Top Gym Management Software
Welcome to the first edition of EZFacility’s Behind the Curtains series! Today’s guest (or victim) is Michael Vidal, Product Owner and self-proclaimed family man. Mike is here to give us the inside scoop on EZFacility’s development team, the product development process at a growing company and how to juggle the needs of customers, prospective customers and the team players at EZFacility.
Read the full interview here
Think any of your members have ever tried traveling without a passport? If they do, they risk getting out of shape, inducing an injury when they start working out again, and losing their momentum for regular exercise. I’m not talking about their actual passports, of course; I’m talking about IHRSA’s Passport Program. If your facility doesn’t take part in it, you might be doing your members a disservice.
IHRSA’s Passport Program is a worldwide network of 1,700 health clubs that offer guest access to their facilities for members of participating clubs. Participation in the Passport Program is free for clubs; you merely have to register. Once you do, your members need to follow only a few steps in order to be able to use health clubs around the world. First, they have to obtain a valid Passport I.D. from your facility. Then, they have to check IHRSA’s list of participating clubs to locate one in the area where they will be traveling. Finally, they have to call ahead to confirm the availability of the facilities and find out about any guest fees that might apply. It’s that easy.
When you register, you agree to two stipulations. One, that you will reciprocate and offer traveling members of other clubs access to yours. Two, that you will discount your regular guest fee by at least 50 percent for Passport guests.
Those aren’t small stipulations, but the potential benefit to your club should be clear. Imagine the added value you’ll be offering prospective members when they’re considering signing up for a membership. You tell them that by signing up they’ll be giving themselves access to 1,700 clubs around the country — who can say no to that? What’s more, you’ll demonstrate your commitment to their good health. Traveling can be hard on the body, especially if it means breaking off from a regular workout routine. And traveling around the holidays can be particularly damaging, given all the indulgent treats available. If your members know they can head to Great Aunt Glenda’s place and eat her fruit cake and butter cookies with a clear conscience, because there’s an accessible gym in town—you’ll be providing them with a valuable service.
Keep in mind, IHRSA’s network isn’t the only one out there (though it’s probably the biggest). Look into the available options and consider which ones would be a good fit for you and your members. They’ll thank you if you do.
Let’s say you’ve got a prospective member who has shown a lot of interest in your facility. You’ve given her a tour, offered her a free day pass to try the place out, and even had the highest-performing member of your sales team sit down with her for a full twenty minutes, chatting like an old friend and answering a slew of questions. Yet, when it comes time for the prospective to sign on the dotted line, she balks—she just doesn’t feel like she can commit to a year-long membership.
Does this sound like a familiar scenario? With members’ increasingly hectic work lives and a tight economy, it’s happening more and more at gyms, health clubs, and fitness centres around the country. Something else is also happening more and more to directly counteract the phenomenon: Clubs are starting to offer month-to-month membership with greater frequency than ever before.
How, you might ask, could a club stay operational with month-to-month memberships? The better question might be: How could a club stay operational without them? As Geoff Dyer, Founder of AussieFIT in Columbus, Ohio, puts it, “Some 25 percent of all members become inactive within six months of joining a club, and that figure doubles, rising to 50 percent, after one year. Unfortunately, one of the black eyes our industry has earned is its reputation for locking inactive members into long-term retail installment contracts.”
Dyer recently discussed month-to-month memberships on IHRSA’s blog. These options are better, Dyer argues, because they allow the industry to focus as much on member retention as it does on new member acquisition. “If our clients can leave at any time,” he says, “simply by providing written notice, then we’ll likely be much more attentive to their level of satisfaction with our service, programs, and facility upkeep.” That is, allowing for month-to-month memberships will force health clubs and similar facilities to improve the services they provide—the incentive for keeping members happy will increase, and therefore the efforts to do so will increase. As a result, more customers will join. In the end, Dyer says, even if members leave the facility at a faster pace, the outcome can still be a net gain.
Jarod Cogswell, Founder of Enterprise Athlete and President of Fit Academy, Inc., agrees. “The challenge for you,” he says, “is to prove your club’s value on a month-to-month basis, which promotes and produces a higher level of services. It motivates your staff to focus on service, cleanliness, and member retention because every visit counts, and there may not be a second chance.” Cogswell acknowledges, this reality places a lot of pressure on the sales process, because if clients can leave at any time there’s a greater chance you’ll lose them. “You therefore need to be selling at the same or higher rate than the rate of your membership losses,” he says.
Nevertheless, Cogswell believes the month-to-month option can reap rewards for a club. “When people understand that they can leave whenever they like,” he explains, joining your club becomes a comfortable decision—both psychologically and financially—that will tend to drive the volume you need to be profitable.”
Another critical factor to consider is what kind of fitness membership software you are currently using to track membership data. The right club management software will supply you with the ability to access robust reporting as well as the ability to set up auto-billing or auto-pay for membership payments.
So maybe it’s time to consider how you could implement month-to-month memberships at your own facility. The key to success with month-to-month is providing your members with the incentive to return, and instituting such a plan could force you to revisit some of your systems and processes. This presents short-term challenges, but the long-term benefits could greatly offset those challenges.
If you own a health club or sports facility, you know that about 98 percent of the job consists of making decisions. In any aspect of life, decision-making can be challenging, but in the context of running a business, it can be especially nerve-wracking. The success of the business, your livelihood, the livelihood of others—all of these things depend on you making sound decisions (and, when we’re talking health clubs and sports facilities, the health and happiness of a lot of people also can depend on those decisions).
IHRSA’s blog recently ran an interesting piece featuring three health club owners and the business decisions they’re most proud of. Luke Carlson, CEO of Discover Strength in Plymouth, Minnesota, said that he’s proudest of his club’s decision to make the development and treatment of staff its highest priority. “Our increases in revenue always seem to be linked to our investment in our employees,” he says. “We started with only part-time employees. As soon as we created full-time, career track, salaried positions, our revenue dramatically increased…. When we gave our staff budgets for travel and continuing education, our revenue increased even more. Every time we make an effort to improve our staff and demonstrate that we care about them, they seem to be increasingly effective with our clients.”
Floriane Chatron, Founder of Aquaflorès in Paris, France, says she is proudest of launching an aqua-wellness facility in a difficult market with many low-cost competitors. “I am proud to have taken up this challenge, which, to most observers, seemed doomed to fail,” she says. And Jason Cerniglia, owner of Hoover Fitness in Hoover, Alabama, said he’s proudest of his decision to write an exercise and diet book. “First,” he noted, “I can help people anywhere and anytime, regardless of whether they are members or not. Second, instead of paying for a one-hour diet consult, people can buy the book and get the information they need. Third, it’s a great retention tool for my club because it helps members get results. Fourth, it can be a retention tool for other clubs. Most of all, the book can help deconditioned people, because it teaches how to get results and still enjoy life.”
While each of these decisions offers good ideas to other business owners (definitely prioritize your employees’ well being, don’t hesitate to launch something you believe in even if no one else seems to—and maybe it’s time to start thinking about writing a book!), the lesson here really is that, as a health club or sports facility owner, you can benefit from taking a moment to reflect on business decisions you have made. Which one are you most proud of? Why? Which one has been the least effective? Why? Jot down answers to these questions, and then take some time to analyze the processes you used while making your best decision and your worst one. Were other people involved or was it a solo choice? How did you conduct research before making the decision—or did you? Do your colleagues agree with your assessment of your best and worst decisions? Do they have ideas for how to continually make good ones? What have you learned from the decisions you’ve made?
The thing is, decision-making is tricky—enough that it’s its own field of study within cognitive science research. No one really understands how it works. The more familiar you are with your own decision-making processes, the more likely you are to have an immediate answer (or so many immediate answers that you might have trouble deciding which one to give) the next time someone asks you what business decision you’re most proud of.
Recently, here in New York City, I was helping a friend research options for a swimming facility. We visited Yelp.com, which, as everybody knows, is the place to go for the inside scoop on any and every business imaginable. A search on Yelp for “gym swimming pools” pulled up a long list of gyms, health clubs, and fitness centres that have pools. At first we were overwhelmed. Then we realized how easy Yelp makes it to weed choices out. Does it have less than four stars? Forget it.
That’s for starters. Once you begin reading the reviews, it becomes crystal clear which places are worth trying and which ones are better off ignored. For one club that received two stars, for example, we found the following reviews: “Limited availability for lap swimming and the club does not adhere to its weekly pool schedule,” “There have been lots of problems ranging from overcrowded, stinky locker rooms with broken lockers to lack of morning classes for people who work,” and, simply, “Horrible!”
The same gym had one highly positive review—but the negative voices drowned it out. This is all well and good for consumers. But what if you’re a gym owner, where your facility has a low rating, and comments are negative, even though you know you deserve better? The fact is, online customer reviews can make or break you. In order to ensure a healthy digital profile, one that won’t damage your chances of drawing in prospective clients and winning new members, you’ve got to take action.
The first step is to know what’s out there about you. Take a look at Yelp and other similar customer review sites (such as Angie’s List, the Better Business Bureau, Epinions, and Google+ Local). Are there reviews for your business? Keep in mind that having reviews is a good thing—just as negative reviews can have a negative impact, positive reviews can have a positive one. You want people to be able to find you on Yelp (if they can’t, they’ll wonder why you’re not there); you just want to control the impressions they form when they do. So take a look, hope you’re there, and read carefully through the reviews you find.
Now, here’s the thing: On Yelp and many other sites, you can respond publicly to comments that are posted. That’s right—you have a chance to set the record straight, and if you handle things graciously enough, you might be able to turn a negative review into an opportunity, a chance for the marketplace to see how reasonable, generous, and responsive your facility is. When my friend an I found a response to a negative review of a local gym, we were impressed: The response included an apology, an explanation, an assertion that the customer was right, and an offer to make up for the bad experience. We kept that one on the list of places to check out.
If a mere response feels inadequate to you, or if you’re overwhelmed by the number of customer review sites out there or the daunting task of keeping track of everything said about your facility online, keep in mind that there are companies that help you clean up your online presence. Reputation.com, Reputation Changer, Big Blue Robot, Metal Rabbit Media—these are just a few outfits that find ways to push potentially damaging online content further down in search result lists and pull positive materials to the top. Some of them are pricey, but when it comes to presenting your best face to potential customers, the cost may be worth it.
Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg, Ohio, recently kicked off a deal to take over a local fitness center. The owner of the center approached the hospital, expressing an interest in a community collaborator. Seeing this idea as an opportunity to extend health care beyond its own walls, the hospital embraced it. Doing so, said Pomerene’s chief financial officer in a statement, is a first step towards aligning the hospital’s services with reform in the health industry—with the expanded focus to include a greater emphasis on wellness and preventative care.
I love this. It seems to me that all hospitals should run fitness centres, or at least partner with fitness centres to provide a more holistic set of health-related services. I feel this way about doctors’ offices too. I hate going to them partly because I resent the fact that I’m there in the first place. If I hadn’t gotten sick, or overstretched a muscle, or ignored the numbers creeping higher on the scale, then I wouldn’t have to be there. Sometimes, I am all too well aware of how prevention would have served me better than care.
Not all hospitals have the means or the resources to manage a fitness facility, and certainly not most doctors working independently. But they could at least actively take different approaches to encourage patients to focus on their own preventative care. They could give discounts on co-pays for patients who bring in a letter from a personal trainer, exercise instructor, or gym manager showing that they’ve worked out x number of times in the past month. Or, along with prescriptions, they could hand out certificates good for one free class at a local spin studio or for one free session at a gym. Hospitals, when they discharge patients who have the capacity to exercise, could give out vouchers for a free month’s membership at a health club. There are so many possibilities.
None of these can be realized, of course, if gyms, health clubs, fitness centres, exercise studios, and sports centres are not willing partners. The good news is that forming such partnerships could only be beneficial for businesses in our industry. Each certificate a doctor hands out or voucher a hospital gives away represents a potential new client. And new clients who find your facility through a health care professional or institution are ones that are likely to stay—a voice of authority is telling them loudly and clearly that there’s a link between how much they exercise and how healthy they stay. If nothing else, they’ll come to you to avoid having to go to their doctor or the hospital again.
If you haven’t already done so, maybe it’s time to start cultivating relationships with doctors and hospitals. Approach local ones with suggestions and offers; make it clear that you’re as interested in the health of the community as they are. That’s what the fitness center giving its management over to Pomerene Hospital has done. Honestly, I wouldn’t even need any incentives to join that fitness center; just knowing it’s managed by the same experts who understand my medical needs would be incentive enough.
This is it, folks—we’re now in the throes of what I like to call Summer Attendance Blues. Every year it’s the same story: June hits, attendance at gyms, fitness centres, and health clubs takes a dive. It stays low till the end of August. You watch in despair as a handful of only the most loyal clients straggles in for classes, while your front desk crew twiddle their thumbs and your locker rooms stay woefully empty.
Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, but some days can feel that way. What can you do?
It may be daunting to imagine cutting back on your group exercise schedule, but that could be the first step to take. On IHRSA’s blog, Anne Whiteside, program director at the Yakima Athletic Club in Yakima, Washington, says, “It’s absolutely necessary to cut back on group fitness classes during the slower months.” Frances Michaelson, Owner/Director of Muscle Up, Inc. in Quebec, Canada, agrees. “In the summer,” she says, “there’s always a drop in the numbers and it’s acceptable to reduce the number of classes.”
If you do cut back, you’ll inevitably displease some people, but both Whiteside and Michaelson say there are steps you can take to assuage them. Whiteside recommends educating members very directly about why you’re cutting back. “Inform them about industry averages for classes, and/or your own personal goals for the club’s group exercise program. Let them know what the numbers are, that that they’re falling off due to seasonal low attendance.” One possible benefit from doing so is that members may begin to pay more attention to the shrinking numbers—and they may start to encourage others to attend regularly in order to keep the classes on the schedule. Another option is to combine classes, says Michaelson. “For example, if you offer a step class and a toning class that are both popular, then why not put the two together with a circuit-style format, and call it ‘Step ‘n Tone’?”
If reducing the number of class offerings doesn’t seem like enough, or if it’s something you’re simply not willing to do, there are still other steps you can take. You could consider instituting summer hours, keeping all your offerings but compressing them into just four or five days a week. Or design an incentives program. Perhaps if members attend 35 classes between July 1st and August 31st, they receive a discount for September, or if they bring a friend to at least 10 classes during that time, their friend gets a month’s membership free. Think about what kind of program would work best for your facility, and get creative. You might also try simply getting members to pledge at the start of summer that they’ll make it to your facility a certain number of times before the summer ends. Studies show that people are more likely to stick to promises and goals if they take the trouble to state them in a formal way.
Whatever your plan, make sure you have one, even if it’s just doubling down on efforts to keep attendance high during the fall, winter, and spring. The last thing you want is that experience of sitting around watching the numbers dip, feeling powerless and waiting for the year’s sunniest season to end. And remember: Summer does end. Everyone will be back.
I have a friend who works in the sales department of an education publishing company. Recently, she won an award for having the highest monthly sales for six months running. She and her three colleagues all went through the same training, but she consistently outsells them by significant amounts (and she didn’t even have sales experience when she was hired). She told me that one of her colleagues asked her, “What is it about you? How do you do it?” My friend says she has no idea, but I do: It’s just who she is. She’s friendly to everyone and always upbeat. She really listens to people. She’s a great problem-solver. She never says no to anything. (Yes, I realize how lucky I am to have her as a friend.)
Wouldn’t it be great if she were working for your facility? Chances are, you already have some high-quality salespeople on staff. But how can you help them be even better? How can you take your sales staff from good to great?
1) Start with professional training for your sales leaders. This might seem like a no-brainer, but if you’re hiring experienced people and you’re confident about their ability to cinch a sale, the need for training could be overlooked. In fact, there’s a reason teachers, doctors, lawyers, and others have to fulfill a certain number of professional development hours each year. We all get rusty; especially in sales, when someone is making the same pitch over and over again, it’s easy to lose some of the vitality and charisma — that stuff my friend has—that is crucial to a successful transaction. Plus, the better trained your leaders are, the better trained your whole sales team will be: Solid skills and best practices trickle down. Ideally, you want to let your sales leaders choose their own training programs, ones that suit their personalities and styles.
2) Look for passion and interpersonal skills more than sales experience. Experience comes with time, but passion about fitness? An ease with people, a willingness to see each individual as unique and to truly listen to them, and the finesse required to help customers get their needs met? Those things are hard to fake.
3) If your sales numbers aren’t high enough and training isn’t producing the results you desire, you might have to ask yourself difficult questions. Do you have the right people on staff? Might you have to let a weaker employee go, or find a position that better suits his or her strengths? Do what you can to help naturally good salespeople get better, but know when it’s time to shake up the team.
4) Finally, focus on relationship-building. You want to think about this on a couple levels. First, what is your relationship to your sales team, both the leaders and the people who work under them? Do you have a personal connection to them? Do they know what your goals are and why those goals are important to you? Do they trust you? Second, what is your sales team’s relationship to prospects? Do they make an effort to connect personally? Do they listen to their needs and do whatever they can to fulfill them?
Keep in mind one more thing: Your facility and your staff are going to reflect you. As a manager or owner, you set the tone. If you (like my friend) are open and upbeat yourself, if you really listen to your employees and you tackle problems in creative ways, you’re likely to find that your sales staff (and, for that matter, other employees) do too.
Over on the IHRSA blog, there’s an interesting post about how small gyms in rural towns tackle the unique challenges they face. It’s true that for any health club or sports facility with a small pool of members and clients to draw from, there are difficulties that clubs in more populous places don’t experience. You might compete with larger clubs nearby, vying hard for attention against brand-name franchises. Or you might struggle to fill up your classes or operate programs or leagues that are tricky to manage without a certain bulk enrollment.
The best strategy? Use your club size to your advantage. Sisters Athletic Club, in Sisters, Oregon, makes a point of creating a homelike atmosphere in its facility. First of all, the gym provides no membership cards. Instead, even though the club boasts 1,600 members, employees are required to know every member and greet them by name when they enter. Here’s where small-town advantages come into play: The town has only 2,000 residents. Chances are, the member entering is your neighbor anyway. Also, the club strives to create an anti-gym feel. Outside, the 19,000-square-foot facility looks like a lodge. Inside, a rock formation fills the lobby, classical music infuses the air, and an art gallery spreads out near the front desk. You can’t see the cardio court from the entrance, and you don’t smell anything that even vaguely suggests you’re in a gym. The hominess is complemented by fastidiousness; everything is spotless.
Playing up the sense that the facility is an extension of their members’ homes is crucial for Sisters Athletic, in part because the club’s biggest competitor is nature. There’s so much skiing, biking, and hiking nearby that the facility has to give members the sense that they’re getting something they can’t possibly get outdoors. It’s precisely its small, comfortable feel that allows it to do so.
The situation for B-Fit 24/7 Fitness in Adrian, Michigan, is different: The local population consists of 24,000 and there are big-name competitors not too far away. So, B-Fit has a bigger pool to draw from than Sisters Athletic Club, but there are more options for the folks who make up that pool. B-Fit has to really stand apart from the crowd in order to create a loyal clientele and attract new members.
Their solution? The club has made itself the only one in the area that’s open 24 hours, and it pitches itself as the “ungym” — unlike the traditional gym model, B-Fit does not require members to sign a contract, and it refunds members who don’t reach their goals. Also, the club works hard to forge relationship with the 80 percent of the population that isn’t naturally exercise-oriented.
For sports facilities in similar positions — either with only a tiny pool to draw from or with big-fish competitors nearby and a relatively small pool of potential clients — smart marketing, along with lots of event hosting, might be the key. Looking to fill up your baseball league? Try putting up flyers in towns one to two hours away; parents will go surprisingly far to keep their kids interested in an activity, and adult players who are committed enough to join a league probably won’t mind the travel. As far as events go, don’t limit yourself to birthday parties. Put the idea in the minds of potential customers that you are there for all occasions, from celebrations for specific events and holidays to celebrations for no reason at all.
The overriding lesson is this: What you think are weaknesses might be turned to advantages. Exaggerate the very qualities that seem limiting — your small size, the restricted pool you’re in — and figure out what about those things might appeal to those around you.
I don’t know about you, but now that the long winter finally (finally!) seems to be drawing to a close, all I want is to be outdoors. I want that so badly that I almost, for a very brief second — full disclosure — considered letting my gym membership expire. I’ll just start a new one in September, I thought. It was only a fleeting idea; happily, I know that I get too much from my gym to ever really let go of my membership so easily. But a lot of people don’t know that. A lot of people do exactly what I thought of doing: let their membership slide in the warm months and rejoin (or, worse, join somewhere else) when the cold sets in again.
One way for a gym, or any type of fitness or sports center, to combat this phenomenon is to take things outdoors. In recent years, it’s become more of a trend for health clubs to institute outdoor programs. Large cities hold yoga-in-the-sun classes. Gyms offer boot camp in the park. So-called “street workouts” are becoming more popular, with exercisers using poles, park structures, even swing-sets to build up core muscles and practice other forms of strength training.
If you haven’t yet cashed in on the trend, it’s time to do so. Your audience is hungry for it (google “outdoor workouts” and you’ll see what I mean). The question is, how do you make it work? How do you move operations outside?
Start with an existing class — it’s probably your most portable commodity. Go for a low-key class first, one that doesn’t rely on music or heavy equipment. (Once you get things up and running and you understand how to coordinate outdoor sessions smoothly, it’ll be simple enough to fiddle with sound systems and free weights; til then, keep things easy for yourself.) Think of props that naturally work well outside: balls, jump ropes. Get your instructors to incorporate these items and, if necessary, to modify their routines to suit the outdoors. Of course, promote heavily. Your social media channels should be screaming, “New outdoor class!” The walls of your facility should be littered with posters and flyers. Make sure the logistics are clearly communicated: Will the class meet in the gym lobby and then follow the instructor out? Will there be a meeting point in the park? Spell it out.
Once you’ve seen how it works — and what the potential pitfalls are — think of creating classes specifically for nature. Call upon the expertise of your trainers and instructors; find out their favorite outdoor workouts and ask them to develop these into teachable sessions. Scout out potential locations carefully and make use of what’s out there: trees, old jungle gym sets, park benches. Anything fixed to the ground is fair game.
After you’ve built up an outdoor clientele, think about investing in equipment. Life Fitness recently developed a “jungle gym” series for outside; other companies are following suit. If you’re in a location that doesn’t easily allow for outdoor access, consider doing what my gym in New York City does: use the rooftop. You might have to partner with a school, community center, or other organization that already has outdoor space. (If you’re using parks, keep in mind that many municipalities require permits for the use of public spaces, and often there are restrictions about how existing structures, including trees, can be used. Do your homework.)
Follow these steps, and you’ll be well on your way. The only thing left to figure out will be how you can sneak into one of your own facility’s outdoor sessions — because once you have the option, there’s no way you’re going to want to stay inside.