Membership salespeople need a couple of things in order to reach their potential.
- They need leadership. This is a person who follows what I call the “PTI playbook.”
- They set the plan for sales success. This includes marketing and the step-by-step process for answering phone calls, giving tours and asking for referrals.
- The leader is responsible for training on the plan. This includes role playing telephone calls, tours and asking for referrals.
- Leadership needs to be regularly inspecting that the plan is being followed and where there may be potential needs for more training. Much of this can be found by inspecting the numbers.
- Salespeople need to have their performance tracked. How are they with telephone inquiries? How are they doing with their tours? Are they hitting their goal with referrals? Are they reaching the benchmark for scheduling new members for assessments and consultations?
The numbers don’t lie. In order for you to know if you have a marketing problem or selling problem, or both, you need to track the numbers.
Telephone inquiries: Every time a call comes in from a prospect, somebody who is looking for information about your gym, it needs to be counted. Every one of these prospects who books an appointment from the telephone call needs to be counted.
I recommend a good old-fashioned tick sheet. Email me at jason@jasonlinse.com with “tick sheet” in the subject line and I will get you the one I use.
Every time a telephone call comes in from a prospect a vertical line is made on the tick sheet. If an appointment is scheduled from the call, circle the vertical line.
At the end of the day, put them in a spreadsheet or database, or software system — someplace where leadership can easily access and inspect the numbers.
For telephone calls to appointments, your salespeople need to be at 70 percent or higher.
Every tour, place a vertical line on the tick sheet under the “tours” section.
If the prospect joins, circle the vertical line on the tick sheet.
For tours to sales, it gets trickier when it comes to benchmarks. If you are offering a paid trial membership, like a 30 days for $19, then your first visit closing percentage should be around 30 percent to 35 percent if you are offering a gift, such as a gym bag for folks who sign the longer term agreement on their first visit. The remaining 30 to 35 percent will come during or shortly thereafter the 30-day paid trial.
If you aren’t offering a 30-day paid trial, then you need your salespeople at 55 percent for first visit closing.
Every new sale needs to be asked for referrals, names and numbers of friends and family. Salespeople simply make a vertical line on the tick sheet for each name and number procured.
Every new sales needs to be asked to schedule a consultation or assessment. The goal is to get 70 percent or more of your new members to schedule an appointment with a fitness coach.
So, as leaders, you crunch these numbers every month. And from the results, you can see where your sales staff may need some extra training. Part of your weekly duties as a leader should include training and role playing. But analyzing the numbers monthly will show you where you may need to focus more training time.
Knowing the numbers is critical and helps you figure out where you are strong, and where you need to improve.
I have had several clients who have said things like, “We did a 10,000 piece mailer and got only one or two memberships.”
Upon closer inspection, I often discover that they did in fact receive a handful of inquiries. Maybe 12 to 15. But they were poor on booking appointments and closing tours.
Track your numbers, work on areas you need to improve in and make more sales.
Keep changing lives.
Stay ahead in the fitness industry with exclusive updates!
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. Contact him at jason@jasonlinse.com or 612-310-1319 for resources on scheduling more tours and personality assessments, or visit www.jasonlinse.com.
