This is all too common. We receive a phone call from a club owner who indicates they need help with marketing. They don’t have enough people to talk to. Now, at a certain level, this may be true, but when you investigate further, you find they have cracks in their sales process and marketing foundation. That’s what needs to be fixed first; otherwise you’re simply driving additional guest traffic into a broken system. The business of your gym is either trending up or it’s on the way down. Growing and making improvements to the business of your gym is a choice. The key is to choose the right area of your business that will make the necessary impact. Here are some things to think about.

1. Track Your Numbers: It’s always interesting to see how few independently owned gyms know their daily, weekly, and monthly sales and production numbers and member attrition trends. How can you expect to fix something if you don’t know where you’re at? You can’t guess at it and conditions will continually change.
2. Expectations and Goals: This is a crucial element of gym success for the independent owner. I had a meeting with a club owner recently and he expressed his frustration that his staff was not hitting their numbers….when the staff was asked what their goals were, they were unclear of expectation.
3. Use Proven Marketing Programs: Do not know where to start? If you’re not sure, this is an area to get some help, but you want proven marketing programs. If you’re trying to get your gym business back on track, now is not the time for trial and error.
4. Know How to Give a Tour and Membership Presentation: If you don’t learn the proper sales process, you’ll find yourself simply making it up as you go along. At its core, you need to be sure you’re selling the benefits of your gym and not the features.
5. Know the Industry Trends: The way you run your business will continually change and you must keep up. As hard as it is to believe, there are still clubs that don’t understand their web site analytics, have a web site that is not mobile friendly, don’t have a club app…well, you get the picture.
6. Regular Sales Training: This is no different than any other profession; you and your team must continue the educational process with daily sales training. You must focus on sales improvement and the accountability to the process.

Now, go improve your gym!

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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By: Jim Thomas

I see this frequently.  This business will fool us.  We only sign up the interested “hot” prospects that don’t always require us to be disciplined (and we think we’re doing a good job), it’s a matter of “don’t talk them out of it,” but that won’t grow your gym.  It’s not good enough to know the process; you MUST have the discipline to follow the process.  Here are some areas we see that get ignored all too quick;

Closing.  As the saying goes, if you don’t ask, the answer is always no.  This can be uncomfortable for many salespeople, but if you want the membership sale, you will have to ask.  All too often we lose our discipline and start to say things like, what do you think, how does this sound or do you have any questions.  That won’t work.

Prospecting.  The key to this is taking massive action and having many avenues for generating new prospects.  When we lose our discipline, we end up only doing 1 – 2 things to generate traffic.  No sales will ever be closed unless you have people to speak to.

Nurturing.  This one is frequently ignored.  You must have a member nurturing program in place.  The idea is to help maintain interest and desire.  This is particularly important for new members.  You must create value over a long period of time (nurturing).

Planning.   Without proper planning you will end up becoming a victim of circumstances.  Proper planning will allow you to use your and your prospects time most effectively.

Value.   You must show value when making the outbound call and when giving the tour.  Every prospect interaction should include value, be a resource center.

Follow Up.  This is usually the first to go.  Salespeople on average will only follow up on leads 1 – 3 times and it will take 8 – 12 follow ups to have success.  Persistence is one of the ways that trust is established.

Now, go show your sales discipline!

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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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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Those of you who’ve attended my business seminars over the years have often heard me say: “Your numbers are the sum and substance of your business practices.” If your numbers are up, usually it reflects some solid business practices. If your numbers are down, take a look at where your systems are faltering.
One of the things I try to accomplish with my Fitness Business Council efforts is to get a clear “take” on what the business numbers are for the independent health club sector. That’s why I deploy three (3) quarterly surveys every year and an annual survey. In seven (7) years of polling the independent club sector of our business, I’ve learned a lot that I’ve shared with all of you. The initial results from my FBC 1st Quarter 2014 Business Results Survey show where the industry is at present…and also reflect on some longer-term trends that can be very challenging to club operators.

Growth of New Membership Sales is a key indicator. Whenever we’ve seen a consistent 60%+ of clubs reporting growth in new memberships for 3 consecutive quarters, we’ve generally been able to predict the beginning of an uptrend. Unfortunately, new membership sales were up in only 49% of reporting clubs…and that is a continuance of a slightly downward-slipping pattern that has been in evidence for over three (3) years. Growth in Total Sales (which includes the all-important Ancillary Sales categories) is another critical benchmark. While total sales and ancillary sales growth are higher in slightly more than 50% of clubs, we still do not see a breakout uptrend occurring here. Alarmingly, these categories have been accompanied by a consistent downtrend in single-member-monthly dues…which presently stand at an average all-time low of slightly less than $28 per month across our industry.

The latter may well be influenced by Unbundling of Membership Prices, which 45% of clubs reportthey have done in efforts to compete with budgetclubs and HVLP (high-volume-low-price) players intheir marketplaces. One-to-One Personal Training sales growth stillpersists in a gradually-downtrend mode, with only
45% of clubs reporting sales growth. This may be in part because Small Group Training revenue growth continues in an upward pattern, though not yet definable as a “definite uptrend.” Group Exercise Class Attendance growth, which until early last year had been in a defined uptrend, is slipping into declining numbers, with only 45% of clubs reporting increases in attendance. Finally, the percentage of clubs with Increases in Profits are inching higher…but Profit Margins themselves are continuing to slowly erode, with the national average pre-tax margin at approximately 9% – its lowest in several years. While the above “numbers” overall might look negative to the reader, they are not. What they are, are “benchmarks” whereby clubs can measure their own progress, or lack thereof – and gauge their business strategies accordingly. !

Michael Scott Scudder is Founder/CEO of Fitness Business Council
575-751-1212
mss@fitnessbusinesscouncil.com

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Do you have a quality health club, but you’re having a hard time getting more people to join? I’ve found that the solution to getting more people to join is usually very basic. There are minor things that you can do to make the membership sales process more effective. Today I‘ll share with you 3 basics steps to increase your membership sales right off the bat.

These methods will work regardless of what your membership dues are or what system you are using to sell. That’s the beauty of it! These simple strategies can make a huge difference in your health club sales production.

1. Build Impulse with Health Club Guests

Impulse is basically your prospects willingness to buy.  Your health club guest’s impulse is at ZERO when they first hear about your club. It is your job as a professional health club marketer and professional health club salesperson to raise the impulse with your guest by using a series of strategic steps until your guest joins.

Your membership presentation has to be well thought out in order to raise impulse effectively. You must anticipate those points in the presentation where the guest’s impulse level will drop. Use the health club hot spots and benefits your guest would like to receive to raise the impulse back up, and always close at the very peak of their impulse level for best results. Treat it like its “Love at First Sight”.

2. Leverage the Law of Averages

The number one way to double your membership sales is to double the amount of people you expose to your health club. Sounds simple enough, right? Every health club and each club salesperson will have an inherent law of average. This law represents the relationship between the health club guests that refused to join the club and those that actually did join. For example, 1:10 laws of average means that you must get 9 noes from a health club guest before you get one sale.

Remember this is an average. It’s not to be taken literally. You may sell the first 2 guests that come in today and then get 18 “noes” in a row. At the end of the day you average out your yeses and noes to get your law of average. Now, let’s say you wanted to make 10 membership sales today. If you spoke to 50 people today and made 5 membership sales, then how can you make 10 membership sales tomorrow? That’s right! Talk to 100 people.

3. Up-Selling

I think this is one of the most common areas where health promoters and health club sales people really drop the ball. They invest all this time and money into finding prospects, getting them in the door, finally getting them enrolled in the club, and they simply stop selling. Never forget this. You have a buyer at your club. Buyers buy! So keep selling. Suggest other health club services or products that might benefit your new member. Personal Training, Nutritional Supplements, Gift Cards, Locker Rental, etc. Whatever the case may be, you have to sell more to your new member or at least generate another lead from this new membership sale. Ask them, “What friend or family member could benefit from losing weight or getting back into shape?”

All you have to do is ask? What’s the worst that can happen? They might say no. Big deal!

Now, go sell a membership!

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Health Club owners nationwide are always facing more and more competition. I can’t think of a single health club client of ours for whom competitive marketing and salesmanship isn’t a top priority.

As a health club owner, your greatest achievement will lie in trumping the fitness competition in order to expand membership sales. Here are some thoughts:

1. Know your competition. It’s essential to understand all we can about our competition. If you don’t already have copies of your competitors’ advertising, websites, Facebook page and brochures and can’t recite from memory their key selling points and messages how can you hope to successfully position against them?

2. Market your specialty. Once you know everything you can about your primary competitors, you can identify what your health club is offering your members’ that’s unique or special. Take a long, hard look at the current offerings in your health club. If necessary, alter your programs or service itself, bundle in additional features or find a way to deliver the same core programming or service in a way that uniquely meets the needs of your members. Then, build your marketing campaigns around this central theme.

3. Tackle new audiences. If you’ve reached the maximum market share in a particular member niche, why not try a new one? You may be able to add line extensions (variations of your product) that will stimulate sales from a whole new set of members. Or, you can launch a new media campaign targeting a different audience, who may embrace your product or service with a minimum amount of alteration.

4. Offer more value. Some fitness providers traditionally compete based on discount pricing, but for many other types of clubs in the fitness business, cutting prices is often detrimental. If you offer a service, for example, and charge the same rates as your chief competitors, cutting your prices may make you look suspiciously cheap and inspire prospects (and members) to wonder what’s “wrong” with your club or the services it provides. A better idea is to offer something of additional value that your prospects and members will find tempting.

5. Add a sales channel. Are you presently selling via one channel alone, such as exclusively through your club? Adding another channel, such as online sales, gives your customers more choices and allows them to shop more often and at their convenience. It’s likely that most of your competitors offer sales through multiple channels. What’s more, studies show that customers who shop via more than one channel spend more (often as much as three times more) than customers who shop through one alone.

6. Tune into your members. To remain highly competitive, you must understand what your members want. Unfortunately, your members’ needs and preferences can change on a dime, so you should have systems in place to regularly solicit their feedback. As a health club owner, you’re in the enviable position of being closer to your members than some of your big-box competitors. You may know many of your members or clients by name and have the advantage of being able to contact them periodically to check in. In addition, be sure to initiate regular surveys as well as solicit ongoing feedback via your website.

7. Ask for the sale. Complacency is the enemy of small-business success. If you’re not continually asking your prospects and members for their business, you can be sure your competitors are. Set up and monitor an ongoing marketing program that reaches out to your past members and new prospects year-round. The key to success is to have a consistent marketing message and select a mix of media and tactics that “touch” prospects and members with sufficient frequency. This will help you drive your message home and stand out from your toughest competitors.

Now, go outlast your competition!

Jim Thomas’ Fitness Management & Consulting
fmconsulting.net

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