In a yoga studio, all your staff probably want the same thing – to share their yoga practice with their students. Equally, they probably want to become more profitable by bringing more potential yogis into the class – that way, everybody benefits.
But just because everyone wants the same thing, doesn’t mean that they are all working toward it. So getting everyone on the same page is an important part of your sales strategy. As a Yogapreneur, it’s your job to make sure that your teachers and staff are trained to sell ALL THE TIME!
As the business owner, it’s important for you to be confident that sales conversations are happening in your studio, even when you are away.
How to get your yoga staff to sell
The best opportunity to sell is during a face-to-face conversation with students. Many of these opportunities may be missed if your teachers and staff don’t know how to sell yoga. While your teachers underwent a thorough yoga teacher training, there was likely very little education about how to actually sell yoga.
Training your yoga teachers and staff to sell
Yogis often don’t want to be salesy. Many yoga teachers don’t have sales in their aspirational identity. They more than likely became a yoga teacher to help people. But that’s why it’s important that you explain to them that by selling to the students, they are actually helping them.
Many yoga biz owners are often scared to train their staff to sell as they are scared it will be met with a negative reaction. Another fear is that they don’t know how to train their staff to sell.
But no matter how scared you are, sales are necessary for your yoga business to survive. Cash flow is the breath of the yoga business and sales are how you create cash flow. Ultimately, if you don’t sell, you die!
Answering the why factor
In order to get your yoga staff to sell, they need to know why they are selling. So getting them to understand that your wants and beliefs align is important. The first step is to ask them to answer a few short questions.
- Get everyone to answer: “Why are you here, teaching yoga or working in the studio?” “Out of all the jobs you could have, why did you choose this one?”
- Once everyone has answered the question, bring up the studio’s “why”.
- Speak about your vision and mission statement.
- Affirm: “We are all here for the same reason!” It’s all about the clients.
Tell your team WHAT we are selling
It’s important that your team knows WHAT they are selling. It’s not a membership or a yoga package as they may think. You are selling 3 things:
- Transformation
- Community
- Status
These things can only happen with frequent and consistent practice = goal membership.
KPIs – use numbers to prove your points!
Use key performance indicators to emphasize your point that sales are important. These are some of the numbers you can use to do that – you only need to use one or two from this list:
- How many members? (show trends)
- First visit no return – this one resonates with teachers effectively
- % of first-timers that bought the intro (vs. drop-in)
- Intro to membership retention (1st to 3rd month if straight to membership)
- Average attendance per month per student
- Average months on membership
- Comparison of average visits between packages
Show your staff how it all connects
Your yoga teachers and staff need to understand the bigger picture and how their “why” connects with sales because sales are crucial to keeping the cogs of the business turning. Without sales, your teachers won’t be able to help anybody. When they grasp this concept, they will be more motivated to sell than ever before.
Tactics to sell yoga
Now that your yoga teachers and staff are sold on the idea of selling, it’s time to give them some practical tips to help them sell more effectively. There is a one-liner that we teach Yogarepneurs that converts better than many other tactics combined. Are you ready to hear it?
“What most people do is…”
The reason this is so effective is that people trust what the crowd does. Their reasoning is, if most people do it, it must be the best option. So you can teach your yoga teachers and staff to upsell to new clients with something like “what most people do is opt for the all-inclusive membership as you’ll get the most out of your practice with us.”
The next thing you can teach your yoga staff is to affirm the client’s “why” factor. Do this by first asking them one of the following questions:
- What brought you to yoga?
- What are you trying to get out of your yoga practice?
- What’s your yoga goal?
You can then affirm them with “you are in the right place!” and then repeat their problem statement. Your team can then recommend that the client practices at least two times a week to achieve their goals, and then they can suggest a membership or package.
You can then act out a couple of role-playing scenarios in which your staff needs to sell to you effectively. When they go wrong, correct them so that they can learn. They can then go home and work on their scripts until they come up with the one that is the most effective.
Yoga sales training plan:
So how exactly should you go about training your yoga staff? Here is our 4 step sales training plan:
- The base training
- The concepts
- One run of role-playing
- Homework to work on scripts
- Group role-play training
- Individual role-play training
- Check-in and feedback
Selling yoga without being salesy
To wrap up, the most important thing your staff needs to be taught is WHY they need to sell. The overall profitability of the business is not the main goal (although it is one of them), but impacting people’s lives and making a difference requires students to show up.
After a killer training session, your teachers and staff will be ready to SELL like there’s no tomorrow!
Need a little help getting defining your why and getting your team on board with selling? We’re here to help!
Book your free strategy session now so you can learn key sales strategies and get your team selling yoga like a boss in no time!
