This week I had a very important conversation with a client on focus that I know will be a game-changer for him.

And in reflecting on that conversation it occurred to me that EVERYONE needs to be reminded of the central points.

You see, in the beginning when you start building your business, and know nothing, you can make big leaps from just little tweaks in things. Because when you've got no systems or tools really going, just 1 or 2 put into action will give you a massive leap forward in growth.

Then as you get a little more down the road in learning about systems and tools for your business, things can kinda go the other way.

Because now you know too much ... and it gets to a point where you've got so much spinning around in your head that it's unclear where your focus should be to keep growing.

And THIS is the exact place I began the conversation with this coaching client this week.

He's got a lot going on.

And he knows so much, and has so many things on his mind, that he wasn't 100% clear on where he should be focusing.

And as a result revenue is growing, but not as fast as it SHOULD be growing.

The problem?


See when you start to get educated on business building systems and strategies, and your mind expands, you've got all these cool ideas and thoughts spinning around in your mind and that's great.

But for FAST results you've got to bring yourself back to center and get VERY clear and laser-focused.

Only then can you drive RESULTS in a major way.

So what are they keys to focusing your mind and targeting your energy so you can drive up revenue FAST? The Revenue Equation

Let's start by reviewing the very simple and straight forward equation of what makes up Gross Revenue in the first place:


So if you want to increase revenue, what do you do?

Well you increase 1, 2, or all 3 of the variables in the equation above.

• Increasing # Pre-Qualified Prospects you meet with is a function of your marketing and lead generation efforts. If you need more leads, you do more marketing.
• Close Rate % is a function of how well your executing your sales process (and it's effectiveness). Put in our AUTO-CLOSER® Fitness Sales System here. If you're not getting consistently over 85-90% close rate, you're not following the system correctly.
• Average Transaction size is a reflection of both your sales process effectiveness (again see AUTO-CLOSER®) AND your packaging and pricing. Also the way you PRESENT your packaging and pricing in your sales process is key here. I've spent a lot of time working on this area with several hundred clients over the last year or so, and I can tell you the current control is to package and present your offerings in time 3,6, 12 month time intervals that are tied to length of time required for the client to achieve his or her goals. (See another blog post here for a full review of this).

Ok, so that's the formula and how it works.

But what ACTION STEPS do you need to take to focus yourself into really driving growth and improving your numbers in the revenue equation?

1. Take out your calendar and block time out time each week for consultations. Selling is the most important time you spend in your business. Without sales, you have no business. So treat selling time as your most precious time in your calendar and your #1 priority. I advice clients to block out a 1 hour afternoon block and a 1 hour evening slot to start. Say Monday-Thursday at 4pm and 6pm. Then Saturday open a couple slots 9am and 11am perhaps. Nobody wants to come buy fitness from you in the early morning or on a Friday night, so you can forget about selling during those times. Now, some folks may find if they're a 1 man show, with just a handful of clients, that you don't need this much selling time. Others with a bigger operation need more selling time so they either open up a 3rd or 4th block for consultations on each of those days, or add another sales person to their staff to double up the availability when necessary. Adjust as needed for you and where you're at. But let's say you're blocking 2 time slots, 5 days a week, for an average of 10 consults a week, which is 40+ consults/month. With a decent close rate that should yield you over 30 new clients a month when you're rocking it. For MOST businesses, that's growth at a pretty good clip.
2. Track every consultation on a sales tracking worksheet. We give our students a sales tracking worksheet in AUTO-CLOSER® and I'm making it available for you to download here. You can see how you list the name of your prospect, whether they were pre-qualified or not (to remind you not to skip this step), if it was a closed sale or not, if the sale wasn't closed the objection you were unable to overcome, and the sale amount for closed sales. At the bottom of the worksheet is where you total up some numbers. Average Close rate is the number of new clients you signed up divided by the total number of prospects you met with. Average transaction size is the total revenue in new packages sold divided by the number of new clients.
3. Use a "sales debriefing" worksheet after every consultation for feedback and self-correction to improve. Here's another very important step you should ALWAYS be doing. And this applies no matter how good you are, or how long you've been doing this. Trust me on this one. Every time someone hits a slump in selling, I always ask to see their sales debriefing sheets. And 100% of the time they don't have them and stopped doing them because they 'had it down'. Doesn't matter if you 'have it down' or not, do the debriefing worksheets everytime. You can click here to download the one we give out in AUTO-CLOSER® here.
4. Realize that regardless of the marketing strategy or tactic you use, your ONLY goal is to fill those consultation time slots with the best pre-qualified leads you can find. Again, marketing is a thick, complex, and dense topic at times. And it's easy to get lost in it and forget that for the front-end of your business, your ONLY marketing goal is to feed the leads you need into your sales process to keep it running. Don't get twisted. Stay focused, and since you've got so many marketing strategies and tactics to use and implement, scan the deck and look for the highest payoff ones that will help you keep the sales pipeline full the fastest. If you don't know which ones to start with ask. If you want direction on how to systemize them all, get our DEEP-CORE® Fitness Marketing System that will walk you through that step-by-step. You may have to do some testing and tweaking here, that's ok. Just don't forget to stay clear on your goal to simply fill those consultation time slots!
5. Each week review your sales tracking worksheet and ask yourself the right questions. Questions to ask yourself: How many consultations did you meet with? Did you fill all the slots you needed to? If not, go focus more on your marketing efforts to do so. Again, your ONLY job as a marketer in driving the 'front end' of your business is to fill those slots. Was your close rate 85% or better? If not, what objections were you unable to overcome? More often than not the 2 biggest factors in lost sales are lack of proper pre-qualification or weak problem building. Review and focus on improving both of those for your biggest gains. What was your average transaction size? If your pricing and packaging is all sorted, and you're actually charging a decent rate now for your services then this should be pretty straightforward. If not, you probably just need to spend more time on your sales process and again become better a problem building. Also belief system is really important here and you can't "fake it". If you TRULY believe that your clients will benefit best from committing to at 6 or 12 month package, then that confidence and belief will direct your prospect to take that action. But if you don't believe it, and your wishy-washy about asking for that type of commitment, then your prospect is going to smell it, be unsure of making that commitment and back off. You must believe and you must lead them forward boldly with confidence!

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Clarity->Focus->Results

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