Sales: Focus on the Features and Benefits

A big mistake gym owners or sales consultants make when touring their facility is they don’t know what they are selling. The typical scenario looks like this: Prospect walks in and inquires about the gym. Sales consultant eagerly walks them through the facility boasting about their awesome equipment and a dozen amenities at the prospect’s disposal. Sometimes the prospect buys, most of the time they want to think about it. Why is that?

The sales consultant totally dropped the ball on identifying the wants and needs of the prospect. To increase the chance of making the sale, you have to identify what that person is looking for in the first place. This is called a needs analysis. What are their fitness goals, do they currently workout, are they married, where do they work, do they have kids, do they like group fitness, etc?

Spend a few minutes at the beginning and talk to the prospect to figure these things out. Then and only then can you give a proper gym tour, because you’ll be armed with the information needed to customize the tour to be specific to their needs. You need to be able to connect the amenities to their goal. Just think “features and benefits.”

How will the features of the gym benefit the prospect? Features are what your gym offers, benefits are how those offerings will help the prospect achieve their goal. For example: “…over here is the workout floor with the most recent, state-of-the-art equipment designed to keep constant tension throughout the movement. Now Mrs. Jones, what this means for you is a faster, more efficient way to develop muscle tone, which will aide in your weight loss goal we spoke about earlier. How does that sound?”

Most people don’t care about the features of products, especially ones they don’t understand. But if you can get them to understand how the features of your product will benefit them, you’re one step closer to attaining a new member.