Take advantage of your quiet times

Dont be caught out by the Christmas Joys!

November and December are notoriously quiet for the Health and Fitness Industry as prospective clients shift their focus from personal wellbeing and joining to partying and Christmas purchases.

So with this in mind in never fails to escape me how many clubs join this Christmas spirit by switching off and relaxing.  In fact this is the perfect opportunity to prepare your plans and train the team ready for the New Year.

Whilst it is not as vital as it once was, January and February are still the busiest time for membership sales and a failure in this early period will have an impact on your clubs performance all year.  It was not uncommon for many hotel leisure clubs to back load their budgets so that any poor performance did not have an early impact and any big success put the clubs on a real footing for the year ahead.

So what should you be preparing?

1) Your Budgets
2) Your sales and Marketing plans for the year.  These can obviously change as you go but having an annual plan allows you to to deliver rather than be planning as you go.  Adapating to changes is far easier than having to create a new plan every month. Especially if its busy.
3) All of your internal and external marketing material. Book your leaflet drops, create and print your mail drops, create newsletters and media adverts and press releases.
4) Train your team.  This is a perfect opportunity to take the team aside and work on any operational challenges, retrain the sales process and the customer journey.  Work on customer service standards and instill new practices.  It is also a great time to send team members on CPD courses, first aid, pool lifeguard and pool plant as the club will be quiet allowing for skeleton staff shifts.
5) Carry out club audits and ensure any preventative and essential maintenance is carried out now.

I still remember the old saying FAIL TO PLAN, PLAN TO FAIL

This quote ring so true when it comes to the New Year for most leisure Clubs.  This rings even more true for those in Hotels where traditionally November and December will be one of the busiest times for the hotel.  Come January the hotel business dies off and leisure pics up.  Its therefor easy to get caught up in the hotel's hecticness and fail to put in place what is needed for the clubs busy period.

Working hard now will pay dividends in the New Year!