Stop offering services and start offering recommendations

Last week I saw a piece of content that I felt was spreading a massive limiting belief in the quest to build a more digitally robust business, and I want to write this piece to smash that belief. 

The belief: “your in-person clients don’t want digital services because they came to work with you in person” - is nonsense. 

When building a digital business, that does NOT mean the only way to acquire clients is online. 

As a matter of fact, offline strategies can have a massive impact on your ability to acquire customers. Why? Because you ALREADY have access to those clients and the connection speed is faster. I’m not talking about dial-up internet vs. current internet speeds, I’m talking about your ability to connect with the other human right in front of you. Essentially, the lag time to form a trusting relationship with someone is typically shorter in-person.

Don’t believe me? Just this week, my client Nic added $18,000 in annual recurring revenue to his training business by offering a digital service to his in-person clients!!!!!!!!!!

Now let’s talk about why your clients really come to work with you… RESULTS -  they believe you can solve their problem. The medium by which you do so may not matter - in regards to in-person or digital. But, if you simply position your offers as “in-person service” vs. “digital service,” yes, your client will choose their preference, that’s just a natural bias behavior. However, if you create a path by which you will help them achieve the outcome and offer a blend of in-person and digital offerings or a straight digital offer, the client will buy your recommendation because you’ve showed them how this gets them the results they desire.

You might be asking, “how do you know this?” 

This exact model was how my clinic operated for years. 

Clients who originally sought me out to work with me in person (because that’s what they believed the PT experience to be) could have three outcomes after an assessment with me:

1. A hybrid approach right off the bat. Meaning we started working together both in-person AND they were on a digital service offering.
2. An in-person approach that transitioned to a digital offering when appropriate - maybe at the halfway point of the journey after a couple of weeks together.
3. Or, straight to a digital offer because seeing them in person to help manage their issue was actually unnecessary. 

I call this the Retention Programming Model, and it sets coaches and rehab professionals up for success by appropriately framing the entire client journey from problem to return to activity! 

Clients want results, and it’s our job to give them to them. 

Now, I need you to challenge yourself… if a client isn’t opting into a service that you offer, is it because of the service or because of how you pitch and position the service in the client journey?

You want to finally build a business that doesn’t rely on in-person sessions and gives you the freedom to travel, take vacations, and generate recurring revenue, all while getting superior client outcomes… The Retention Programming Model makes that dream a reality.