Sales: Are Your Prospects Filling their Cart?

The biggest mistake membership reps make is giving the “Disney Tour.” Meaning, they bring their prospects around the club, showing them all the awesome things the facility has. “These are our treadmills and they go really fast, these are our dumbbells and they’re really heavy, and this is our pool and the water is wet, etc.” Unfortunately, this type of tour does nothing but give the prospect a “data-dump” of information and fails to get a prospect to confirm that they want to join your club because it meets their needs.

One of the most common mistakes a rep makes during a club tour is sounding generic. They say the same thing every time, over and over, multiple times a day, and hope that the prospect will want something in the club that was showed to them. An over-rehearsed tour isn’t typically relevant to the prospect in front of them. That doesn’t mean our reps shouldn’t have a set presentation or system. It simply means that every presentation or tour they do should be personalized to that individual prospect.

Let’s take an example and see how the “Disney Tour” can work against them:

You’re looking to purchase a new cellphone and the thing that is most important to you is a great camera. If the consultant begins telling you about all the wonderful features of the cellphone, but has not answered your question about the camera, what are you thinking?

You’re probably thinking that they’re wasting your time or they don’t care about what you really want or need. Maybe you need to go to a different store to see what they have to offer. Maybe they will tell you about a phone with a good camera.

A rep should think about this when giving a tour. If the prospect has told them that she is looking to join a gym because she wants to lose the 30 pounds that she gained after having kids, then the tour needs to be all about how she can lose weight at your club.

She’s not going to care about your 20 treadmills, 15 ellipticals and 10 bikes, how fast they go or that they have TVs on them. She cares if we show her how she can come in, do a 30 to 45 minute workout on that cardio equipment and burn more than 800 calories, helping her lose those 30 pounds as fast as possible. She is not going to care if a rep shows her 25 resistance machines and how the weight can be increased or decreased by moving the pin up and down. She cares that resistance training is an important piece of weight loss, because the stronger her muscles are, the faster she can metabolize fat, which means the faster she will lose those 30 pounds.

The only way a rep can do a true needs-based tour is by doing a great needs analysis. Reps must discover the prospects’ goals and motivations, which should then dictate the tour.

Once they have uncovered what a prospect wants from a health club membership, it is time to bring them around the facility and connect the bridge from their goals to your club.

This process is the equivalent of taking a prospect grocery shopping at your club. When you go to the grocery store, what is the first thing you get? A cart. Then you go through the aisles and do what? Get the items you need, want and appeal to you. Next, you go to the checkout counter and the cashier rings in all your items. Finally, you have to pay for the items that you put in your cart. Imagine if you went to the grocery store, went through all the aisles, but didn’t put anything in your basket. When you got to the checkout counter, you wouldn’t owe the cashier anything because you didn’t take anything.

If our reps fail to make the connection of the prospects’ needs to our club while on the tour, there is nothing for them to purchase. They will not close a sale because we have 20 treadmills or because we keep the Jacuzzi at 103, or even because of the 100 group exercise classes we offer each week. They will close the sale because by using all of the wonderful amenities and great equipment at the facility and by doing a variety of activities in a safe environment with lots of support, they will reach their goals.

So the next time your reps give a tour, have them think of it as a shopping trip where their prospect is pushing the cart. How will they make sure that the prospect is putting items in their cart? How will they walk them across that bridge, connecting their needs to your health club? How will your membership reps make sure that their prospects are filling their carts and ready for check out?