Not So Expert Secrets PT II

This Not So Expert Secrets series is something I want to bring about once a month to provide owners and operators the information it takes to truly be successful. My goal is to bring you the information that is needed to reach more people in your community for health and wellness.

My dream is that through my information, the companies I work for and with, the partnerships I've created and the gyms we service, that we can set a goal of reaching 30% of the US population in the next 10 years.

Right now we are at 18%, so it's up to us to do the work it takes to increase our reach, and our impact!

That being said, I'd love to have you guys let me know what you're struggling with in business and each month I will write an article or do a long form video training on whatever it is you want more information on. So... Without further ado. Here is Part II! Enjoy!

What are you currently doing to engage and interact with members during their initial months in the club? It is so important to stay on top of your members, and provide them with value throughout their time in the facility, but during the first 90 days this is key.

During the first couple of months in the facility, habit building is the name of the game. Even more than transactions, a member’s first 90 days is about habit building, plain and simple.

You need to make sure that once a member signs up that you are holding them accountable to their goals. You just spent time going over everything they want, and more importantly everything they need. They’ve just made the most important investment in their life and quite honestly, it is your obligation to make sure that they reach their goals.

The key to this is through diversified member engagement. We know that a member that utilizes your facility more often and in more ways is going to stay longer. We also know that it costs 3 times as much to gain a member than it does to keep a member, that being said, let’s go over some questions really quickly.

1. Who gets the most out of your facility? Is it the person that only comes and gets on your treadmill, or the mom in the group exercise class? Is it the person who comes in on their own, or the person that is coming in with a friend or working with one of your trainers?
2. Who refers their friends the most? Is it the person you only see once a week, or 5 times a week?
3. Who purchases more of your products and services? Is it the engaged member, or the member you haven’t seen in 3 months.

I know these may seem like simple questions with even simpler answers, but too often I see clubs “set it and forget it” with their members. A member comes in, your staff takes 30 minutes to sit down with them, go over their pain points, overcome objections and sign them up on a 12 month contract. They sign them up for a Fitness Assessment, get referrals at the point of sale, and then they never talk to that member one on one again.

This is where onboarding comes in. The first 90 days are crucial to a member’s engagement in the facility. In my time in the industry, I've worked with clubs that have had a structured onboarding, I've worked with clubs that have had an unstructured onboarding and clubs that have no onboarding procedure. I'll let you in on a little secret.... the only club that was massively successful (Is now a multi location facility), was the one that had a structured onboarding process.

What happened to the other two? One got bought out for pennies on the dollar, and the other is slowly failing. I don't know about you, but I'll choose to do the work and onboard.

With any proper onboarding there are going to be 4 key ingredients to building the relationship and providing true tangible value to the members that are apart of your facility.

1. Free Services
2. Free Products
3. Free Month
4. Free Accountability

In the first 90 days, you're going to provide so much value and so much diversification that the member will have no choice but to stick around.

The following 90 day game plan is something you could copy and paste, but it is truly meant to just be a simple blueprint.

The First 90 Days!

When you sign up a member, you should be signing them up for a Fitness Assessment (Free Service). This assessment should be more than a needs analysis. Most members consider the fitness assessment a sales tactic (Because it is). As much as we are trying to sell them training, part of the onboarding needs to be an actual Personal Training session, beyond the sale, we want our members to actually experience what it is like to work with one of our trainers. Again, who gets the most out of your facility?

In most cases, if I'm working with the front desk staff, I want them to change the wording. I don’t offer an assessment, I offer a “Free PT session, where our trainer will go over your nutrition and exercise needs, put you through a full workout, and go over the next steps to getting you in the best shape of your life.” (The key here is it has to be true).

You see the difference there? A fitness assessment is a waste of the member’s time, a training session is a great use of their time, where they can figure out their nutritional and exercise needs, get a great workout in, and then get the next steps. Sounds great.

Beyond this you want to be setting up milestones. With each milestone comes another free offering. This is done via the “Attendance Ladder”. This is similar to the value ladder in marketing, but it basically offers services to diversify member engagement via multiple bite sized attendance goals.

Your first step is obviously the free personal training session, but beyond that your next goal is to have the member come in 8 times in the first month, that’s 2 times a week, pretty easy and highly attainable. For this, when the member achieves the goal, they will receive another product or service free depending on what your facility offers. I've seen smoothies, t-shirts, free week of tanning, free week of hydro-massage etc. Remember with this milestone, you are providing smaller products or services. Not massive prizes. Something to wet the whistle if you may.

As you move up the ladder, the second 30 days you want the member coming in 10 times. Once they achieve this goal you want to offer them something a little more enticing. Here you would offer them something like a session of small group training, a full nutrition assessment, maybe if you have supplements, you offer them the supplement of their choice. This is going to be something that is a bit more pricey, but something again that will pique their interest in our premium services or products.

In the last 30 days our attendance goal moves up to 12 check ins. If they check in 12 times, they get their fourth month free. Not only have you offered our members, free personal training (which they've possibly purchased). You've offered them other amenities in our facility that would normally have a cost associated with them, but because they were engaged you provided for free. And now, since they have become even more engaged and come 12 times, you offer them their fourth month completely free.

The focus here is not on upselling, but on engaging. Getting the member to truly enjoy coming to your facility. An upsell is great, but a stronger relationship and longer lifetime value is better.

Now what about free accountability? You remember, number 4 don't you? Well this is constantly going on. You should be shooting out exercise tutorials, grocery lists, and just general “hey how ya doing?” emails. You should be having quick chats with the member about their goals when you see them in the facility. You should always be tracking check in trends, but it is especially important during the member’s first 90 days. Here we want to keep them updated on how many times they’ve shown up, offer them very interesting ideas via email and social media and provide them with not only accountability, but care. When you care, people stay.

Onboarding is the key to success. A lot of your members aren’t pumped to be in the gym and definitely don’t know what to do. If we can hold their hand through the process, show them that we care and provide them with the value, that member is going to be a raving fan by day 91 at the latest.

Ned has worked in and around the fitness industry his whole life. He has his Master’s Degree in Exercise and Nutrition Science, during which time he collaborated on and was published in multiple peer reviewed articles in health and human performance. He has consulted for multiple 6 and 7 figure organizations in the healthcare space, has worked with hundreds of club locations all over the United States focusing on digital strategy and mobile branding as an Account Manager with Netpulse, and is now the Customer Lead for the entire SMB market. In this role, his main focus is the automation and restructuring of sales processes, marketing systems and operations for the SMB segment of the Netpulse market. His true passion is providing fitness facilities and professionals with the tools to achieve autonomy and success through market positioning, technology adoption and operations optimization. You can reach ned at [email protected] or follow him on Instagram at @NedArick.