Leads are oxygen for your business.  If you are not generating leads through word of mouth, your website or some form of direct marketing, then your business is in trouble. But it's not about how big your list of leads is, it's what you do with them.

All leads fall into three basic categories:

• Ready to go now,
• Not interested, or
• Not ready yet.

'Ready to go now' are easy, they signup and become your member on the spot. But what about the people who are 'not interested' or 'not ready yet'?  Is that the end of your relationship? Do you just let them slip through the cracks?  For many businesses, the answer would be yes. They let them go because they have no process or system they can follow to nurture these leads. These last two categories often never hear from the club, studio or box again.

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. These two categories are where the gold is in your business. They already know about your business.

Sure, no one converts 100% of the leads they generate, but what if you have a repeatable process that nurtures those leads and moves your conversion rate from 30% to 40%. What would that additional 10% difference make to your bottom line?

Below are a few easy and inexpensive ideas to nurture these leads to become members of your club:

1. Share success stories on a monthly basis with a strong call to action to those leads who have not yet become members
2. Offer a free visit or session, demystify your club for them, after all, there is nothing like coming in a doing a session to get a feel for the place
3. Book an induction for prospective members, get to know them and answer their questions about the club as you take them around.  Sure, it is important to point out where the toilets and showers are, but put in place a proper induction that explains your point of difference, introduces them to regular members and any trainers you have on the floor
4. Most importantly, take steps 1-3 and put them into a system.  Just because someone tells you ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ on the first approach, give them the chance to opt-in to regular communications and promotions.

Of course you need to be aware of spamming your prospects but if you give them the tools to opt-out, there is no reason you can’t follow-up with more information in the future.

After a decade of small business, we have developed several lead nurturing and sales processes to convert ‘no’ and ‘not ready yet’ customers. Smart business owners understand the business of follow-up.

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