Managing your Leisure Club or Gym Membership Sales Teams

Managing your Leisure Club or Gym Membership Sales Team

Contrary to what many Club Managers and buisness owners believe. Members do not simply join our clubs.

I hear all the time excuses like.

- The competition are cheaper

- The competition is newer

- Our location stops us getting walk-ins

- Weve spent thousands on marketing but they don't work

- We don't have enough leads

The list of excuses as to why a club does not succeed with membership sales are endless.  However, in my experience they come down to one main cause.  There are few if any processes in the sales strucure and what is there is not being managed.  

I hope to give you some understanding of the minum expactations required to ensure you are set up for success.  This will in no way gaurantee it but it will definately ensure you are managing the team to make the most of your marketing initiatives.

So where to start:

Targets 

You should have already set your club target for the month.  This now needs to be broken down between the team members.  My suggestion is to base individual targets on the number of shifts they are rota'd for.  Even full timers may do a different number of days even just by 1 day.   This means the individual is now responsible for their own performances.

Simple equation:

Target 100

Add up the total shifts your staff are working between them

divide 100 by this total

then multiply the number by the number of days each individual is working

This will create their sales targets.

We break down our team target for a number of reasons.  One is to make the staff accountable for achieving their fair share, it allows for their performance to be managed and finally allows you to break the larger target down into more achievable chunks. 

As a basic rule of the thumb the following activities should be a minium expection from every individual

- 20 Completed calls (this does not include left messages or those calls that were attempted.  Attempted calls are those where the advisor actually makes contact with the prospect)
- 10+ New prospects per advisor per day.  This could be referrals or 

- 25%+ of these calls should book an appointment for a free trial or a tour
- 70% of the appointments should show up.
- 70% of appointments should join
- 2 referral name per joiner on average. If their sales target is 25 then their referral target should be 50.

If you already have statistics of your clubs current conversion stats you can actually work out your clubs personal targets on all the above. For example,

If your target is 100

You tour to sale percentage 50% meaning you need to do 200 tours
Appointment show percentage is 50%, you now need to book 400 appointments
Calls to appoitment ratio is 50% meaning you need to book 800 appointments

You now realise that a target of 100 required a significant level of activity.  You will be right in thinking, the higher you can get the conversion rates the easier the workload becomes and so the importance of setting up your team and ensuring regular training takes place is vital.

Importance of a membership and prospect data base system

There is a very important point to make here.  Every club from the small independent to the large commercial gym should have a membership system that they can manage their activity.  We recomend Club Right but there are a range of other suppliers. 

This allows you to manage daily activity of your team as well as new joiners, contact details, referrals and usage statistics.

What you days should look like?

A membership sales team does not need to be in any earlier than 9am unless you have a specific clientelle that requires any different.  The same applies to the evening in that 9pm should be the latest. 

The following activities are a must for every club:

- Outreach every day - up to 4 hours per day
- 2 Call drives - set between 12-13.30 and 17.00 - 20.00.  These whould be done as a team where possible and be as exciting and vibrant as posible.  have challenges, set targets, play games between the team to get results and ultimately reward success

- In Reach activity - to be carried out during peak periods,  have a referral desk manned in an attempt to ask for names and telephone numbers of those looking to join.

The Sales Board

This is a vital tool for you to manage and for the tean to self manage their progress.  An example can be see below and shows all the details required for you and your managers and team to understand where they and what still needs to be achieved

Meetings and Training:

I cannot count how often i see underforming teams that do not have regular individual 1-1 and group meetings.  These are vital to address shortfalls in training, to focus the team on the challenge ahead and to discuss the daily activities and targets.

Every sales team should have a group meeting at the start of the day or before the first call drive.  This is discuss yesterdays performance, what could have been done better and to discuss the objections and have a small group role play o training on those specifics.

Every week each individual team members should also have a 1-1 for 20 mins to go through their performance.  This allows you to praise good performance or discuss actions for poor performaance.  The individual performamnce statistics should be reviewed along side all of their prospects, where each is on the buying cycle and what do we need to do to get them joined.  Including maybe a call from you as the manager.

Sales in any form is not rocket science, it is a people games.  What is ofetn neglected is the discipline required to keep the basics moving.  If you dont manage the team and the processes the team will quickly become lazy and your performance will drop.  High performing teams always know the goal, the route and the expectations.  Your job is to know they are wehere they need to be, delivering what is expected of them.

Despite all of this, make it fun. Sales people are often your influencers, they like to be praised, they like to work in fun environments and they like excietment. keep them hyped and motivated and you will be well on your way to smashing targets

Managing The Membership Sales Cycle

Managing the Membership Sales Cycle

Almost all Senior and club managers within leisure will have seen and often received training on the membership sales cycle.  It clearly outlines the key focus points of selling a membership from the initial inquiry to closing the sales and beginning to find new prospects again through such things as referrals.

The questions you have to ask are:

1) How often do you review this process within your business?

2) How do you review the process and ensure it is alive within your sales teams?

3) Do you manage this process through statistics and detail or through anecdotal evidence?

4) Do you focus on one area more than another?

5) How do you train this within your team?

6) Do you put emphasis on one area more than the other?

It's important to train the process out first and ensure your team understand each of the 8 steps.  All of the 8 steps are important and work together to ensure each and every inquiry into your business has the best chance of success.

Whilst on the outset you may think the tour and the closing the sale are the most important.  to put into context though remember these points.  People buy from people, someone will make a first impression within 10-15 secs of meeting your team.  A poor first impression can stop the sale in its tracks.

The needs analysis, if done effectively will provide the information for a tailored tour but also overcome many objections even before they are raised and so be making closing the sale so much more effective.

Overcoming objections is a key skill to master as most people will have queries and barriers to signing up straight away.  This is not a reason to not ask for the sale but an opportunity to confirm some additional details for the client.

The sales does not end with the paperwork, with referrals at point of sale being one of the most cost effective and highest conversion type, the sales process ends with prospecting.  

So as you can see the cycle makes sense, it fits together and all parts are equally important.  How you manage this cycle though and how you keep it alive will determine how successful your membership team will

So How do you keep it alive?

In order to manage this process you need to do exactly that, manage it!

1) Train it and retrain it.  Practice it in its part and in its whole with your sales team.  Either during sales meetings or 1-1's.  I was always taught that repetition is the mother of all learning.  By repeating the process and the techniques the skills become and instinctive behaviour.  Some may even have heard that the process becomes "unconcious competence", like driving the skill just hapens.

2) Get your teams to practice with each other.  They will learn from their colleagues and add more skills to the armoury

3) Have your team provide the needs analysis sheets to you after each tour, for those who did not join they need to provide a genuine reason for not joining. " Want to think about it" is not a reason.

4) Instill KPI's into the process.  Important once to consider are:

- Inquiry to Appointment conversion

- Tour to Sale Conversion

- Sale to Referral 

- Total sales to target

With sales being a numbers game, those with better stats will more than likely have a better grasp on the process, will be generating more of their own inquiries through word of mouth and referrals and this will show.  Those with weak sales performances will need a greater focus on the process.  

However, by managing and focusing on the sales cycle you can identify where the training is needed and provide the guidance for improvement.

Too many managers these days focus on the end product which is the sales number on board.  Go back a few steps and put the focus on the process and the skills and the numbers will look after themselves