Optimizing Lead Management

0:05 All right. Good morning, everyone. Gosh, I did that right on the second it hit 10 a.m. I like it. yes. thank you so much for joining us for our Walla webinar series. those of you that are joining us for the first time, this is our monthly webinar series where we dive into all types of topics around studio business operations, how to use Walla more effectively, and generally how we can help you all make better business decisions, move your business forward, and do it with a little more ease. And today we are talking about optimizing your lead management and really sales. When we get down to it, we're talking about sales. So, of course, naturally, I brought in Eric Tepper, who is one of our favorites. He's worked with so many businesses in this industry, some of the biggest businesses from, you know, the giant franchises to individual studios, helping design sales processes, and nurturing leads through kind of that thought process of, hey, I'm interested, and then getting them to actually dive in, buy the intro offer, buy the membership, and start enjoying your services. So Eric is going to be chatting through some of his strategies today and I'll be popping in and out of Walla to help you guys get a visual on how you can practically apply this dayto-day.

1:29 before I turn it over to Eric just quickly I wanted to give you guys a heads up. If you haven't used SQL before it's it's or this platform we have on our website there is a chat functionality. Please pop in now. Say hello where you're from. what kind of studio you have or the name of your business. But if you do have questions during our session, there is a Q&A button and I would highly encourage you to use that. That's where I'll be looking throughout the presentation. and it helps me track whether we've answered things or not. I can mark it as red and other people can actually vote. So if you have the same question as someone else, you can just vote it up and say, "Yeah, me too. I was curious about that." So hopefully that keeps us all streamlined and we can dive in. Eric, I will turn it over to you. Please introduce yourself and let's get rolling. Thank you Laura. Thank you so much for that introduction and it is always a pleasure to be on a webinar with you and Walla. you know Walla I've been you know working with and use your products. So my name is Eric Tepper.

2:37 Laura said, "I have been in the wellness industry for almost 30 years now, and it's crazy. We used to use pen and paper, and I launched my own company selling wellness about four years ago. I've worked with over 30 brands and over 250 locations across the country, in London, and in Australia. and a lot of my clients use Wallop because it's a fantastic product. And I also run a company that uses Walla called Redlight Method which is an emerging franchise. And I have a presentation. So I'm going to share my screen. And here we go. Okay. So I imagine that most of you right now in the wellness business, you're thinking about the new year and you're thinking, how do I grow my business? And for some of you, sales is a dirty word, right? It's like, how do I create sales without selling my soul? Because none of us went into this business to be great salespeople. in fact, I would say, you know, for most of us, we went into this business because we love people and we love our modality and we just wanted to share it with people, right? And now you might find yourself at a place where okay, I'm losing a little bit or I'm breaking even or I'm making a little bit, but what comes next? How do I take it to the next level? So today we're going to look at sales and kind of the science behind it and how to be effective, but we're also going to look at how do we leverage the

4:21 tools we have. And when I say tools, I mean the conversations that need to happen with someone who's interested in your services and tools like Walla because it really is about creating an experience with somebody and it's all about information, conversations, and timing. So, you know, I think all of us, we just want to grow our communities. That's it. And when you have more members, naturally, you have more revenue. And when you have more revenue, let's face it, your business is more fun because, you know, you might want to have that member party and it's going to cost you $1,000. And if you're losing money, you go through the whole mental gymnastics of, well, can I spend the money? It's literally coming out of my pocket. But when your revenue is flowing, you can make those decisions and you don't really think twice about it. you can come from a place of abundance, right, which is a lot more comfortable. And when your community is growing, it really becomes not just a win-win scenario. It's what I like to refer to as a as a triple win, a win-winwin, which is our members are winning because they're getting the results. They're enjoying coming to your services and they love interacting with their community. Our teams win because let's face it, our instructors love playing to a full house, right? And your teams that are on the hospitality side, they love interacting peop with

5:53 people. They don't want to be in a quiet studio. And we win because our studio is successful. So, why sales is important, why having a really well ststructured sales program is important. if you don't have a well structured sales program, you're still going to sign people up. People are going to sign up for your studio. There's a natural rule called the 206020 rule. And it says that 20 pe 20% of the people are going to sign up no matter what. You could tell them you shouldn't sign up here. It's awful. And they're still going to sign up and try it. And then there's 20% of the people who are never going to sign up no matter what. Then there's the 60% in the middle that are open to persuasion. So, this group on the left, these people know of your studio. They know somebody who goes to your studio, but they're not your clients. So, they're not benefiting from your services. They're not part of your community, and you're not collecting any revenue.

6:53 Without having a good process, 20%, maybe 30 will sign up. When you have a great process, you can raise that to 45, 50, even 60%. I have a client in Miami who closes between 80 and 90% of the people he interacts with. It's it's crazy, but it's a very hands-on process, right? And while that might not seem like a big swing, you know, we're talking about more than 10 people in that community. There's thousands of people that surround your studio that would be interested in what you have to offer. Now, I want to be really clear about something. When we talk about a sales process, we're not talking about being great at sales or having a better offer. That's that's not what it's about. What we're talking about is really a natural extension of your love for people and of your services and making it easy for people to get what they want by saying yes. Because every single person that inquires about your studio, they want something. There's something that's important to them and it's our job to tease that out and figure that out so we can see if we're even a good fit. It's like dating. You know, you really want to know, is this person the right fit for me or not? and I know that no one on this webinar, your marketing strategy does not involve driving around in a van lassoing people and forcing them to come and take classes with you. So, everybody truly wants something. They opted in. And you

8:32 know, the analogy I like to use is like if I went to a really great restaurant over the weekend and I saw Laura on Monday at work and she said, "How was your weekend?" and I said, "Oh my god, I went and had the most amazing sushi. You have to try it." She's going to be like, "Oh, okay. I'm gonna try it." That's selling. And it's not trying to get anything out of it. It's a sharing experience. So, in order to build this effectively, we want to talk about what the science is. And this is all going to fit into how you use Walla or any system that you're using and how do you construct these conversations. So, there actually is a science behind sales and all you have to do is think about any impulse buys you've made. Laura, do you ever make impulse buys? yes. It's embarrassing. Yeah. Yeah. Me, too. And for all of you listening, you have whatever your, you know, guilty pleasure is that you repeatedly have impulse buys. But there's a moment when something goes from, oh, this is cute or this is interesting to I got to have it. Yeah.

9:40 And I was working with a group yesterday and one of the managers shared she was standing in a house and this she was looking for a house and this was an empty house and she's standing in the kitchen and in that moment she envisioned Thanksgiving dinner with her family that she hasn't even created yet. And it was like she was teleported to that. What happens is little hits of dopamine start going off in the brain and we feel good. So when we connect people with what they want and they start to see you mean coming to your studio three times a week, I'm going to get community. I'm going to get health. I'm going to feel good. The little hits of dopamine start going off. That's why we call it retail therapy. Now here's the trick about it. As humans, we're built on this pain and pleasure thing where we run towards pleasure, but we run away from pain. So that's why our sales process can't be icky because if it's icky, it immediately causes pain and we resist.

10:46 But if we create this pleasurable experience, they naturally want to say yes to us. Yeah. So besides connecting people with their goals, there's also the experience of the process. And the experience that creates pleasure is when people are seen and heard and known. They're the center of attention. They're the guest of honor and they're being taken care of. That creates a lot of pleasure. So what's most important in a sales process is we want to tease out what's important to someone, why is it important to them, which is even more impactful, and why not? And once we capture that information, we want to create we can then build a bridge of here's where you are today, here's how to get where you want to be. And that bridge is coming to our studio. And we want to be really specific because this is not about us and how great our services are. This is about talking about what they want, what's important to them and how our services help them get there. there's a great marketing book out there called Story Brand. I don't Have you read it, Laura?

12:03 Yeah. Yeah. They are the heroes. We're just the knowledgeable, wise sidekick or guru who helps them in their journey. And that's what we want to create in our sales process. Now, here's where it really gets great in leveraging your tools. And we're going to go in a minute into specific aspects of the sales process. I highlighted a few steps, but in order to create a seamless experience, like I don't know if any of you like Laura, have you ever had the experience you go to a place and you say, "Here's what I need." And they say, "Well, let me introduce you to soand so." And then soand so says, "How can I help you?" And you have to repeat everything over again. They say, "Oh, that's not my department. Let me introduce you to so- and so." And then they say, "How can I help you?" And by the end, you're frustrated. So we don't want to do that. We want to take and we want to build on it and forward the information so that every person they interact with in the sales process in their journey is taking what they already what we already know and building on it and forwarding it.

13:12 So, here is the where we're going to focus today. And Laura, do you want to share, what this looks like in Walla? And so, the key points we're going to focus on today, and there's lots of steps we could, and we're not going to be able to go in a lot of depth in one hour, but we're going to look at the first interaction, which is when a lead comes in, right? So, they just have raised their digital hand. They've said, "I'm interested." Then to when they come in, but before they go into that first class, the interaction between you and the instructor or if you are the instructor and how that works going into the class and exiting the class and then the invitation for them to become part of the community. Yep. Okay, perfect. Well, let me let me share my screen and I'll take you guys into Walla so you can see exactly what we're talking about in this context. So in Walla, if we go into the sales tab, you'll see lead tracker. And some of you may not have designed your lead stages yet. So you can, you know, maybe right away after this webinar or even as we're going, you can look at your lead stages and add ones that either correlate with what we're talking about or your specific sales process. but here I'm going to show the pipeline view, not the table view. The table view sometimes is better for acting or a team to look at, but this is going to be kind of the visual that we're talking about. So,

14:44 the new lead coming in, like he mentioned, these are a little bit more like the manual touch points, but here's the first visit booked. So, I'm imagining that's what you're talking about with your second tab before that first interaction. this is our first class completed and they've got their intro offer active. and then I'll let you go into it from here. But I do want to highlight guys, the people that are automatically added into this new lead column here are the folks who have come in via a lead form, one of our Walla lead forms that you might have on your website, on landing pages, anybody who comes in through meta ads, like if you have any kind of lead capture advertising going on Facebook or Instagram, that you've set up in the marketing suite your third party connect. So you've got Google and Meta connected to Walla and then lastly it's Google leads. So the other piece that you have to build manually and we've got a great video on this in the knowledge base and the marketing suite training is essentially anybody who comes in any other way. So they created a profile online but they never did anything right? Like those are people who maybe said hey I started the process they were in line at drop off for their kids and then they got distracted and never finished and booked their class or somebody who came into the studio talked to your front desk got a profile set up but

16:20 still hasn't booked still hasn't bought anything still hasn't come in. So you do have to create in your essentially a journey to automate a lead stage to be added to those folks. So we can talk about that separately outside of this webinar, but that's the visual here. Oops. Yeah. And one thing I and let's stay on your screen, Laura, because my visual is not as important. one thing I love about the lead the sales pipeline, the lead tracker, if you call it, is it's customizable. So, you know, when you figure out in your studio, what is my process? What are the key steps on where I need to say this is where this person is in the journey, this is where this person is and I need certain actions to happen, then you can customize that so that it matches that and gives you a lot of information about your lead pipeline. So, when let's say somebody filled out a meta lead and they said, "Wow, this is interesting. It flows into wall and it shows up in the new lead. Here's you know what I create with my teams.

17:27 You've got five minutes because if you think about people's lives, if you think about your own life, there is a lot of distraction out there. Whether it's social media or news or your own work or your own family. So the fact that we got somebody's attention with an ad and they said, "Wow, what is this? Is this for me?" you've got their attention for no more than five minutes. It's probably more like two minutes, but so studies actually show if you reach out within five minutes and it is a phone call, not an automated text because you can trigger the automated text saying, "Thanks for inquiring. We'll be in touch soon." A personalized phone call within five minutes. even if you don't connect with them, you are 10 times more likely that person's going to respond and show up in your studio. Now, the other part about that is that if you book them within 24 to 48 hours of when they inquire for the first experience, they are more likely to show and they are more likely to sign up and be a part of your community. Because if you think about it in your busy life, if you took five minutes out of your day to have a person-toperson conversation and then arranged your schedule to go in that night or the next day, it keeps driving that interest forward. Now, that doesn't happen by itself. The conversation that you have with someone, and it's so funny because so I work with a lot of

19:03 brands. I was just virtually shopping a brand that's been in existence for like 20 years. They're one of the biggest in the industry. And out of 10 studios, eight called me, which was great. I was thrilled that eight called me. And the ones that I spoke with, they said, "Hey, we got your, you know, we saw you inquired. When do you want to come in for a free class?" And you see how vague that is. Yeah. And if you remember, what is this process about? It's about being seen, about being heard. It's about me. So, you know what we want to know in that first interaction? And I typically build this with clients, so it's customized, is what is the person doing for fitness right now? What is it that they are working on? What is their goal? and as soon as you hear that, you can kind of hear an opening where you say, "Oh my gosh, you are gonna love your experience with us, and here's why, right?"

20:05 Or, you know, we've gotten several clients from that same thing, and here's why they love our studio. And then saying, "Look, don't take my word for it. The best way to experience it is come in for yourself and experience it and see how it feels. Did I reach you at home or work? Great. you get off at 5:00. I've actually I our instructor Laura tonight is our most popular instructor. She has two openings in her class tonight. Can I book you into that one or tomorrow morning? Which one works better? And then Laura, what would you do in Wallupa once you captured that information? Yeah, I was just going to say one of the great things about our kind of we call this section, this panel here, working the lead. like this is a great place to capture your notes, to communicate with your team, your other team members. But if you're on the phone with them, you can immediately say, "Okay, great.

20:58 We had a conversation." Maybe you even create a template for your team that's like their, you know, current workout, times that work for them, what their goal is, or whatever it might be. And you can put that right into the notes here. And then if there is a follow-up date or a follow-up activity, you can put that there as well. so that way when the next person comes in, those notes will be right down below. The other thing I see a lot of our clients doing specifically if there are, you know, we want to really focus in on the people who are most interested in stress relief or we want to have a very different conversation with people who are, you know, perhaps on their GLP1 journey and they want to bring, you know, bone and muscle strength into their lifestyle because this is a new thing for them. You can create, you can add tags here and you can have say like, listen, I want to categorize all of those people together because I want to make sure I have specific educational content going out to them later on. So, don't be shy about using tags for that.

22:01 The tag functionality is fantastic for future communication, marketing, education. but this section here, it is manual to fill out, but that's intentional. the you know who is working this lead. Are we targeting? Is this somebody who just told you they live a half hour away and they come in to work two days a week right by your studio? Great. My plan target for them is probably going to be like an eight classes per month, not our highest tier unlimited. So you know what to communicate what you're selling to them. And then also if you find out where they came from, this is where you select your referral source here as well. So, this section is gold when it comes to internal staff communication, but also having a consistent thread when you're having a conversation either in person, on the phone, text messaging with this prospect. Yeah. Fantastic. And tagging, can't emphasize how important it is. it because you can customize the journey based off of the tags and the tags are based on their interest. So, it's like you're customizing speaking to them, which is which is again has them be seen, has them be heard. I heard what you said to me. I'm repeating it back to you. That also creates dopamine hits in the brain. So, one gap that a lot of studio owners and managers often call out, I'm going to give this is like a little tip, okay?

23:29 Is well, what do I what happens when they book themselves? if it's like a self- select and I can't get a hold of them before they show up to the studio. So, this was something that I saw in a lot of studios. We added literally one phrase to a voicemail and a text and we saw like a 15% lift in terms of people who actually had conversations. That phrase was, "We got your request for this day and time and I just need two seconds of your time on the phone to finish your profile so that I can get you set up for class. Please, I'm here till 7 o'clock tonight. Please give me a call." So, if someone booked their class, they signed up online, they booked a class for tomorrow afternoon, you're still calling them saying, "Hey, Eric from Selling Wellness, we got your request to attend class tomorrow." Yep. Just need two minutes of your time to confirm some profile information. Okay. Yep. Yep. We're so excited to meet you.

24:31 We want you to have a great experience. I need one minute of your time on the phone to finish your profile. if you could give me or my team a call, we're here till 8 o'clock tonight. Wow. Yeah, that triggered a much higher response rate and then the show rate went up to like 80% on people who had booked their first class actually showing up. Now, if you have a paid offer, it's a lot different. But even with a paid offer, I'm gonna say you still want that information because every opportunity, the more information you have, the more the opportunity to personalize the experience. Now, let me I'm gonna actually I'm not going to share because this will this will be more in your screen, Laura. Okay, I'll go back. Let's say, you know, somebody is a lead and we haven't got a hold of them. No problem at all. So what we use in the lead tracker is we use the contacted bucket very regularly and in that contacted bucket is anyone who we've attempted to reach out to but we're waiting to hear back and this is where we leverage the journeys in Walla. So, this is where we build out a whole month worth of journeys. And in those journeys, we also plug in where we're manually going to call and send them a text afterwards. Laura, do you want to you want to show that?

26:00 so just sharing a journey. Can you guys see my screen right now? Oh, sorry. No, I need to put it on speaker. There we go. There we go. All right. So, if I go into journeys, let me just make my screen a little bit bigger for you guys. essentially what you can do, I've created a journey. Let me let me search for it. everybody who's asked for this, we just added a search functionality in journeys. So, it'll be easier if you've got a hundred journeys. Okay. So, I've got a sales pipeline journey started and I actually have a ghost client. So, this is basically either bought the intro offer or, you know, booked a class but then never showed. So, I have that automatically moving someone in my you can move them into a lead stage, a ghost client or contacted like you're saying lead stage, but you can also start the communication funnel. So, this is where you can say I want to email or email and text this client over time. you can do, you know, they no showed or they purchased but didn't show five days ago, 10 days ago, 30 days ago, whatever your cadence would be. That's how you'd build that out.

27:12 Yeah. And I think it's really important to point out journey messages, you don't want them to be generic where the same p where it's like I could be receiving this message, but so could anybody on the planet. that's not impactful. what's what's impactful is when it speaks directly to me. And that's also why we recommend that in the automated journeys, you have strategic touch points where you're actually manually picking up the phone and calling them and leaving them a message and then sending a quick little personal text. And in the text, you could even say, "By the way, I'm a real human. I shop at the Whole Foods on 32nd just like you. Like something like that really personalizes the experience. Well, and you can also so from the conditions in our marketing suite, you can do things like obviously what we were talking about before, I want to connect or I want to send this specific message to the people who have this specific tag, right? The cow bunga tag.

28:18 so you can you can say on lead day three when they, you know, we talked to them, they booked, but they never showed. If we know that they're in this for stress relief and that's the tag we have, they're going to get a different message than maybe somebody who had weight loss or flexibility or, you know, recovery as their desired outcome. So that's that's one area. And then also if you're using our personality typology, if someone created their profile and they filled it out, we also have personality type in here. So you can again like these tools are meant to give you higher levels of personalization in every touch point you have. And I can tell you right now, the studios that have more customized journeys that don't just send the same message to every single person are the ones that see much more engagement, open rates, click rates, and those people coming into the studio. Yeah. And remember, because I know some of you, as soon as we said open rates and click rates, you went, "Oh, this is very much about sales." We're talking about engagement, which gives you an opportunity to share the love of your studio.

29:30 That's it. That's what we're talking about when we talk about engagement. And you know, by the way, we I did like a really like a year-long look at studios that rely fully on automations versus studios that combine automations with personal touch points. The ones with personal touch points convert typically on average like 15 to 20% higher. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a huge difference and your journeys in that in that contacted bucket. I know in a lot of cases it's you know a week maybe two weeks and then we consider them in a long-term follow-up. we actually find 30-day follow-up process works best. I can't tell you how many times I talk to a studio owner and they say, "I didn't want to pick up the phone on week four, day five as I was cued to do, but I did it because I know that's what you're telling me to do and the person picked up and I almost didn't know what to say because they picked up and I didn't expect them to pick up." So, you know, pe we tend to think like they're not interested. You just never know what's going on in people's lives. You know, it's a busy world out there.

30:46 Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So, let me go into the next step, which is There we go. Which is they come into your studio. So, you know, now hopefully we've captured some information and you know, maybe we tagged a team member who we knew was going to take care of them when they came in the studio, which you can do in Walla. But when they come in, you want to have a conversation before they go into that first class because the time that elapsed, they're probably not even thinking about here's what's important to me. They're just thinking about, okay, I'm going to try this thing. So, you know, there's a whole conversation, what we call intake, which flushes out and brings to the surface what's important to this person and why is it important? What's the emotion behind it? Here's just a general structure that I recommend is the easiest way to start is in the present which is what are they doing currently?

31:46 If you have that information already in Walla from your phone conversation saying you know Laura I thank you so much for the information you gave us on the phone. I know you're a Pilates pro. You've been doing it for 20 years and you were talking about a lack of like progressive strength training. So, if it's okay, I just want to talk a couple more minutes about that to make sure that we're really connecting the your experience today with what's important to you. Is that okay? Yeah. You see how that is like, oh my gosh, they actually listen to me on the phone, right? How rare that is? That does not happen. Okay, I can tell you right now, you guys, after going to I travel all the time. I go to studios everywhere. the number of times I walk into a studio after booking ahead of time. First of all, almost never has anybody contacted me ahead of time. Every once in a while, I get a pre-class text. But most of the time I walk in and it's either a group of like current members all talking but to the front desk staff person or the teacher and I'm kind of like, hey, how's it going? or it's a front desktop person staring at a phone or staring at a computer and almost never takes their eyes up to me unless I initiate conversation. So, just know the bar is relatively low out there when it comes to what is actually happening in most businesses. So, this is like holy crap, you're going to blow their minds

33:14 if you actually listen to them on the phone, can reiterate back to them what they actually said was important and then present a solution. It's it's gonna make a big difference. This is a four seasons or Ritz experience. Yes. Yes. so after you talk about present, you know, you want to dig into what that we then call the past, which is why did they start this routine? How long have they been in this routine? What's missing from this routine? And that's going to give you a really good picture of why they chose to come into your studio today. Because if Laura goes to Pilates 4 days a week and she's been doing that for 15 years, there's got to be something going on. Like, why the heck would she break that routine? Once you hear the opening, that's when you can say, "Oh my gosh, Laura, you know, we've gotten so many Pilates people in. They said exactly the same thing that you did, and here's what they loved about our classes." Bam. Now we're creating value. and she's going, "Oh my gosh, this might be exactly what I never knew I always wanted." And then and then once we start talking about that, then it's asking questions about, "So, you know, would this if this was a good fit, if you enjoyed it and you felt like this helped you with the building muscle that was missing from Pilates, hint, I just repeated back to you what you said. How many days a week would you work this into the routine?"

34:42 and great. How do you think you would feel even in your Pilates if you had more strength, right? And you're painting the picture of the future. So your intake conversation, these are the key elements. Now the next step is how do we then connect this with the instructor and paint the picture? And for me, this is the most important step. Okay? Because if you say, "Great, here's your instructor," and they go in and the instructor says, "Let me set you up on the machine." It becomes again generic. So, being able to say to them, "Hey, Laura, this is Tammy. she's one of our favorite instructors here, Tammy. Laura's first time. She is a Pilates queen. She's been doing it for 20 years, but she's really looking to get in some progressive strength training because she feels like that's been missing. you've got it. Tammy has got your back here. She's going to make sure you have a great class. I'll be waiting here for you when you're done so you can let me know how it went and I can show you how to book more classes. Okay.

35:53 Now, the instructor, if you had all that, like Laura, as someone who has taught before, if you had all that information, could you create a custom experience as an instructor? Oh my gosh, it's night and day knowing what somebody's done versus not. It's as an instructor, it's always so tricky trying to figure out how to approach a brand new person, especially if you haven't had a ton of time to go communicate with them. So, it's great to have somebody help you do that job. Good. Good. And it also when we repeat something three or four times in the experience, which is this is your goal. Here's how we help. By the time you've heard it the third or fourth time, it starts to sink in your head. Okay? Because remember, we're building this bridge of how coming here consistently is going to help you get what you want. Now, the when they come out of the first experience, okay, out of that first class, I mean, more times than not, my guess is all of you who are here in this webinar get great, it was awesome, let me think about it or I'll book on my own. And then the person's out the door and maybe they do, maybe they don't. the disconnect is they don't see why they need a membership yet because they don't understand. You know, most people don't know how their bodies work. They look to us as the expert. You know, that instructor up there, they are like the medical professional. It's like if I go

37:19 to the doctor and I say, "Oh, I got a sore throat." And the doctor says, "Oh, you have strep, Eric. Take this twice a day for the next six weeks and you'll feel better." What do I go? I go and I fill the prescription. and I take it twice a week, twice a day and I feel better. The instructor or if it's not the instructor, the person who originally interacted having this next conversation will bridge that gap from a great experience today to coming consistently. And here's what it looks like. Laura comes out and I say, "Laura, how was your first class today?" How was your first class, Laura? Oh, sorry. Great. Good. Super fun. Good. How are you feeling physically? Because I know you do a lot of Pilates and this was going to be different for you. hard. It was hard. I'm exhausted. Okay. Is it a good exhausted? Yes. Good exhausted. Good. Did you have a favorite part of the class?

38:16 gosh, just the cool down was the perfect cool down for all of the hard work we just did. Yeah. Yeah. That's Everybody loves that part. well, I peaked in and you were killing it. You know, I mean, obviously you're experienced at taking classes, so you picked up the queueing. No problem. You know, I know that you have a really structured routine where you go, this is where the information comes in again. You know, where you go four days a week to your Pilates studio. Based on your goals of adding some progressive strength training and your experience today, how many days a week do you see this working into the routine? one to two. Oh, that's fantastic. See, that question is what we call a trial close question. That is literally tells me, "Okay, Laura's actually committing in her head to coming once or twice a week." Now, I can continue to paint that picture and say, "Awesome, Laura. We get people who do Pilates all the time and they put this in once or twice a week as like their heavy lifting day." And you know, based on what we talked about, the specifics of your goal, you add this in once or twice a week. Your first 30 days, you're going to be sore, just like when you first started Pilates, and it's an adjustment period, but by like the second to third month, you're really going to start to notice those strength gains. And then it's just fine-tuning

39:42 and maintenance at that point. Does that does that sound like a good plan for you? Yeah. Great. Awesome. So, I just Yeah, you had an question for you on this because I'm I definitely I'm actually curious if everybody could just like give a thumbs up in the chat. How many of you have full-time front desk staff people versus just a teacher? Because this is this is like the you know, hopefully a lot of people have the staff to be able to do that. Yep. We've got quite a few thumbs up coming in. yeah, because that's I think the teacher having this conversation or getting a teacher to have this conversation sometimes can be trickier than the front desk staff. But it's it's one of those reasons why front desk staff can end up paying for themselves when you find the right people. Yeah. And even like I've worked with studios that don't have front desk staff. If the instructor has really bought into the studio and the studio success and you share this with them that look, you're just going to be helping this person get what they want and have a full class.

40:45 and you get that buyin. It's a super easy conversation to coach on. but this is what really bridges the gap. So then I'm not just saying, "Oh, you should buy our unlimited membership, right? I'm showing you here's how you get what you just told me you want." And that's not salesy at all. That really is you. You've given me the green light or a yellow light or a red light and I can take that and now I can invite you to join our community. Now, this is this is interesting because I can't tell you how many times I've seen a studio, somebody has a great experience, they have this interaction, and then there's this awkward silence where we both sit there. It's like if I said to if I said to Laura, Laura, I'm having the most amazing party at my house this weekend. There's going to be a DJ and an open bar and fire dancers and a buffet. And in her head, she's like, "I want to go to this party."

41:48 Yeah. If I don't say, "You're invited. Will you come?" Yeah. Right. If I don't say that, she's left like, "Okay." You know, I mean, if it was Laura, she would just say, "Hey, I'm coming." But you know, Yeah. Exactly. You've got to say the words. I My favorite thing here that I've experienced is just like, "All right, great. Let's do it." Like, "What do you want me to get you booked into the next class?" I see here you've got let's get you booked. But I just I love the great, let's do it. Just kind of excitement factor. Yeah. Like awesome. Let me help you get booked in your next class. I just need a couple pieces of information. I may have a card on file I can charge or know what source of payment did you want to use. That step, while it seems so simple, is skipped over at least 50% of the time. Wow. Yeah. Because, you know, we don't want to be pushy. We're worried they might say no. you don't get anything. Wait, what's the phrase? You get 0% of what you don't ask for. Yeah, I think that's it. So, just extending the invitation to become a part of your community is a huge part of it. Now, and I recommend, this is just kind of a side note, I recommend you use an AB option when you're presenting. So, when Laura said once to twice a week, if I have a four time and an eight time option, I might show her both and just say, "Which one works better for you?"

43:10 giving a an option, it feels for the person like they're in control. They have choices versus just saying, "Here's your option." Now, it's like, "Well, if I don't like that, I take nothing." So, an AB option, what we call a witch pitch, is really the way to go. So now this is where going back to using leveraging Walla right now let's say Laura did not say yes let's say she was on the fence she had some concerns let me see how I'm going to feel tomorrow we want to somehow close on a next step and let's say she agreed to you know let me see how I feel because I do have a tricky you know SI joint and I said no problem, Laura. I want to make sure this feels good for you. is it today is Friday. How about would it be okay if I called you on Monday to see how you're feeling and then we can just see where you want to go from there? Would that work? Yeah. So, Laura, how would I set that up effectively?

44:16 Yeah. A great way, well, first of all, for many of you, you don't have it's not like a free class. Most businesses on Walla have some sort of like a week trial offer that's you know a discounted free week or I'm sorry not free a discounted week or a discounted month or an intro three classes. So there's almost always a next step you can close on which is getting them booked into their ne next session because mo the vast majority of people walking in I mean we always say shoot for 80% of your folks to buy the intro offer that are walking through your door already have paid for the next step. So the next step is getting them booked but also that personal check-in. So let me share my screen and then I can show you in the in the lead tracker. So essentially what we can do here in the pipeline is we can say okay great first visit was booked. First class was complete. I don't think you're sharing Laura.

45:12 Oh I'm not sharing my screen. Yeah. I'm sorry. There we go. There we go. Can you see it now? Yeah. I actually have these two stages backwards. First visit, this should be first visit completed, and this should be intro active. So, they're they're active in their intro offer. They've come to their first visit. Did I just do that right? Sorry, guys. Oh, well. Well, these two should be swapped. intro. I put it as the introactive. after they've come to their first class, they've completed their first class, you could leave the people there. So after somebody's booked, you can automate it to say their first visit was yesterday or their first visit was two days ago. And then this person will automatically move into first visit completed. And so whoever comes in, whoever's job it is to be managing the lead tracker can see, okay, great. Today's the day I called John River or you know John River already got his call so now I'm going to move him into introactive and this is our time to make sure over the next month or two weeks whatever your intro offer is you have another touch point or you have a follow-up date associated with him. So there are a few different ways you can run the tracker based on how long your intro offer is. If it's a week, two weeks, a month, or if it's class-based, then you can decide to use the kind of automated triggers to move people

46:39 along automatically. Or you can use your salesperson, front desk, staff person, manager to manually move them. But I do highly, highly encourage you to use, you know, we had a conversation at the front desk after that class. Great. He has hip injury and wants to see how it feels tomorrow. Great. That means I should be following up with him tomorrow and make sure that's assigned to me so I can be the same person checking in on him. But that way now we can move out of this and we've got a follow-up date tomorrow for them. Laura, is there a way I know I'm putting you on the spot. Is there a way to when somebody checks in? like if I'm at the front desk and I didn't know this person was coming in where there's an alert if I wanted to have like say for example you were coming in tomorrow and you check in and you're in your oneweek paid trial where when you checked in there would be almost like a popup note that says like Laura's on her oneweek trial. Make sure to ask her this.

47:51 No, but when you're checking people in, it will say what visit they're on and it will say they're on their trial offer on this roster. So, it'll say like visit two and they're they've got one pass left of their, you know, three pack trial offer. So, it's very clear on the front desk check-in. Yeah. And this would be a great opportunity where, you know, if it's if it's my studio and I know Laura's coming in tomorrow, I might send a message to my front desk person. Hey, you know, coming in, make sure when she checks in that you mention, you know, ask her how her hip was. And the notes are in there, right? And also mention, you know, the membership options that we talked about. And this is where these audiences on the dashboard can come in really handy. So, these are all unique to whoever is logged into the software. So, if you have a front desk staff person that's, you know, your normal daytime front desk staff person, they might have here, let me remove a couple of these, but let's say their cards on are first class tomorrow. you can make this like this is first class with Alyssa. So, if I'm a teacher logged in, I could see and go through the list of people who have their first class booked with me tomorrow. And I can go through and text each one of them.

49:13 But here, I'll add an audience. And you can build an audience to be anything, right? Like their first visit is tomorrow. I want to show up to 10 people, I think it allows for on the front or on the dashboard. And then it'll show me anytime somebody has their first visit tomorrow. That's how I've built this audience. They'll be on here. So, I can click through and just say, "Okay, I'm going to send Frank a text." And you can even create a snippet that's reminder for their first class. Hey, so excited to meet you tomorrow. Just here I have it. Remember to bring your grippy socks. Or, you know, we're super excited about X, Y, or Z. This is what to expect. Make sure you get here 10 minutes early. Parking can be tricky for a 4:00 class. And then send that off. So, the audience is on the dashboard. you know, lead tracker is definitely watching your funnel, but these could be the like, okay, these are my critical folks. I got to make sure every single one of them is touched base with today.

50:11 Laura, I think there's a question in the chat. Can front desk access the lead tracker or is that only manager access? It's up to you. You get to decide. So, within your permissions, under business settings, staff permissions, I believe it's under sales. Sorry, I'm looking for the bucket that it's under. sales CRM. So yeah, you can decide the lead tracker here. So you can say yes, I want my front desk to have full access to that or my instructor. So this is where you decide who can see what and who can edit what, who can just view it. So that's all the detail there. Great. I know Laura, you wanted to share a little bit because we where we started this whole conversation was about, you know, growing in the new year and, you know, part of that is being able to set smart goals, know where you are in relationships so you know what actions to take. Yeah, absolutely. So, I we did a check-in to see everybody who is registered for this and so we added you into as of hopefully last night, I think it should be live on your site today.

51:35 if you go into your performance tab, so if you've got Walla open on another tab right now, you can click on performance and now you should be able to see your studio performance and your goal setting, which are new sections in the software for you. So, we did a webinar actually the last two weeks we've had progressive webinars kind of teaching how to use this these functions. So you can pop into our webinars and watch if you'd like to see how to set up your goals and then actually see how to you know track them, what the AI summary and action items are so you can see how our AI is going to be helping you with decision- making but also you know basically we've got this new lead tracker now so you're going to be as you're using the lead tracker more and more as you're actively optimizing this kind sales process you have in nurturing your leads. Now you've got a beautiful dashboard to be able to see, okay, how many leads were created last month? how many made it to the intro offer, how many made it to their first visit. We've got a beautiful conversion funnel here, so you can see how people are moving down the stages and then where they're coming from. So, all of this is decided by your lead tracker. Everything that you build in your lead tracker is what funnels into that report. So if you're let's say I click on Micah, if I just log a phone call with him or

53:13 manually message him, that's going to be what feeds now the studio performance lead response time. So all of the actions taken in the lead tracker are going to be feeding this report. And the nice thing here is it's going to give you a quick like, all right, great. We've got a ton of leads coming in, but here are the areas we need to focus on. and so it'll give you specific like, all right, this is going to be important. This is going to be important. We've got that other piece dialed in. We don't need to spend our time there this month. So anyway, this is something I'm excited for all of you on this webinar to check out. I know I've been chatting with quite a few of you about it and would love to get your thoughts, your feedback. And just want to call this out too, this little Letwalla help button. For any of you that were on our webinar with Josh last week, Josh and the customer success team are the ones fielding this inbox.

54:06 So, if you click on let well help, it's actually going to email our team and it kind of prefeeds the information from that dashboard and it says, "Hey, I'm reaching out regarding the real talk analysis. Here are my details. I'd love help with improve the lead conversion section. Can you give me some ideas on how I can leverage Walla there?" And then our team will work with you on how to use the tools more effectively. So, very, very excited to get you guys in there. trying it out and hopefully this is going to be you know a really welltimed feature to move into 2026 and start to you know take a crack at those goals. Yeah. there was a question and I'm not sure I got it but can you give an example of a workflow for a studio like when are front desks making the calls throughout the day or the end of a shift? So, I think okay, so what we do is we look at throughout the day there's one person who's got to be responsible for new leads coming in and that's something you might work out like a schedule. So, we've had it where if like the studio is so jam-packed, if the owner might be responsible for certain time periods and then the manager says, "I've got, you know, the inbox or the new lead bucket from this hour to this hour. This person's going to make sure that they look at it from this hour to this hour." That way, we know exactly, you know, that those are

55:40 taken care of. Outside of that, it really just depends on the flow of your studio and how many people you have working there. you know, if you bring a class in, you there's usually a gap, like you might have a class come out, a class come in, and then there's silence for a little bit. That's like a critical call time is like during that time or it could be like after the last class or before the first. It just depends on your staffing model and the flow of your studio. I mean, T I've actually been to Tanner's studio, the one that's opening or that asked that question. He has a massive studio with like he can fit a hundred people in a class and I have been there working the front desk with a hundred people walking in. So from your perspective, yeah, those like those moments when it's that have, you know, 15 minutes before check-in until 5 minutes after class starts, your front desk staff people are probably way too slammed. In most studios, the front desk staff is slammed during that window of time. So that might be just whoever you know a manager or you know owner or whoever is going to be helping out during the day gets those windows but I would say you know even starting somewhere where you have somebody once an hour that's respon obviously we want the first five minutes that is the dream but not every studio has the staff to be able to do that but I you know

57:03 generally speaking for most businesses it's not 50 people 50 leads an hour that you're getting. It might be a couple people that you're reaching out to, right? So, it shouldn't be tremendously time consuming. It's just somebody keeping an eye on it. and then the other thing too is you can be CCD on any like anybody who fills out a lead form, you can be CCed on account creation. So, if you want that to like pop up in your phone that like, oh, I just got an email, welcome to your new account from Walla, or somebody just created a profile off a lead form, you can do that as well. and that it's kind of reactive. Yeah, great question. Any other questions anybody has? I did see I think it was Katherine a little bit earlier. does data support use of phone calls to contact clients versus text message or email? So, the what we do in Walla in order to track contact is if you log a call. So, let me show you that again in Walla.

58:06 okay. So, if I go in, sorry, I had a chat going with support in there. if I go into my contacts and click on Aaron here, and I go to log a phone call, this counts as like a phone call outreach. Now, I will tease it out to you guys that we are integrating phone starting I believe in Q2 of next year. So, it is coming. It's going to be pretty exciting. And honestly, I think a lot of you guys are going to benefit. basically what'll happen is you'll be able to click that button and it'll dial like you'll be able to dial straight from Walla. So, it's coming. Laura, can I can I give you and Walla just a shameless plug? is that you know I having worked with a lot of studios I also work with a lot of CRM and member management and the two things I appreciate about Walla one is the development pipeline is the most aggressive I've seen and two is the people and the responsiveness like I usually get questions answered same day and if not same day within 24 hours even if it's to say I don't have an answer but we're working on it we'll get back to you and they actually get back to you. Imagine that. So, so those two things alone with all the functionality really makes it a joy to have Walla as a partner.

59:38 Thank you. You're welcome back anytime on these. And if anybody What's that? I'll pay you after. And if anybody has any questions for me like about you know building these conversations and your process and setting goals for the new year and where do I start? you're you're feel free to reach out to me. there's no there's no charge for it. You I'm always happy to have conversations. I this is what I love doing. So feel free to reach out. This is my email. That's my phone number. I don't answer my phone a lot but I do respond to texts. and it was just so great to be with you, Laura. Yeah, thank you. And guys, please keep an eye on the product portal in Walla. I know we've got lots happening and we're constantly trying to do our best to educate everybody on how to use the tools more successfully. But for those of you on this call, hop in, check out your goal setting, your new performance dashboards, and yeah, I can't wait to hear how this goes. really just optimizing your lead management system.

1:00:46 Okay. All right. Have a good day everyone. Bye. And have a good holiday.