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The Hidden Powers Of Your Clients

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Each and every individual that enters your facility carries an untapped potential for the benefit of your business. They harness the power of representing your business as well as sources for free business advice. Now the question is, what are the steps to get this power up and running? The answer isn’t as hard as you think, not when there’s only one main goal that matters—and that goal is: an established level of comfort. As long as you know your clients will feel welcome, the possibilities are endless. Here are just a few.

Suggestion Boxes

“Hey you know what you should do?” No doubt you’ve heard this before. Suggestions, while helpful, can be overwhelming when there’s no physical place to store them for actual consideration. This is why creating a visible suggestion box is a valuable asset when considering adding new additions to your gym. Considering adding dance fitness classes at last? Turns out eight members had the exact same thought! Always make sure to thank them for their suggestions and share how their input was in alignment with your ideas. Clients will feel valued to know their thought was in line with a place where they spend their time and money.

Shout-outs on Social Media

Appreciation that extends beyond face to face communication is not mandatory but it does put your business in the perfect human spotlight on social media. There’s a quite a difference between the impact of a scripted performance compared to something completely improvised. It’s why spontaneous acts of entertainment get so much media attention, a phenomenon that can even be dated beyond America’s Funniest Home videos.

Contests

Who doesn’t want a little fun competition? The mere mention of a contest can bring about the wonderful effect of maximum audience engagement. Why? You know the answers. It’s what’s guaranteed at the end of every contest and practically commands the participation rate of the event itself. The prizes. The glory and the bragging rights. When it comes to the prize itself, however it never hurts to get creative. As long as the reward bears some relevance to your business it’s certainly prize worthy.

Record Boards

In the same fashion of world record books, your gym can also have a place of fame for all different types of categories. Avoid a divider between the go-getters and beginners by setting up a variety of titles to win, from most push-ups in a day to longest run of fitness jokes. Another great suggestion would be to have a suggestion box for members to add in their ideas on what new categories could be added to the board. The longest conga line of joggers? Why not?

Appreciation Displays

In contrast to a record wall, an appreciation wall highlights achievements that happen outside and show a human size to your gym. The little things that go untold. This is also where you get to give power to your loyal of customers and give them a platform. An appreciation wall doesn’t need limits to a piece of paper saying thank you. It can be photo collage or published short bio. You could even take advantage of our Photo ID’s & Player Passes feature and customize client cards with their newly earned title! Turning a simple action into a personalized memory will make both a powerful and positive impact on your client.

Although it does take planning, the approach on how to unlock these special powers isn’t as hard as initially believed. Once customer morale has built up on positive vibes and human elements, the identity of each customer becomes a part of something greater. A solid community. A family.

Retaining Members a Month at a Time

Retaining Members a Month at a Time

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Let’s say you’ve got a prospective member who has shown a lot of interest in your facility. You’ve given her a tour, offered her a free day pass to try the place out, and even had the highest-performing member of your sales team sit down with her for a full twenty minutes, chatting like an old friend and answering a slew of questions. Yet, when it comes time for the prospective to sign on the dotted line, she balks—she just doesn’t feel like she can commit to a year-long membership.
Does this sound like a familiar scenario? With members’ increasingly hectic work lives and a tight economy, it’s happening more and more at gyms, health clubs, and fitness centres around the country. Something else is also happening more and more to directly counteract the phenomenon: Clubs are starting to offer month-to-month membership with greater frequency than ever before.
How, you might ask, could a club stay operational with month-to-month memberships? The better question might be: How could a club stay operational without them? As Geoff Dyer, Founder of AussieFIT in Columbus, Ohio, puts it, “Some 25 percent of all members become inactive within six months of joining a club, and that figure doubles, rising to 50 percent, after one year. Unfortunately, one of the black eyes our industry has earned is its reputation for locking inactive members into long-term retail installment contracts.”
Dyer recently discussed month-to-month memberships on IHRSA’s blog. These options are better, Dyer argues, because they allow the industry to focus as much on member retention as it does on new member acquisition. “If our clients can leave at any time,” he says, “simply by providing written notice, then we’ll likely be much more attentive to their level of satisfaction with our service, programs, and facility upkeep.” That is, allowing for month-to-month memberships will force health clubs and similar facilities to improve the services they provide—the incentive for keeping members happy will increase, and therefore the efforts to do so will increase. As a result, more customers will join. In the end, Dyer says, even if members leave the facility at a faster pace, the outcome can still be a net gain.
Jarod Cogswell, Founder of Enterprise Athlete and President of Fit Academy, Inc., agrees. “The challenge for you,” he says, “is to prove your club’s value on a month-to-month basis, which promotes and produces a higher level of services. It motivates your staff to focus on service, cleanliness, and member retention because every visit counts, and there may not be a second chance.” Cogswell acknowledges, this reality places a lot of pressure on the sales process, because if clients can leave at any time there’s a greater chance you’ll lose them. “You therefore need to be selling at the same or higher rate than the rate of your membership losses,” he says.
Nevertheless, Cogswell believes the month-to-month option can reap rewards for a club. “When people understand that they can leave whenever they like,” he explains, joining your club becomes a comfortable decision—both psychologically and financially—that will tend to drive the volume you need to be profitable.”
Another critical factor to consider is what kind of fitness membership software you are currently using to track membership data. The right club management software will supply you with the ability to access robust reporting as well as the ability to set up auto-billing or auto-pay for membership payments.
So maybe it’s time to consider how you could implement month-to-month memberships at your own facility. The key to success with month-to-month is providing your members with the incentive to return, and instituting such a plan could force you to revisit some of your systems and processes. This presents short-term challenges, but the long-term benefits could greatly offset those challenges.

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Keeping Up With Gym Membership Increases

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The number of gym memberships has significantly increased over the past decade. In 1998, 29.5 million Americans belonged to a gym and in 2010 that number rose to 40 million and despite the recession hitting most households, Americans did not cut gym membership.
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