New Customer Behaviour New Ideas

A friend of mine who normally produces triathlon racing apparel has switched his factory to making masks for healthcare providers.

Welcome to day 7 of creating the best version of your endurance coaching business.

Yesterday, I talked briefly about considering different types of customers due to people's behaviours changing because of what's happening with COVID-19. 

More people are working from home now. People who normally don't exercise are walking or running more. People who do normally exercise a lot don't have any events so are training less.

During these times of change and uncertainty, to keep your business going, you probably want to think about how people are changing their behaviors and how you might need to change your business. Think outside of the box to adapt to those changes as well.

Watch my video or read the transcription for some examples of how you can take this approach in your coaching business.

Video Version

Transcribed Version

Prime Example of Outside-the-Box Thinking

A great example at the moment is happening with lots of factories who normally make other things.

A friend of mine who normally makes triathlon and endurance apparel has been making masks and looking to sell them to hospitals and medical professionals. Not only is he watching those two sides of that behavior -- the one side is people aren't racing so they're not going to need endurance racing apparel, and the other side is everything happening with this health people are wearing masks.

He's been able to innovate and adapt to turn his factory from making one thing based on people's behaviors that aren't required at the moment to making something else that is required because of people's behavior.

Thinking About Customer Behavior Towards Your Business

So, if you can think about that in terms of your own business and what I mentioned before, endurance athletes might actually be training less, so they might require your services less. In terms of one-on-one coaching, they'll definitely require your services less. I've heard of coaches who have lost half of their one-on-one coach athletes already. And that's normal because they're not doing races. So it's normally what they're doing off-season anyway. But luckily, a lot of them have been able to offer them online memberships or lower price products to sort of make up some of the money lost in sales.

So if we go back to thinking about behavior -- that's the behavior of your existing customers and those people who can be a new customer. Again, people are working from home and most likely worried about their mental health. These people are less likely to be athletes, but people who are probably walking or running a little bit more. These people could possibly be your new customers, right?

New Behavior Options

So, in terms of thinking about this new audience -- these everyday people who are working from home and might need some structured exercise plans to follow -- you want to be prepared with the type of workouts or plans you want to offer. You might want to have three versions of walking plans for: people who never walk to get them up, another for people who walk often but want to walk a little bit more, and finally, a more advanced walking plan.

Perhaps you could also do the same with a running plan for non-athletes because I've seen people out running, and you can tell they don't really run. It would be great to be able to offer something specific to them. And then have a seven-day plan that talks and through like building up to certain distances or times more likely and just that sort of thing.

So again, looking at people's new behaviors and thinking about how you can adapt your product services in your business to survive through these challenging times. Right now, the idea that we're going to maybe target those normal type of people who are just getting into walking and running, is most likely accurate with what is happening to the world.

Applying the Approaches

Before we continue with these suggestions as to how you can approach these potential customers, I just want to say that this is just a theory. I don't know what the outcome will be, but I do believe that this will be beneficial for you. I think it would be great to reach out to all the contact you have around this. Reach out to people you know -- your friends, immediate social circle or people who work in corporate.

There are two different ways to approach the new potential customers: Advertise or promote your products and services to them directly or market to corporates, which are the companies who employ these people who are now at home.

Why Target Corporations?

With these issues around mental health, people been stuck at home, productivity, etcetera, you know corporates will be really concerned about the welfare of their employees. Do these businesses want their employees to come back fitter or fatter? It's not necessarily about weight, but about their physical and mental state. Do you want them to come back healthier physically and mentally when they come back to your office and start working full-time? Do you want them to be able to be more productive? Or do you want them to come back feeling drained, tired and worse off when they were coming to your office to work?

How to Approach Corporations

If you have some contacts in corporate and HR, I'd suggest reaching out to them and seeing if you can package up your existing products and services -- maybe training plans or a private Facebook group where you can do live training sessions each day. And you could sell that to a corporate for a reasonably high price point so they could all have access to your training platform. Something between $500 and $1000 a month that might cater to a hundred people might be good.

In this approach, you can look after the employees with training plans and stuff. I'm not talking about one-on-one coaching, but about creating training plans that these people could follow and then be able to invite them to your platform so they can easily log in. And if you can get two or three corporations to sign up, then you might have replaced half of your revenue or all of the revenue that you lost from one-on-one clients.

If you do approach some corporates, I would offer it as like an all-in-one solution where they don't need to do anything other than hand you the reins for you to sign their employees up, set it all up in your platform, set up the plans, manage the plans, etcetera. Then all you need to do is send them a link that they can send to their employees to sign up. So you create all the content, you create all the exercise plans, and then just make it really easy for them. The make it a no-brainer at a lower price point of $500 to $1000.

When you're selling them to corporates, you probably want to make it so it doesn't require too many levels of approval for them to be able to sign it off. Ideally, if you could talk to the HR manager, they could be the decision-maker to make that decision.

So anyway, there's my thoughts for today -- something more specific. So, really it's about behavior changes on your existing customers, and that means they might not need your services anymore. And behavior changes are people who aren't your current target market but could be because of the way they're behaving now.

So thanks for watching and I'll talk to you again tomorrow.