Getting to Know You

You can’t consistently sell memberships effectively without knowing two things – first, what are you selling; and second, knowing to whom you are selling. For the purpose of keeping within the space allotted let’s focus on the latter. It is imperative to find out who your prospective member is and what they need. The easiest and most effective way to accomplish this is to ask a series of open-ended questions. This can be accomplished by having a preformated questionnaire (recommended). At a bare minimum you should learn about: Fitness goals,upcoming deadlines or big events, marital status, how long they’ve been considering membership, current memberships, what brought them in, training schedule, any other clubs they’ve checked out. Actually, there are quite a few more and I’ll extend the interrogation as long as it’s giving me valuable information or they are playing along. The answers give you the ammunition to close the deal when people start throwing objections around after prices are presented. If you skip this step you have nothing but tired salesy tricks to battle with. I like my odds better when I can use information straight from the horses mouth.

Frank Emanuel
Health Club Marketing Contributor