How We Transformed 60% of New Clients into Regulars: The Salt Remedy Success Blueprint

Here’s the last blog of our series - how we added 122 members in just 90 days. If you’ve missed the content up to this point, you can get all caught up by visiting out blog. If you've been following our series, you know we've been diving deep into the strategies that helped us grow exponentially. Today, I'm thrilled to talk about a crucial aspect of our success: converting first-time customers into recurring members.

The Moment of Truth

Picture this: a customer walks into your wellness center for the first time. This moment is more than just a transaction; it's an opportunity to transform a one-time visitor into a loyal member. Remember, sales are the lifeblood of your business. It's not just about revenue; it's about creating a sustainable cycle of growth.

The Power of a Proven Process

At Salt Remedy, we've honed a process that turns 60% of first-time customers into recurring members. How? By focusing on the last and most critical step of the client journey. Let's say you attract 100 leads, and 75 show up, but only 8 of them purchase something. Your efforts might break even, but real ultimately you’re back where you started.

If instead, you generated 50 leads, got 25 of them to show up for an appointment, but this time 15 (60%) of them purchased a package or membership, not only did you get a positive return on your investment of time and money, but you actually GREW your business.

Embracing the Sales Mindset

Learning sales isn’t easy. We’ve coached businesses through sales processes for over 10 years, including multiple of our own staff, and it’s not a tell-you-once-then-it’s-done kind of skill. Learning sales isn’t just about learning what to say, it’s a change in mindset.

Common beliefs:

• Sales involves manipulating someone else

• Applying tension to encourage someone to purchase is bad

• If the customer really wants it, they’ll come back and purchase it

Sales ≠ Manipulation

Sales isn't about manipulation; it's about helping customers make a decision that benefits them. Sales is about understanding what the customer wants/needs and showing them how your business can help them achieve it.

Tension Is Necessary

It’s human nature to delay making a decision. When faced with a purchasing decision, especially over $25, people tend to delay the decision. Why? Because now they have to weigh the value of the investment, their schedule, the drive time, etc. So, rather than think about it now they will think about it later - “I need to think about it,” or, “I need to talk to my partner,” or something similar.

In order to help the prospect reach their goals we need to confront their habit of delayed decision making, because, unfortunately, once they leave they’re unlikely to be back.

They Probably Won’t Be Back

Once the prospect walks out the door their busy life runs away with their good intentions and they’ll have completely forgotten about the your business. In the case of our salt therapy spa, this means they’ll go on for weeks with lingering congestion, poor sleep, and load of over-the-counter medication that could have been resolved much quicker.

Our Sales Framework: A Four-Stage Process

• The Problem: Identify why the customer is in front of you.

• The Bridge: This stage is about transitioning from understanding their problem to presenting your solution.

• The Presentation: Here, you present your services or packages.

• Overcoming Objections: This is where you address their hesitations.

The Problem.

The problem stage is all about identifying the reason the customer is standing in front of you. All businesses are solutions to problems, and the bigger the problem and the better the business solves that problem, the more valuable the business is. So, if someone is standing in front of you simply because they’re curious about your services, but lacks any real problem that you business can solve, they’re very unlikely to become a regular customer. However, if someone, in our case, has been dealing with congestion for 9 months, tried loads of medications that didn’t work, and believes strongly in all-natural solutions, then we have a very high likelihood of making a BIG difference in their life.

So the problem stage is all about identifying the problem, and how serious the problem is, through a series of questions. In our case:

1. What symptoms are you experiencing?

2. How long has those symptoms been going on?

3. What other things have you tried?

4. Why were you interested in trying Salt Remedy?

The Bridge

Typically the bridge happens after they experience the service, a tour, or something that helps them better understand your solution. The Bridge is asking a series of small questions that are easy to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to, that leads into being able to present what you offer.

For us, this includes: a summary of the answers to The Problem questions, some kind of barrier to entry, and asking for permission to present our offer.

Summary - “We’d start the bridge by summarizing the problem like so, “Just to confirm, you’ve been dealing with congestion for 3 months, you’ve tried antibiotics and over-the-counter meds but it keeps coming back, and you really wanted to see if salt could finally help clear the congestion. Is that right?”

Barrier - “In order for salt to clear congestion and reduce inflammation, you’d need to come about 8 times over the next 30 days to allow the salt to coat your lungs and act as a scrub brush to clear the congestion. Can you come 8 times over the next 30 days?”

Permission - “Great, we have a great 30-day risk-free trial that would be perfect for you. Can I show you the details?”

A common mistake we see people make is treating the purchase decision too casually and launching right into the offer. Remember, the customer has been in this purchase scenario many more times than you’ve been in the sales scenario, and their habit is to delay making a decision. So when you casually walk up to them and ask them to buy something, they casually, and habitually, say, “That sounds great. Let me take something home and think about it.”

The Bridge takes them out of that habitually mindset and helps them slow down enough to hear what you have to say.

The Presentation

Presenting the offer shouldn’t be casual, that’s why we call it a presentation. Presenting an offer is a skill that you practice.

When you present an offer here are few things you need to keep in mind:

1. Present as few options as possible, typically 1-3, so that the customer can focus

2. Recommend one or two options based on your experience and The Problem the customer communicated.

3. Stop talking! Don’t be impatient with silence. Breathe, relax, and give the customer time to think.

4. Answer questions vs. justify. Rather than continually explain/justify your offer, give the client room to ask questions, and answer their questions.

5. Ask for the sale. Most businesses don’t actually ask for the sale. They often half-heartedly present a menu of options and wait for the customer’s response. Look the customer in the eye and make a recommendation, “Given what you told me I recommend package 1, this is best for you because x, y, and z. Would you like to get started today?”

Overcoming Objections

Overcoming customer’s habit to delay the decision is the most difficult part of sales. It takes time and experience to hear “no” as a data point and not the end of the conversation. If you present your offer to 100 people you should get about 10% to say ‘yes’ and 10% will say ‘no’ regardless of what you do. The other 80% will START with ‘no’ but, depending on how you handle their objections, will come around to ‘yes.’

An easy rule of thumb is, you’ll get another 10% for every objection you overcome.

These are conservative numbers meant to communicate the effort and skill needed to make sales happen. Of course, the quality of your service/product, the customer-service/product fit, and the price point dramatically affects these numbers.

So how do you overcome objections? The basic framework is:

• Listen to the objection

• Repeat it back to the customer

• Answer and clear the objection

• Ask for the sale again

For example, here’s an objection we get often:

“I want to see how I feel tomorrow before making a decision.”

Our response,

“Waiting to see how you feel makes total sense [LISTEN + REPEAT BACK]. My only concern is that once you leave, if you’re like most people, you’re life will get in the way and it will be weeks before you make it back in, if not longer. That’s why we make this program risk free, if you’re serious about seeing whether salt works to help you clear congestion and start feeling better, then you can try it for a month and if it doesn’t work you don’t pay. But if it does work, you saved yourself a lot of trouble and sleepless nights [ANSWER AND CLEAR THE OBJECTION]. Should we go ahead and get your started today [ASK FOR THE SALE AGAIN]?”

Our Results Speak for Themselves

By implementing this framework, we've seen remarkable results. From generating leads to converting them into loyal members, each step is crafted to ensure predictable growth.

Your Turn to Grow

As we wrap up this series, remember that growth is a journey. It requires patience, a willingness to learn, and a commitment to your customers. Stay tuned for more insights, and here's to turning your first-time customers into lifelong members!

Very Respectfully,

Josh & Cody