I teach five steps when it comes to the membership sales process.
- Meet and Greet
- Qualify
- Build value
- Present prices
- Ask for the sale
A membership salesperson needs to do all five of these well in order to maximize sales and be a rock star. However, if I had to choose which one is the most important it would be number two.
Qualifying is defined as finding out the reasons that the prospect is visiting the club. Qualifying means asking many questions, most of them open-ended.
In terms of the other steps, the meet and greet occurs at the front desk or near the entrance of the gym. Building value happens on the tour. You present prices and ask for the sale at the sales table. And qualifying occurs at many times during the tour. But, it starts at the sit down. And it starts with a needs analysis sheet.
Now, a seasoned membership salesperson can skip the needs analysis and go right on a tour and start qualifying. But, it takes a ton of practice and leading a lot of tours to get to this level. So use the needs analysis sheet, but let me give you some solid tips that will help you not feel old school.
- Train front desk staff to present the needs analysis sheet to the prospect and walk them to a nearby table to fill it out while a membership salesperson is called. This works best if you have a separate sit down area that is not in an office. Allow them time to fill out the sheet. Then transition to the meet and greet.
- Continue sitting with the prospect after explaining what is going to happen over the next few minutes: “First, I want to go over this sheet and learn more about you and what you are looking for in a fitness center. Then I will take you on a tour, showing you all we have here at Main Street Fitness. After the tour, if you are still interested, we will go over the membership options. How does that sound?” This type of scripting will help to mitigate any intimidation that the prospect may have about the gym touring process and allow them to give you permission by answering, “That sounds great”.
- At the top of the sheet is the basic contact information. The next section includes questions like, “What brought you in to Main Street Fitness today? Are you currently a member of a health club? Would this membership be just for you or for you and someone else?”
- The next section contains the three most important questions related to qualifying a prospect: What are your goals? Why are those goals important to you? How are you going to accomplish those goals?
The above three questions make up the meat of the qualifying process. Most membership salespeople can easily be trained to ask what are your goals and how are you going to accomplish those goals? But the second question, which is the most important, is often a struggle unless you practice.
People join a gym for many reasons, but we have to try to get down to the “why” they’re joining as much as possible.
People buy from people they like and people like people who listen to them, and who show concern:
- Salesperson: “What are you goals?”
- Customer: “I want to lose 20 pounds”
- Salesperson: “Why do you want to lose 20 pounds?”
- Customer: “Um, well that would put me at the weight I like to be”
- Salesperson: “What do you like about being at that weight?”
- Customer: “I feel better, my clothes fit better and I am happier.”
Please email me jason@Jasonlinse.com and I will shoot you back a needs analysis document that you can start implementing right away.
Keep changing lives.
Jason Linse is president and founder of The Business of Fitness, a consulting company. He also owns a personality assessment company called People Plus+ Fitness. He can be reached at jason@jasonlinse.com or at 612-310-1319. Visit www.jasonlinse.com.
