By: Jim Thomas

In many clubs we go into they have everything they need to be successful.  By simply changing the attitude, the process and fundamentals, things can start to change their sales volume right away.

Here are some things to consider:

Telephone Inquiries and Log Sheet.  Be sure every inquiry is logged in.  First, this will tell you exactly what kind of phone response you are getting.  Don’t leave this to guesswork.  Second, monitor the salespersons effectiveness on setting the appointments and show percentages. We find that clubs are getting more phone response that they realize.  This one step alone will improve your performance.

Always, always agree.  You want to eliminate such words as no, not, never, can’t, won’t, don’t from your vocabulary. It’s nearly impossible to get agreement when you have disagreement and so many salespeople sell from a standpoint of disagreement. This doesn’t commit you to anything; it simply means you have the same opinion.  Mary, I understand, I have said the same thing myself from time to time, now, let’s get you started.  Be agreeable at all levels of communications, watch the difference it makes.

Show membership options to every prospect.  Regardless of circumstances, be sure and present membership options to every prospect that enters your club.  If you start to prejudge, you’ll lose sales.  A good rule to follow is to treat all prospects like buyers.

Give the prospect what they came in for.  We see this one a lot.  The club offers a free week trial or a paid trial through Groupon or something similar.  The key here is to give the prospect what they came in for right when they come in.  Don’t give it to them AFTER they decide they don’t want to join.  This will put the prospect at ease and simplify the sales process.

The Second Sale.  This will be one of the easiest sales you will ever make.  Once the new member has joined, be sure you are offering such things as personal training, apparel, nutrition, etc.  Most sales people never do this. Additional purchases will also help solidify the membership sale.

Volunteer to handle all complaints.  Successfully handling a member complaint is the highest level of service you can provide and great opportunity to make another sale.  Upgrades, add ons, personal training or whatever you club has to offer.  There are sales to be made every day from this valuable source.

Now, go close a sale!

Jim Thomas is the founder and president of Fitness Management USA Inc., a management consulting and turnaround firm specializing in the fitness and health club industry. With more than 25 years of experience owning, operating and managing clubs of all sizes, Thomas lectures and delivers seminars and workshops across the country on the practical skills required to successfully build teamwork and market fitness programs and products. Learn more here: Jim Thomas On Demand

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For gym managers, seasons such as summer create the problems of loss of member involvement. Members vacation, weaken in New Year resolve, spending time with kids, favor outdoor athletics, and enjoy increased events. Seasonal diversions also disrupt healthy habits best maintained by continual practice. Good reasons for missing workouts easily lapse into weak excuses for skipping workouts.

If you understand members’ reasons for seasonal absenteeism, you can develop a plan for strength-training your club in preparation for it. The 4 P’s of Marketing has weathered many variables in time, economy, and product. It is a worthy outline for strategizing strengthening your club against unhealthy seasons.

Price

How can I maintain stability in cost, member attendance, and, therefore, profit, despite the instability of season?

Even if actual purchasing and maintenance cost, from fitness drink to fitness trainer, are stable, slow season costs aren’t. If it isn’t moving, you are losing.

Instead of waiting for products and services to expire, retire, or stale, adapt them to the season. Offer discounts on or samples of unused products and services, or, better yet, create from them something intriguingly new. One, your members will appreciate added value in overall gym experience. Two, you will bolster profit with product movement and attendance increase.

Product

How can I package my services so gym members continue to see their benefit during this season?

Members of even the most innovative and diverse clubs grow weary of diet and exercise routine. Captivating beach-side vacations, lawn concerts, and backyard grilling relieve members craving excuse. Passage of time and struggle with obstacle wear down member resolve.

Renew and repackage your services to captivate attention and encourage persistence of members in a seasonal slide. Mix up members’ personal training with new, creative ways that accomplish the same fitness goals and result in trainer and member laughing together. If you have space, use club management software to help you organize classes for members’ kids so parents can have both a break and time for the gym.

Promotion

How can I turn to my gym’s advantages to capture member attention?

Lots of summer activity means lots of word-of-mouth in person and through social media. Apps on ever-present mobile devices also alert members to happenings about town.

Use your club management software and app to alert members to the intriguing new happenings at their very own gym. Manage a rewards program alongside your club management software. A gym-branded app and rewards program alerts motivate member frequency. Also focus social media posts on fun fitness tips and summer interest know-how.

Place

How can I place my product so it goes with instead of against the flow of season?

The gym is one location with unchanging equipment and a routine schedule. Your members are sunning on the beach, grilling in their backyard, jamming to a concert by the river, and visiting friends.

Take your services to your members. Organize a hike or classes under park trees or rink disco-lighting. Have a few classes members can invite the friends they are usually with elsewhere. Use club management software to track guests to remind them of their fun experience…

And to strengthen gym membership!

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It sounds simple, doesn’t it? On the flip side, what happens when you don’t ask a guest to join your club? The short version is that you don’t get the sale. The longer version is that the potential member doesn’t join, joins another club, or continues putting off his or her decision. In any of these cases you have dropped the ball in your role as a health club salesperson.

One of the most interesting sales questions for health club owners, managers, and salespeople is simply “Why do owners, managers and salespeople spend such a great deal of time, effort, energy and commitment to get in front of a prospect — only to let the opportunity to sell a membership sail on by?”

Maybe you’re thinking that the cause of losing a sale is a sense of fear driven by a desire not to offend – or to avoid being offended yourself when your guest says “No.” But that’s not quite correct. Or maybe the sale slipping away is due to the inability to establish benefit and value in the prospect’s mind, not to mention the salesperson never really knowing when or even how to ask someone to join the club. That’s not really the reason either.

It’s also easy to blame poor marketing, pricing, the club, the boss, the competition or anything else. Generally speaking, though, the sales problem is usually traced back to the salesperson. Let’s look at some of the qualities, or lack of qualities, that cause this:

• A lack of selling benefits and results on the part of the salesperson – selling on price and facility will rarely work
• A lack of boldness (“decent” boldness, mind you) on the part of the salesperson
• A lack of confidence or low self-esteem on the part of the salesperson
• A lack of personal accountability
• A lack of true belief in the club on the part of the salesperson
• A lack of a proven sales system that leads to the sale
• Letting the guest convince you they’re coming back

That being said, how do you fix the problem? If it is to be, it’s up to me! Here are some strategies to help you begin closing membership sales today:

• Understand and stay focused what your real job is. It’s making sales. Period.
• Learn how to use feedback questions (“How does this look?”) to be sure you’re on target as you move through your tour.
• Learn how to listen and observe better. Listen to what your guest has to say.
• Don’t just wait for your turn to talk. Be sensitive to body language.
• Take notes on the tour. It tells your guest they are important, plus you can use theinformation later in closing the sale. Use an actual guest profile or needs analysis form. Be sure to find out the REAL reason the guest is in your club.
• Learn how to anticipate the guests’ and address them on the tour, before they even come up.
• Develop the art of value-added selling so you can show your club in a way that makes it irresistible.
• Learn, apply and become comfortable with several different ways to ask for a sale and use them consistently. Statistics show that more sales are made after the fifth attempt than any other time.
• Believe in yourself, your sales process, and club so much that you badly want others to become a part of it – and ask them to do so, with enthusiasm and decent boldness.

Are you ready? Go close a sale today!

www.fmconsulting.net
Jim Thomas

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Fortunately, he had some good cash reserves.  From our conversation and initial evaluation of the gym, it was clear the gym could be saved.  The cash reserves would give us enough time to fix the business.
I explained the drastic action that we would need to take in order to save his gym business.  It was too much, too quick and too much heartache for him.  (Significant layoffs of club staff were going to be required.)
He decided not to retain our services.  He looked for a miracle and hoped everything would work out in the end.

Unfortunately, he was wrong.
Approximately 4 months later, the gym owner called me again and he was very down as he spoke on the phone.  Membership sales had continued to decline (which caused other sales to decline), long term members and key staff had left the club and he was now almost out of cash.  He was literally down to his last $1,000 with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

His gym chances for survival were gone.  Within a week of his last call, he closed his business.  Even worse, his home backed-up the personal guarantee on his business loan.
The saddest part of this story is the gym owner sent me an email a few weeks later.  He knew that he could have avoided all of this if he had acted sooner…back when we first spoke.  By failing to act quickly, he had lost his gym, his livelihood and his home.
Do not become paralyzed and fall in the trap of hoping for a miracle.  You need to take immediate action to get a handle on your existing circumstances and get your business turned around.

Are You a Candidate for a Gym Turnaround?
Conducting a gym turnaround is all about reversing a gym’s decline and restoring stability to the business of the gym. There are some key factors that will help determine if your gym is a good candidate for a successful turnaround.  Here are some questions you should ask yourself?

•  Is your gym still a viable business? If you were going to open this club today…what would you need to know to make an informed decision?
• Is there still enough time left to get this done? Are there any hard deadlines looming that could stop you in your tracks?
• Is there enough available cash to get this done? If your cash flow is good enough, many times you can use a simple float to get it done, if not, you will need outside funding.
• Do you have a clear vision on how your gym should operate? Have you done this before?  Do you know how this should look?
• Do you have the proper management team and leadership in place? Are your key people truly committed to the success of the gym?
• Do you have the confidence and belief of your stakeholders?  Of course, your stakeholders will see you as the person who got them into this mess. You will need to win these folks over…again.
• Do you have a structured and proven approach to get out of this mess? Go with what’s known and proven…no guesswork here.

Key Steps for the Gym Turnaround

•  The first step is critical.  You must recognize the need.  Most gym owners wait until it’s too late.  If you have a problem…face up to it now! Speaking from my consulting experience, don’t wait to admit the need until the patient is on the operating table. The longer you avoid what’s happening, the worse it will get and the more difficult the turnaround becomes.
• You must get an immediate grip on your finances.  Only pay what will keep you in business.  Everything else can wait.
• Next, you must take an objective look at your situation and develop short term and long term priorities. Don’t let emotion rule your decision making. Be willing to make the difficult decision.
• You will need to determine what has caused the under-performance. If you don’t know why this happened, you are doomed to repeat the mistake. Be sure and re-establish discipline.
• Establish a marketing plan and get the entire management team on board for the planned objectives. Do your research.  Now is not the time to be testing new marketing ideas.  Go with what’s proven.
• You will need supplier and vendor support to ensure your plan can happen. Don’t ignore these folks.  Meet with each of them and let them know your situation and your intentions. The key here is good communication.
• You need to become an expert at health club management, particularly sales management.  Start surrounding yourself with people who are better than you are at what you are asking them to do. Get your system in place.  Assume nothing.
• Keep everyone involved in the process. Communicate, don’t keep anyone guessing.  Communication is the key to most anything, but it’s the foundation when trying to keep everyone on the same page during a gym turnaround.
• Manage the process.  Let people know what needs to be done and why.  Then follow up. Train. Train. Train.
• Know your numbers.  Don’t let the process of change distract you from the need to manage your gym. Track everything that is done in your gym just like you normally would.
• Manage with a cautious optimism.  Know the risks moving forward and be prepared to deal with them. There are many elements that can stall your turnaround progress.  Make a list of these potential setbacks and then a have plan if this were to happen.
• Keep your foot on the accelerator.  Don’t let up.  Ever. Don’t take success for granted.  It’s hard work.  Be on the lookout for success apathy.

Benefits of Turning your Gym Around

• You will save your investment and that of your investors.
• You can keep your well-paying job.
• You will get rid of any criticism that you have been receiving.
• You can continue to have the good things in life, such as a big house, vacations and a college fund for your children.
• You will give your gym a fresh start.
• You will increase the cash flow, the profitability and productivity of your gym.
• You will gain valuable experience that will keep you from trouble again.
• You will be able to sleep well at night.
• You will save many of your employee’s jobs.
• You will be a hero to your family, your board, your investors and your employees.
• And most importantly, you will have the personal satisfaction of knowing that you saved your business.

Learning Experience
The difference between winners and losers is that winners take responsibility for their actions and learn from their mistakes. This will be your key to bouncing back and taking the necessary steps forward.  High achievement usually only comes after having a failure.
With this done, put the past behind you.  Nothing good comes from lingering on the past.  You need to look forward and figure out how to save your gym business.
In the end, you and your gym will survive.  You will save many jobs and increase your investors’ stake in your business.  Most importantly, you will have revived an important business for your community.
The key to getting out of your rut and moving forward is having very specific and defined goals.  Your key goal now is to fix your gym.  However, you must balance this goal with compassion since your goal will affect many lives negatively.
In addition, you must make time for family and friends and all that’s important to you.
This will give you the strength to go into the gym the next day and continue the honorable work of saving your business.
You must start immediately to give your gym its best chance to survive.
Now, go turn around your gym!
www.fmconsulting.net

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Scheduling
Paying your own company bills, such as electricity, water and rent, are important elements to keeping your business open. If you don’t pay your bills, you’ll have a collections company after you. When you’re not receiving regular payments from your customers, it can snowball, putting you behind. The assurance of having regular payments on the same date every month makes it easier for your company to collect its income regularly and cover its own expenses. This eliminates the need to cover your customers’ late bills up front without receiving the payments. Health club payment processing is inevitable and can be more productive when it’s done regularly and on time.

Time Is of the Essence
When people are running behind on their living expenses, the ones that are more likely to not be paid are the ones that require effort on the customer’s part. If the money is automatically deducted through gym management software, your client doesn’t need to think about getting the checks written. The money automatically comes out without the effort.

Cut Overhead
Sending out regular bills via mail requires postage and time. The fewer expenses involved in the process, the more money there is left over for profits. When it comes to billing, companies must find ways to collect money at regular intervals while keeping the overhead costs down. Electronic billing payments reduce postage, lower the number of employees on the payroll and eliminate the extra lead time required to send out paper bills. It also eliminates the need for employees to receive, open and post the payments.

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As I travel the country and have the opportunity to sit in on numerous sales meetings, I have noticed an all too common occurrence in health clubs… the majority of the club sales staff have a genuine dislike for the meetings.

Most health club salespeople don’t know why they are being asked to sit through weekly or monthly meetings. From their viewpoint, these sales meetings consisted of nothing but boring discussions without meaningful decisions, bull sessions about the local sports team or unresolved debate.

After giving this some thought, here is what I observed about how NOT to conduct a health club sales meeting:

1. No advanced agenda for the sales meeting.
   This is very common as many health club managers will simply try and “wing it.” Your health club sales staff will be unable to contribute effectively to a particular discussion because they won’t know the subject matter in advance. The idea is to put your salespeople in a position to be successful. Lack of preparation from management will result in frustration and poor decision-making.
2. Failure to adhere to the established agenda.
   The morning of each sales meeting we were presented with the meeting’s agenda. We rarely stuck to those topics, and often got behind. The majority of the time was wasted.
3. Lack of a marketing and sales plan for your health club.
   I do not remember any cohesive marketing programs or plan of action, which would increase our club market share or prospect/member awareness. It was difficult to generate excitement in the club.
4. No business fun in your sales meeting.
   We had four talented, capable managers, who wanted to succeed and make money. There was no “motivational speaker” or trainer or consultant brought in to help us grow personally, to get outside our habits and look for innovative ways to grow our business.
5. No follow up from the top.
   The Owner and the VP of Sales were great people. We became friends. But they had no action plan to work with us outside the club to identify markets, increase networking or improve corporate sales. We may or may not see them in the club between meetings.

From these experiences with health clubs across the country, I have three recommendations for effective sales meetings in your club:

1. Identify and promote a specific and definite objective for each meeting.
2. Keep it short and stick to the business of your health club. Generate excitement to make the meeting personally rewarding and health club profitable.
3. Follow up with a management presence in your health club to reinforce the initiatives or the plans decided in the sales meetings.

Salespeople in your health club need to be accountable and feel supported. Now, go have a great sales meeting!

Jim Thomas’ Fitness Management & Consulting
www.fmconsulting.net

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Acquisition and Retention

A successful marketing plan doesn’t just center on acquiring new members; it also focuses on maintaining existing ones. The following three marketing strategies can help you drum up new business, while also creating loyal members from your current customers.

• Leverage your trainers
  Most health club owners fail to recognize that they aren’t just a place to work out; they are a part of the multi-billion dollar wellness industry. It’s important to take advantage of this role by offering events and programs that pull people in to the club. Numerous health clubs use their trainers to host events that teach everything from strength training to nutrition; however, few realize they can go even further by offering educational sessions on weight loss, organic foods, stress management and effective training strategies for specific sports. The possibilities are virtually endless for thoughtful health club owners, who are willing to put forth the effort.
• Community involvement
  Smart health club owners work within the community to connect with potential customers and increase brand recognition. For some, this means sponsoring runs and other recreation activities; for others, it means connecting with local apartments, businesses and associations to offer tenant and employee discounts. Whatever the case, businesses that establish roots within communities tend to enjoy higher profits and increased customer loyalty. This is an especially useful strategy in smaller communities, which have limited pools of customers.
• Cultivate loyalty
  Almost every gym has a referral program that rewards existing members for recommending new customers. That said, few gyms offer loyalty programs which reward existing customers for their continued membership. While most gyms focus all of their attention on luring in new clients who are far more likely to lose interest and cancel their memberships after a short while; smart gym owners invest in maintaining their loyal members who are committed to fitness. When you make your long-term customers feel appreciated, they will do your marketing for you via word-of-mouth advertising. This may mean offering coupons for any extra products or services you provide, such as massages, tanning, supplements or clothing; or it could even mean membership discounts. Study your budget to see what you can afford. In the end, you’re not just paying to maintain a valuable member; you are recruiting him or her as an agent who will talk your company up amongst family, friends and co-workers.

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In working with health club clients that are struggling and attempting to turn around their existing situation; one of the common things we see is managers and owners mistakenly thinking money, or the job itself, is the primary motivator for their staff. This rarely proves to be true and this type of thinking only makes the problems inside the club worse.

We have found the most important issues for most health club staff are: to be respected and the ability to respect who they are working for, a sense of accomplishment in a job well done, and recognition for performance. Money is important but it is not as critical as these other components. If you’re willing to accept this as being true, let’s look at how you can better motivate your health club staff:

1. Involve the staff in your health club.
Many health club employees want to be involved in the ongoing development and progress of their club. Since they are on the front line, they often have insightful ideas that can make a significant difference in the club. And when they are involved in the process, they buy-in quicker to changes and have less, if any, resistance. In other words, they own it. This means you can implement club changes more quickly and easily.

2. Communicate with your staff.
Very few health clubs can be accused of over-communicating. I hear it frequently said in the health club business that, “No news is good news.” However, most staff in a health club want regular updates on the progress of the club and their personal performance. Use everything you can think of to communicate: memos, email, text, telephone, and one-on-one and group meetings to keep your health club staff informed. Talk to your staff on a regular basis. Tell them what challenges are currently being faced in the club; they may have suggestions.

It is also important that your club staff receive feedback on their performance. If you have a concern with something, remember silence is acceptance. Tell them and give them the opportunity to correct their behavior. When working with clients, I am always surprised how many of the health club staff did not receive feedback of any kind pertaining to their performance.

3. Celebrate individual and overall club performance.
Find people doing something, in your health club, and focus on recognizing excellent performance. On an individual basis, you can provide positive reinforcement by issuing awards or using a club newsletter to highlight specific achievements. Send thank-you, birthday and anniversary cards as well as congratulatory notes to your staff. Make personal phone calls and send emails.

4. Set challenging goals.
My experience with health clubs has taught me that people strive to achieve what is expected of them. If you set challenging goals for your health club your staff will work hard to accomplish them, providing of course, they are realistically attainable. It is amazing what people can accomplish when they are given the opportunity to perform. Communicate these goals and keep your staff informed on the club’s progress.

5. Give your staff the tools to succeed.
No health club staff will stay motivated if they do not have the necessary tools required to do their job. This can include working equipment, regular training, accountability to the system and marketing materials. Put your staff in a position to succeed. Frustration will run high when this component is missed.

6. Manage poor performance in club.
Your health club staff expects you to manage individuals who do not perform to the standard or contribute fully to the efforts of the club. However, many managers and health club owners ignore poor performance because they are afraid of the potential conflict. Instead, they hope the situation will resolve itself. It almost never does and this “blind” approach affects profitability and sales, causes higher turnover and contributes to low morale in the health club. By not getting it addressed, you really end up giving permission for low performance.

7. Lead by example.
If you want your health club staff to treat each other with respect and dignity, you need to set the tone. It starts with you. If you expect them to be motivated and enthusiastic, it is critical that you behave in this manner. As an owner of a health club or manager of a health club, your staff looks to you for direction and guidance.

Now, go get ’em motivated.

Jim Thomas’ Fitness Management & Consulting
fmconsulting.net

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If you’re unsure what to do to boost the happy-factor at your club, try these sure-fire fitness center management tips to get your members smiling:

1. Solve Membership Problems: There’s no quicker way to turn members off than to have them speak with sales staff who are unwilling or unable to help. It bears repeating that the fitness industry is a service-based industry and the time and attention you pay to your sales team will directly affect referrals and member retention.

Give your sales people the power to provide a variety of offers that work for varying customer needs. Allow your reps to provide student discounts, one-month trial memberships, and extend discounts to customers who’ve contacted you with complaints.

Empowering your sales people can give you a bump in member satisfaction that lasts long after the phone call is over.

2. Get Friendlier: Sometimes the only difference between your health club and the one across town is the connection members feel to you.

Try reaching out to potential and current members through a variety of channels:

• Offer discounts and promotions on Facebook
• Provide value-added services through your email newsletters
• Promote new class offerings via text message to members’ mobile phones
• Use compelling signage at your locations to inform members of new events and promotions

3. Spread Some Fun: Health clubs have an added bonus when it comes to engaging with their audiences, a large part of club populations are naturally competitive. Consider this statistic – nearly half of Internet users expect incentives and rewards for engaging with a brand online and over 200 million played games on Facebook in September 2012 alone.

Put these together and you’re working with fertile ground for spreading fun and increasing connection with current and prospective members when you create games and contests to capture their interest. (For more information on social gaming for brands, check this resource from Oracle (PDF).)

The name of the marketing game for any health club is connection. Use these tips to connect more strongly with your membership and you’ll benefit from happier followers.

Learn more ways to improve your fitness club management. Learn about how ABC Financial’s health club software can benefit your business with a free demo.

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