Nobody In Fitness Has Heard Of A CRM

I’m convinced that nobody in the fitness industry knows what CRM means.

Not because people haven’t heard of the phrase CRM

But when you hear how people speak about it, vs what it actually stands for

You’d assume they have no idea.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management

It’s the tools, strategies and processes a business uses to manage interactions with current and potential customers.

I actually like to extend the idea mentally to anyone in your network, not just anyone who could be a customer.

With this in mind, it’s worth asking whether you have a process for capturing conversations, keeping track of what people are working on

And yes, with how busy life is - getting reminders to check-in with people in your network.

I bet there’s people you have meant to message over the last three months?

Not to sell them anything - Just because you thought of them.

Because the nature of being a coach means you want to help - you want to be the person who sends someone something they might be interested in reading, you want to make intros, you want to check in when someone’s going through a rough patch.

Nobody sets out to be the coach who only gets in touch when they want something.

But that’s who a lot of us end up being.

Life is busy and we forget.

You can keep a handful of people in your head, the number will fluctuate based on what you personally have going on.

Mentors who talk about CRMs will tell you it’s about who sits in your pipeline - leads, calls booked, sales, clients, churn.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this - it’s incredibly helpful. I just think it misses a huge chunk of what running a business is.

It’s a short-term approach to relationship management.

The useful version tracks the gap:

• Who you haven’t spoken to in a while
• What you could do for them right now - a message, an introduction, something you read that made you think of them

The R in CRM is relationship

And if you have a system for nurturing your network, and being useful over time?

I’d bet that’s worth a lot more than a system that just tells you who is close to buying this month.