Free Trials Are Hurting Your Gym. Here's What to Do Instead.

Many gym owners still rely on free trial classes to attract new members, but do samples actually help your fitness business? The data says "no."

In this episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Chris Cooper explains why free trials are ineffective, how they hurt long-term retention and what to replace them with.

Instead of creating a race to the bottom by commoditizing coaching, gym owners can improve close rates by using the Prescriptive Model, starting with a No Sweat Intro—a consultation that helps potential members understand how the gym will help them get real results quickly.

Chris walks you through the steps of the Prescriptive Model and shares data comparing retention rates produced by free trials and No Sweat Intros. (Spoiler: Consultations generate length of engagement that's three times longer!)

It’s time to ditch free trials and start using a system that actually works—tune in to learn how.

Want to learn more about the Prescriptive Model? Click the link below. 

Links

The Prescriptive Model

Gym Owners United

Book a Call  

01:16 - The history of free trials

05:12 - The close rate of free trials

11:02 - The commodity effect

13:40 - What to do instead

19:19 - Free trials are bad for clients

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Free trial classes are easy to run, and that's why many franchises and CrossFit HQ recommend them. But that ease of operation comes at a cost. They're not very effective. They don't work very well Today. I'm gonna tell you why free trials don't really work and what to do instead. I'm Chris Cooper. This is Run a Profitable Gym. I'm the founder of Two Brain Business. We work with a thousand micro gyms at a time worldwide. We have an alumni network of about another 1500 gyms close to 3000 total now. And we have a data set of about 15,000 gyms that we publish every year for free. We don't recommend free trials to gyms that go into our mentorship program, but of course, if you wanna talk more about this or ask us more questions after listening to this podcast, you can join our free group. It's www.gymownersunited.com where we have these kind of conversations every day. There's 10,000 other gyms in that group right now. We've filtered out the bad actors and the people trying to sell you garbage. And we just have honest conversations about this stuff. So today I'm gonna lay out the case for not doing free trials. I'm gonna tell you exactly what to do instead and why free trials are not effective. And then if you want to talk more, just go to gym owners united.com and we can continue the conversation there. Let's start with the history of free trials. Where the myth of free trials comes from. Years ago in the karate business, which was probably the fastest growing , locally owned fitness movement outside of Jazzer size in North America, the free trial was set up so that kids could invite their best buddies or their brothers and sisters. And Karate was really growing fastest with kids. And in the early to mid eighties, movies like the Karate Kid were pumping all kinds of kids into the class. And the best way to onboard these kids was not one-on-one because they were coming in so quickly that you had to onboard a bunch of them at once. And so what you would do is you would take 20 kids, 30 kids in a free trial class, you'd throw 'em some punches and kicks and stuff, and they'd feel like Ralph Macchio and the Karate Kid, and they would say, mom , mom , mom , can I sign up? And that's basically how the process worked. There were so many people coming through the funnel that all you had to do was say, okay, try it. If you don't like it, don't sign up. And that was good enough. Now this movement actually permeated CrossFit culture around 2006 when a business consultant named John Birch, who was coming from the martial arts field, presented this as the way to onboard people to CrossFit affiliates at the CrossFit affiliate gathering. The problem was that there was no data that this was working anywhere in CrossFit or in fitness training or in one-on-one coaching, or even in group coaching in the fitness industry. But it was still presented as the solution. And ever since a lot of CrossFit affiliates have jumped on that bandwagon, even promoting it as the answer without trying anything else, looking at any data or comparing it to anything. And other franchises have jumped on that bus too. Orange Theory, F 45, fit Body Bootcamp, they all promote a free trial. Here's why we think this isn't the best way to approach a client in a coaching business. Free trials work if you have kind of unlimited or infinite lead flow. If you're in a brand new market that's never seen a CrossFit gym or a FitBody Bootcamp or even a karate uh , place before, you're gonna have a lot of leads. These leads are called early adopters. They are the curious, they want to try the new things. They want the novelty. They wanna say to their friends, I was the first one to try that. They wanna bring their friends in, you gotta try this new thing, right? You know them. I was one with CrossFit for sure. I was curious. I wasn't the first in my town to try it, but I wanted to be the first. And I wanted to tell people that I was the first. And then I wanted to own the first CrossFit gym. And when we opened up that CrossFit gym, we said, free trial class. And guess what? Lots of people came in the door and a few of those people signed up. And so we said Free trials are a success because we signed up a couple of people. But what we weren't doing was comparing that success to any other options. It was the only thing that we tried. We weren't looking at the nine people who didn't sign up. We were looking at the one who dead out of every 10. And we were saying this is a success. And it was successful until it wasn't. When those early adopters stopped showing up, we said, well, maybe we need more free trials. And fewer people would show up. And suddenly we'd have this community workout on Saturday where the same five people would come in and take CrossFit for free. And we said, finally, there's gotta be a better way. And then we looked at our personal training gym that had a consultative process where we closed nine out of 10 instead of one out 10. And we said, what if we tried that here? And then we started looking around the industry to say, is it just us or is it everybody? And what we found and what we publish in our reports is that free trials work very rarely for a very short period for gyms that are the first to market. Everybody else should be doing a consultative process. Before I describe that consultative process to you, and I'm gonna give it to you step by step , I wanna share some actual numbers with you to show you, I'm not guessing, I'm not mad at the people who promote the free trials. I'm just saying that they're making that recommendation without context that you get from studying thousands of gyms around the world. So first, let's talk about close rate. The point of offering a free trial is to sign people up for your ongoing service. That's it. You're not doing a community service. You're not of the belief that giving people one workout will change their lives. That's not it, right? And when you tried CrossFit, when you tried FitBody Bootcamp, you were an early adopter, you fell in love with it and you said, this is for me. I'm doing it forever, right? That was good enough for you. But that's not good enough for most people. Most people are not like you. They're not early adopters. They're not like, try it once. It made me throw up. That's it. I'm, this is all I wanna do for the rest of my life. That was me. That was maybe you, but it's not. Most of your clients, the actual efficacy of free trials is less than 30%. That means that in the gyms that actually track their data, which is you know, outside of two brain , that's a very low percentage, but the gyms that actually track it, and these might be guessing too, but the gyms that actually track it say that their close rate is below 30%. What that means is that 10 people came in, did a free trial, and three signed up, seven did not. To me, that's not successful. And most gyms don't measure it. So when they say that a free trial is working, they're guessing, Hey, I did a free trial and one person joined. Right? That's one in 10, that's nine people who tried your service without context, without a conversation, without, is this actually gonna help me? And they left. And those people are not coming back, right? They have tried CrossFit, they have tried FitBody Bootcamp, they have tried kickboxing. They are not coming back because they've made their decision. They haven't had you help them put the service in context. They haven't had you help them explain how that's gonna help with their goals. They haven't even talked about their goals. It's up to them. The uneducated, uninformed, non exerciser to make a determination about whether your service is gonna help them lose weight, get in shape. And in that free trial, they're more likely to say, I can't do this, and never come back than they are to say, yep , this made me throw up. Perfect. Sign me up, take my money. So the first thing is that the close rate on a free trial, even in gyms doing a lot of free trials, the close rate is less than 30%. There's no consultative process. The client shows up, they try the workout , they walk over the desk and say, here's my credit card, take my money. That actual close rate is below 30%. Now, if you are doing free trials right now and you're skeptical about all the stuff I'm saying good, like skepticism is the cornerstone of science. We do science. I want you to be skeptical. Look for proof, look for numbers. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to track your free trials for the next 90 days, just one quarter. That's all you gotta give me. Track your close rate. Out of all the people who come for free trials, how many of them actually sign up? That's the first metric that you've gotta track. If you wanna be scientific, okay? If you wanna make a logical argument for closing free trials, start by tracking your numbers. The second thing, the second number that you want to track is length of engagement. For the people who do sign up for free trials, how long do they stay? Well, industry across the data, the entire industry think the data across the industry shows that the average length of engagement is about 7.8 months. The people who come in through a free trial, who sign up without context, they just like it. They generally stay less than eight months. Why is that? Well, because they can't differentiate between your coaching and somebody else's. So they might come in and , and they're , they're at your Fit Body bootcamp, they do a free trial. Hey, this was fun. Two of my friends want to join with me, let's sign up. And then seven or eight months down the road, they're looking for something different. And this is because they haven't had a conversation with their coach about what's best for them. Nobody has asked what their goals are. It's just they're doing this thing and now they're gonna do something else, right? And actually that's fine for a lot of people. Like if , if that novelty is what keeps them engaged in fitness, fine, but that's not gonna help your gym. If people are leaving every eight months, that means that your churn rate is well over 12%, which means that every year you're turning over like more than half of your clients, right? It's crazy. So the people conversely who do a no sweat intro or do a consultative process in two brand , we measure this, those gyms keep people for 23 months. So let's compare every eight months your client leaves and you have to get a new one versus every 23 months, almost three times as long. That's how long a client sticks around. Would you rather keep a client for eight months or 23 months? Well, I'd rather keep a client for 23 months. 'cause in eight months I can't really change their life, especially if they're quitting my gym to do something else in 23 months, I sure can. And that's the difference between people who come in, do a free trial and sign up, and people who do a no sweat intro and sign up is they stay eight months versus 23 months. Massive difference. What does this mean? It means that free trials might have a low barrier to entry, but they also have a very low barrier to exit. And I , I have, I take issue with the low barrier to entry claim too. Like there are other business coaches out there who say, free trials are great, low barrier to entry. That's not necessarily true. I think it's a lower barrier to entry for somebody who's unsure about fitness to come in and sit with me privately in an office with a door that closes and talk about their goals candidly and openly in secret than it is for somebody to work up the courage to show up and try this hard exercise that's making other people throw up and get injured. You know, like that seems like the high barrier, the misperception barrier is much higher than the consultative barrier. So free trials might seem like a low barrier to entry, but they're actually higher. They're also a low barrier to exit. They don't keep people around as long and their close rate is poor. Okay? They also introduce something that's called the commodity effect. And this is really closely tied in with people who come and try things and then move on to the next thing. The problem is that free trials don't differentiate your coaching. You might think that they do. You might think that somebody comes in, they try your F 45 workout. Cool, yeah, the coaches were really nice, the workout was nice, and then eight months later they're gone looking for CrossFit. And that CrossFit coach is like, well , my coaching's way better. That's what's gonna differentiate the two services, but the client really doesn't even know how to tell what coaching is good. And so what you're doing is you're commodifying your service, which means that the client thinks like these two things Fit Body Bootcamp or F 45 and CrossFit or Orangetheory, they're 99% the same different people in the groups for sure, maybe a nicer bathroom, but mostly they're the same. So why is there a price difference? That's what commoditization means, is that if a consumer, a buyer can't tell the difference between two things, the lowest price wins. And so you're, if you're commoditizing things by doing free trials , uh, free month, free week, free, free class, what you're actually doing is driving its value down in the eyes of the consumer. And when a gym comes into your market, that prices itself lower, everybody's prices go down to match them because the client can't tell the difference. You want proof? Don't believe me. Be skeptical, but look at the pricing in your town. If you're a CrossFit gym, look at the pricing 10 years ago versus now. Has it gone up, down or stayed the same? If it hasn't gone up, that means the perception of value from CrossFit is not going up in your town. It probably started out too low and in most places it's gone down. The first gym charged 135 bucks a month for unlimited, they didn't know what to charge. The next gym charged 1 29. Oh smart, right? If you're commodity pricing, you want to go down and the gym after that charge one 19 and hey, it's a small step to 99 bucks a month. Unlimited, right? Tell me, I'm lying, right? You've probably seen this in your gym. And the same thing are starting to happen with the franchises. When most Orange series open , they were charging two 20 to two 50 a month. That's not the case anymore. Many are at 180, 180 5. I mean nine round has seen the exact same thing. It , it's not unique to CrossFit, but what happens when you're doing these free trials is you increase this commoditization effect. The consumer can't tell the difference between you and somebody else. They're gonna pick the lowest price one with one-on-one consultative process, a no sweat intro. That doesn't happen because you start building the relationship and building trust and that relationship becomes more valuable the longer a client stays in it. Okay ? I'm gonna talk about how that happens in a moment. Alright? Here's what to do instead. We call this the prescriptive model. You wanna start with a consultative process. The first thing that happens when you meet a new client is a conversation about what are your goals? Where are you starting from? And how is my service gonna help you get from where you're starting from to where you want to go. Now whether even if you're just selling group coaching, you need to put this context in place for the client so that they know how your program is gonna help them . If not, in eight months, they're gonna go look for something else. So that's the first thing. Walk through it step by step . Then you wanna review their goals and their progress every 90 days, even every six months. And the reason that you're doing this is you are keeping the client in the frame. They are not coming to your gym to do CrossFit. They're not coming to your gym to do Pilates. They're coming to your gym with a clear goal. And if they lose sight of how is CrossFit helping me get to my goal? How is Pilates actually helping me lose weight? They're gone. They're gonna go try something else. They'll, they'll default to novelty. And so what you need to do is have that conversation with them, okay , here's your progress so far. Congratulations. We're so proud of you. Are you completely happy with your progress? If they say they wish the progress was faster, you change the prescription, right? Well, if I were in your shoes and I wanted to get there faster, I would do this. I would add a nutrition plan, I would do one-on-one or what I would come more often. Whatever, right? If they say , uh, I it's not working, that's your chance to turn things around. If they say like, I don't know, I might try something else, that's your chance to save them as a client by offering them a different option that's gonna work better for them. What you're doing here is you're citing in your rifle, like the first program that you write, anybody, the first prescription a physician makes is not going to be perfect. They need to dial that in over time. And every time you update that prescription, you tweak it, you change it, you're citing in the rifle to get better and better and better results with the clients, but you're also introducing sunk costs in the mind of the client. So now it costs them something to go and start from scratch with somebody new. If you're not embedding that process, showing them how their program is changing, updating things with their goals and their measurements, there's no sunk costs , right? It costs 'em nothing to go to another gym. We think they're best buddies with us. We think we've got this relationship and they're gonna stick around for that. They're not, they have no sunk costs at our gym , no emotional investment. They're gonna go try something else. They're gonna pursue novelty, okay ? The client who invest in their journey stick around longer and they invest in their journey. If you are invested in their journey and you show them that by tracking their progress and updating their prescription as necessary, okay, prescriptive models and one-on-one client relationships are the cure to commoditization. You can have a one-on-one relationship with a client, even if they only come to your group classes by implementing the prescriptive model, meeting with them, updating their goals, taking their measurements, and telling them, here's what's best for you. Now even if the prescription never changes, what's best for you is to keep coming to class. That reassurance introduces more sunk costs and build your relationship with the client. If you don't talk to them outside of coming to class and you're counting on your question of the day about the kind of car they drove in high school to build a relationship, I mean, that's not even the, the thickness of a paper deep. No client is going to b make their buying or continuation decision based on that. Here's, we've shared some numbers, right? The , the close rate on no sweat intro consultative process is very close to 80%. The close rate on um, a free trial is under 30%. I think that's optimistic. The retention rate on a client that comes in through a no sweat intro is 23 months. The retention rate on a client who comes in through a free trial is 7.8 months. Okay ? Three times as long. If they do a consultative process, these numbers alone should tell you why this is not the best for your business. If you think that it's working because a couple of people are signing up, you really need to ask yourself like, is this best for my business or is it the only thing that I've tried? And is it best for my clients? The free trial was or seemed effective in two 2008 because there were so many leads coming in of early adopters that if you ran a free trial class of ten three were gonna sign up. No matter what you did, like you , you couldn't blow it. Now that number is more like one, and unfortunately, it's also worse for the clients because the market has evolved. The early adopters, they loved the trying new things. They weren't really looking for coaching, they wanted to use your equipment, right? Those are gone now except in places like Eastern Europe where CrossFit, F 45, high intensity interval training is still brand new. Unfortunately, these are also very price conscious places. So they need to get a lot of clients and maintain a lot of clients to pay their bills. 'cause the clients aren't paying very much. And unfortunately what's going to happen in places like France, it's already happening. Spain, Greece, Italy, is that they're gonna have the same problems that happened in Western Europe two to three years ago that happened in the eastern North America five years ago that happened, you know, on the west coast of North America seven years ago. It's that these clients churn out really quick and suddenly you're like, oh , I don't have enough clients to pay my rent. I've gotta ramp up my marketing. And soon you spend all your time marketing and you know, it's this downward cycle, right? In places where your service is new, the free trial seems to work because so many early adopters are pouring in. They're gonna catch a few of them in the net, but it's not gonna work for long. And, and even in Eastern Europe, this model will soon stop working just as it did in the US and Western Europe. But worst of all is that free trials are also bad for clients. Now imagine this scenario. An early adopter like you, you're already fit. You're not scared of trying new things. You're probably not even scared of taking off your shirt in public. That is not the average client anymore. Imagine a new client that builds up the courage to go and try a gym. It's January, she's tired of feeling sluggish, tired, like her clothes don't fit anymore. She doesn't like the way her husband's looking at her , whatever. She finally builds up the courage to try going to a gym. Her only experience with gyms were back in the ninth grade when they played dodgeball every day and she got picked on because she was slow. She has never had a good experience with a gym in her life. Okay? Your offer is a free trial. She shows up for a free trial, she doesn't know what to do. It looks like everybody around her is fitter, smarter, they fit their workout clothes better and she feels dumb. Maybe even after three minutes she feels sick, right? I can't do this anymore. CrossFit is not for me. Once she has said that in her brain, once she is not coming back, how do I know? Because this happened to me back in 2009, back when free trials were still quote unquote working. Somebody came in , they lasted five minutes, they sat on the bench. We were very encouraging, got her a drink of water, you know, helped her with her blood sugar, gave her a banana. You can do it, you got it. But meanwhile, she's watching the next 60 minutes of people proving that she can't do it, that she doesn't fit in. And she said, you know what? This isn't for me. And she never came back. Now I remember her name and face, but there were really probably a dozen of these before it hit me like, I am not helping people here. And I never saw her again. This particular client, I can picture her, hopefully she wasn't turned off gyms forever, but there's a chance that that experience did turn her off gyms in fitness forever. And she's in worse shape now than she was back then. And again, I'm not sharing this 'cause I'm proud of it, I'm sharing it because that was really painful for me. That was a rough epiphany. That was me stubbing my toe on the truth. And I don't want you to have to learn from the same mistake. You can learn from mine instead. So instead of having somebody change their life by having a caring, private sit down conversation where we talk about their goals, candidly, a free trial can confirm their worst fears about joining a gym. And this is for the bros. This is for the cool kids, the people that I'd never fit in with in high school. Do you really wanna take that risk? So in closing, free trials don't work. They might be the only thing that you've ever tried. And so it might seem like they're working, but that's because you haven't tried anything else. Free trials don't convert well. They lead to lower retention and they don't differentiate your coaching. In fact, they commoditize your coaching and drive the price down. The prescriptive model works better for your business and your clients. If you want to build a sustainable gym, ditch the free trials and focus on building real client relationships, one-on-one with a no sweat intro, a Gore review, and consistently updating their prescription. I'm Chris Cooper. This has run a profitable gym and we publish this every week to help you. We don't publish this to start arguments with other business coaches who sometimes build their business on telling people to do the opposite of what we say. What we like to do is science. And that means tracking data, looking at metrics and publishing what actually works. And so you know, if you wanna do the right thing for your gym long term , I strongly recommend that you move away from free trials and adopt a consultative process. A mentor can help. You can go to two brain business.com and book a free call with my team to see if mentorship is right for you right now. Thank you, coach, for your service.