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How to Put Together a Successful Pre-Sale for Your Fitness Facility

The pre-sales process is one of the trickiest and most important elements in determining whether or not your new club will be successful when it opens....

Archived Articles from Step by Step: Sales

How to Put Together a Successful Pre-Sale for Your Fitness Facility

The pre-sales process is one of the trickiest and most important elements in determining whether or not your new club will be successful when it opens....

Ten Methods for Improving Health Club Sales

Unfortunately, no quick fix for improving health club sales exists, but there are some things you can do when you find sales lagging. ...

Three Ways to Boost Health Club Profitability

To be profitable, health clubs need high member usage. These three tips help keep members at your club....

The Top Five Strategies that Improve Health Club Sales Results

How to increase sales at your fitness facility during the dog days of summer....

Turn Your Front Desk into a Revenue Producer for Your Health Club

There are ways to turn your fitness facility's cost centers into profit centers....

Tips to Selling Health Club Memberships during a Recession

It's not impossible to sell health club memberships during a recession. It just takes a good sales team....

How to Create a Sales Culture in Your Health Club

Club operators must follow some fundamental rules when creating a sales culture in their facilities....

Three Ways to Nurture Prospects and Convert Them to Club Members

Three ways you can successfully nurture your leads and ultimately convert them into long-term health club members....

How Clubs Can Reach Out to Doctors

Creating partnerships between your club and doctors requires planning and preparation....

How to Give a Powerful Health Club Membership Sales Presentation

The quality of your staff’s club tour and membership sales presentation will often determine whether a guest joins your health club or one of your competitors down the street. Unfortunately, most membership presentations lack pizzazz and are seldom compelling enough to motivate the club guest to join your club the day of the visit. ...

How to Increase Membership Sales in Your Health Club

Here are some proven ideas you can refer to when you choose to evaluate your own sales and marketing efforts in your health club—and they apply not only to your membership sales, but to personal training, juice bar and almost anything else you market and sell in your health club....

Sales Lessons from a Beagle

This Beagle offers a few good lessons on how to make the sale....

Selling in the New Economy

People are still looking to buy products and services, but the game of selling has changed. Here are three things you need to know in order to succeed in selling in the new economy....

Fear Factor: 10 Tips for Putting Prospective Members at Ease in Your Club

How club owners can optimize their club's physical environment and adopt sales and service strategies to overcome those fears....

Fear Factor: Why Prospective Members Don’t Join Your Gym

In 1998, an IHRSA study summarized five fears that keep potential members from coming through a club’s front doors:...

Set the Stage for More Member Referrals

Getting members to give referrals isn't as easy as it used to be, but you can still be a referral-driven business....

Promote Your Personal Training Business Inside the Club

As you know, personal training is still one of the fastest growing parts of the fitness business. If you want it to be a profit center for your club, then consider implementing the following items to promote it....

Grow Your Retail Sales and Ancillary Revenues

Follow this five-step plan to develop a strategy for success in ancillary revenue sales...

Basic Fitness Knowledge Helps Staff Sell More Memberships

Selling Group Training at the Right Price Point

Lately, I have heard the following comments or have been drawn into discussions about these comments...

How to Instantly Sell More Personal Training

In the midst of the current recession, many club owners are starting to look for ways that they can generate more revenue from the members they currently have. One obvious way to do this is to sell more personal training...

The Old Rules of Selling Are Dead

What do Elvis, vinyl records and traditional selling techniques have in common? They are all dead—even though a small percentage of you still believe Elvis is alive, use vinyl records or are still trying the same old techniques for selling your services or products to consumers...

Goin' To The Chapel: How To Sell Wellness To Employers

Planning to go beyond corporate memberships to full-fledged corporate wellness programs? It’s a terrific business opportunity—if you avoid the obstacles that many health club owners encounter when they tackle this market. ...

Assessments Can Mean No Selling

Offering assessments can help your staff get new clients without ever truly selling sessions. How can this happen? ...

Eight Questions That Uncover Your Potential Member’s Motivation

When we work with health clubs on business strategies, we always ask what motivates their customers to buy from them...

Six Steps to Successful Sales in January

January is a special month in the hearts of every club owner, as it is the month that often is responsible for around 20 to 25 percent of the year's total sales. Here are six things you can do right now to make sure you have a solid foundation for success heading into the new year....

Five Strategies to Close a Membership Sale Prior to Presenting Prices

You know the routine. A guest visits your club, you go through the small talk, show them the facility, talk about the amenities and answer a few questions...

How to be an Ethical Health Club Salesperson

My company was recently asked to conduct a health club sales training class on ethical selling practices...

How to Jump-Start Sales in Your Health Club

We receive many inquiries from health club owners who want to jump-start the membership sales in their club. I always refer to it as “sales magic.” ...

How to Turn Around a Health Club With Lagging Sales

Is your health club producing far below potential? In working with clubs all across the country, I get the opportunity to step into health clubs that are in need of a sales turnaround. ...

Growing Your Health Club One Member at a Time

The people aspect of the health club business is really what it is all about. Think of your club members and guests as individuals. Once we think that way, we realize our health club is our member -- not the features of the facility. ...

Death of a Salesperson

Time for a story: A new health club salesperson was ambitious and eager to learn all he could about the health club business and the technique of selling in the club industry. However, despite all of his efforts, new membership sales were few and far between. Sales effectiveness eluded him. ...

The Power of Questions in the Sales Process

Sales training participants in seminars I conduct across the country often ask how they can better control the sales process with their health club guest....

Is Your Health Club Addicted to Bad Profits?

Check your business for these five bad-profit practices......

Tell It Like It Is: How to Succeed Using Testimonials

Why waste thousands of dollars on slick marketing and advertising when your most powerful resource is free?...

Ten Ways to Get Out of a Sales Slump

There are two kinds of sales people in health clubs: those who are in a slump and those who will be in a slump. It’s happened to most sales people at one time or another. You might find that you can’t get your club guests to join...

Troubleshooting The Sales Cycle In Your Wellness Business: Part 4

Leslie Nolen is CEO of The Radial Group, which provides wellness businesses with seminars, publications and coaching on starting and managing profitable and personally rewarding businesses...

Troubleshooting The Sales Cycle In Your Wellness Business: Part 3

In Part 1, we identified the four key stages of effective sales and marketing strategies: Stage 1: Filling the pipeline with prospects Stage 2: Following up with prospects Stage 3: Exploring ways your business can help prospects Stage 4: Closing sales ...

Troubleshooting The Sales Cycle In Your Wellness Business: Part 2

Every successful business has a pipeline of prospects/potential clients and customers. Use these tips to regain control over your pipeline...

Troubleshooting the Sales Cycle in Your Wellness Business: Part 1

Finding more members and clients can feel like learning to drive a stick shift. You’ve got the pedal to the metal, generating lots of noise and vibration, but the car just doesn’t move...

Prevent Subtle Sales Missteps

Start by understanding three factors that influence potential customers. If you’re like many health clubs, your sales process and marketing materials overlook these aspects. First, competing choices often seem alike to prospects. Sure, you can rattle off important differences between ...

Automatic Billing for Fitness Professionals

As an entrepreneur I have realized the benefits of systemization and automation, and how to increase predictable results. As a business coach, I encourage clients who wish to build their business and increase ...

Putting Your Fitness Business in E-motion

As a fitness professional, I am always amazed at the different people that I get to meet each day. Many have attained a high level of success in their chosen careers, and I try to learn as much as possible from them whenever I can. When one of my training clients attributed his ...

Hosting Events that Drive Membership Sales

If you’re in the health club business, then you know that every club has three main priorities: retention, revenue and referrals. Club parties are the perfect way to drive revenue while...

Closing More Sales by Asking the Right Questions

Many sales representatives today are so focused on selling a club’s features, believing that the club and its unique features will sell itself. ...

Coaching in Fitness Centers—The Next Sales and Retention Tool

Not every club member fits into the personal training mold, so some fitness facilities are implementing coaching services to boost their bottom line. Coaching is a system of communication between a client and a coach that enables them to discuss the various aspects of a client’s overall health and wellness. To fitness centers, coaching is the best retention and sales boosting tool to come along in many years....

The Psychology of Motivation

When the prospective club member you are sitting with announces, “I need to lose 25 lbs., but I’m just not motivated to start or stay with it,” they are really saying, “Please help me find my true incentive and my emotional reward that will drive me to take action toward that goal of losing weight.” In other words, get busy helping them identify their exact motivation...

Asking for the Sale with Confidence

Many sales professionals encounter a stumbling block when asking a customer for the sale. Many close by asking, “So, what do you think?” That may sound like a close, but it isn’t. By simply changing the way you ask for the sale, you will automatically increase your closing percentage. ...

How to Achieve Higher Sales Through a Well–Developed Sales Training Effort

Ed Tock, a partner in Sales Makers, tells clubs how they can achieve higher sales through well-developed sales training. ...

Step by Step: Sales

They also are more likely to refer others, and they’ll stay longer and pay more while they’re members....

What Does Your Web Presence Say About Your Club?

Scott Meldrum, the president and founder of HypeCouncil, discusses what your Web presence says about your club....

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In This Issue: January 2012 View All Past Issues

Cover Story

State of the Health Club Industry Looks Bright for Larger Clubs in 2012

Fiscal Peaks and Valleys: Some companies are expanding their portfolios while others are shrinking. Which ones have the resources and support to climb to the top in 2012?



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