Many club operators struggle to hit their projections each year. Oftentimes this is due to not monitoring results. As any consultant or sales expert would say, you live and die by the numbers — you must pay attention to them. It all starts with having and setting expectations and then breaking those down into smaller parts.
Inspect what you expect and get the desired results you want though accountability. Hold staff to the numbers they should be generating. Easier said than done, but doable with most club management software (CMS) packages. For items such as new member sales, renewals and online revenue generated, the numbers should be paid close attention to.
Make sure you have the ability to easily create and print basic reports, which are critical to see if results are being attained. Get started by wrapping up 2015 and posting the results in clear view.
Determine the number of new memberships sold for the year. Then break it down into the number of monthly, annual and short-term contracts. Determine the number of renewals sold.
What was the number of monthly paying cancellations? Likewise, how many paid-in-full memberships did not renew?
Look at outstanding open-ended memberships on freeze. Clean up the list if possible.
Review all balances due and perhaps write off old, bad debt.
Track returns and cancel any accounts that have been delinquent for more than three months. Not doing this skews future projections.
Archive former or expired members.
Having the above numbers provides a report card and allows a club to see its attrition rate. The result should determine the appropriate course of action and set reachable goals for 2016. Note that the most profitable clubs put 70 percent or more of their memberships onto monthly billing to ensure they have a steady revenue stream. Monitoring and managing this ratio is a key indicator of success.
Be sure your CMS program can give you a Sales Analysis Report showing not only the revenue brought in by line item, but the number of units sold. This will give a real reference of what items are moving and should be restocked regularly.
Here are a few other ways to inspect staff performance in your facility.
Maintenance Team: Have a checklist that they adhere to on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Conduct a walkthrough with list in hand. Run usage reports from your CMS by day of week and time of day to ascertain high usage. More staffing may be required during peak times to assure a clean and safe environment.
Fitness Team: Retention should be one of the primary goals of your fitness team. Use low user reports that include phone numbers and email addresses to communicate with them. Next, analyze the personal training numbers. Track sold and redeemed personal training sessions in the software, and even add monthly package renewals automatically to the monthly billing.
Sales Team: Inspecting new member sales is critical to the success of any club. Be sure the team is entering all prospects and guests into the software for follow up. If you have a website, add the ability via your software provider, to allow for online joining and other items.
Front Desk Team: Frequently run a status code report to see if members with alerts were allowed to enter the club. A cancelled, expired or past-due member directly affects the bottom line. Work with staff to halt the member and clear up their account.
Clear-cut expectations for the staff, along with consistent follow up, is the best way to assure success.
Carole Oat is a national sales manager at Twin Oaks Software and a former club owner and operator for 15 years. She can be reached at coat@tosd.com or 860.829.6000 x 281.
