Over the last few days, I made both a TikTok/Reel and a podcast about this, but there was something I should have mentioned. Something important.
The story is about a gym owner whose business is doing $1,000,000 ARR with a YouTube channel of 450 subscribers. The YouTube plays a big part in it.
Here’s the Instagram Reel about it. If you haven’t seen this, I think it’s quite good.
In short, this guy Jay, sells personalized fitness coaching. He has a gym (Hale Fitness) and he has trainers.
The following strategy worked so well that Jay:
- Raised prices.
- Shortened sales calls from 45 minutes to 15 minutes.
- Has a waiting list of months; too much demand.
- Expects to soon make way more than $1,000,000/year.
The strategy
The strategy in a nutshell:
- Prospect sees paid ad. Here’s one of them, which I found through the Meta Ad Library.
- The ad goes to a landing page with a video at the top. The prospect is instructed to start with the video, which is 41 seconds and is of Jay explaining the upcoming form and sales call.
- Prospect fills out the form. There are questions to group prospects into archetypes.
- At the end of the form, the prospect sets up a sales call for typically two days into the future.
- The day before the call, a sales rep looks at the answers and figures out which archetype the prospect falls into. The gym’s YouTube channel has few subscribers, but it has many videos for every different archetype. The videos are of trainers speaking and explaining fitness/nutrition/lifestyle themes. The day before the call, the prospect is sent a video that matches their archetype, addresses the biggest problem the prospect specified in the form, and offers a solution. The videos provide direct value.
- Oftentimes, this will even be enough for prospects to binge other videos on YouTube.
- Sales call happens the next day. Close rate from this strategy is a whopping 50%.
- For remaining half that doesn’t close, they’re given a 24 hour discount and 1-3 more videos of people like them getting the results they want. This closes many more.
The part I left out
That’s how the strategy works.
But I didn’t explain why it works so well and what we can take away from this.
This is from Jay himself about these warm-up videos:
For example, if I have a mom who’s in her mid-40s, then we’ll send her a video that talks about how to handle menopause.
Or if I have a man who’s in his mid-30s, I’m going to send him a video about what to do if you feel like you’re too late in life.
I know that if I have a male that is like me, he’s going to want to see me in the video.
I know that if I have a woman who’s like one of our female coaches, they’re going to want to see her in the video.
I try to send videos that are specific to the problem each person has.
In short, the videos are hyper-personalized.
The prospects are made comfortable and confident feeling like this gym understands and empathizes with them. Then the videos go above and beyond offering value and solutions right there, for free, in the videos.
Takeaways
For anybody doing sales calls, the takeaways are straightforward:
- Get as much info on your prospects as possible before the calls. Consider using a thorough form like Jay’s. For this part of his stack, Jay uses Typeform.
- Make videos of you talking about people like your prospects.
- Address their problems.
- Offer solutions.
- Use your face.
- Host all the videos on YouTube so viewers can binge other videos on the channel. This further increases close rate before the call.
- Send prospects a targeted video a day before the sales call.
Again, for Jay, the above was good enough to get his close rate (on cold traffic) to 50%.
Okay, but what if you’re not doing sales calls? Start with always trying to have a prospect in mind. Who are you speaking to with your marketing?
If you’re selling a product and not doing calls:
- Consider putting videos on your landing page.
- Make several videos for different buyer personas.
- Explain the problems these personas have and address how the product will help them.
- If possible, give free advice in which the buyer doesn’t even need your product – this builds trust that you’re genuine about trying to help.
How about if you have a minimal website and you’re mainly selling through a social media account:
- Similar to the above. Make videos addressing different personas.
- If TikTok, use hashtags to target these personas. If Instagram, use keywords instead of hashtags.
- Use your face if possible.
What it comes down to
I loved Jay’s story because there are aspects all of us can apply in what we’re doing.
At the top-most-level:
Be empathetic.
Give value before trying to close.
And personalize.
