I’ve got a back-to-school cold, a Lego Lamborghini on my desk, and apparently a “super-duper high-pressure get to know you call” to explain. So let’s do this. If you’ve ever booked a discovery call with a marketing agency and walked away feeling like you needed a shower, this one’s for you. Here’s exactly what happens when you get on a Zoom with our team, why we do it the way we do, and honestly, why it’s just a smarter way to run a business.
The Gym Marketing Agency Sales Call Nobody Warned You About
Most gym marketing agency sales calls go like this: you show up, they ask two questions, then spend 45 minutes pitching you a package with a price that’s only good until midnight tonight. There’s a countdown timer somewhere. Someone says “limited spots,” fast action discount that expires tonight, or “would you like to see if you qualify for financing?” You feel the walls closing in. Sound familiar?
We do the opposite, and not because we’re trying to be cute about it. The reason is embarrassingly practical: we make our money on recurring revenue, just like you do. If we sign up the wrong person, they cancel, they’re miserable, and our team has to spend time cleaning up a mess that never should’ve existed. We’ve got enough gray hairs already (I’m speaking for myself here, mostly) to know that a bad client costs us way more than a lost sale.
So yes, there’s a free trial offer on the table right now. No, it does not expire at the end of the call. Kyle literally jokes about the expiring discount on every call and then goes, “Nah, I’m just f*cking with you.” That’s about as high-pressure as it gets around here.
What We Do Before the Call Even Starts
Before you and Kyle or I ever hop on Zoom, we’ve already done homework on you. Your ads, your website, your SEO, your Google Business Profile, what you’re posting, what you’re not posting. We want to know whether there’s actually room for improvement before we waste your time or ours. This isn’t us fishing for how much we can charge you. It’s us figuring out whether we can genuinely move the needle for your business, because if we can’t, we’re going to tell you that on the call (we only make an offer to 30-40% of the gym owners we talk to… really).
The Actual Structure of a Gym Marketing Agency Sales Call with Us
We start at 30,000 feet. How long have you been in business? What does the team look like? Where are people finding out about you right now? We want a pulse on the business before we get into anything tactical. Then we go granular on the data, and this is where it gets real.
Here’s what we’re looking at:
- Lead volume and where they’re coming from
- What percentage of leads are booking, showing up, and buying
- What you’re collecting on the front end
- Your churn rate (this one matters more than almost anything else)
- Average and lifetime client value
- Where you’re trying to take your gym
Once we’ve got those numbers, we can actually project what growth looks like for your specific business, not guarantee it, because we don’t do that, but give you a real picture. Had a call recently with a gym owner churning ten to twelve percent monthly. That’s a situation where you can have eighteen people walk in the front door and twenty walk out the back. Pouring money into acquisition before fixing retention would’ve been genuinely irresponsible advice, so we said that out loud instead of just taking the money. PS: can we help you with keeping members longer? Absolutely – we’ve got weekly coaching calls with some of the top gym owners in the industry that’ll share exactly what they do to turn members into raving fan referral engines that stay (and pay) for what feels like forever… but we’re not gonna BS you by saying “install this one retention system and your churn goes to 2% tomorrow”… because it won’t.
If you want a broader look at what the data actually tells us about what works across the gyms we’ve worked with, our breakdown of gym marketing tactics ranked across 350+ gyms is worth a read before your call.
When We Won’t Make You an Offer
This part surprises people. There are real scenarios where we get to the end of a call and just… don’t pitch anything. Here’s what those look like.
Kyle had a call last week with a guy whose data was genuinely strong. He was running his own ads, net positive twelve members a month, and he was enjoying the ads work. Kyle’s response was essentially: go chase the thing, man. Come back when it stops being fun or when you’ve got bigger goals to hit. That’s it. No pitch.
I had one years ago with a guy training people out of his basement, maybe eight clients total. It would’ve been irresponsible of me to pitch him, so I didn’t. Coached him on referrals for an hour. He texted me weeks later saying he’d added a bunch of revenue off what we talked about. I told him to wire me money (lol). Jokes aside, maybe he’ll open up a gym one day and be a client, maybe he won’t, but he grew based on a free call with us and dammit that helps me sleep pretty well at night.
The two things Kyle is always trying to suss out on a call are capacity and budget. Do you actually have the time and energy to work a real leads process right now? Is this a financially responsible decision for your business today? If the answer to either of those is no, we’ll say so, give you some homework you can act on right now, and tell you to come back when the timing makes sense. No guilt trip, no “don’t you love your family,” no crazy objection overcomes about “limiting beliefs” or “heavy is the head that wears the crown,” none of that.
Why We’re Coach-First on a Sales Call (and Why That’s Selfish, Not Saintly)
Look, I want to be honest about this because it sounds too good to be true and I hate when things sound too good to be true. The reason we coach first on our sales calls is not purely altruistic. Our number one KPI in this business, from day one, has been churn – the percentage of our clients cancel in a given month. One of the best places to solve for churn is in your sales process. If you sign up people who aren’t a fit, they cancel, they don’t get results, and they say bad things. We’ve watched dozens of people in this industry have a shooting-star moment, make a bunch of money fast off gyms, and then disappear because they were great at selling and terrible at delivering.
We don’t want that. So us being coach-first is genuinely selfish. It just happens to also be good for you.
The other selfish reason: gym owners who get on a call with us, don’t sign up, and still walk away saying “that was the most useful call I’ve ever had with a marketing company” tend to come back later, or send someone our way. Dozens of times over. Probably more, if we’re being honest. Being good people is absolutely a viable business strategy. It also happens to feel better, and we like that.
This is the same philosophy we coach gym owners on when it comes to their own sales conversations. The sales questions that kill objections before they start work because they’re rooted in curiosity and coaching, not pressure and manipulation.
What About Objections? Do We Use Objection Overcomes?
Here’s the thing, we teach gym owners some genuinely banger objection-handling frameworks (shoutout to our Hero’s Journey sales training, where we had a client basically preach to his entire peer group on a call yesterday after it helped him scale from 10K a month to 50K and open a second location). But when’s the last time Kyle used a scripted objection overcome on a gym owner? Basically never.
If there’s a challenge on our calls, it comes from curiosity. We want more clarity. Sometimes we’ll offer a different frame or an alternative perspective if we genuinely believe someone’s about to make a decision that isn’t in their best interest. But it’s not a technique. We want to work with folks who are excited to work with us, not folks who feel like they “got got” by a fancy objection overcome on a sales call.
Oh, and if someone gets off a call and feels like they were sold something against their better judgment, Kyle’s line is simple: “Let me know, and the money’s coming right back to your account.” We don’t want that relationship. We’ve never wanted that relationship.
No Contracts, No Countdown Timers, No BS
Thirty-day heads up to part ways. We waive that in the first thirty days. No long-term contracts financed up front, no hidden ad accounts we hold hostage, no 24-hour expiring discounts. If you need to talk to your spouse or business partner before you decide, that’s not an objection to overcome. That’s a normal human decision, and we’ll be here when you’re ready.
The goal is to keep you around forever, if it makes sense for your business. And if it doesn’t, we’d rather part as friends and have you send someone our way than lock you into something that makes you resent us by month two.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens on a discovery call with a gym marketing agency?
With most agencies, you’ll get a pitch with a high pressure close at the end. With us, you get a coaching conversation. We review your data before the call, ask about your business at a high level, go deep on the numbers (leads, conversions, churn, lifetime value), and then give you an honest read on whether working together actually makes sense. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that and give you some things to work on in the meantime.
Do you require a long-term contract to work with Gym Member Machine?
No contracts. Thirty-day notice to cancel, and we waive even that in the first thirty days. Our whole model depends on keeping you happy and getting you results, not locking you in and hoping you forget to cancel.
What kind of gym owner is a bad fit for your program?
A few situations where we won’t make an offer: if your organic growth is already strong enough to hit your goals without ads, if you’ve got an ego that’s too big for your britches and we sense you’re gonna be terrible to work with (e.g. “I’ve been stuck at $5k/month for 10 years but I know more than every mentor I’ve ever worked with), or if your budget makes this a financially irresponsible move for your business today. We’ll be straight with you about all of that on the call.
Will you pressure me to sign up at the end of the call?
No. Kyle literally jokes about a high-pressure offer expiring at the end of the call and then tells you he’s kidding. If you need time to think, talk to your partner, or just sleep on it, that’s fine. We’d rather you feel great about the decision than sign up and immediately feel buyer’s remorse.
What data should I have ready before getting on a call with your team?
The more the better, but at minimum: how many leads you’re getting per month and where they’re coming from, your booking and show rates, what you collect on the front end, your current active member count, and your monthly churn rate (how many members are canceling). If you don’t have all of that, don’t stress. We’ll work with what you’ve got and help you figure out what you’re missing.
If you’re curious whether your numbers actually warrant bringing in outside help right now, or whether you’re closer to your goals than you think, come find out. No countdown timer, no credit card required to get on the call, and worst case you walk away with a clearer picture of your business than you had before. Start your free trial or book a call with our team here.