Your gym may be well known for coming up with creative promotion ideas, but that doesn’t guarantee your members will want to stay for a long time. The key is to provide excellent service, so that they fall in love with the experience of working out at YOUR gym. You can do this by offering and focusing on three important services that will improve their first impression and leave a lasting effect. Let’s find out how health assessments, orientations, and free personal training sessions can help in retaining the newest members of your gym…

1) Health Assessments

Every person who joins a gym should receive a fitness assessment. Assessments help in determining their overall physical fitness and sets them on track to start accomplishing their health and fitness goals. In fact, this step is as important as collecting the billing information of a new member because it is a guidance tool to improvement. A typical health assessment involves evaluating blood pressure levels, body mass index, aerobic fitness, and resting heart rate. You can improve on this by including additional tests like evaluation of lung capacity, strength, and flexibility as well as that of body composition.

With a thorough health assessment welcoming the new members of your gym, you should be able to help them draw up a realistic fitness goal. If they have a realizable goal set, there are better chances of helping them achieve satisfying results. Setting unrealistic goals is one of the many reasons why some people give up on their fitness goals.

Additionally, a fitness assessment is an objective method of measuring physical improvements. From the results of the initial assessment, members will have a set of base numbers to measure against. This means that they can keep a track of the progress they are making and are more likely to find satisfaction in the results.

2) Orientation

The gym environment can be intimidating to most people, especially those who had just taken their first step to do something about their health and fitness. Orientations should be designed to ease anxiety levels and to tour them around the facility to familiarize them with their new workout environment and exercise equipment. It is imperative to have a friendly, knowledgeable, and patient staff members to conduct this section of the welcome program. This tour is your first chance of making the new members feel appreciated and valued while giving them the assurance that they have made the right gym choice.

This time also gives you the opportunity for you to get feedback about the previous health club experiences of new members. Through the positive and negative feedback, you should be able to draw up a plan for overcoming your own gym business obstacles. This can help you stand out from other fitness centers. Make sure you introduce the important contacts in the facility such as the manager, the daycare supervisor, and the lead personal trainer. New members are more likely to enjoy their gym experience when they know whom to go to when they encounter problems.

3) Free Personal Training Sessions

New members of your gym should start out by getting a couple of complimentary personal training sessions. Ideally, assign each member the trainer who conducted their fitness assessment. During these sessions, the trainer will help them draw up a goals suitable to their initial health profile. They can help the new members determine the kind of workouts that are ideal for them and how long it would take for them to realize certain fitness goals.

With a professional trainer to give them personalized fitness advice and attention, new members can get an unforgettable experience at your gym. They will feel welcome and valued as patrons, improving their likelihood to come back for more workout sessions. Moreover, they also get a first-hand experience of the personal training services provided at your gym. This means that they might even opt to upgrade their membership level and bring in other referrals.

When it comes to maintaining member retention, every one of your employees play an important role in ensuring quality customer experience for your new members. If you can offer excellent service from the beginning, you should be able to keep new members satisfied and ensure that they stay loyal to your gym.

Over to you…

What services do you provide when welcoming new members to your fitness facility?