If you’re a one-lesson trial, let’s start there. You have your free trial lesson and then go directly into an enrollment procedure. The best thing for you to do is tell them on the information call or on your thank-you page after registering for your free trial class. Let’s go over your info call script. After you’re done with everything else, would you said, “Hey, just to give you a heads up, if you decide that you like the program and you like to go ahead and sign up, we’re going to go over all of the details after that first class and normally there is a $99 registration to get started. But if you sign up on your first lesson, we waive the registration fee and we give you a free blah, blah, blah,”. T-shirt, uniform, whatever it is that you offer. Now if you’re a three-lesson intro and you don’t want to sign them up on the first lesson, my best recommendation is, is that you create an offer sheet that encourages them to sign up on the lesson number two. Just create a little flyer that basically lists out your regular prices versus your special for enrolling on class number two and then it can be exactly the same thing. If you enroll on lesson number two, you are going to waive your $99 registration fee. You’re going to only pay X, Y and Z and you’re going to get X, Y and Z as a free bonus. Very simple. 

   If they want to sign up after the third lesson, you can decide on what you want to do. Are you going to continue to waive the registration fee or are you going to charge it? I would just waive it. If you’re on a six-week trial program or low-barrier offer, maybe you’re going to do a three-week segment to where at the end of three weeks, you’re going to encourage them to sign up. So again, at that point, you need to do a reminder text, reminder call, reminder email, whatever it is you decide, and you need to do the same thing. You probably have already given them a heads-up, but if you haven’t, you should. “At the end of week three on your lesson on Thursday, we’re going to go over all the details and ask you if now it makes sense to go ahead and get started on a regular program. You see, by starting now, on your regular program, we waive the regular $99 registration fee as well as give you a free X, Y, Z and your payments of course don’t start until the end of your six-week special. So we will see you on your next class.” That’s it. 

  

   Pre-framing your enrollment is one of the most important things you can do to have people ready and excited to sign up on whatever type of trial program it is you offer. Sales Part 2 Let’s talk about improving your closing rate. A lot of you offer some type of trial program and your website most likely says that you have a money-back guarantee. Yet when someone wants to exercise their money-back guarantee, you get upset. It’s ridiculous. The money-back guarantee is there for that exact person. It’s there for the person that really isn’t sure that they actually want to be involved with it. But because of the guarantee, they feel like there’s actually no risk. Whether they actually like it or don’t like it, they’re going to be OK. So if someone comes in and they do the trial, they do a lesson, they don’t do any lessons, they do 3 lessons instead of 12, whatever the heck it is, and they say, “I don’t like it. I want my money back,” give them their money back for several reasons. Number one, you said you were going to. Number two, it increases the number of top level funnel people that come in. In other words, you’re going to have more people come into your trial. They’re going to opt in to your web form. They’re going to spend more time on your webpage simply because you’re showing confidence in your program and you’re saying if you don’t like it, for whatever reason, we’re going to stand behind it. Number three, if you get upset, because you have to give somebody their money back, that’s something you should not be focused on. That’s something you shouldn’t be stressed out about. So the fact that you’re stressed about it creates tension, which does not allow you to perform at your best at everything else you do during the day. You’re going on to these forms and these Facebook groups and everything else and you’re talking about this person that didn’t even come in for the trial and they want their money back, or this person saw that I was discounting a program by 50 percent and they paid full price and they want to know if they can have some of their money back. You’re spending 30 minutes. You’re spending an hour. You’re spending all day going back and forth, discussing this with people. It would be a lot cheaper just to give them their $7.50 and be happy they showed up at the door and signed them up. Quit wasting your energy on little things like that. It’s ridiculous. The tension by itself stops you from signing up more people. Just let them flow in. Let the ones that don’t belong flow out and understand that they don’t all have to belong. It’s OK. As a matter of fact, if they don’t belong and they don’t sign up, they’re doing you a favor. 

   I noticed that some people end up having high numbers of people that never make their first payment. It’s something that most people don’t pay attention to, except that they get concerned that their monthly recurring revenue – otherwise sometimes known as negative billing – is lower than they expected. One of the reasons it’s lower than they expected is because the program gets canceled. Even if it doesn’t formally get canceled, it gets canceled because they never make their first payment. So your monthly recurring revenue or negative billing number is not as high as it was projected to be. That is one of the reasons. They never made the first payment. Now, why would they not make their first payment? Number one, something interrupted them. For instance, on their second lesson, after they get started, they get off of work at 5:00. They drive an hour through traffic. They get home. Little Jimmy is not ready for class. Little Jimmy can’t find his uniform. So you spend another 30 minutes getting him ready, finding his uniform. You grab all the stuff together. You get to class. There’s no belt. There’s no top and you’re 10 minutes late. The first thing that you do as the instructor is you get on to little Jimmy and you embarrass him and then mommy is embarrassed and oh, by the way, mommy didn’t bring his belt because she barely got into class to begin with. So before it’s all said and done, mom is upset. Little Jimmy is embarrassed and next class, they don’t show up. That’s one reason people don’t make their first payment. You made them quit. You made them quit. Another reason people don’t make their first payment is because you sold them on signing up. If you sell someone on signing up versus just getting out of the way and either allowing them to sign up because they want to, they may sign the paperwork. They may even give you the check that bounces later but they’re not going to make their first payment. I see it in a lot in fitness-based programs especially those with a higher volume. But it definitely happens with martial arts as well. As a matter of fact, I was very guilty of it in my school. We hard-sold people, we got them to sign up on lesson number one. We pushed and we had a high number of non-payment for the first up tuition payment dues, so quit selling. Explain the programs. Make sure they understand the values and benefits of what it is they’re going to get involved with. Overcome any objections if you can. But don’t sell them. Selling them is where you’re pushing them into something that they’re really not sure of. Well, signing someone up without selling is just letting it happen, right?  That doesn’t mean you can’t provide incentive to sign up early, but there is a difference in that versus a real high pressure sale.