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Why We Don't Have Sales

December 29, 2016 Selling Gym Memberships
You are not selling a product. You’re selling a service. Your goal is not simply to sell more because your most valuable resource (time) is finite.Product companies want to sell high volume because the cost of production decreases as they sell more units. They can buy parts in bulk, they can negotiate volume discounts with suppliers and they can streamline production. We can only sleep less. Or exercise less. This means it’s important to sell our service at the rate that will make us profitable, maintain a professional image and avoid problems that make our business unstable. Here are the reasons we don’t discount our rates, or have “sales”—from both sides of the coin:  1. Discounts attract the wrong people. Because we don’t have unlimited time and attention, spending that same time and attention on a client who pays 20 percent less is robbing us of what we could earn in the same time. Our rent doesn’t go down 20 percent when we give a client a discount. All the “savings” come from our profit.  2. Sales teach the right people bad habits. Who is most likely to purchase a one-year paid-in-full (PIF) membership? The client most likely to stick around for a year anyway. So why discount? A 20 percent discount for paying up front seems like a great idea in January: All. The. Money! But a discount of 8.5 percent is equivalent to a free month. A 20 percent PIF discount means your best clients—the ones most likely to stick around anyway—are attending for free after Oct. 15. Worse, it teaches these great people to wait for another sale before signing up again. When you cease the bad habit of “sales,” they don’t think, “Ah well, it was good while it lasted. I was getting a bargain!” Instead, they think, “Now I’m going to pay 20 percent more for the same service.” Discounts and limited-time sales are a ...
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Surveying Your Clients

December 27, 2016 Vision
[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10368″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As the end of the year approaches, it’s a great time to take the temperature of your gym community. As with anything else, there’s a “right way” to do a client survey, and definitely a “wrong way”. When done well, a client survey can First, here are some of the most common mistakes gym owners make when surveying their clients: Their questions are too vague. “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said, ‘a faster horse.'” – Henry Ford. Keep your questions very specific, with yes/no or rating-scale answers. The data isn’t actionable. “Overall, how do you like our gym?” is nice…if your goal is to stroke your ego. But this question tells you nothing about the client’s plans to remain with the gym, refer a friend, or quit in 2017. If you ask, “How clean are our bathrooms?” you should be prepared to make your bathrooms cleaner if you get a low score. The answers are irrelevant to growing the business. “How do you like our programming?” is a bad one. Clients weren’t thinking about alternatives to your programming before…and now they are. They do nothing with the data. Imagine the mayor comes to your house and says, “How can I make this town better for you?” You say, “I’d like my garbage picked up on Thursdays.” On Thursday, there’s no garbage truck in sight. Has your opinion of the mayor increased or decreased? The ask the clients to compare or rank the coaches. This is usually an ego trip for the owner–but erodes confidence in the brand. I’ve also seen it destroy the confidence of some coaches. As the owner, it’s YOUR job to write down what makes a good coach in your gym, clearly make those expectations known, and evaluate regularly. Next, here are some ways you can use surveys most effectively: Include a Net ...
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We are Grateful for YOU

December 25, 2016 Personal Development
At this time of celebrating family, friends and showing gratitude, we would be remiss if we didn’t express our thanks to you, our clients, and our mentors/ team members who “make it happen”. Our clients give us the gift and opportunity to do what we love. Our committed mentors live our values, and are committed to “help first”, they inspire us every day with their enthusiasm and drive. We could share many stories from the course of the year that illustrate the commitment level from each and every one of them, but have selected one to represent them all. Recently our mentor Ken had a post on the private member page on FB that illustrates the spirit TBB live by and we thought we would share it (i.e. brag) as an illustration of why we are so grateful to work with this team.  Below is a summary of that post: “I met Ken this year in March or April I’m not exactly sure. On Nov 1st, 2016 a house I have on Cape Breton Island flooded quite badly, I was in Calgary upon my arrival to the house I was devastated to discover 20 inches or so of water in the house . Hurricane Matthew did a real number on the whole town , after three days waiting for insurance people to come the insurance adjuster explain I was 188 on the list of the houses to visit . After explaining there was black mold forming on the walls she said take pictures and you will have to rip it out yourself . The next day I began by myself a very giant removal of a disaster , Ken Andrukow had texted me and asked how I was doing and I explained to him the circumstances of the disaster my deceased parents former house was in . Within an hour he texted me back saying help is on the way ...
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Is Your Awesome Community Killing Your Business?

December 23, 2016 Member Retention
By Ken Andrukow, Two-Brain Business Mentor As gym owners, we know how great the “community” in our box makes us feel. It’s amazing to see such a cohesive group having fun together. They work out together, they party together and they might even travel together.When I asked my athletes what they liked best about my gym, the most popular answer was “the community”. That answer scared me. Here’s why.My thought was this: “If the community is the most important part of why people come to my gym, then what am I doing there?” I want people to come because we make them reach their goals (and thus make them happy). I can assure you that no one ever joins your gym because of “the community.” A newcomer has no concept of what the community is all about. When they walk through the door of your gym for the first time, they have a personal goal. If you do a consultation instead of a “free trial”, they’ll tell you that goal. If you meet with them on a regular basis, you’ll stay on top of their progress and set new goals with them. If an athlete progresses straight to group classes, you’ve lost them to the community agenda. Coaches are leading a class based on the goals of the class. A coach would be hard pressed to tell you the why of any individual athlete in a group setting. What happens when the community fractures? If you are meeting with your individual clients regularly and working on THEIR goals, you can mitigate the sometimes negative hold the community could have on the individual client. Imagine a client who has had the goal of doing 10 pull ups unbroken for over a year but still has not achieved that goal. They could keep going to class, and incrementally work toward linked pull-ups as the class works on everything at once. But if ...
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Episode 57: How to Set Your Rates

December 21, 2016 Podcast Selling Gym Memberships
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Are you ignoring your best performers?

December 21, 2016 Gym Marketing
By Amber Cooper, MHRM When it comes to talking to our team about how they are doing, we often can get stuck in the “opportunities” (i.e. what we can do better). What we don’t focus on enough is the positive feedback – and when we do it’s a “Good Work” in passing. Reality is we tend to ignore our best performers all together, thinking that we can just rely on them to get things done and focus on the other problems that face us every day. If you have someone on your team who is doing a great job, it is a mistake to not provide positive feedback. Studies vary on the ratio of how much positive to constructive feedback is required by a team member, but you are looking at a minimum of three to a high of seven times. That means for every piece of constructive feedback you give, you need to provide three times the positive encouragement to that same employee. If you think about your best performing coach, or other team member right now, do you think you are meeting that ratio? And if you do how specific are you? Do you link their behavior to business results; are you providing the kudos in the moment? These are all elements that make positive feedback more meaningful. Next time, instead of a passing “good work”, take the extra ten seconds and make it clear to them their impact on the growth of the business… i.e. “I wanted to thank you for what I saw back at the desk. Your positive attitude with that potential client really made an impression on them, when they see the people that work here are engaged and happy the customer knows it’s a fun place to be. Thanks for giving them a peek at our culture” Never assume your best performer knows how appreciated they are, and take the time to provide ...
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