With potential members pouring through your doors to cash in on their New Year’s resolutions, you’ve got the perfect opportunity to grow your membership-and your revenue. And all you really need to do is get organized.
New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and get in shape mean health clubs have plenty of opportunity to lure lots of new members. But despite the flood of new memberships that come in January, few clubs reap long-term benefits-those potential members show up a few times, then vanish into the ether. By March, most of them have already decided not to extend or renew their memberships.
So how can you enjoy the benefits of those new members for more than a few weeks? Research suggests that many new members leave because they are intimidated by the club environment-they feel confused by the plethora of classes and equipment and intimidated by the confident exercisers working out around them. Assigning your new members a personal trainer who can help them master the machines and put together a workout plan that will help them achieve their goals is one of the best ways to keep members coming to the gym and to create strong club loyalty. But if you want to make a program like this work, you’ve got to be organized.
Can your training department or studio quickly change appointments, handle extra off time for your trainers, move a trainer’s clients to another trainer? This is a time of year that can be a nightmare for some facilities, if, you do not have some sort computerized scheduling system.
Running around looking for everybody’s book, seeing who is available to take over another trainer’s appointments, handling calls from clients to change appointments can upset any system. With a small number of trainers the task is not overwhelming, but when you have 10-70 trainers and hundreds of clients, scheduling can become a headache.
That is why the training department (and others in your facility, aquatics, spas, massage, sports, and recreation) need a good computerized scheduling software. With a scheduling system you will be able to see all your trainers side by side, be able to drag and drop from one trainer to another, trainer payroll should be included in the system and based on the sessions completed for each trainer. This way no matter how many cancellations or time changes you have your weekly payroll will continue to calculate correctly. Trainers should have their own views of the schedule so they can see, at least weekly, what their schedules are, and be able to quickly move and cancel appointments. Less time spent on managing your clients and trainers schedules will give you a little more holiday time and peace of mind.
There are affordable systems available specifically designed to manage your personal trainers and instructors. If you do not have a good scheduling system you should spend some time to evaluate them, it will help all year long.
Frank Acosta is the Owner of Jersey Software, developers of PT Manager Software. He has been consulting and developing software solutions for the last 20 years. He can be contacted at 888/243.7619 or by email at Frank@ptmgr.com .
