AMA: How Can I Create More Consistent Sales In My Business?

Welcome to the Ask Me Anything column. Each month I answer a reader question, where I share more detailed ideas and recommendations on all things business, marketing and brand building. Head to this page if you’d like to submit your own question.

Q. Hi Aylen, I am a pilates instructor and would like to know how I can get more sales with my classes and membership.

At the moment, I do a combination of in-person classes at the local gym as well as a pilates membership online. Around 1 to 2 times per year I also do a wellness retreat and then I offer in-person one on one classes whenever I get those requests.

I try keep up posting regularly on social media, I have a small email list which I use maInly to promote the retreats, some people from the in-person classes at the gym turn into membership customers, and then it is also word of mouth from current students who either invite friends to classes or share my membership. I would like to have more consistent income because at the moment, it dips and peaks and is very dependant on the interest I have at that time.

Thanks,

Anonymous.

A. Hi Anon, thanks so much for submitting this months question.

I’m going to share a few different ideas and recommendations on how you can increase sales, as well as mapping out a clear plan so that they become more consistent. Without having all the specifics, this will give you a really good starting point as well as a high-level overview of what the sales pipeline looks like, and how you can tweak it accordingly.

DEFINING WHAT YOU DO DIFFERENTLY & ENSURING THIS COMES ACROSS IN YOUR MESSAGING

A common problem when it comes to converting leads is down to messaging. When people are first introduced to your business, they’re not clear on why they specifically need you.

It’s easy to put it very generic and think: “I’m a pilates instructor, my target audience are people who want to become more lean.” But we need to get more granular.

What is it specifically that you do you differently from other pilates instructors? 

Diving deeper and understanding the why and who you serve will mean you are communicating more effectively and truly speaking to your target audience.

Do you specialise in pre-natal pilates for example? Is it the community feeling that people get when they attend in-person classes? Is it for injury recovery? What is the result and takeaway they receive?

You also want to be clear on who your audience is, are they time poor, new mothers, people in high-stress corporate roles, all of these are different personas so how you will speak to them is different.

Have you conducted market research?

If you’re unsure about the value your current students find from your pilates classes specifically, can you create a short survey to get more feedback? This can be really enlightening since you can often uncover key selling points or differentiators that you hadn’t thought of.

For example, you might receive responses from the survey where people indicate the reason they really enjoy your pilates classes is because of the breathwork at the start of each class. Alternatively, maybe they find the membership platform is really easy to use or they love attending in person because they get to connect with friends and other likeminded people.

All of these are key selling points and what makes you different, you want to cross reference this with your marketing collateral like your website and social media content, do you mention these key points consistently?

For the survey, some questions you may want to ask are:

• What do you feel I do differently from other pilates classes?

• What do you especially enjoy from the my classes?

• What stands out for you about the membership platform I offer?

• How would you describe my teaching style?

• If you recommended my pilates to a friend? What would be the specific reasons you would tell them of why they should sign up?

Teasing out questions like the above, makes it so much easier to get your current students to respond really specifically (versus generic answers) of why they choose you over others.

REFINING YOUR LEAD ATTRACTION STRATEGY

Gathering from what you shared, it sounds like your current lead attraction strategy is via social media, in-person pilates classes and a small amount via email marketing.

Social media

Social media can be notorious difficult for conversions due to the low percentage of people seeing your content, so that’s definitely something you want to keep in mind. Having said that it can be valuable for creating that initial awareness and then inviting them to the next stage which is an in-person class or membership.

If you’re not doing this already, I always recommend batching content. That way you spend a day maximum per month working on creating and scheduling and then you don’t need to worry about it. You should pick about 5-7 content pillars, that you regularly share across socials. Some examples would be:

• In-person classes - reminders of classes, content of the space where classes are held

• Online membership - a behind the scenes of using the platform, an invitation to sign up to the free trial

• Promoting the retreat - through waitlist, teasing information about the location and whats included

• Benefits of Pilates

• General content surrounding wellness - healthy recipes, breathing techniques, meditations

• Testimonials from happy clients

• IG lives sharing different key guests on all things wellness

These various content pillars mean that you are providing clear call to actions, as well as as interesting and relatable content so it doesn’t feel too salesy either. From there, you want to create templates that you can easily plug in and play each time you’re batching, that way you’re not reinventing the wheel each time need to post, you tweak as needed and your branding stays consistent.

In-person classes

It sounds like you get a lot of success from people attending classes, so I would look at in-person classes being top of funnel i.e. being the start of your sales pipeline and let social media tick over in the background, while you focus on physically getting people through the door.

To optimise in-person classes I would look at a) how you can get people to attend more classes, b) are there any other in-person events you could be doing to get them through your sales pipeline.

For option a)

• Can current students invite a friend for free to trial a class?

• Get creative, can you collaborate with someone else in wellness such as a nutritionist where you promote each other to each of your communities?

For option b)

• Could you create additional events with the objective of attracting more people? Community walks on Saturdays or pilates in the park? Be intentional, the objective here is not to make money, but to create an experience that makes them want to either come to regular in-person classes or join the membership, that should be your focus when running them

• Can you partner with a wellness brand like an activewear brand or healthy food brand, and offer a pilates class for events they run?

Email Marketing

In terms of your email marketing, I would keep this as simple as possible, so that you can focus the majority of your time on what’s converting and so you don’t overwhelm yourself with feeling like you have to do all the things.

For the moment, I would use this purely as the waitlist for the retreats, for any promos you might run throughout the year as well as any general updates.

Some additional ideas that can increase awareness and conversions:

• Create a giveaway offering one month free for the membership

• Create a referral program, you’ve mentioned that word of mouth works well for you, so how can this be optimised? What can you do to encourage current students to bring friends on board as well?

OUTLINING THE PHASES IN YOUR SALES PIPELINE

After implementing the lead attraction strategies, you want to clarify the next steps in the sales pipeline. You want to think of this an ascension in the steps people can take to work with you, the first would be awareness which is $0 investment, the final step being the membership or retreat.

A breakdown of your sales pipeline would look like:

Awareness (social media, word of mouth) > Tries service (membership trial/free intro class) > Trust and likes service (joins membership or classes) > Established trust (joins retreat)

Someone who met you at an event usually won’t immediately sign up to your monthly membership, so you want to offer an ascension framework like the one above where they progress through the sales pipeline as they’re ready to move through each phase.

Once you have attracted them, you want to ask yourself what is the next stage in the sales pipeline? My guess is once you have garnered their interest, you either want to get them to an in-person class or offer a trial to your membership. Essentially it is focusing on capturing their attention, then inviting them to try for free and once they have enjoyed the experience, they can move on to being a paying client.

When you look at each stage individually and assess where there is drop off in people moving to the next stage, that can provide more clarity on your next steps and areas for improvement.

CREATE A PREMIUM TIER FOR FOR YOUR MEMBERSHIP

I’m going to assume that the membership you have created is standard for every student, and that the only variance is say, paying per month or per year. What if you added a premium tier for the students who are the loyal fans? The ones that have the budget and would love to take advantage of the ability to have a more close proximity experience with you? This can be a really great way to increase your sales, without the added work of trying to get more leads.

Your premium tier offering could include:

• A monthly one-on-one class with you

• Exclusive recordings with special guests on topics such as nutrition, breathwork, meditation, etc.

• Discounts on future events and retreats with you

• A welcome pack, which includes a pilates ball, a mat or anything else that could accompany their membership (I would recommend all of this being custom branded)

This strategy is another way you can add another step to the ascension framework I mentioned earlier, of how people can work with you.

GET CLEAR ON YOUR SALES GOALS

I meet with a lot of clients, who tell me a very generic figure, like, “I want to make 10k per month,” but then there’s no clear plan or understanding of the how they will get to that figure. If you haven’t already, work out the monthly figure you’d like to make and reverse engineer, how many people do you need to sign up to get to that goal?

• How many in-person clients do you need each month? How many monthly packages do you need to sell?

• How many monthly subscriptions do you need to have ongoing?

• How many retreat signups do you need?

When you’re mapping this out, be mindful of the offers that require more time or for you to be available and what you actually enjoy doing. You will likely want to push for and make a higher income from the membership, since you can leverage time and help more clients remotely versus in-person. Tweak the numbers so that you can create clear sales targets, this will give you clear direction of what to work towards.

···

Thanks so much for reading!
Is there a topic you’d like me to write about?
Drop me a DM, I love hearing from you.