I currently operate as a personal trainer on the side. In the training world it’s said that maintaining your business is harder than building it. And this seems backwards to most new trainers. Doesn’t acquiring new clients seems a lot harder than holding onto a group of existing clients?
This seemingly paradoxical statement is true because of the mindset that someone takes on once he’s established his business and reached his target number of clients per week. The natural tendency is to altogether stop approaching new prospects and pursuing potential leads. The result of this tendency is a complete cutoff in the new clientele pipeline.
When you combine this cutoff with the natural decline in your current clientele – people move, decide to stop training, etc. all the time – you’re left with a business that is bound to enter a steady decline. The business is destined to fail if the trainer isn’t pursuing a small amount of new leads as he conducts his daily business.
How to maintain a steady flow of clients indefinitely
Therefore, what separates a successful trainer from a poor one is his prospecting process. Rather than neglecting it completely when things are going well, he never fully takes his foot off the pedal. Sure, if his schedule is completely packed with clients, he won’t be spending significant amounts of time pursuing new leads, but he will do so here and there, just so he has someone ready to jump into a new slot the moment one of his regulars ditches him.
The X factor that makes this strategy necessary is the fact that when a trainer gets out of the swing of things – he stops his prospecting process completely – he will surely struggle to pick up new clients efficiently when the shit hits the fan and he needs to. By taking a break from the practice of generating inbound traffic, he essentially loses his game.
Dealing with women is no different
This reality struck me one day when a fellow trainer was bitching about, well, bitches. Attempting to offer instruction, I instinctively told him to treat the dating market like he treats his training business. Girls he finds attractive and wants to date are prospects, and girls he’s dating already are clients.
This trainer happened to be the top trainer at the gym. By far. He dominates his training business like no other. Of course, this analogy brought a smile to his face as he realized he could apply his successful training model to women.
The obvious lesson here is to never stop approaching. If you have a three girls rotation that you’re completely satisfied with, realize that one of these girls is going to fall off. She might push for commitment and bounce, she might meet another dude and lose interest, she might move, etc. By continuing to approach cute girls you notice, you’ll keep your pipeline full so that when one, or all, of your current clients dry up, you can move quickly to replace them.
One objection to this model is when you have a girlfriend. And this is a legitimate concern. Surely you shouldn’t prospect while in a monogamous relationship, right? In truth, it’s up to you. Just realize the dangers of ceasing to approach: when the relationship ends, you’ll likely have lost a lot of your game. I’m sure most of you can already attest to this.
Seeing game as a sales process also removes unwanted emotions
At the same time that this model reminds you of the importance of prospecting, this realization brought a further increase in success to my personal dating life. By thinking of dating as a sales job, I truly was able to realize that dating is a numbers game. This effectively removed most of the unwanted emotions I normally felt when a girl I really liked fell through the cracks.
When you view game as sales, you recognize that most prospects aren’t going to pan out. However, you don’t use this as ammo to be a bitch and cry yourself to sleep, but rather as ammo to get out there and approach even more women. After all, a solid prospecting process is the mark of a successful salesman.
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Read More: Don’t Let Women Rule Your Life
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