Club Owners

Selling is not an easy job to do and anybody who has ever come across this subject would agree with this statement. With this subject we face many counteractive situations, reasons and circumstances. For example on one hand we want to sell and find as many new members as possible but on the other hand we want to be fair, honest and build positive brand imagewith them. We also want to give some extra tools to our team to help them to ‘close the deal’ while selling so we give extra discounts, gifts and options.

New Year’s resolutions usually fail or succeed around spring and summer time. This is the perfect moment to revise our current situation and find room for improvement, both in our private endeavors as well as in our business performance. It’s always useful to base on global surveys when evaluating the condition of your fitness club and estimating its consistency with the market expectations. So what should you consider, according to the Worldwide survey of fitness trends for 2017?

Can you feel it? The amount of gym management software providers is overwhelming these days. There are many companies offering very similar products. Making any decision is not a problem, however making a smart choice is far more challenging.

Before you choose your gym management software, you should visualize which tasks its should complete for you and how it should facilitate your staff’s and your work. Define your expectations and decide which features are crucial to you. Take into consideration basic functionalities as well as innovative solutions.

Remember when you first opened your club? When you were installing fitness equipment, arranged final details, had your first staff meeting? Do you remember your first member typed into the system? Of course you do. We always go down memory lane, to remind ourselves of the times when anything was possible. But life does go on, and so is your business. It evolves, it succeeds and it fails. This is why it’s extremely crucial to observe and draw conclusions, when things start to go bad.

Here are the most significant signs, that your club needs change:

Getting in touch with your customers has never been so easy, fast and relatively cheap. There is no trick here and no hidden costs – the automation centre in PerfectGym management software is easy to use, intuitive, functional and it is a part of your fitness management service. You simply have to step forward and make the most out of this opportunity. As it is with all tools used in business, you have to utilize it wisely and with care. Well-though strategy is key.

You may have different approach towards the whole gym staff issue. There are few schools that treat this subject completely differently or diverse but the latest findings of IHRSA can force you to have a second thought about it. One crucial and the most important fact is: the gym team plays a vital role in keeping the customers engaged and active in a long-term perspective.Therefore, building an effective fitness team seems even more crucial for your business. Those people will transmit your values and care about your members.

I would always believe that doing business is a mix of talent, intuition, luck and of course knowledge. As the first three either you have or not, the last one is a matter of time and hard work. Know-how comes with experience you gain over the time, with training, workshops and analysis. You may like it or not but without hard data you cannot manage and grow your business. You have probably learned tough lesson that some numbers may say two different things depending on how you read them. This may lead to completely contradicting conclusions and can seriously affect your business strategy.

Sales is always a difficult subject and whenever I start talking about it I see strange grimace on people’s faces. Not only it is difficult as it touches the most delicate subject which is money and finance but also due to fact that it is hard to answer sometimes: what to do? How to improve sales? In growing markets is it fairly easy as the demand is higher than the supply, so sales just come naturally and without much effort. Problems start when the market saturates and gets mature. New tools and new approaches must be implemented in order to keep the sales coming in.

Opening hours of your gym is considered your income and it’s up to you how effectively you are going to use it. This is why group class schedule is so important – it can generate significant sales, be  a member retention factor, be  a cost issue etc. You have to take many aspects into consideration in order to build the best timetable possible. The best timetable has few advantages: it enables you to have a high turnover, interest potential new members, use your instructors time effectively, grow your business not requiring extra investment in new equipment.

At first, you may think this topic is not really for you and you can skip it. You are focused on selling so in other words on obtaining new members in a highly competitive market. You can observe dynamic growth both in total members number and overall sales. What is crucial is the fact that this situation won’t last forever and in a more mature market, you have to start considering new tools and cooperation with existing customers.