4 Tips to Raise Your Affiliate Gym Sales Process

Sales is one of the most challenging responsibilities of a gym owner. It (sales) is often thought of as time-consuming and complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Check out these four tips to raise your affiliate gym sales process this year.

Know Your Target Market

We often see gym owners trying to cast the widest net possible when it comes to finding new leads, but this usually results in leads who are unqualified. By this, we mean individuals who are not right for your program. As a result, you end up with poor conversation rates, lots of wasted time and, if they do sign-up, poor retention rates.

Believe it or not, your offering is not right for everyone, and everyone is not right for you! You need to start by understanding your membership base; Who are they? Think about their age, gender, likes, dislikes, goals, profession and socioeconomic status. Usually, you will find the members of a gym reflect the owners and/or the full-time staff. Ever walked into a gym owned by a husband and wife team and found it’s full of couples around the same age? Or, perhaps the full-time staff are all of the competitive mindset and like to compete. Their members probably like to train for competition as well. Your management software should provide you with the ability to find this important information and help you discover who your ideal member is.

Automate with a Personal Approach

Not only is this the biggest time saver, but it ensures each and every lead is followed up with in a timely manner. Zen Planner provides more than just software for gym membership management, you can create an automated sales funnel to reach out to new leads using different contact methods. Automating this follow-up process can take a huge workload off your hands. With that being said, keeping a personal approach can make you stand out from the competition. Automated SMS and emails are quick and easy but tasking staff to perform phone calls can be more valuable. Within Zen Planner “Staff Tasks” can be included in the sales funnel to alert a specific staff member to carry out a task. For example, they can be alerted to call a new lead on day 1, day 3 and day 5, and then SMS or email them on the other days.

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Be Quick and Persistent

As previously noted, persistence is key when it comes to converting leads. A lot of the time, we see gyms give up on leads after reaching out one or two times, but on average leads need to be contacted up to five times before they will respond! Some research has also shown that if a new lead is contacted within the first five minutes (regardless of contact methods) of filling out a lead form the chances of conversion increase exponentially. On average, less than 7% of businesses achieve this. According to another study by Lead Connect, 78% of customers buy from the business that responds to their inquiry first. That’s how big the consequences can be of taking a few extra minutes to make a cup of coffee before getting to those leads. But, it also highlights how having an automated email and SMS to contact a lead as soon as they fill out a lead capture form can place you front of the queue.

Don’t Treat Everyone the Same

When building your affiliate gym sales process remember that not every lead that comes to you should be communicated with using the same messaging and having different sales funnels can be a huge advantage. Let’s look at two individuals, John and Jill. John is new to this style of training. He heard about it from one of his friends and is intrigued. Jill has been “CrossFitting” for five years, has just moved to the area and is looking for a new gym. John is likely intimidated by what he has seen on his internet searches, and the idea of stepping foot inside a box is overwhelming. He is probably not at the stage of considering a trial class. It may take a little time to address his uncertainties and help him see that this training style could be for him. Getting him to commit to a phone call is a good first step. On the other hand, Jill knows what’s up. She has likely researched gyms in the area and given her contact info to a number of those she likes the look of. The first gym to get back to her and get her in for a session will likely win her business. How you talk to your leads makes a huge difference to your chances of conversion, so try to identify 2-3 stages of a buyer’s journey and speak to them appropriately. Luckily for Zen Planner users, you can create different lead capture widgets to funnel these different folks into the appropriate sales funnel to help you achieve this.

Sales funnels can be cumbersome and complicated, but they don’t have to be. Putting in the leg work to create an automated gym sales process will increase conversion rates, improve retention and take a huge workload off your plate.

Download your free affiliate gym marketing guide today!