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Ten Commandments of Exceptional Customer Service in the Fitness Industry
One of the largest obstacles health club staffs must overcome is selling their product to people who may not like to exercise. This obstacle can be combated by paying close attention to your customer service and making sure you make your members' exercise experience as enjoyable as possible. ...
Archived Articles from Step by Step: Retention
Ten Commandments of Exceptional Customer Service in the Fitness Industry
One of the largest obstacles health club staffs must overcome is selling their product to people who may not like to exercise. This obstacle can be combated by paying close attention to your customer service and making sure you make your members' exercise experience as enjoyable as possible. ...
Retain Your Health Club Members with the Four-Way Test
It is difficult to convince people to place their health and fitness needs in our hands. Consider using the four-way test to earn a client's trust....
Welcome the New Member to Your Fitness Facility with Unique Integration Procedures
One of the most dynamic ways your facility can rise above the neighboring competition is to create a new member integration experience that will surpass any new member’s expectations...
Five Tips for Retaining Health Club Members Beyond the January Rush
Within a few short weeks of the January rush, many new members are gone, but with some planning, clubs can keep them around....
How to Throw a Low-Cost Member Party at Your Health Club
If you invest a bit of time and just a few pennies on a well-planned member appreciation party, you will see a huge return on investment in retention....
Managing Employee Issues Can Lead to Better Staff Retention at Your Health Club
How health club operators can handle employee issues efficiently. ...
Member Results Are the Quickest Route to Higher Retention at Your Health Club
People are more likely to keep going to their gym if they are getting the results they seek. So what can you do to ensure your members get great results from attending your gym? ...
Building Loyalty to Your Health Club Requires Trust, Transparency and Thanks
Health club operators must build loyalty by being loyal to members. ...
Key Performance Indicators Influence Health Club Membership Retention
If you want to improve retention at your club, you should monitor or measure several metrics....
Boost Club Member Retention by Creating Habits
Habits are truly our driving force in all areas of our life, and creating a habit is what keeps someone coming back to your club....
One Simple Tip to Boost Member Retention at Your Club
If you add emotional value to your members’ club experience, you could safeguard your business....
Persuasive Tactics to Retain Health Club Members for Life
By using these three persuasive strategies, club owners can boost retention ...
Evaluate Complainers to Determine Your Response to Complaints
The one thing you can count on is that you’re going to have complaints. Since you can’t avoid them, it’s best to learn how to deal with them....
Loyalty Programs Are Popular, But Do They Really Work?
Given the popularity of loyalty programs, they can be surprisingly ineffective. That’s right, ineffective. A loyalty program, like any program, is only as good as its ability to engage and drive behavior....
Create the Fairmont Experience in Your Club
In February, I attended the Abierto Mexicano (Mexican Open) in Acapulco. It is a lovely small tennis tournament. The organizers have aspirations to make it the fifth Grand Slam. Although I enjoyed my experience at the tournament, I want to share with you the superior customer service I experienced at the Fairmont Pierre Marques hotel, which was next door to the tournament, and how that can translate to the club environment. By Karen Woodard-Chavez...
How to Drive a Sales-Based Retention Program
For more than 25 years, health club operators drove the industry on a model of selling memberships based on the attributes of our facilities and on our pricing strategies. Today, however, we are in a different world, and a new model needs to emerge...
Membership Retention Strategies: Plan "B" for 2010
Why is it that after about 25 years of trying to fix the membership attrition problems within the fitness industry, we are still experiencing a membership attrition rate of 35 percent to 45 percent...
Inside the Mind of Your New Member
Many people cite lack of time or money as their reasons for not joining a health club, but I've found that three more prevalent factors stop them from getting started...
Seven Tips for Retaining Trainers and Instructors
What would happen if you lost your best personal trainer or group exercise instructor to a competitor? If this has ever happened to you, then you know how important it is to retain your trainers and instructors...
Are You Easy?
Did that title catch your attention? Thought so. Well, the expanded version of that title is ‘Are You Easy to Do Business With?’ but it doesn’t seem to be as much of an attention grabber as the abbreviated headline...
Internal Training Programs Help Retain Personal Trainers
Owners and fitness managers agree that people drive the success of the fitness business. Thus, most owners find that the benefits of developing an internal educational resource for personal trainers outweigh the challenges they face in implementing the program...
Cleaner than Clean
Clean must become a mantra for everyone at a club because hygiene and cleanliness are priorities for current and prospective members. Nothing differentiates your facility more in the minds of members and potential members than your staff and your facility’s cleanliness...
How to Keep New Members Loyal and Involved
More than half of your members in 2009 will join in January, February or March. The sad reality is that the majority of these members also will lose motivation shortly after joining....
Personal Training Client Retention Made Easy
Retaining personal training clients requires effort and a sensible approach. The following tips will make it easy for any personal training department to retain more clients for a longer period of time....
The ROI of Customer Service
Simply stated, customer service means servicing the customer. What sets your company apart from your competitor?...
Retaining Value: Retention Through Fee-Based Programming
In the "2007 Guide to Membership Retention," John McCarthy, former executive director of the IHRSA, cites member-to-member connection and fee-based services as two of several powerful retention tools....
Seven Tips for Retaining Your Clients for Life
Are you getting most of your business from your current and past clients, especially if you have been doing personal training for at least two years...
Calculating the Reason for Focusing on Retention
We often think that retention is something we will worry about later. Club owners have so many other things on their to-do list that improving retention seems to fall far down on the list of must-do items...
Six 'High Five' Retention Strategies that Work
Avid exercisers know the importance of continually developing new muscles. But they also know the importance of maintaining the muscles they have already built up. ...
How to Prepare your Club for Great Retention
Having a good retention rate is like hosting a well-attended dinner party every month. To host a good dinner party, you first have to go through many steps of preparation and behind-the-scenes effort and energy. ...
The Hard and Soft Truth About Retention
In the health club industry, a high retention is a must. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about retention. Here are five important tips for improving your retention and separating the soft data from the cold hard facts: ...
Four Strategies to Dramatically Improve Your Member Retention
There are several ways that you can maximize the LMV of each of your members, but the foundation of this concept is retention. You must keep a member......
Five Steps to Avoiding Member Issues
There are many issues you might come across when running your daily operations. The best way to decrease the possibility of a member-relations nightmare is by following a few easy steps. ...
Position, Position, Position: 5 Tips
Retention, retention, retention. That is the name of the game if you want to stay profitable. But what’s a club to do when it’s surrounded by competitors? The answer: position, position, position. ...
How to Solve the Revolving Door Dilemma
Trying to lure beginners into a health club is not a difficult task but keeping them there is a different story. We live in an image-conscious society with infomercials and diets that promise to help us lose weight in less than 30 days, so people are typically ...
Eight Tips for Implementing a Successful Member Retention Program
1. Create a synergic relationship between the personal training and programming departments and the fitness manager. 2. Proactively ask the members how they’re doing and what you can do to better serve them. ...
When Should You Conduct A Member Survey?
The quick and easy answer to the question of when should a club conduct a member survey, of course, is whenever you want to know what members are really thinking. In reality, there are many answers to this question. Here are a couple of the more important ones....
Train More, Worry Less
Phil Kaplan, a club owner, personal trainer and consultant, discusses how clubs can train more and worry less....
Focus On Retention
Maintaining Interest With Your Club's Layout...
Focus on Retention
How to Prevent Employee Burnout...
Focus on Retention
Member Satisfaction: It's All in the Name...
Focus on Retention
How Your Members Sabotage Their Own Success...
Focus On Retention
Prescription for Service Excellence...
Focus on Retention
Retention Begins With Your Sales Force...
Focus on Retention
Renovate to Retain: Updating Your Club...
Focus On Retention
Praise With Punch: Why More Than a Thank You Matters...
Focus On Retention
Satisfying Members With Group Exercise...
Focus On Retention
Keeping members happy during renvations....
Focus On Retention
Promotion! Promotion! Promotion!...
