Get your Gym ready to exit Hibernation

 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.