Tues. April 20

15 Min AMRAP:
5 HSPU
5 KB Swings (70/53)
5 Burpees

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I thought this was really good. It's from CrossFit Alexandria. Their sales pitch:

I came into this week with some specific topics that I wanted to address - I hope you don’t get bored.


We opened this gym for one reason - we think that CrossFit is the greatest fitness protocol in the history of mankind. We started doing CrossFit - we saw marked improvements in our own performance - we wanted others to be able to see those same improvements. The fact that we were all in the fitness industry at the time is just a coincidence. There are many examples of normal people leaving their mundane desk jobs, & opening CrossFit affiliates. We would have done the same. We were; however, a part of the physical fitness community already, so this afforded us an ease of transition that we will forever be grateful for. But...we would have done this no matter what.


The ease of our transition notwithstanding, we needed a few things to happen when we opened this affiliate. We first needed to have people find us in order to have clients to train. Second, when they walked in the door we needed to help them understand something as complicated as CrossFit, & we needed them to want to participate. Third & finally, we needed to have them pay us a membership fee for our services. It is not an exorbitant amount of money, but it is more than you would pay at your local Globo gym.


The fact that people pay us to train them is nothing groundbreaking, but people are used to paying for training that involves a big, shiny gym, lots of biceps curls, & a sales pitch involving “guaranteed results” or “tightening your core”. We are obviously neither big nor shiny, & if you see a biceps curl performed here, you are probably watching a “Terry & BJ” video. So there’s our big dilemma - people are used to having training sold to them, how would we sell our training?


I like the answer a question with a question sales technique:


“How long will it take me to lose 10 pounds?”

“How long do you want it to take?”


“How many sessions do you think I should buy?”

“How many sessions do you think you should buy?”


I don’t know if this is actually a technique. Quite frankly, it would annoy the hell out of me. I, in fact, don’t really know any sales techniques. I guess you can imagine that this would make it tough to start a sales oriented business, but somehow we’re still here. Weird.


For those of you who have experienced it first hand, I think you know - our sales pitch sucks. There’s no way to put it nicely. We couldn’t sell our collective way out of a wet, recycled canvas bag. Half the time we don’t have any idea what to say to people when they walk in the door. Someone actually told me one time that not having a sales pitch, was our sales pitch. I guess that would either make us geniuses, or idiots. I think I know which way most of you are leaning on that one. But the thing is...you guys joined - why?


Ok, so we’ve established it’s not our sales pitch - it’s probably not our good looks (ok, maybe Christy’s) - it certainly could be our sparkling clean facility (if by clean you mean there are more hairballs than at one of those crazy cat people homes) - it may be this fine blog/website, but I know you guys don’t read the posts when they’re this long anyway. So what the heck are you doing here?


Most of you were probably instructed to do one thing the first time we talked to you - try a workout. In that “first impression” moment you may have thought that we were a little odd. You probably thought the facility was extremely odd. And you had to think the fact that some of workouts only last two-and-a-half minutes was definitely odd. Yet for some reason, some adventurous streak you have inside made you want to give it a shot.


The rest is history - you either love it or hate it. Funny thing is, when you love it - you really love it. You go from being a normal human, to a full blown cult member in about 2 weeks. You start to plan vacations around CrossFit. You start to check the website 10 times a day, because you’ve got to know what the workout is. You start to try to convert others to your cult. Sometimes they even come & join, & make you feel like a little less of a freak.


We will never have a sales pitch. You will never get a cold call after you visit our facility. We’ll never send out a mass email to all of the people that have sent us an email to express interest. If you cancel your membership, we won’t make a “special deal” with you to try to get you back. We won’t give you a brochure, or try to explain why we’re better than someone else. We will let you walk out of the door without making a “membership commitment”.


We will; however, coach the hell out of you every day. We will try to teach you to be the best mover/athlete/healthy person that you can possibly be. We will try to build a gym full of Firebreathers. We will give you the most possible fitness you could ever dream of getting for your hard earned dollar, & we will enjoy every day of it - we hope you do too.