Your Business Being in Hibernation is an
opportunity!
If you own or manage a fitness business,
you are not alone in having to sit out this crisis from the sideline. You are in the same position as almost every
gym throughout the world, so believe me when I say you are not alone. What make our industry so special is the
exact reason why we have been asked to close our doors.
Unlike may other businesses we bring people
together, not only to participate but to be part of communities, to train together
and enjoy the journeys each of us are on.
Unfortunately, in a Pandemic like our
business model actual becomes the enemy.
So, we have all followed guidance, we have closed our doors and gone
online, we have continued to inspire our clients with online PT, group exercise
and nutritional support. It’s an inspiring phenomenon to watch an industry full
of bright forward-thinking individuals be able to change years of engrained
thoughts and ideas and embrace a new reality.
For many clubs and businesses though, this
amazing change in focus and product delivery has been done for free. Seen as a way
of not losing members and not a revenue source or simply as a way of rationalizing
why members should continue to pay. Whatever the reason, it has been a shift that
very few industries have been able to make and shows how strong our businesses really
are.
The practical challenge now is how we
survive and prepare our clubs, bootcamps, personal training businesses for
re-opening. The great news is you as a
manager or business owner have never had such an opportunity to set your
business up for success. It does not
matter whether you are a large multinational, a Franchise club, an independent
fitness business or a freelance personal trainer you should be working now to
make sure you are ready. There are 5 key point that you should be reviewing
right now in preparation:
1Re-opening Hygiene and safe
Distancing protocols
We all know we won’t be going straight back
to business as normal and that we will have strict hygiene and social
distancing regulations to adhere to. Now
is the time to get these processes in place, write them up and have the engrained
into your business. Some of which you
may end up keeping long term so its worth the effort now. These include:
·
New Equipment cleaning
standards
·
Sanitizing protocols – hand stations
on each piece of kit or just dotted around the gym
·
Do you have the ability to
control member numbers in the gym? Do you need a gym usage booking system like
classes?
·
Does your gym need redesigning
to ensure social distancing? For many small
clubs this would involve removing some kit.
If you can’t remove kit or isolate certain areas how can you ensure social
distancing
·
Do your opening times need to
change? Along with this do you need to review your staffing structures. Those 24-hour
clubs may have to consider restricting times to manned hours only
·
What training is required for
your staff prior to opening to enable them to manage these new guidelined
2 Have you looked at your members
communication channels?
Now more than ever, the way you communicate
with members will be the key to your success.
With this in mind do you have robust processes in place to ensure this
is happening
·
Do you have an automated e-mail
protocol to keep in touch with members, clients and prospects? Time now creating these will reduce your
workload massively once you open
·
How will you be communicating
your re-opening and your new operational standards
·
Do you have a system in place
that will allow you to set up automated e-mails and texts? If not, take the time to investigate a CRM
system that allows you to do this
·
Should you be having keep in
touch calls with your members now? The power
of a quick call to see how members are doing cannot be underestimated. Granted with staff on furlough this would
fall into the hands of those still being paid or the owners of the
business. But hey, that isn’t a bad
thing and shows how much their business is valued
·
What is your social media
communications protocols? Who is in charge?
how often do you post, what are the standards to your posts, or does anything
go, are you using design tools like Canva? What is your message response times
and do you have any standard response to enquiries?
3Time to review your members
journey
Your member and client’s journeys are your
business. This is what you will establish
your reputation on. If you don’t have a
set journey that you and all your staff know and that is engrained into everything
you do then this is time to sit down and create one. It is vital you know who you are, what are
you trying to achieve and how you deliver that message to every client who
enters your business
Large corporate businesses spend millions
on creating their brands. This doesn’t start
with a marketing strap line, its starts with an underlying belief in what they
want their business message to be. By
knowing the message, you are able to create a set of rules and templates that
your team can use to deliver this message.
To highlight this message lets take 2
businesses in the same industry.
Marriott Hotels and Travel Lodge are both
extremely successful hotel businesses, but both have a considerably different
model and journey. The profit per room
however is not that different. One is a 4-5* brand the other 3* budget
model. They have both purposely deigned
their brands to hit the market they are going after and the journeys they
deliver to their clients matches this approach.
Marriott hotels lives and breaths the
service delivery in everything they do, its customer centric with the moto’s
and values of its founders still forming a massive part of what they do. Travel lodge is a budget brand and so doesn’t
push the service delivery but instead the quality of rooms at great value
prices. This isn’t just a marketing response,
it dictates their future investments, their decisions on locations, their job
specs and the way they manage their teams and their businesses.
As a leisure business you should be doing
the same and asking who you are and what service you want to provide, once you
establish this you can then create a journey for all your clients based on these
criteria’s. Having a well-designed
client journey not only enables your staff to know your business model but its
also allows you to identify the touch points to improve service and sales
opportunities.
Some of the main journeys you should be dictating
and not allow staff to create themselves:
·
The sales process – this should
be the same whether it’s a gym instructor, the GM or the owner
·
The guest process – what happens
when a guest arrives, a free tour, a Hussle pass. This should be slick and a simple waiver and
in you go. These are potential future clients,
and this is your opportunity to impress
·
The personal training journey –
Why should you let the trainer dictate what that service looks like. It’s a massive risk to your business by
letting someone else determine what this service looks like
·
The member and new member
journeys. What are the touch points? How
often will you message them, do they get an induction, do you book them into
classes, what happens to low users etc. etc.
·
Your Group exercise journey – initially
you may need to keep the virtual classes in place as restriction may remain,
after these are dropped are you going to maintain your online service to run
along side your studio based ones?
4Review your Operational
Standards
We would all be lying if we said our clubs
operating processes were perfect and that all staff followed what was set
out. Well this is your opportunity to
change that and to review what is in place and what needs to either change or
be managed differently to ensure it happens.
The need to ensure your operational checks and records are up to date will
be paramount when you re-open. I can see
insurances companies requiring these documents in the event of an incident or a
complaint and don’t be surprised if local Health and safety officers make
visits to ensure your processes and records are sufficient.
Things that should be at the top of your
list:
·
Is your H&S file robust and
up to date
·
Are your training records up to
date and how are you going to ensure all staffed are trained prior to opening?
·
Are your cleaning and daily,
weekly and monthly operations check robust enough?
·
Do you have the supply chains
in place to ensure you can manage the new hygiene protocols?
·
Do you have a regular auditing
process to ensure these processes don’t break down and staff are held to
account
5Review your 2020 business plan
and projects and create Opening Sales Plan
Many independent, franchise and small
businesses are very poor at ensuring they have effective plans in place to
drive, manage and monitor performance.
Sometimes this is driven by just being stuck too deep into the business
and not taking the time away to ensure these are in place. Its always amazing to see how any business
can run without knowing where they are going and how they plan to get there but
that is the reality for many clubs.
Well now is the opportunity to look at this
and put in place robust plans for your recovery. It’s likely that clubs could re-open around
July/August so clubs should be looking at a 5-6-month recovery business plan
and projections.
Once these business plans are in place then
sales and marketing plans for all aspects of their business need to be created for
each month. The first 2 months of which
should be similar to their pre-sale plan.
Any plans that are created need to take
into account what the competition is likely to be doing. This is going to unprecedented in modern
times. Every gym and fitness business in
the country will be in pre-sale. So any
plans need to focus on how they can be different and stand out in a crowded
market.
Whilst reviewing what revenues you can
generate you should also be looking if you are not already at reducing your
cost base. The biggest one of these is staffing. Is your staffing model correct, can you
reduce the level of spend, can you change your model to less employed and more
freelance? Review all your operational
costs and see if you can renegotiate contracts or changes suppliers on
utilities, cleaning supplies, CRM systems.
Work out who adds value and if they don’t think of removing them from
your costs. There will be some difficult
decisions, but those decisions could just save your business.
I can’t do justice in this article as to
what items should be included into these sales and marketing plans, but each
club should look at the following key points:
·
What are your top 2 or 3
revenue generating elements of your business?
Focus on these first. You can’t
do everything, and your reach will be limited by government restriction so
focus on what can make you the biggest returns.
Most often these are Membership and personal Training, but you may have
other key lines you want to focus on
·
Start to build your network and
client databases now so you have people engaging with your business who you can
contact close to re-opening. This can be
done through member referrals, social media adverts and competition.
·
What is your social media
strategy?
·
What is your current internet
presence? Is your website sufficient, do you have a google, Bing, apple, yahoo business
page? Is your business loaded on the various business directories nationally
and in your area?
·
What is your corporate strategy
and are you starting to contact these companies now? Waiting until you open will be way too late.
·
What is your strategy to work
with the various industry aggregators?
·
What are your opening offers,
are they going to be price, service or product lead? I would suggest to stand
out try and avoid price lead offers and the whole world will be doing these and
are you in a position to take on the large companies in a price war? If not go back to your client journey work
and focus your campaigns on these strategies.
Be the best at what you do and not the cheapest
The world of fitness is going to go through
an immense change, what this looks like none of us know. There is a real chance we could lose up to
30% of the businesses currently filling this space. This is both scary and offers huge
opportunities to those who do survive.
Will we see a growth in virtual solutions? Will members rush back to
their own clubs, will budget clubs with their large membership basis struggle
to manage with the strict guidelines being enforced
Who knows, but as will all situations, those
who are best prepared are more likely to succeed. As the old saying goes “fail to plan is
planning to fail”, don’t be that statistic, be the one that flourishes.
