In this issue of Hidden Features, we present our newest software update: Recurring Scheduled Payment (RSP), a tool that lets you automatically charge gym services, punch card add-ons, and annual fees. We’ve also added recurring payments to our Sales Guru© membership software – this way you can automate payments through membership packages.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Truthfully though, this is a game changer.
RSP is an essential feature for services requiring regular payments, such as personal training sessions, tanning, massage, smoothie bar access, pickleball courts, towel rentals, and other add-on services. This functionality automates the billing process, ensuring a steady cash flow and reducing administrative tasks. Now you can automate and manage payments by customizing a variety of parameters, including frequency, number of sessions and expiration. You can even auto-charge annual maintenance fees.
Three reasons Recurring Scheduled Payments strengthens gyms
1. Predict sales rather than react to projections.
Every budget involves a forecast: How much money do you expect to bring in and how much will be going out? Balancing these two variables requires both planning and control. Realistically planning for future cost often relies on past experiences.
Wouldn’t it be easier if you knew today how much your members might buy tomorrow? This is where auto billing does its job. It reduces the number of opportunities a client has to stop payments. Every time a staff member or personal trainer must sell something anew — known in marketing as the “conversion point” – a member will/may/can reconsider their next purchase.
RSP combined with Insight’s comprehensive reports system allows you to watch these sales over months, determine an average of where sales are growing, and provides the ammunition needed to move forward on big or small decisions.
Bottom line:
Placing a client on auto billing increases the chances they will continue to purchase the same service month over month – giving you a steady view into your financial future.
2. Streamlines guests interactions.
High-touch, yet highly streamlined gyms are the goal for most fitness owners today. Yet reaching that status is difficult if your staff regularly becomes bogged down with everyday charges.
Who wants an irritable parent struggling to find a credit card to pay for childcare when they are already late for their favorite class? How about the one client who forgets their towel every time they use the sauna?
Placing these regulars on auto-bill for their preferred activity smooths out their club experience. At the same time, your staff is happier they can focus on their primary responsibilities rather than plodding through accounts all day.
Bottom line:
This material improvement in customer services gives you the flexibility to reduce staff or redirect staff members to more productive roles.
3. Connects members to their well-being.
We are all willing to pay for something that makes us feel good. Think ice cream or full-body massages. Research by IHRSA reveals “everything we buy has an emotional value before it has a tangible value.” In other words, we need to feel the immediate reward before we can experience the long-term value.
Joining a gym may provide a future healthier body. But right now, that mom fumbling with the credit card is paying for “me” time. She wants the emotional gratification that comes from spending time with like-minded people doing something she enjoys. By adding her childcare service to autopay, you’re reducing her barrier to entry. You’re eliminating one of the many little obstacles between her and her reaching personal fulfillment.
It sounds a little goofy, doesn’t it? I mean the idea that placing a client’s towel order on auto bill might make them feel more connected with your club?
But, frankly, why wouldn’t it?
There is an emotional side of exercising physiologists are just beginning to understand: What makes us want to exercise? What makes us stop exercising? What barriers keep us from ever signing up to join a gym/studio?
In the IHRSA article cited above, the author described his own father’s reluctance to join a gym. The elderly gentleman from central Europe would not consider exercising for fitness, but he would visit the gym’s sauna. With this hook in place, his father eventually made friends and began doing what his doctor prescribed: exercising regularly.
But it took consistency, a financial commitment, and a specific benefit to draw him in.
Bottom Line:
Gym Insight’s Recurring Scheduled Payments feature turns your members’ financial, material and emotional drivers into a solid, long-term asset upon which you can build a future.
Gym Insight
Thanks for taking a look at our Hidden Features. Please visit our knowledge base for specifics on implementing RSP with your clients. We are so excited you’ve visited our website and, perhaps, are using Gym Insight management software in your club.
If you are an Insight customer, remember you can always reach out to our world-class, American-based customer service team for questions and guidance you may have on using our software and hardware. If you’re a gym-dreamer or an owner currently struggling with one of our expensive competitors, give us a call. We provide free demos and are happy to walk you through our easy-to-use gym management software. With a fully integrated platform created by our in-house team of experts, we’ve built an affordable, intuitive software beloved by gyms across the country. Call us today at 1-855-FOR-GYMS and ask for Anthony or Natalia.
