What if I told you that you could easily generate consistent surges of new client revenue every month without having your personal training staff do any prospecting, make any cold calls or meet with any members that aren't already interested in doing personal training? I'll even take it a step further. What if I told you that you could easily get every member in your club that needs the services of a personal trainer to raise his or her hand and say, “Here I am. Please come help me.”

By using a unique type of lead generation (LG) marketing system that has a non-threatening form of first contact, you can easily accomplish all of those things and quickly develop a database of the hottest personal training prospects in your club.

You're probably familiar with a popular form of LG marketing in the health club industry: lead boxes. The purpose of the lead box is not to make an appointment, not to qualify a prospect and not to sell anything. The sole purpose of the lead box or any LG ad is to generate leads from people that are interested in whatever it is that you're offering. That's it. Just get contact information.

HEADLINES DRIVE IT HOME

How to put together that LG ad is a little more complicated. An LG ad should start with a benefit-rich, solution-driven headline, not the company name, trainer name or program name. A good example of a benefit-rich headline is, “Discover How to Lose 12 Pounds of Fat in the Next 4 Weeks, Without Dieting.” All of the marketing pieces for your personal trainers and all of your LG ads should be geared toward a niche market. The above headline is obviously for weight loss. Another example of a good headline that fits a different niche market is, “Exposed: The 5 Simple Steps Woman Can Take to Maintain Bone Density.” This headline targets women concerned about osteoporosis.

The third component of a good LG ad is the call to action. This is where we ask the prospect to take advantage of some offer. If the call to action requires a significant effort on the part of the prospect, such as scheduling an appointment to meet with the trainer, or if it is perceived by the prospect to require them to put themselves in front of a salesperson either on the phone or in person, you'll drastically reduce the number of leads that you collect. By using a non-threatening form of first contact, you can eliminate any reluctance on the part of the prospect to respond. You also can tremendously increase the quantity of leads that you collect.

Eliminate any fear of pressure by offering the prospect a free fitness report. For example, with the headline, “Exposed: The 5 Simple Steps Woman Can Take to Maintain Bone Density,” you can have a little blurb at the bottom of the ad that says, “To immediately receive a copy of this FREE REPORT, go to www.yourclub.com right now. Offer expires on 5/15/03.” Once they go to your web site, simply have them opt-in to immediately receive a copy of the free report. At that moment you capture the contact information of a hot lead that would respond positively to a marketing campaign promoting osteoporosis prevention programs.

By doing this, not only have you generated a quality lead, but you've actually begun to segment your database of prospects. Put weight loss prospects in one spreadsheet and osteoporosis prospects in another spreadsheet.

Think about it. You can easily put an LG poster in your club with a captivating headline offering a free report on a particular topic of interest to a niche market and get the members that want more instruction in that area to stand up, raise their hand and say, “Here I am.” No prospecting, no cold calling and no wasted time for your training staff. And the best part, the free report, the non-threatening form of first contact takes away any reason for a prospect not to respond to your ad. Now all you have to worry about is whether you have enough trainers to handle all of those leads.

Todd Brown, CCN, MES, CSCS is the director of personal training and nutrition for the seven New Jersey Work Out World! facilities. Todd can be reached at tbrown@workoutworld.com.

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