming coach that they have you know whenever they screw up they You know their confidence crumbles because their their coach is yelling at them and Often case that's you know, that's the scenario that is the scenario that most kids have And they struggle with that and that affects their confidence and my goal of my sessions is to boost their confidence I want it to be different than anything else that they've ever done. And so they have to know that Lastly the third is I always want them to be positive and No matter what's going on at home. No matter what's going on at school When they get to my session when they step onto the field, I want them to be a positive person Even if they mess up, I want them to be positive even if you know something really crappy happens I want their mindset to always be positive and That has changed a lot of kids lives that I've trained just by telling them that because you know a lot of kids out there To be honest are mentally weak. They're they're fragile. If something bad happens. They're super negative Often times it's because their parents are like that And they don't have a mentor and you know by me immediately breaking the ice within the first five minutes and talking to them about eye contact Talking them about the willingness to fail talking about being positive that Right there, even if they left the session like I've made a difference in their life Even if it's something that minor and so that is something again I use that as part of my evaluation process to better understand this player to make sure they understand that and as soon as I get done Telling them that they will go teach that to their parents and that's where I understand, you know, were they actually listening if they Walk out of their parents and they're there for 10 seconds and they come back to me I know that they weren't paying attention. So this is something that again, I'm talking to the kid I'm testing them. I will see if they can go recite it back to their parents Then from there We move on with the session and in the session I have with the evaluations very easy I just like to see where the kid is at. It's not something that's rigorous Again, I want them to feel comfortable around me. It's not one of those things where I make this session extremely difficult kids who go through extremely difficult sessions at the very beginning are Not going to want to come back. That's just the way it goes And lastly, so the first stage here is the pre-qualification process I broke that down if you want the script to that if you want the exact questions You can join our inner circle program You can learn how I taught to parents there and then the evaluation process I just broke that down and then lastly they become a committed client and What I do though is in stage one with the pre-qualification process. I already sell my program I tell them what my expectations are. I tell them what the investment is There's nothing that I hide and I do that because I know if they understand that and they come to the evaluation session I know that they're number one. They can afford it number two They want to commit to the program because that's the first step I have everyone take once I tell them the investment of the program is the evaluation and That makes it easy for me because I don't have to sell anything after that because if they already Understand the investment Before they come to the evaluation then I don't have to sell anything if they don't understand the investment And then I have them come to an evaluation and then I have to try to sell something to them Well, they might be shocked with what the investment is They might be like wow like we thought it would be like $25 an hour like like Jimmy John over there in the corner and My program is set up completely different than most trainers And that's why I have this process though because I want to attract committed clients before I even see their kids and Like the third step like I said is they become a committed client and what I have The parents and the players do is they sign a contract and yes, I know that sounds intense But in order for me to to truly move forward with kids I have them sign a contract and I have their parents on a contract and that contract is in Extreme depth and I'm going to give you an example of one thing that's on there that You may want to implement into your program so let's say you have a 12 month program and Your training Johnny Johnny is in your program and he's in there for four months and then Johnny's parents for some reason they start missing some of the sessions and they Start complaining saying they can't make it to every session They want to pull out of your program if you don't have any terms in place They can just stop training with you and if they wanted they could call the credit card company and and say that there's credit card fraud That has happened to me before That has happened to many trainers that I've worked with when they work with terrible clients But if you work with a terrible client, that's actually your fault and that means that you don't have a process in place that means that you're just training whoever and They're going to take advantage of you and your time and when you train committed clients that crap never happens and let me show you what happens though is When my clients when they sign up they sign a contract stating they're going to be committed to 12 months And it's also set up if they wanted to cancel before the 12 months is done. That's great They have to pay a thousand dollars to cancel and I have that set up because I know that if they're thinking about canceling That's fine. Like if they want to end the contract already great They're gonna pay a grand and they can at that point I will stop the billing But I have that set up because I know if I'm Thinking about training someone who may not be committed when they look at that There's no way they're gonna sign up because they in their head. They're thinking. Oh, well, you know We probably just wanted this for three months or one month They're not going to get into a contract with me if they know it's strict and what that does though is it gets everybody off the fence into my program or it gets everybody off the fence and Not get into my program and I like that because I know when someone signs the contract very clear to me They're extremely committed and I'm and I know at that point money is not going to be an issue for them If they wanted to cancel that's fine. They can cancel they can pay the fee It's very similar to what you would pay if if you moved out of an apartment complex early And that gives me the security as the coach to know that you know what this player is committed They're signing a contract. This parent is committed We're not gonna be messing around with money. We're not gonna be messing around with cancellations. They know what's up They know what my expectations are and I can have the peace of mind Adding this client into my program Hey coach. Thanks for listening to our show today. If you enjoyed the content I'd really appreciate it if you would leave us a five-star review here on iTunes If you want to attract more committed clients generate more income and create more freedom in your life You'll want to check out our inner circle mastermind This exclusive group is reserved for coaches who want to build and scale a dominant sports training business To learn more about the inner circle program simply head over to our website at www.buildmysportsbiz.com Thanks again for listening. I'll catch you later