Written by Dan Barker at Momentum Business Development What is a gym without its people? As the manager/owner, you might be the driver, steering the car where it needs to go. But the people you bring onboard are the engine—they do the work to get your business from A to B and beyond. To drive…
Written by Julie Allen, Customer Engagement Coach at The Retention People (TRP) Whilst we have reopened our doors across the UK over the past weeks, many of our members are yet to return. In fact, research into over 8 million gym visits shows attendance is down 46% year-on-year for the period. Now, whilst some of…
It’s too easy to fall into the trap of replacing existing gym equipment with brand new, but when you start to analyse the benefits of doing so…is it really worth it? New gym equipment looks great when it arrives, and its presence certainly gives your fitness club a new lease of life, but there is…
One of the biggest differences between fitness owners who are thriving and fitness owners who are barely surviving is the ability to attract new customers. Not having a system in place to consistently generate new leads makes for a stressful situation and often leads to otherwise well-run fitness clubs closing their doors. What is a…
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it! Here are our top KPI’s to keep your club fully optimised: Membership Sales No. of New Members per Month Leads to Sales ratio Appointments to sales ratio Leads to appointments (tour) ratio Fitness Services Top 100 Longest Serving Members Ex Members Termination Patterns (Month on Month…
The words you use to communicate with your customers are very important, whether in brochures letters, advertisements email, on websites or in telephone and face to face conversations. Below are 15 words that you should consider incorporating into all your communications. Easy Everyone wants stuff that’s easy. We want things to be easy to use,…
It is widely recognised that learners have different and preferred learning styles. This has been used particularly in relation to adult learning. Reflecting on learning styles can really help you to look at new members in a different way, encouraging you to think about how best to present the learning experience and what teaching strategies…
The most successful way we have found to effectively impact retention and increase member value is through developing a multimedia quarterly and repeating campaign. Here’s the 10 Essential Marketing Tools for Retaining your Members: Online Member Surveys Check what your members want and which of them want it and tailor your retention programs around the…
The beauty of advertising special offers on Facebook adverts is that we can target very specific audiences. For your club, this is a golden opportunity to attract new members from demographics you haven’t reached before. So, advertising for mums is a campaign you should think about offering. Think of your club’s quiet times during a…
Market research has conclusively shown that the biggest proportion of new joiners comes from the word of mouth power of existing members. When a customer joins up, they are generally full of enthusiasm and want to tell their friends straight away, partly to get approval for the process. A perfect way of marrying these two…
So here we are in the 5th phase – the chance to close the sales by simply asking the customer to join. Simple eh? Well you would think so, but for many in sales roles this is the biggest hurdle to overcome. So, what’s happening? Well biologically, we are genetically wired to run away from…
We’ve arrived at the 4th stage of the 7 – The Price Presentation Phase. We talked about the importance of the greeting phase and the vital job of qualifying the prospects so that we both know we have a club that is ideally placed to serve their needs. We’ve toured the prospect and confirmed that…
Traditionally, this has been a phase in which the client is walked around the club to be wowed by the quality and breadth of the facilities matching his or her requirements and a tick box exercise to ensure that the client understands what’s on offer. This is the FEATURE tour, and this is changing in…
So here we are. The prospect has arrived, we’ve greeted them and made them comfortable in the sales area. It’s time to qualify them. There is every chance that whatever the quality of the car they arrived in, or the level of personal business success they have achieved, they will be feeling a degree of…
So now we have the prospect committed to an appointment with us and they have been indoctrinated by our videos and the carefully crafted multimedia content we have regularly sent the prospect from the start of the relationship. We have built authority by establishing ourselves alongside credible bodies in the local community and built the…
In last week’s blog, we discussed the importance of the Indoctrination Phase. Consider this has been successful, and an appointment has been made. The customer has accepted your pre – eminence in the market, understands the sophistication of your offering and has a feeling for your price point range. The next phase is what we…
One of the key changes that have happened out of the rise of the Internet compared with traditional fitness marketing is that it’s now become possible for customers to find out detailed information about your club online within the comfort of their own homes. Many Clubs have produced websites (mistakenly in our view!) packed with…
One of the biggest differences between fitness owners who are thriving and fitness owners who are barely surviving is the ability to attract new customers. Not having a system in place to consistently generate new leads makes for a stressful situation and often leads to otherwise well-run fitness clubs closing their doors. What is a…
Here’s a great way to highlight some instant ways for you to bring in more members and grow your fitness club. These are the questions that we ask clients – and our experience has been that if you are willing to spend a few minutes giving them serious thought – the results can be quite…
Before your team engage with any new prospects, make sure that they have got plausible, compelling answers to these 20 key questions. Just because they don’t get asked them expressly, this doesn’t mean they are not being thought about by your prospect. An effective sales presentation will cover these important psychological barriers to joining. Work…
Measurement and visible improvement are key to motivating new members. Programme cards, personal progress packs, composition analysis and fitness assessments are all important tools for creating a baseline and should all be built into your onboarding programme for new members. Without doubt the MOST POWERFUL MOTIVATOR, however, is the before and after photo. Here’s our…
In a poll reported in USA Today 61% of small business customers could not document or prove any direct return on their investments in social media activity yet 51% said they were increasing time and money commitments. Only 7% said they were cutting back! Consumers are most likely to share articles, news, and content related…
Traditionally, this has been a phase in which the client is walked around the club to be wowed by the quality and breadth of the facilities matching his or her requirements and a tick box exercise to ensure that the client understands what’s on offer. This is the FEATURE tour, and this is changing in…
When you doubt the value of a CRM system look at the evidence. Whether it provides your exercise team with an organised way to email their clients or to provide you with an organised way to schedule motivational calls to your members, remember this US walking study. Unable to push herself to exercise, Ruthanne Lowe…
The Essential Guide to Planning an Effective Club Marketing Campaign This month I would like you to talk to you about planning your lead generation and membership marketing activities. If you are starting with a blank sheet of paper then here are my top tips for achieving a successful marketing outcome and keeping your owners…
The 9 Ways to Fail with Your Fitness Club Pricing Strategy Far and away the biggest error that I see working with struggling operators is that quite simply they don’t charge enough! They desperately yearn to run great clubs but can’t afford the staff to deliver it because of a lack of profits. The lack…
How to Maximise Customer Value (Part 1) The No.1 Mission for all fitness clubs must be to “maximise customer value”. The logics very simple. Once the original membership sale is achieved then all further revenue is achieved with virtually nil cost of sale. In the future, we can expect that the…
Making Your New Members happy- Take them back to” Fitness School”! Half the battle in making your Club work for new members is getting them feeling comfortable in their new surroundings. That’s largely down to your new member “Induction process”. It’s where Clubs make sure that customers understand how to work everything, know where…
Look at successful people the world over and you’ll notice that, at their core, practically every one of them is pretty good at selling things. It might be they’re good at selling themselves, their ideas, their philosophies, their dreams. Everyone should spend some time in the trenches selling, especially when young. It could be telemarketing,…
The 10 Fitness Club Success Commandments It’s not a comprehensive checklist by any means but it’s a good starting point for you to look at and evaluate how your Club measures up. If you subscribe to our FREE Fitness Club Community, “Fitness Club Success” then you will get a heap more detail on each of…
Despite the positive spin of our industry publications, I see dark clouds on the horizon for the UK fitness sector if we are not careful. Of course, the Fitness Club sector is not in terminal decline, but significant regime change is long overdue. The last 10 years has seen the creation of a very standardised…
How about a Summer Holiday Fitness Programme Reactivation Offer? From New years day till 23rd June 2018 I trained over 100 times at my club! I was in the best shape for a decade. I was pumping the biggest weights ever. I was chiseled like I haven’t been for some considerable number of years. And…
Here’s a great way to highlight some instant ways for you to bring in more members and growing your fitness club. These are the questions that we ask clients – and our experience has been that if you are willing to spend a few minutes giving them serious thought – the results can be quite…
If you think that simply putting Online Joining on your website is going to change anything regarding getting new members … well, really, what planet are you on? Please …just stop right there and think for a minute! What are you are saying about the buying habits of your prospective customers? “If only I didn’t…