Laura Munkholm:
Alright. We are live. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here on time and early, some of you. Appreciate you popping and being set up. We're gonna get started right on time today. I know we have lots and lots of people registered for this, so there may be some folks popping in. But for those of you who are here already, if you wouldn't mind just opening the chat on the side and introduce yourself, the studio you you are with, and where in the world you are. Um, and don't be alarmed for everybody who is joining, uh, our webinars for the first time if you don't see yourself. This is set up in a webinar format where it's just gonna be focused on Teresa and myself and the content that we're sharing. So you're not gonna see yourself. Hopefully, it's helpful for limiting distractions during the presentation, and, uh, we'll be able to get started. Um, okay. Welcome, welcome. Thank you for being here, everyone. My name is Laura Moncon, and I'm the president and one of the founders here at Walla. And this is our Walla webinar series. So if this is your first time joining us, uh, really appreciate you making the time. I know it's a lot to stick step away from your business, but please pop into the chat, introduce yourselves, and we host these webinars on a monthly basis. We bring in experts in different areas of fitness and wellness business to hopefully give you guys some some tips, some really actionable guidance. And our goal in all of these webinars is for you to be able to walk away and do at least one thing today, maybe even during the webinar, that can make an impact on your business. We try not to overload with tons and tons of kind of in the software work, but we will probably pop up Wuala at some point during the webinar to give examples of practical application. And if there are some of you that are on this, uh, that aren't using Walla yet, please feel free to send us a question afterwards, connect with us at sales@helloWalla.com. Alright. Without further ado, I am so excited to introduce Teresa to you all. Teresa is one of our Walla experts. She has not only worked in the yoga and fitness industry for years owning a studio. Correct, Teresa? But now has spent years consulting for, working with, and supporting studios all around the world. Um, she actually is one of our expert well of marketing suite builders, so some of you may have had the pleasure of working with her in the past. Uh, but if you ever do need support building out more or strategy with your Walla Marketing Suite, Teresa is a fantastic person to, um, consult with, to hire, to work with. Thank you to all of you who have introduced yourselves. Hello, everyone, and I will turn it over to you, Theresa.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Thank you, Laura. Um, such a nice introduction. Um, I'm honored to be here. And as Laura said, thank you all, um, for taking time out of your busy schedules, uh, to work on your businesses a little bit today, to be here live or to watch the recording. So, um, I am really excited to talk about this topic today. It's a subject I'm pretty passionate about. I see so many studios relying on or trying to rely a little bit too heavily on automations these days because we are living in an automated world, right, with lots of convenient space processes. Google can control our house. We have auto subscriptions left and right. Um, so many parts of our lives can be automated, and everything's so convenience based. You know? Everything's focused on making our lives easier. And so there's a natural tendency to want to make our business processes more convenient and more automatic too. But there are some things that can't be completely automated, like building relationships with clients. Yeah. And so you need human interaction for that, and, um, people crave those human interactions. That's why they have come to your business. They're looking to better their lives, and they're looking for help. And so, um, it helps us build relationships with them, but then it also helps them because they're craving those relationships. And so, um, you know, I see businesses a lot of times struggling with conversions and retention, which also lead to struggles with revenue and profitability. Um, and many times these businesses are relying just a little too heavily on automations, and they're missing the human interaction piece or they don't quite have the balance. And, um, they're just hoping that clients will just fall in love with the business and with the service and then just all on their own progress to an intro offer or membership, and it doesn't usually quite work that way. Right? Right.

Laura Munkholm:
Yeah. And I would say just just quickly, for for those of you that are paying attention, you know, the the big bigger gyms, especially luxury gyms, are trying to start playing in our boutique fitness space. And there is more and more competition out there. There are digital platforms that are trying to kind of own our clients or grab our clients. And one of the really big benefits we have is that nobody does community connection and relationships better than boutique fitness. So that's why I wanted Teresa to talk about this today. She's equally as passionate and has some great ideas and strategies for making that a reality without, hopefully, too much work on your end.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Yeah. But a little bit of elbow crease.

Laura Munkholm:
A little bit. Good. We can't

Teresa Zanardelli:
get crease.

Laura Munkholm:
If it were if it were that easy, everyone would do it and be resilient. So we can do that.

Teresa Zanardelli:
I am going to share my screen here so we can jump in. Alright. Okay.

Laura Munkholm:
Hopefully, that's big enough for you all. If not, you can just kind of make zoom in on your screen or, um, go full screen size, but if you guys need it bigger, just let me know. Okay.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Alright. So I will dive in here. So, um, there was a world years ago with no automations. So when I first, um, had my studio when it first opened, I remember the time where I was handling every part of every process manually in my business. So I was following up with leads, following up with people on their intro offers, um, following up with members to help with retention. So I was manually sending emails, making phone calls myself one by one. Um I remember I didn't even have it on spreadsheets I preferred paper and so I had all these folders and I would print out reports on paper and make notes I would write down what happened in conversations with people so um, you know, that's it wasn't even that long ago, but it seems ages ago because things have changed so much. But those systems did work. They worked really well. And one of the big reasons was because it was so personal. Clients felt seen, and they felt heard, and they felt valued. And because I was interacting with them so much, um, I had relationship with them. And even when I offloaded some of the communication tasks to my staff, they the it still worked really well because then my staff had these relationships with people as well. So, um, um, automations came next, then came the rise of automations, and suddenly there were these software companies who could, um, integrate with, uh, our booking software. And we could automate things based on client behavior, based on what they purchased or what classes they went to and things like that. And so many businesses suddenly thought, oh, I can just automate it all, and I don't have to do all this anymore. Um, it'll save me so much time. It will save all my staff so much time. And so a lot of businesses shifted from really heavy personal interaction to really heavy automation, um, processes. And so sometimes the personal interaction things got left by the wayside, and the new businesses who came after the automations were already a big thing, they didn't have as many of the personal interactions in place in the first place. And so now there are a lot of businesses and a lot of us who have the mindset that the automations are gonna take care of everything, But the reality is automations are just a tool, but not the solution. And so if you have automations, and I gave just a little snippet of some of the audience rules, um, audience conditions in the wall of software. Um, but if you have automations without human interaction, um, it's you're you're missing a piece, and you could be leaving money on the table. And you could be seeing more, um, revenue in your business, higher conversions, more retention, better relationships, better community, uh, if you don't have that human interaction piece. Automations don't build relationships. People build relationships. And clients can tell the difference between an automated message and real interaction. And a lot of the automations these days have, uh, merge tags where you can auto populate the client name or auto populate the instructor's name of the class they took yesterday and things like that. And they all help, but a lot of times clients can still tell and especially if they respond to a text and they don't get an immediate response, they know someone's not on the other end of that conversation right at that particular moment too. Um, so they can still tell. Yeah. Um, yeah. Definitely.

Laura Munkholm:
If you guys I this is just kind of a fun thing that I've done before. If you go into your Gmail or your your email and just type in the words we miss you, the number of automations that you will find in there from every not just fitness businesses, but all kinds of businesses. There there are so many kind of catch phrases that are used in automations. And so it's it really is transparent, and I think we've all, as consumers, started to to really, you know, not pay attention to a lot of those automated communications because we know they're not really for us, and there's an ulterior motive to it. Right? Correct.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Yep. They'd know that they're just going out to everyone. Yep. Um, yes. So the real life conversations are what really create that impact. People feel recognized and appreciated and seen and heard, and they feel they know that they're not just a number. And that human interaction is what really builds trust and customer loyal loyalty. Emails don't. Right? And then you have the big issue that always comes up that if you've got automations without human interaction, you're missing a lot of people because there always will be a decent chunk of your client base that don't opt into emails and texts. They just don't want to. Those people will always exist. And if you don't have the human touch points, you'll you'll miss them. So automations can handle some communications, but they can't replace the human touch. So we need both. So, um, I've helped many, many, many, many businesses implement sales processes, and I've worked with a lot of businesses that are a bit hesitant for a variety of reasons to implement the human interaction piece of things. They want to rely a little bit more on automations sometimes. Um, maybe they wanna save on payroll. Maybe they feel that they don't have the right staff to handle it. But what I will tell you is that the owners who fully commit to incorporating the this human interaction piece, the these human interaction touch points, they see double the conversion and retention rates as compared to those that hesitate to add in that layer and are relying on on automations alone. So, um, and that being said, the human, um, touch points and the human interaction is it can partly be automated. It's not all manual. And so there are ways in Walla. There there's a lead tracker and tasks and audiences, and so there are ways where you can automate some of the reminders to do some of these human interactions. And I know Laura has the software all pulled up, and and so we can look at that a little bit too here in just just a little bit.

Laura Munkholm:
Awesome.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Uh, so when you are thinking about blending automations with human interactions, these are just a few things to keep in mind. So you wanna automate the repetitive communication. So, of course, things like, um, class reservation confirmations, class reminders, same thing with appointments, confirmations, reminders. Um, you can automate some of the welcome emails and some of the inter offer communications and some of the win back communications, milestones, things like that. Um, and that increases efficiency, and it allows your team to focus on the higher value customer moments and the, um, human interactions, the human touch points. It allows them more time to focus on those things. And so you want to I said humanize. You want to humanize the critical moments. And so there are critical points in the client journey, and I'll talk more specifics

Laura Munkholm:
in

Teresa Zanardelli:
a moment. But, you know, there are critical moments with your new leads and your new clients and your intra offer clients and your membership clients and your at risk clients. There are critical points in all of those pieces of the client journey, and that those are points that you want to humanize. And so that builds trust and ensures that customers feel supported during high impact interactions and, you know, during, um, it helps them make important decisions. With these human interactions, you can offer premium personalization. So if you are customizing a manual communication to someone, you can really personalize it, which is something that can't be done with the automations. So you can segment groups of customers and assign staff to high value clients or to clients that are at critical points in their client journey. And this, again, improves customer satisfaction and loyalty by tailoring the communications based on the customer's needs or the client's needs. And then, of course, have to throw in measuring. You have to measure what matters. So, um, your key performance indicators, your KPIs, so pay attention to revenue, of course, and also your first visitors and your intro offer conversions and membership conversions and win backs and retention. So you need to measure these things to ensure that your strategies are delivering results and ensuring that your strategies are evolving based on feedback and data because all of these processes, even your automations, are not static. They're living, breathing systems that require refinements, and you they require staff training and regular evaluations. You'll you'll have to make changes to to them over time because what works right now may not work six months from now or a year from now. So they'll they'll always be changing.

Laura Munkholm:
Yeah. I think too one of one of the things that we often see is there's a really heavy emphasis on the early stage of client communication. Right? The the lead point, you know, early leads, mutual offers, and then it kind of starts to drop off, and there's an assumption that, okay, they love us. They bought. We're they're in. Um, and I would encourage all of you to look at the okay. What happens after someone purchases? Like, what does your client journey look like once they've made the purchase to buy into your membership? Um, I I hear oftentimes that there's a lot of shock and disappointment when people cancel or when they they move on or kind of disappear and stop attending. And it's like, well, when's the last time you actually had a conversation with that person? Or, you know, if you for example, one of the the kind of segments that gets missed often is if you have a teacher turnover or a teacher significantly drop classes on their schedule, who are the folks that wet that teacher a lot? Right? Those people probably need a little extra love in that moment. So, yes, you can, like like Teresa is saying, find those critical moments in the general customer journey. But with Wallaam, you guys have the ability to create these audiences for unique events that are really critical in the customer journey. So consider consider those things that could really be, um, I don't know, a benefit to that boutique fitness kind of relationship experience, community experience, and leverage these tools. Mhmm.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Ongoing. You're right. Not just at the beginning of their client journey. That's a super important part, but, uh, absolutely. I just gotta gotta keep paying them. Yeah. Just adding in the human interaction is not enough in and of itself, so it is important what you say. And I will say here that there's no one magic script. Um, you know, sometimes I will be talking to a business owner and they'll say, well, we added in this, um, personal outreach, but it didn't work. And so what's what's a good script? Well, there's not you know, there's general guidelines, but there's no magic script that's gonna work with everyone because your everybody's staff is different. Every owner is different. Every business is different. Every service is different. Every client demographic is different. And so if you try a script and it doesn't work, then it just needs to be refined rather than ditching the whole thing. And so here are just a few things to keep in mind with these, um, interactions, and when you're writing scripts or role playing or playing through scenarios. And one of the big ones is asking open ended questions. So I often work with clients, and they have text scripts or SMS, um, automations. And they say something maybe like, um, congratulations on your first class yesterday. Let us know if you have any questions. And a much better way to word it would be congratulations on your class yesterday. How did it go? Um, so every time you can, asking an open ended question. And that goes for, you know, in person communications or phone communications. You know, asking the client questions so that they are prompted to give you information and you're starting a conversation and you're building a relationship rather than saying, click this link to get this offer. Right? You know? You'd be better off saying, can I help get you set up with this offer? Something like that. So, um, open ended questions is huge. Um, offering personalized rec recommendations. I I touched on that, uh, a little bit earlier. Um, providing a clear call to action for every communication. Just like your automated messages, your real conversations should be intentional and strategic. So not just layering in a manual text that you heard another business owner had success with and it's not really related to your processes. You know, you really want to have a clear goal for every communication and then, you know, convey that that clear to call to action and ask open ended questions and use names. Using names is a big, big, big one, and I will mention that again. Um, there have been lots of studies on what happens in our brains when we hear our own name, and it's a huge impact and can make such a huge difference. So as a business owner or manager, if you have trouble remembering people's names, uh, I encourage you to seek out some tips and tricks, um, um, for remembering names and then teach them to your staff because using your clients' names is, like, gay a game changer. So, so important. And the best client interaction systems combine all three, uh, methods of communication here, phone, emails, and SMS. Um, sometimes I get push back on the phone. Sometimes people are like, no. Phone is dead. It doesn't work. We just leave messages. The messages still make impact, and you have to do all three to reach everybody because every client demographic is different. Every client is different. Some people never look at texts or respond to texts. Some people respond really well to phone calls. And so if you use a combination of all three, you'll have all your bases covered. And so, um, you know, our clients are relying on us to be guided through the, uh, client journey, really. They don't know, um, sometimes what they should purchase first or what class to go to first or what they should do after the intro offer. And so we use all three of these communications, uh, communication types to communicate with them, to guide them along the way, and to tell them what to do next.

Laura Munkholm:
I like to tell the story when we talk about all the different methods of communication because I I happen to be probably many of your ideal by the time I'm a 42 year old mom in a, you know, busy job that likes to work out, and I definitely fall into the the demographic that seems to be attracted to boutique fitness. So I was at my, you know, new soccer mom happy hour the other night, and I said, okay. I'll just text you this. And she was like, oh my god. Don't text it to me. Just tell me now because and she turned her phone around, and she had a 142 text messages unread. And then she was like, I'm so mortified to show everybody that. And then the other mom was like, oh, don't worry. I've got 40 I have to get back to you. And all of these moms started going around talking about how embarrassing it was that they hadn't read all of their text messages. So as much as we assume text is the kind of surefire way to get everybody's attention Mhmm. We live in a very busy society, and our ideal prospects are very busy people. So we do need to catch them in different ways and at different moments in order to really grab attention. And the more personal it is like, if if you're one of 42 or a 142 text messages that are unread, if it's a an automated kind of who cares message, that's getting deleted right away. So have an impact, and you've got to try all three of these communication. And even social media. Right, Theresa? I mean, you can reach out to your clients, the engaged ones on social media. They may read their Instagram DMs more than they read their text messages. So don't forget about social media.

Teresa Zanardelli:
That's true. That's a really good call out that I didn't touch on at all. So yeah. Absolutely.

Laura Munkholm:
Yeah. Okay.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Again, phone calls, emails, SMS, and social media.

Laura Munkholm:
There you go.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Okay. So let's talk a little bit about specific, uh, touch points, specific times that you can talk to, um, your clients. So I kinda broke it up in studio and out of studio when your clients are at home. So in the studio, these are some really great examples of human touch points to that you can layer in. It's not an exhaustive list, but it's, uh, a really, really good place to start. And so, um, your first visit, we talked about that just a moment ago, how, you know, the the early days of the client journey are really important. And you do wanna provide a gold standard experience for first time visitors, of course. So you should have a whole first time visitor protocol, SOP process. Um, and in that, the client is having interaction with your staff, and, um, they're really getting a gold standard experience. And so names come up here again. So learning the client names is super important. Greeting them when they arrive. Um, maybe you give a studio tour. Maybe you introduce them to other staff or other clients. Maybe there's a space to discuss their goals. You know, every business will be different in as in what they can and can't do, um, with the new clients during that visit. But as much as you can, spend some time with that new client and start to build a relationship with them, start to make them feel really welcome, um, and really seen and and heard during that visit. Um, you can recommend upgrades. That should be a part two. So if you are a business that has an intro offer and they come that first time with a drop in pricing option, you will be way more successful in selling them the intro offer when they're there that day in the studio as opposed to an automated email the next day. You can have that automated email the next day as like a safety net, but your in person interaction will be much more successful. Um, and then we've got during the intro offer. So training your staff, whether it's the teachers or front desk, um, training them to talk to people on their intro offer. How are you liking the classes? Have you taken this instructor? Have you taken this class? You should making recommendations. You should try this class or this instructor. And you your staff can also be mentioning the membership to them because you want the in person interactions with clients that are on the interoffer to, uh, expose them to the membership and so on. And the goal is that they are all ready to buy the membership by the time they get that automated email that comes to them to sell them the membership. Okay? So you want them to be ready to buy before they even get that email. That's that's the goal there. And then every visit. So this goes into what Laura had mentioned earlier about, you know, not just building these relationships in the beginning of their client journey, but forever. And so every visit, as much as you can, have your staff learn names and greet everybody by name when they come. Greet them when they arrive. Talk to them after class. Interact with them during, uh, the service, during the class or the appointment. The worst thing is when someone repeatedly comes to your business, they come in, they take the class, or they they have the appointment, and they leave without talking to anybody. And so, of course, you're gonna have quieter clients that aren't as outgoing, so that will happen sometimes. But as much as possible, you want them to be interacting with your staff every every visit possible.

Laura Munkholm:
One fun thing I saw with, uh, one of our clients is their SOP with their front desk staff to encourage this is the roster notes section in Walla. So, you know, being able to use the notes that are actually on the roster when you're checking people in. Everybody's required to have something, to learn something about a client. So whether it's, you know, Sarah is their favorite teacher or they ride horses or, you know, whatever it might be, using that section to add little anecdotes or little little moments or just quick facts so that you can engage with them over maybe something other than just how's your day, how are you doing. Yeah. So lots of ways you can pull in snippets of information and have it readily available.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Yeah. I love that. Uh, milestones. So this could be a whole webinar in and of itself, but, uh, many studios have some sort of in studio recognition for milestones, whether it's a board in the lobby, you take Polaroids, you know, there are a million different options. But when a um, client reaches a milestone, even if they get recognition before the class starts, you know, that can be huge. So that's a really great ongoing, uh, touch point to add in. You have upgrades. So you will have super users, and they may be taking tons of classes with drop ins or class packages, and they could be really great candidates for membership. And so having those conversations with people in the studio, again, will be way more successful than an auto email that they get, um, when they take a certain amount of classes in a certain time period with a with a package or drop ins. And then member retention slash feedback. So this ties into ongoing communication with people after they've, um, purchased the membership. So having regular conversations with the clients, having your teachers or front desk do this with things that Laura was just talking about, remembering things about the client. They like to ride horses, things like that. Um, but even if an instructor I had this happen to me recently at a studio that I go to. One of the instructors came up and and she was like, I hit 700 classes a little while back, and so she was like, oh my gosh. You have like 730 classes. I can't believe it. I remember your when your first week and, you know, just encouraging, um, me a little bit and recognizing that, oh my gosh. You've been here a long time, and that's super awesome. And we noticed that's that can be really impactful. And then with feedback, uh, my intention here was to mention that you will have long time members that are super users that are like your ideal clients, and you love them, and they are a really valuable resource. So having conversations with them and, you know, maybe asking to stay after class one day or scheduling a coffee with them, they can be really valuable for feedback. So take advantage of those resources, and they will also feel valued when you ask them for their feedback.

Laura Munkholm:
Yeah. Absolutely. I can pop into Walla here and show you all a couple of the ways you can leverage audiences now, um, with these certain groups of people. So, Teresa, if you don't mind, I'll just share my screen. You can Sure.

Teresa Zanardelli:
I'll stop.

Laura Munkholm:
Pop on. Alright. So I will share my screen here. Um, one thing to note as we're talking about conversations with clients in person or over the phone, one of the reasons we added this stats page and kind of the way we designed the profile we did in Walla is that you'll have context into who this person is with the business. So you can very quickly see Oliver Twist here is a thinker, so you can see the yellow circle. Um, he's taken lots of different classes at the business. But, you know, obviously, I'm his favorite instructor. Um, actually, I'm tied with Kara. But the in my demo site, I I make myself popular. Yes. Anyway, so you can see his visit history if he was crushing it one month. But, anyway, it gives you something to talk about and to bring up. And I know that can sometimes be tricky is, like, how do you start the conversation or what do you discuss? Um, but also just knowing that he's a thinker. For those of you using our personality typology, this can be tremendously helpful because you know this person's gonna be interested in learning something about the business or the programming. And then on the dashboard, depending on who's logged in, if you all haven't played with audiences yet, this is one of the most powerful tools in Wuala that's gonna give you a way to highlight these folks. So those upgrade clients that Teresa just mentioned, upsell member opportunities, you can build an audience in Walla that says, okay, I wanna see everybody who's on a 10 pack or an eight times a month membership that's used up all of their or almost used up all of their sessions, or they've used eight of the 10 in the last thirty days. So you've got those people highlighted right there on your dashboard, and you can make sure that, you know, you talk to them or you send them a quick text message just saying, hey. Way to go. Looks like you're blowing through that, um, eight times a month membership. Let me know if you're interested in upgrading to unlimited. You can come as much as you'd like. So opportunities to use audiences. I absolutely, absolutely recommend diving into our Marketing Suite course if you haven't. This is gonna give you examples of common audiences that really highlight those critical moments in the client journey and the how to build them so you don't have to kinda get stuck and scared, and I know the the conditions can be a little bit overwhelming if you've never played with them before. Um, but now we also have a way to to really organize them in a nice view. So you can see here, I've built collections of my class pass prospects or my win backs. So I can see all the people with no visit in sixty days, ninety days, no visit in the last six months or a year. So these are actionless for you and a great way to kind of task your team with the right people to reach out to at the right moment.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Mhmm.

Laura Munkholm:
Okay. Sorry. I'll hand it back to you now. Awesome.

Teresa Zanardelli:
No. I'm glad you pointed that out because super super valuable tools.

Laura Munkholm:
Yep.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Okay. So we're back. Yep. Okay. I see. Okay. Um, so that was in studio human reaction interactions and now at home human interactions. So, um, at home interactions are really nice because it says something when you're paying attention to them when they're not in the studio. So, um, these can be really important touch touch points. And there are some that you can't do in the studio, like new leads. They're not there yet, and so, um, they have to be at home human interactions. And so, um, when someone fills out a lead form or creates their account in Walla or, um, fills out some sort of lead form with social media when they when you have these leads, if there's a little bit of hesitation before they make take action, book or purchase before they book or purchase, Uh, a call or a text can be huge in getting them past whatever barrier they're experiencing and getting them booked or, you know, helping them purchase. Um, they could have a tech issue. They could not know what class or service to start with. They could not know, do I do the inter offer or the drop in? I don't know all the rules. You know? So actually starting a conversation with them and finding out from them what the barriers are can be really helpful in removing those barriers and getting them to actually come into the business. Before and first after first visit are big. Um, sometimes before is automated, but it depends on your business and your service offerings. Sometimes some one on one services, a phone call the day before is really great because you can give them the appointment reminder and things to expect and how to prepare and what to bring, things like that, answer any questions that they might have before the first visit. And then post class definitely is really great if it can be manual. Text or phone call and as I said, uh, before asking that open ended question and getting feedback on how their first visit went. And then you can make recommendations for future purchases or services and take it from there. Uh, during intro offer. So it's really great to give them phone calls. Phone phone calls are first choice, text is second choice. Um, you know, halfway through the intro offer, just checking in with them. This is especially important important if they haven't been utilizing their intro offer as much. You may be able to remove barriers there. Um, and then towards the end of their intro offer, last third part of their intro offer, you're having conversations with them about what to do after the intro offer as well. Win backs, of course, you can't do those in studio either. Um, so fifteen days if they haven't been in the studio, especially members, a phone call that's saying, hey. Just wanted to check-in. Just wanted to make sure that you were okay. We haven't seen you at the studio. Sometimes people really appreciate that. Um, not sometimes. A lot of times people really appreciate that because someone noticed that you've been missing. And if there's something going on in your life, you can find that there's something going on in the client's life. You can find out about it. Again, you're building a relationship with them, learning about them, and you can help them possibly, uh, with the situation that they're dealing with. So you can offer alternative classes, offer solutions for them. And then downgrade saves. So when I talk about downgrade and saves, I mean when someone requests to cancel their membership. And so there should be a process for when someone requests to cancel. There's the whole click to cancel thing, and I won't go all into that. But, excuse me, no matter what your process is, when you get a cancellation request, everybody that submits a cancellation request should be talked to. So whether you cancel them right away or talk to them before you cancel them, either way, uh, you want to have a conversation with them either phone or text, and that way you could possibly downgrade them to another type of membership. You could possibly save their membership and prevent the cancellation. At the very least, you could downgrade them to a class package. And even if you can't do that, you can at least get feedback from them, and that can be really valuable as well. So having the goal to talk to everyone that request to cancel. Just a few points for your staff because, you know, you may be worried about staff interactions and how will your staff interact with clients. So just a few tips. Um, you wanna hire with sales in mind from this point forward. So you may have a staff now that in your mind is not gonna be great with human interactions, with client interactions. You can still work with them, but in the future, you can hire people that are more comfortable engaging with clients. So that will be helpful in the future. You can empower your staff to make certain decisions on behalf of the business. So when they're interacting with clients, they feel empowered to make decisions, and they don't always have to tell the client, I'm not sure I'll have to check and get back to you. You know? So empowering them is really helpful. Sales trainings, and you notice I have sales trainings rather than sales training because that should be a regular part of your, uh, staff meetings you so that you're constantly giving them more tips, revised scripts, getting feedback from your staff on how conversations are going from clients, all regular ongoing, uh, parts of the, um, processes in your business. Role playing, uh, it's that can actually be part of sales training, but I broke it up into its own bullet point because it can be so, so effective, but people shy away from it so, so much. And, um, so I really wanted to call out role playing. It's really not reasonable for you to expect to give your staff a script and say, sell them the intro offer when they come in on a drop in for their first visit, uh, because those that conversation, they've never had it before. Those words have never come out of their mouths before, and so they need to practice. Call it something different. You as the owner or manager can play the staff member, and you can have your staff play the, you know, obstinate client or the troublemaking client, and you can make it fun that way. But role playing is super important. And then provide them with the right tools. So well documented processes and SOPs and scripts for all types of different interactions for leaving messages, for phone calls, templates for emails, and texts so that they have all the tools in their tool belts and they feel really confident about how to handle all these situations that they will encounter.

Laura Munkholm:
One of the best things I've I've encountered in studio kind of sales is, um, if if any of you guys watched our one of our recent webinars with Eric, he talked about it's it's on our website if you want to watch, but he talked about the, um, the idea of doing improv classes together as a team building exercise and kind of letting your staff flex the muscle of speaking or, you know, having a response when something is unexpected. Because you really never know what you're gonna hear, and that's part of the fear around in person communication or phone calls is that you don't know what the person on the other end is gonna say. And there's a little bit of, oh, I don't wanna bother them, but it's gonna give you, uh, just some tools to feel more confident in those those conversations. Mhmm. And then the other piece of the the sales scripting is empathy and removing objections beforehand. So giving your staff in those scripts, in the menus, in the cards, hey. I really don't wanna bother you today. That's not why I'm calling. Really, more than anything, we we genuinely care that everybody who is interested in coming in has an opportunity to. And if there's anything that we can do to, you know, make sure you feel confident or, you know, take away the objection at the very beginning, or I promise this in the SNL scene where the Pilates instructor is hovering over you, asking why you haven't been here in two weeks. I genuinely care. Are you okay? We haven't seen you in a while and we miss you. Um, so anyway, I know there are a lot of jokes about it right now, and it can be kind of funny to just use that to to take away any kind of discomfort at the beginning of a conversation. And the staff has most of them have probably never sat in a cold calling situation before. So if you have teams that arm them. And if you happen to be lucky enough to have sales folks, fantastic. Empower them to train your other staff members.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Mhmm. Absolutely. I have one more slide. Okay. I just wanted to touch on implementation, um, because we and like Laura mentioned in the very beginning, if if you can implement one little thing so that's what I'm gonna say here. Um, we live in an era where information is everywhere. So as a business owner or manager, you can take all kinds of courses. You can work with different consultants. You can have conversations with other successful studio owners that are sharing all types of different strategies. But the truth is that none of it matters if you don't implement anything. So, um, inspiration without action does not lead to change. So you can listen to advice all day, but if you don't take action, nothing changes. And as I mentioned earlier, there's no magic script. There's no one magic, uh, process. There's guidelines, but not every strategy works for every business, and that's okay. And it's important to remember that if something doesn't work, it doesn't mean you failed. It just means that you need to adjust and try again. So, um, don't throw it by the wayside and just say it doesn't work in my business. You just haven't found the right way to make it work in your business yet. That's all. Um, so consistent action, a willingness to refine, and a balance between automation and authentic human interaction, um, and remembering to take things in small steps. So don't try to implement some 30 step process all at once. Just at this point, if you don't have many human interactions in place, just pick one to implement, one to add in. Just start with one. And maybe it's upselling, drop in first time visitors to your intro offer. So just pick that one. And if you can do it yourself, start doing it yourself or train a staff member and come up with a script and start implementing that. And then refine the script, find what works, and then layer in something else once you get that one up and running.

Laura Munkholm:
Awesome. Yeah. Well, I thought at the end here, I would give you guys kind of a view of a lead tracker option and a couple of details around how you can implement this in a very easy way where it's visible and actionable in Walla. Um, so if those of you have who are still on have a few minutes and those of you watching on recording, we'll go through a a quick setup guide. Um, it should be

Teresa Zanardelli:
Is it okay if I show my, um,

Laura Munkholm:
email? Absolutely.

Teresa Zanardelli:
And then I'll stop sharing, and then you can have it. Yeah. So if if anyone does want to further the conversation, happy to talk to you. That's my email address. That QR code will take you to discover to schedule a discovery call, and I'm always happy to point you in the right direction, talk about how we can work together, whatever you need.

Laura Munkholm:
Yeah. And, again, Theresa is quite the expert on Volley's sales marketing suite. So if you ever need support there, she's great. Um, okay. So I'll pop back back into Walla and show you guys my lead tracker. So within the sales and marketing center, those of you who have our core plus marketing suite, um, you've got two different views of the lead tracker here. And you can see we've got the list view, and we've got the sales pipeline view. And this is only going to show your location. So if you're part of a franchise or part of a multilocation and you're maybe a manager or a franchise owner, you will see your leads here, not the entire system. Um, I'm just looking at all of my locations right now. So for a a great touch point, um, you know, it might be the first visit is booked, but they haven't come in yet. You would essentially create a sales pipeline that's going to automatically drop people into that that bucket. And then as most of you know, you can just then use the side panel to click and communicate with those folks. So this is where you can send the manual text if they have a a phone number in the system, or you can log a phone call here and, you know, so everybody will see the notes on on what happened on that call. But we'll go into the sales pipeline that I've built in the journey so you can see exactly how to do this. I create a journey called sales pipeline. I highly recommend that for those of you that are lead using the lead tracker. Um, but you can see here, I've got one called first class booked. And the audience here is going to be check for a future booking or wait list. So if I edit my conditions here, um, I'm creating a custom audience, and I'm using my home contacts only. You if you are a franchise, you may want to look at associated contacts if you wanna see people who have, um, gone to other businesses within your franchise but never your location. Um, and here you can say, I wanna look for somebody who has a future booking. Doesn't matter to me when I just know that they've booked a class, and you can choose your location. So if you wanna edit that, you can say, um, if you're a multi location, you could say, uh, something specific and choose your location here. Um, but I also wanna make sure that they have had exactly zero check ins ever. So they've got a future wait list, but they've never checked into a class here before. So this is somebody who is brand new to my business. Now you can send a message here if you want to automate communication. But if you want to make this a manual touch point, then, essentially, what you'll do is add a lead stage of first visit booked. And, you know, First visit booked and maybe that is assigned as an SOP as a manual touch point. You can remove any other prior stages there, but then anybody who falls into this condition will drop right into that column in your in your lead funnel. And that way, that can be okay. Your front desk staff or your salesperson or whoever works on that will know. As soon as somebody enters that lead stage, um, that's somebody that I have to reach out to. So now you can see Andrea has landed in that because she fit the condition of first visit booked, and she has never taken a class here before. So, hopefully, that gives a kind of a a quick snippet on how this lead tracker can be used to facilitate the manual touch points. Not everything can be automatically dropped. Like, if it's post somebody else talking to that person five days ago, you know, we don't know exactly who talked to that person five days ago. They'll have to manually add in a touch point or a stage in the sales pipeline, but you can always manually move these folks around. Um, okay. I'll stop sharing here. And if there are any questions, I'll pop in. Yeah. No problem, Hannah. Alright. Anybody anybody have questions for Theresa? Anybody have questions for me or just generally about ideas sharing on manual communication, in person communication, or any automations before we wrap today. Alright. Great. Well, thank you guys. For those of you watching on recording, if you have questions, please reach out to us. Um, you can always reach out to support or sales or Teresa. You can use her QR code there to connect with her about some of the success stories and processes she's implemented across some of the businesses she's worked with on Walla. Chantelle just quickly asked how how we would recommend tracking the manual communications. Um, so one thing you could do is well, Teresa, I'll let you answer in just a second. One thing you could do is create a bucket within the sales pipeline of, you know, communicated with and then add a next step. Like, essentially, your a date around next reach out. Um, or you can use task management in Walla, which you can create a task from those pipelines as well.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Yeah. And because you can add notes for all the communications in their cards. So that was what that's what I was gonna suggest, um, to track any any conversations that you have with them along the way. Yeah.

Laura Munkholm:
Right. Um and Fania, yes. All of our for those of you who haven't been in our webinars before, all of our webinars are recorded as long as you registered, and they live on our website. So I'll pull up where you can find that right now and show you how to get there. But I know you probably don't spend a lot of time on our website once you've become a wallet client.

Teresa Zanardelli:
Yes.

Laura Munkholm:
Uh, you can go to the resources page and under webinars, this is where you find the one today. But all of our past webinars are here, and this is a treasure trove of information, especially if you've got a specific question or issue in your business that you're really looking for an expert on. Um, and we've got all of them housed here. All you do is register, and you get to watch live or receive the recording. Alright. Awesome. Well, thank you all so, so much. Keep your eyes out. We've got a webinar in April planned around brand and brand voice and communication around brands, so that should be very exciting. Um we hope to see you all there and Teresa, huge thanks to you for coming to share your wisdom with us and we'll see you guys. Yeah we'll see you guys next month. Thank you.

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