Sales is a social job, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. We clearly want our sales people to engage with members throughout the day, but a professional sales person has to have an internal timer to know how long is too long. We are all aware of our responsibilities each day — we clearly want to spend time with members of our club, but we have to have a balance or the entire day could be thrown off and you could suffer from lack of production by over communicating with members.
The members are in social mode and you need to be part of that, but you are at work, so you have to keep that in mind. I tell my sales team to try to keep conversations with members to two minutes. Twenty two-minute conversations take up 40 minutes of the day — I would bet that many of your sales reps are having more than 20 conversations and taking more than two minutes. So on one side we teach to engage, but on the other side our sales reps are killing their day.
Let’s agree that we want our sales reps in front of prospects. One of the oldest rules of sales is to focus on two activities. The first activity is to be in front of prospects; the second activity is to do anything that will get you in front of prospects. Talking to members is one of those activities — calling members that you have not seen, marketing in your community, letter writing to businesses, handing out passes, going to club-sponsored events — the list can be staggering and all activities will lead to prospects being in front of you, but all things have to be in balance.
If you spent all your time letter writing, you would be missing out on personal connections. If you spent all your time talking to members, then you would miss out on corporate opportunities or silent marketing tools that drive memberships. The ideal day is to have a plan that balances all activities evenly.
Remember, our goal as sales people is to sell memberships, so our job description is very simple. To do our job well, we have to monitor our activity that leads to sales. We need to get the most out of our 8-hour days. If you took food breaks and social breaks you may find that your averaging sales rep is only working 50 percent of the day — we all know that will not lead to maximizing opportunity for them or your club. So inspect what you expect — talk daily about activity and pay close attention to the social impact that may be having an adverse effect on your club.
Chuck Hall is the executive director at Big Vanilla Athletic Clubs.
