Are You Missing This Key Referral Strategy? with Ben Pickard

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Speaker: [00:00:00] One, two, three, four. Welcome to the Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the Business for Unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym.

Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.[00:00:30]

Yeah, yeah. Ah, yeah. Baby, wanna get down. Yo. Hello, my friend. Before we jump into today’s podcast, I wanna make sure you know about an awesome free resource that you can instantly download. I know many of you struggle with the S word in your business, or you have some team members that struggle with the S word, and yes, I’m talking about sales.

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Welcome to another episode of the Business for Unicorns podcast. I’m back with Mr. Ben Pickard. What’s up, my friend? How are you?

Speaker 2: I’m doing great. I, I just realized, I think on the last podcast we recorded, we were talking about how I was gonna go to another theater experience.

Speaker: That’s right. We were talking, we did talk about that.

Speaker 2: And-

Speaker: And you did …

Speaker 2: I ca- I watched “The Book of Mormon” in Toronto on Thursday-

Speaker: Yeah …

Speaker 2: last week, and it blew my mind. It was so good and so hilarious and so unbelievably offensive.

Speaker: Yes, so offensive. Yeah. So [00:02:00] un-PC. But it’s made by the creators of “South Park”, so if anyone’s a big “South Park” fan, if you knew it or not, they made a Broadway show, what, 15 years ago.

Speaker 2: It’s won awards.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: A shitload of awards. Like, the hilarity of the “South Park” guys, who I see as previously dumb humor, now I see as quite clever humor-

Speaker: Yeah

Speaker 2: They’re just super into musicals, so they made an unbelievable musical, but the stuff they’re singing about is, I don’t even want to say it on the podcast-

Speaker: Yeah, no

it’s

Speaker 2: so bad.

Speaker: It’s pretty racist and pretty pretty… But in that South Park way where they [00:02:30] make fun of everyone in the show, so it’s all fair game. I know it’s not everyone’s taste- Yes … but it’s, it’s pretty smart humor as far as I’m concerned often. Uh- Yes … a pretty good social commentary. And for those big South Park fans out there, you know a lot of their big episodes were in fact musicals.

They wrote a lot of musical episodes. They’re really good- Yeah … at writing songs and lyrics. And anyway, they put one on stage. The

Speaker 2: songs were so catchy. You wanna sing along, and you’re like, “I can’t say these words out loud.”

Speaker: Yeah. 100%. Yeah, definitely shouldn’t. Yeah. Good for you. I highly recommend it. I’m glad you’re [00:03:00] expanding your, your theater horizons.

That’s exciting.

Speaker 2: Yeah, me

Speaker: too. Yeah. Let’s dive into today’s episode, ’cause I wanted to do… We wanted to do a quick one because you had a real win in your gym recently, and we thought we’d just come on and share it in a quick episode. And let me tee this up like this, which is we all know that one of the most important systems for a gym to have is a system for generating referrals.

Referrals are often one of the main sources of leads in every service business like ours, right? And so the spirit of your share today, I know, [00:03:30] is about the fact that you just had a real win when it comes to generating a bunch of referrals, and it’s, comes from something I know that you’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and you finally did.

So tell us the story, Ben.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So we’ve been in business, this is our 12th year right now, so we’ve celebrated our 11th anniversary.

Speaker: Wow, congrats.

Speaker 2: Thank you. And I work with BFU, and I’m generally a student of the game, that I’m always trying to get better and learn new things and new strategies and just master the [00:04:00] fundamentals.

So I say all this to say, one of the things that I have somehow overlooked in my gym until a couple weeks ago, was putting up a poster that says we have a evergreen referral offer. So we’re doing this Q2 challenge in BFU, which is like talk to strangers, which is all the like offline meeting people things.

Yep. And I think this was inspired from that. So my GM is participating in this challenge, which is great, and she made these like referral posters. And she just made them up. She showed me a couple versions. She went, [00:04:30] “Which one do you like best?” I’m like, “This one.” She goes, “Great. I’ll get them printed and put them up at the gym.”

They’ve, they’re fucking everywhere.

Speaker: Amazing.

Speaker 2: We’ve probably got… Our gym isn’t huge. It’s 3,000 total square feet, and we’ve probably got six posters up.

Speaker: Love it.

Speaker 2: And in my head I’m like, “All right,” like sure, this makes sense to do. It’s got a QR code on it. A couple people might scan it, but whatever.

Speaker: Can you say- There’s one more thing

can you say what’s on it? What’s the actual offer?

Speaker 2: Uh, I think it’s if you refer somebody, they get our two-week trial for $49, plus you get $49 off your next payment.

Speaker: [00:05:00] Fun. That’s easy.

Speaker 2: Not even, not even that much money in the grand scheme of things.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Anyways, we put these posters up and I have like super mellow expectations, and you can probably tell where this is going ’cause we’re doing a podcast episode about it.

We got fucking eight referrals in the first seven days- Wow … and six of them, I think, converted to an actual membership. This like $4 in printing made us, I don’t know how much money every month.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Like a lot.

Speaker: That’s a lot. That’s amazing.

Speaker 2: And it’s just– So the learn here, as I’m saying it tongue in cheek ’cause I’m [00:05:30] making fun of myself, is here I am feeling like I know what’s up and I generally know some stuff.

At least I know enough to be dangerous. And there’s this just like obvious thing that I just haven’t done- Mm-hmm … that was low-hanging fruit. And that, in combination with Bring a Friend Day, like I should actually track how many referrals we get in a year, but it’s a good amount now. Yeah. Which is something we didn’t have systemized before.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: We got, we sometimes got lucky. We still got them, but it was like, “Hey, I have a friend. Can I give them a [00:06:00] card?” And I’m like, “Actually, send me an email.”

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Now it’s this is how we do things here, which gives you a really nice sense of control.

Speaker: Yeah. That’s amazing. First of all, good for you and your GM, Lisha, who has been on the podcast.

So if you’re listening, Lisha, good job. Congratulations. That’s huge. And I think it really represents just a reoccurring theme on this podcast, which is being great at anything in life really just amounts to really being excellent at the basics, right? And so often as business owners, we get so lost in like the creative [00:06:30] problem-solving and the what’s next and the iterating, that sometimes it’s so easy to forget about, oh, we’re just missing a few really basic things.

And so like you’re not alone here, Ben. I, we… You know this from coaching conversations all the time. Sometimes it’s just about going back to the basics and filling in those gaps that really we learned a long time ago and just haven’t fully executed on. This reminds me, we had someone kind of rejoin Unicorn Society again recently, a member who’s come back, and this person reached out and asked me, “Do I need to take onboarding [00:07:00] again?”

That’s actually happened twice recently. And in all those cases, I’m like, “Yeah, go do onboarding again,” right? Our onboarding program for Unicorn Society is, again, going back to all the basics, right? Do you have the basics in place? And so I’m like, yeah, it… anyone at any stage of the business should go back to the drawing board and really look at the fundamentals of lead generation, sales flow, right?

Services pricing, program delivery, right? The basics of our business. Just go and examine them. So I’m so glad you did [00:07:30] this. Yeah. Zooming out, now you’re reflecting on your win of this all. Any idea what stopped you before? What was the thing that– Any idea why this wasn’t on your radar?

Speaker 2: I thought it was too s- simple.

I did. I’m like, “There’s no way this… Put- putting up a poster? Yeah, that’s gonna do it. If that was the thing, we’d all be millionaires.” I just, I was so dismissive of it because it wasn’t, like it wasn’t even fancy enough. I’m not even sure. It’s so funny.

Speaker: Yeah. ‘

Speaker 2: Cause I’m like, I tend to be a kind of fundamentals guy, and I’m seeing the contrast between- [00:08:00] I can’t remember the last time– I probably try one new exercise in my own training a month, like 12 a year.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Most of what I do is squat, hinge, push, pull, core mobility.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker 2: What version of deadlifts am I gonna do today?

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker 2: But then when it comes to my gym, I’m like, “Posters are too simple. I gotta do the new fancy thing. What software can I get? Should I optimize my website for AI? How does that work?” And it, this is a little bit off topic, but Kat, my wife, sells real estate.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And they’ve got CRMs and they’ve [00:08:30] got process. They’re really process-driven. Like, they would be– If they sold, if they did gym stuff, they’d be a great fit for BFU from the systems and leadership they wanna implement.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker 2: One of the most successful real estate agents that my wife knows doesn’t have a CRM.

She literally uses a filing cabinet.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. She’s

Speaker 2: just really good with people, really consistent with her- Yeah … and is always going to the right places and the right events and saying the right things. Her whole system is she is awesome, and everything else is archaic. It’s almost hilarious how successful she is because she doesn’t do any of [00:09:00] this crap.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And I think gyms, there’s something there as well, where we know the fundamentals work for exercise- Mm-hmm … and then we wanna get, like, the new fancy shit for our gym when- Yeah … realistically, we should probably just hand out flyers in the neighborhood.

Speaker: Yeah, 100%. I mean, that’s part of why I think we’re doing this quarterly challenge with our Unicorn Society members is just go back to the basics of, do people within a three-mile radius even know your business exists?

Do the people who are right down the street know your business exists, right? And so I think becoming, as we like to call it, three-mile famous, it’s about the [00:09:30] basics. It’s about having a presence in your community, and that is about signage and flyers and local press and some of those basics of owning a local business.

And it’s so easy to overlook those as not being sophisticated enough. And we’re going back to, “Oh, how do we change our SEO based on new AI algorithms?” It’s, “Have you handed out any flyers lately?” “Have you been to your local coffee shop, and do you know the owner there? Have you done any partnerships with them?”

Those kind of things really go such a long way. Let’s go back to referrals for a second. Can you just say a little bit more about how you chose that [00:10:00] evergreen offer? And maybe I’m just curious if you could just elaborate more about, like, why you think gyms should have this kind of evergreen referral offer.

Speaker 2: Yeah. You should have them because people don’t buy when you’re ready, they buy when they’re ready. Just because I feel like getting my coaches to ask for extra referrals this month doesn’t mean that the relationships my clients have are ready to buy training this

Speaker: month.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Those are very separate things, even though I get, I want referrals.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And by having something like a poster [00:10:30] that’s on the back, on the door so they can’t help but see it every time they leave the gym, knowing that it’ll eventually fade into the background, it’s just reminded them we have this thing, so when a friend brings it up, they can be like, “Oh, my gym’s actually doing this referral thing.”

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: That’s all I need them to say.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And I’ve tried to set it up in a way where- I personally just don’t like referral incentives that only incentivize the referrer, not the referree. Sure. I don’t like feeling like I’m selling my friends. I would much rather be like, “Hey Michael, I found a [00:11:00] new hat company.

By the way, if you end up buying a hat, we each get 50% off our next hat.” I’ll refer that all day. Yeah. But I don’t wanna send you to the hat company that only gives me free hats.

Speaker: Yeah. That

Speaker 2: makes sense. So I made it a thing where both people get 50 bucks, and that just seemed like a good amount of money.

Yeah. But we also, it’s the most– It’s the least amount we could tweak our referral offers. Our normal, our normal o- or least amount we could twe- tweak our LBO. Our normal LBO is three weeks of training for [00:11:30] 199. So this is one, a good deal ’cause it’s only 49, but two, it’s the same thing we normally sell for slightly less money.

It’s simple and it’s not complicated.

Speaker: Yeah. I love that, ’cause then what you’re doing is you’re using your folks not just to get you a name, phone number, and email, but actually pitch them on the idea of coming in for two weeks at, for only $49 when it normally is three times that amount. It gives them a message to share, “Hey, come into my gym, only $49.

And if you come in, I get $49 off my next month.” It’s so easy to communicate. People [00:12:00] get it quickly. I think all too often people make this overly complicated, and I think the fact that it’s easy to talk about and explains means more people are willing to do it. Yeah. Yeah. So when they click on, let’s get a little tactical, when they click on the QR code, what do they, where, what, where does it take them to?

Speaker 2: It’s made for the current client. Mm-hmm. So that will take them to a form that Alicia built out, actually in Notion, ’cause we’re switching everything over to Notion. Yeah. But you could just use a Google form that asks some question and gives us the friend’s information, and I think one of the questions actually is, “I am [00:12:30] confirming that this person is expecting your call,” because we don’t wanna just cold call people- Of course

we want there to be something like that. But yeah, name, email, phone number, how do you know this person? And it gives us an information to be like, “Hey Michael, it’s Ben from Lean Strong. My friend Sally said you’d be a really good fit. Has she talked to you about this already?”

Speaker: Yep. ”

Speaker 2: Oh, great. Okay, cool.” I– You’re probably not gonna hang up on me if I said we have a mutual connection.

Speaker: Totally. Yeah. It goes such a long way to having that kind of a warm introduction and say, and encourage them to go tell the person you’re doing this, right? So we don’t sound like creepos when we’re [00:13:00] calling them out of the blue and suddenly have their phone number, and then that goes such a long way because then they’re gonna be doubly ready, right?

They’re gonna be extra ready to go, which is great.

Speaker 2: It’s also got the perk too of real easy to train our staff on this. “Hey coaches, if you’re doing a session and somebody mentions they might have somebody who’s interested, all you need to do is tell them to scan the QR code.”

Speaker: That’s it.

Speaker 2: You don’t have to remember what’s the offer, what happens next.

You don’t have to give a phone number to Alicia.

Speaker: Yeah. ”

Speaker 2: Hey, why don’t you just go… You know what? Grab your phone right now and go scan [00:13:30] that QR code while we’re doing our warmup.”

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Problem solved. Easy to delegate.

Speaker: 100%. The thing I was gonna add to this, so this is like a very much a yes, and I love everything you’ve done, and it makes so much sense why it’s working.

Not only is it working because it’s a great offer and a great easy workflow for people, but it also is working ’cause you haven’t done it before.

Speaker 2: Yeah,

Speaker: that’s a good point … ’cause it’s fresh, it’s a fresh idea to them. I will say that the thing I often recommend to Unicorn Society members who have an evergreen offer is I actually don’t think of it as being forever evergreen, right?

Oftentimes when you make an [00:14:00] evergreen something, it’s meant to be like a forever thing. And even though we call it that, I don’t think you can have the same evergreen offer forever and have, and expect any results. To your point, that that flyer just becomes like wallpaper at some point and people just stop seeing it.

And so I think at the very least once or twice a year, max quarterly, I think just changing the offer slightly, even just changing the paper that it’s on, the color of the flyer, the size, the font, the anything like that [00:14:30] makes a difference so people can physically see it again, so it becomes a visual kind of eye stopper.

And then if you want to, a few times a year, like I said, also change like the offer a little bit. Great. Change it a little bit. Maybe for one month instead of 49 it’s 79 or 99 for both people. Great. But I think to keep getting people’s attention, it’s gotta change a little bit. And I’ll also say that I think once in a while I encourage people to play with referral incentives that are not only about money, right?

Totally. It could be [00:15:00] about access. It could be about a raffle. It could be about winning something else. It could be about an experience they have together, right? Bring a friend day. It’s if the only way we’re incentivizing people to refer people is inviting them to workouts and offering them money to invite people to workouts, it’s a very kind of limited ask.

But I can invite them to, to, to a, a happy hour. I can invite them to a walk club, a run club, a bike club, a, a book club. If I can invite them to a, whatever else you do with your f- charity 5K. [00:15:30]

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: Then there’s all kinds of other asks I can make of my friends and family and coworkers and not just say, “Want to work out with me?

We both get money.” It’s just such a narrow ask

Speaker 2: Totally. Yeah, couldn’t agree more. That, that’s with the balance of having evergreen, which you’re right, it’s not truly evergreen. Even evergreen trees die and need to be replaced. That’s fair. So there’s something there.

Speaker: That’s

Speaker 2: fair. Yeah. And like having the event-based stuff and then swa- sw- swapping what you’re actually saying, not– ’cause you make a good point.

Come to the gym and save money. Mm-hmm. Like how many times have you actually met a client at a networking [00:16:00] event or drinks or something unrelated or a run club?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: My hypothesis is the number of gen pop people who actually want to lift weights for the sake of lifting weights is like circa zero.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: The number of people who want the benefits of lifting weights, they just need another way in. Yeah. Like the gym who does a really cool book club is already a lot u- more unique than Globo Gym.

Speaker: 100%. Yeah, 100%. One of the gyms I joined when I lived in San Francisco is one that I first went to because they, they held an event there that I went to, and I was like, “Oh, this [00:16:30] is a really lovely space.

I didn’t even know this was near my house,” right? And, uh, and I met some fun people there, and I was like, “Oh, I should go back there and take a tour.” Like it, that, it happens. So anyway, we’ll leave it there ’cause we can go down a long rabbit hole of other referral strategies. But thank you for sharing.

Thanks for coming on the podcast and talking about, oh, I wish I would’ve done this sooner. ‘Cause I think many people listening will totally resonate with that, and it’s a good message about being excellent at the basics, and it’s a good message about do the evergreen referral thing. You gotta have that on your, in your arsenal.[00:17:00]

Any final thoughts as we wrap up?

Speaker 2: If you don’t have referral posters, make them, print them, and put ’em up now. And if you do and they’re more than six months old, change it up a little bit.

Speaker: Love it. Love it. Awesome. Thanks as always, Ben, for the great conversation, and dear listeners, hope you, hope you enjoyed this one.

I’ll see you on the next one. Have a kickass week. [00:17:30] Bye.