In the past week most of the eastern seaboard has been hit by storms. While some people have lost power for a few days, others have lost homes. Communities, businesses and individuals are all affected by the natural disasters that seem to be occurring more frequently than ever before. The question I am posing is — how do you protect yourself when a storm is coming your way, and you business is in danger of losing operations for a few days?
I want to clarify that I am not speaking of devastation such as that in New Jersey from Hurricane Sandy, but more of what many experienced — loss of power, minor wind damage, light flooding. In my community we had power outages for four days, but had no major structural damage. We had trees down, which knocked out power lines. The community was functioning with generators, spirits were high, because we seemed to escape the worst. My point is, life was pretty normal other than no power.
Our health club, like yours, is a staple in the community. When bad weather occurs, we will stay open as long as we can. Many people come to get away from the challenges — many come just to take showers when their house has no power. We allow guests in at that time just for refuge; we are not a hospital, but in rough times it kind of feels that way. We are proud to serve everyone. Occasionally our power goes down and now we have to shut our doors for days — no power, no customers, no revenue, certainly not good experience for anyone. Do you get the picture? Have you been there? So what can you do? We have experienced this several times, so we are getting better. Maybe I can help you!
Often storms are announced days in advance. Sandy started broadcasting herself on Thursday, and the storm actually hit our area on Monday. She was gone by Tuesday, so our power was out Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with the power returning late Wednesday night. Three days of no work… yikes!
Meeting: We met with our sales team and communicated with our leadership team on what may happen and what our game plan was for no power. For this article, I will focus on sales. I could write about what happened in each department, because it is a process.
So, we gathered our sales team to discuss how we could win during the storm. If, of course, our area was not hit too badly, I can assure you — our members would be banging on the door if we had power, and their own homes didn’t. I am happy for the attitude of our community, and maybe we had something to do with it. Our sales team does not want to lose income, nor lose work days. I want you to understand they were on board 100 percent.
1. We pulled our prospect list — we anticipated loss of power, but we could not predict when it would occur. So starting Friday, we kept updating our prospect list, printing throughout the day a new list so all sales reps had phone numbers and names. They were preparing to work without a computer or landline. Our customer traffic was clearing dropping as people were preparing for the storm, grocery stores were packed, generators were being checked, water was being stored — all gearing for days of no power, which is quite common for our area. Our sales team was working all the way up to the moment of no power. When it did go out Monday night at 6:30 p.m., we were ready for Tuesday and Wednesday with a plan in place.
2. We created an offer — obviously no one could come to our gym if we had no power. No one was driving around because our governor put restrictions on the radio and TV to stay off the roads. On Tuesday the weather was windy and rainy, but clearly danger had passed. We were spared and life was going back to normal over the next few days. So we went to work. The offer was a short-term, month-to-month membership. The offer had to be such that a person would recognize that it’s much cheaper than normal, and would be willing to respond over the phone. Remember — we’re only going to call prospects. That means all of our calls were going to people who have been in our facility, have seen pricing and would jump at the offer. Our team was excited to call because they also knew we were offering something below market value, and their prospects would be excited. So we were about to begin a business day on Tuesday, with our sales team all working from home.
3. General check-ups — I communicated with text to the sales team. I wanted each to call at 7 p.m. to report their success or activity for the day. I was available by cell phone all day to answer any questions prospects may have. What I found is that each time a sales rep sold a membership, they would text and share how happy people were to get involved at such a low price. We instructed our sales team to share that this price is strictly because of Hurricane Sandy. We realize that no one can get to the gym in the next few days, so we were trying to make lemonade out of lemons. We were creating a win for the customer, a win for the employees and a win for the health club.
4. We had to create incentives — we offered an extra $25 commission for each sale. This would keep the group working from home excited, so if they sold one membership they would get commission plus $25, so why stop there? If they sold four memberships in a day, they would make an extra 100 dollars on top of salary and commission. We also allowed these sales to count for bonuses for the month. The typical sales rep works 22 days in a month, so to lose 3-4 day can be disastrous. In the past, when time was lost, much income was lost for the employees. We knew we could accomplish so much if everyone agreed and was on board.
5. We allowed all sales reps to go to our other facility to serve customers as an option. We have another club five miles away that never lost power, so if they didn’t want to work from home, they went to the other club. About half of our sales team did that just to be around people and to get motivated — not everyone works well from home.
6. Nightly text — I made sure each rep knew what the others were doing. We found that some prospects got so excited that they called friends to get them on board as well. Often a member would call as many as five friends that day. We offered a member incentive for referrals. Each new member who referred a new member received $25 in club bucks. We had two members who referred at least three other members, site unseen.
7. Meanwhile we waited — our power returned on Wednesday night. Our members had been away for three days, they were anxious for us to open the next morning at 5 a.m., and we were anxious to open and meet all of our new members. We produced over 20 memberships in two and a half days with a hurricane and no power. We did it through team work, a sense of community and a solid game plan. We could have rolled over, waited for the storm to pass, let sales reps go home and do nothing, but that would be too easy. We had opportunity because we were only missing power — we did not suffer damage that was being reported further up the coast. Everyone wanted to work and no one wanted to lose income. We made lemonade out of lemons.
8. We now have many new, happy members that are now positioned in other programs. The average dues are just the beginning for club revenue growth. We focus on average dollars spent by each member — it’s important to have people become enrolled at your facility, but also be part of all that you offer. A new member may join at 60 dollars per month, but their average spending inside the club may be three times that amount. If we don’t create memberships, then none of that will happen. I hope this gets you started the next time bad weather occurs, but I really hope you never have to go though it at all!
Chuck Hall is the executive director at Big Vanilla Athletic Clubs.
