In our industry we continually hear the term diversification. How is your club diversifying? How do you diversify yourself from your competition?
How you diversify your business can be the difference between many years of success, or closing when new competition enters your market. If you only diversify yourself on price in a market, what happens when someone comes in and trumps you?
I’ve interviewed a multitude of clubs and heard a ton of different ideas. The only common denominator is that every club is trying to differentiate itself. Truthfully, there is no way you’re ever going to make every member in your club happy 24/7. Although, how great would it be if you could?
In reality, there is no way — just like there is no way we can write every single article and it pertain to your club. Maybe we write on yoga and Pilates, but you don’t have either one of those. Sorry, but a lot of clubs do — but I’m not saying that means you should. But, hey, we have a lot of articles and the next one might hit right at home.
If you don’t have yoga or Pilates, but your competitor does, then what do you have that they don’t? Maybe you actually have a dietitian on staff. Maybe your team sports leagues out do any club in your area. Maybe you have the top personal training staff.
You have to figure out what type of club you want to be. Don’t say I want to be the best club in town. What does that even mean? What if the best club in town has the cheapest membership and personal training rates, followed by the best equipment and greatest staff? You think you can fill that order?
I didn’t think so.
Look, discover what you want to be. If you want to have the best personal trainers, make that an initiative. Work with members to get them enrolled and create a competitive pricing plan. If you want to have the best leagues, spend time creating time and space for these leagues to occur. Attempt to build a revenue system into the leagues.
Once you know exactly what you want to be, make a point to be great at that. Focus on that service and make it impossible to top. Whatever you choose to be great at, you need to be so good that no one, regardless of size or price, should ever be able to top you. Now, what are you going to do to diversify your club?
Tyler Montgomery is the Editor of Club Solutions Magazine. Contact him at tyler@clubsolutionsmagazine.com
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Rachel Zabonick-Chonko is the editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.
