Now don't get me wrong: I love to reinvent the wheel. I love to come up with new ways to do things. When I know something works yeah, I will keep it on because it's tried and tested. If I've tried a million different ways and that is the best one so far, but if some new information comes along, and whilst I'm not stressed about it too much, I always want to find the most efficient way to do things because I hate wasting time.
So that said, I came across a worrying trend lately. And tell me if this has been around for a while. Oh, my goodness, I must be out of the loop. So I have been having some cold callers message me and call me about how they will contact my leads on my behalf as in… if I put out some Facebook advertising, Facebook marketing, or I've got a database that's got a whole bunch of leads… They will go through my leads and give them a call and get them ready and get them on board. So, of course, you might say, Susan, why is that such a bad thing? I am so busy working in my business, and I never signed up to be a salesman. I never signed up to wear all of these hats, and isn't it good to outsource? And isn't it good to get people that have knowledge and experience to do these kinds of things? Well, I am about to explain why I think it's the worst idea in the world.
There are probably some aspects of this or some subtle nuances for your specific business within your industry that you may find that it works really well for but I'm gonna explain how it works in terms of the gyms and studios and personal trainers that I work for.
So one of the reasons why you should be calling your leads is that it is your first impression that you're making on someone and you want to build that rapport as soon as you can. One of the ways you're not going to build rapport is if you're leaving that responsibility (as in your only chance to make a good first impression) with a set of sales team that haven't done the time in your business. They don't understand your business, they don't understand the language of your business. They don't understand the terminology, the values, all of these, they are just trying to get as many calls as possible and get as many leads as possible. So they might even be telling your leads anything that they want to hear. And the really sad part about that is you actually have no idea how to meet the demands of what they have been told. And so if you have on your behalf, have told a client to expect the world from you and you cannot provide the world, instead you can provide the moon… well, they're not gonna be happy. It can be the best moon in the world, but it is not the world. So that's the first one.
The second one is do you trust an outside company to take notes to understand all of the unsaid things as well as the sad things about clients? Remember, you're the one that deals with your clients all the time, and your business is the one that deals with your clients all the time. You're going to understand right away if they are a fit for you or they are not a fit for you. All the person that is on the phone during the sales for you cares about making the calls. So they do not care about writing about how, when they were talking to a person they were, perhaps a little bit upset about talking about their weight or that sort of thing. So you're about to make a mistake.
On top of that, the items that you're dealing with as a personal trainer or as a fitness studio, are of some of a sensitive nature. How are you going to build rapport and trust on on the person to know you and the person to like you or trust you if you're not the one on the phone. They're the ones that's going to be divulging some information that's really quite personal to them, and they're gonna be divulging it to someone who is not going to pass on that information to them or if they do the information that's passed on. The client is going to feel a little bit awkward about conversations being had about how they're upset about their weight or how they feel like they don't feel as sexy when their clothing is off and that sort of thing.
All of these are reasons that I just feel like by outsourcing this you are taking away your opportunity to excel and to be brilliant. Later on down the track, you might want an in-house person to be doing this, and that's when you've got your 100 to maybe 250 clients that are part of your fitness studio, but right here and now if you can't show someone that you have time for them, you have time to make the call, you have time to be on the phone for them in a personal sense. They are not going to believe that you care enough to be there for them to be able to help them reach the goals that they're sort of thing they're going to feel like they are an impersonal client.
If they want to feel like that they can go to a big box gym, and guess what you can't compete with a big box gym. The big box gym has deep pockets. They have a lot of money. They have a lot of ad spend. They have a lot of new equipment that is not what you provide, you don't provide fitness, you provide accountability. You provide the person with a personal relationship of accountability where they feel seen by a person. When you have more than one person involved in that, and they are not part of your team: they're not within your house of clients. You're now dispersing the blame, you're now dispersing responsibility. Your ability to be able to get them on side, getting them to know, like and trust you.
I know it is really tempting to say I would love to just outsource the calling. I just hate it and if you're a millennial like me you actually hate to be on the phone with someone that you don't know. But let's face it, this is something you need to do within your business to be successful and you're never going to not have to make a phone call to someone to build that rapport to build that relationship. Therefore it is something that you almost just have to teach yourself to get your head around to be ready, so that you can really excel your business and you're not going to be able to excel your business if you're giving all your hard earned cash to someone who doesn't give a damn about your business, about your clients and asking them to call your leads… because like I said they don't know what you do. They don't know who you are. They don't know how you do things. And in that first impression that you're making on the phone, if you are not giving that away as your first impression, it could take months to change the person around to who you are, what you do all of that sort of thing but guess what? You usually don't have that opportunity because you only have one chance to make a really good impression.
You only have that one chance with a lead to be able to help them. If you aren't the person that can help them within the first few hours of them reaching out to you. They'll find someone else, they will find that person that can do it for them. So do not delegate the responsibility of that lightly. This either has to be done with someone who you really trust within your facility you trust like a brother or sister, whatever family member, (someone that you have that sort of level of relationship with even though they're not related to you) to be able to do those things.
So, the next time you feel like there's an opportunity for you to outsource an area of your business, check in and ask me because guess what, I've made a whole bunch of mistakes and I really don't want you to be making the same kind of mistakes. I know what worked best for me and what has worked best for just under 100 businesses right now and I want to be able to help you. So let's reach out, let's chat. Let's make sure that you don't have to make any of the mistakes that I've already made.