One of the most important skills for membership reps to polish is prospecting and lead generation. Their job is not to simply take the call-ins and walk-ins but to create business for the club and more income for themselves. Do your membership reps know how many leads they need every month to hit their goal?* They need this information to have a formula for sales success. Most salespeople do not hit their goals because they are not talking to enough people. Your reps should put together a three-month plan that focuses on referral, corporate outreach and lead-generation activities. Once they do so (assuming their sales skills are where they need to be), they will not have a problem again with hitting goals.

Membership reps often dislike lead-generation activities, but if you have your reps team with another rep when generating leads, it creates a more fun and rewarding experience for them. Instead of sending one rep to do a corporate activity or sales presentation, send two of them so they'll have twice the energy, enthusiasm and follow through — and perhaps twice the results.

Make sure that your membership reps create urgency on their tours, but not a sense of promotional urgency, which often translates as pressure rather than as excitement. Instead, the membership rep should use personal motivation, programs and promotions to create an urgency to join. My recommendation is to use all three tools throughout the tour. To do this, your membership rep must know the needs, motivation and concerns of the prospect before the tour.

Urgency builds excitement for the prospective member resulting in a first visit sale. Urgency also builds excitement for reps because when they have more first visit sales, they create an upward momentum for themselves with regard to each sale thereafter. Momentum is critical to sales success.

As the economy remains tough, you might find that some sales reps apologize for your club's price. That practice can destroy all their efforts thus far. You need to find out the reason a membership rep is apologizing for price so you can stop it. The two main reasons for apologizing is that they lack faith in the value of the membership and their own financial situation is such that they could not afford the club, so they think prospects could not either. If your reps are unsure about the value of the price, you must explain your pricing philosophy to them so they understand the value and can communicate that to prospects. If they apologize for the price because of their own financial situation, you need to make them aware that many people in your market have different financial scenarios than they have at this time in their life and can afford the club. Let them know that carrying their financial circumstances into the sales process limits their sales success — and their ability to improve their financial future.

Attitude is even more important today than in the past when selling. Make sure that your membership reps are giving themselves a "check-up from the neck-up," as Zig Ziglar says. Before reps even step into the club to work for the day, they need to examine what is going on in their head and heart. Are they prepared to have a stellar day or are they on autopilot? What are they saying to themselves every morning and throughout the day? Sales success is determined more by what membership reps say to themselves than what they say to their prospects. They are in charge of their own energy, thoughts and, therefore, results. Are they giving 100 percent? If they are not, how can they expect to get 100 percent? The major problem in a questionable economy is not the downturn of economic indicators, but the downturn in people's minds — especially salespeople.

The tips in this article are definitely a back-to-basics approach. That is the point. Success in any economy can be yours if you have the basics covered well. In every economic situation and industry there are winners. Don't let your competitors be the winner because you forgot the basics.

* If you don't know how many leads you need, e-mail Karen for a simple form to figure it out.

Karen D. Woodard is president of Premium Performance Training in Boulder, CO, and Ixtapa, Mexico. She is an international author, speaker and consultant and provides successful marketing, sales, service and management training as well as consulting to the health and fitness industry. Woodard has owned and operated six clubs since 1985 and now devotes her time entirely to consulting, developing staff training materials, research, writing and speaking. She can be contacted at Karen@karenwoodard.com.

Woodard is a member of Club Industry's Fitness Business Pro Editorial Advisory Board.

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