Have you heard of the market research term Voice of the Customer? If not, you might take an interest in what it has to offer small gym business owners, even if you only have the resources to apply the principles and not the full process. If you want to get a better return on your gym business investment you need to hear what customers want and use that information to set benchmarks for the quality of the service you deliver. Knowing What Your Customers Want In the excellent leadership book, The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey declared [...]
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The Latest Gym Insight Turnaround Success Recently, on the Gym Insight Blog, I wrote a post about small gym business turnarounds for struggling gym owners. That post referenced a video published by Grant Cardone, which followed him through the process as he coached a struggling fitness center back from failure. Well, we're celebrating the turnaround success of one of our customers! So, how could I not share the experience? Video Coaching Podcast With Anthony Pasquale Our gym-software and gym management trainer-expert, Anthony Pasquale worked with one of our customers recently, who had asked for help in improving sales. The client [...]
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It's getting close to the end of the year once again and that means it's time to look at what's on the horizon for 2017. Any new fitness trends that help you recruit customers and earn more revenue have to be good things, right? Well, yes, of course! So, the trends that continue to grow include group activities that are perfect for studios or any floor space, such as dance classes, yoga, and other group activities. The rising fitness trends appear to be the things that get people together to share experiences; these include dance, team training, and other small [...]
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Do you know what I object to most in the fitness business? It's those big-box chains that sign up members for the low monthly rate, but secretly hoping that customers never turn up to occupy space in any of their one million and six facilities. Low membership fees are fine in themselves, and it's a good thing that gyms give their members the hope of getting off the couch and getting fit. However, it just offends my sense of honor and the principles that got me into the business in the first place. Also, a strategy that delivers premium services [...]
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Sometimes keeping your small gym business lean is just a matter of tying your proverbial shoelaces, sprucing up your operational practices and squeezing that little bit of extra mileage out of your resources. Even a fundamentally sound business needs to protect itself against the risk of squandering resources and frittering away advantages in a competitive market. Keeping costs down takes a mix of flintiness, shrewdness and negotiation skills. There are different parts of the business that give you opportunities to cut costs. If there is any fat in the cost of creating sales removing it gives you a bigger return [...]
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Fitness was a $26 billion per year industry at the end of 2015 and it's all too easy to think that taking part is the same as having success in it. That is not the case; the difference is between churning through revenue, where you spend it as rapidly as you earn it (or worse), and making a solid profit on your labors. To achieve that it will require your leadership, a comprehensive map of where you are going, and the right analytics and dashboard solutions to accurately measure the process of getting there. Getting To Grips With Key Performance [...]
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Going From Zero To One One of the most interesting books about startups and innovation is Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters. The principle is that a running business is one, and you start at zero. Everything that you do in between is the hard work of founding a business. Once you are in operation and making enough income to survive you can think about expanding. Beyond one you can use the principle of duplication to repeat the initial success in a second, third, and further locations, this is the empire-building phase where you go from one [...]
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Handling Gym Membership Sales Objections And Closing The Deal Fitness was a $17 billion a year industry in 2014, and it continues to grow every year. Your small gym business has every opportunity to make selling a central skill that will drive your business forward. What's more, all of your employees are counting on you to pull through. So, who in your gym is responsible for selling new memberships? The answer has to be all of you! You need your team to understand that their jobs depend on their ability to bring in new members and turn curious window shoppers [...]
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Pulling Your Small Gym Business Back From The Brink A few years back, Grant Cardone, the business turnaround expert, responded to the cry for help from the owners of a Gold's Gym franchise, in Whippany New Jersey, saving them from a foreclosure that would have left the entire family penniless. The video is well worth a watch. You can apply the key points of what Cardone implemented to any struggling gym. In fact, the methods of organizing and structuring the sales process, the heart of the plan, go for any customer service-centered company. This post is not the first to [...]
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Put Some Life Back In Your Marketing There is always more room for another list on the Internet, particularly when it is as important as reinvigorating marketing strategies for small gym business owners. There may be more relevant marketing ideas that only you can know about driving your business ahead. So, while you ponder on what business marketing ideas will give you a boost, read through these seven marketing tips for gym owners, and perhaps you will find something that inspires you. 1. Free is worth more than any discounts The first tip is a warning with a healthier alternative: [...]
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Orangetheory Fitness Goes Full Wearable Some gym equipment comes and goes as fashionable or convenient to the user. Other gear just turns up one day, and then you wonder how you ever got along without it. It's beginning to look like a solid bet that wearable technology for the gym is here to stay, and it soon might be indispensable too. The Wearables.com website has just posted an exciting article about the wearable tech in use at the Orangetheory chain of gyms. It is an excellent example of how wearables and fitness make such a great pair. This class-based exercise [...]
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Building A Business In Fitness A recent post on the Club Solutions Magazine's website reminded me of how proactive you have to be as a business owner; in the gym management business you live and die by your ability to lead. As an independent gym business owner, you've probably found the key to your success is working with people to achieve a common objective. The goal of your business is to inspire and assist in the growth and improvement in the physical health of all of the people around you. It's the ultimate secret to success in fitness; you have [...]
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Owning A Gym Probably Will Not Kill You Spartan Race exhorts you to push harder! So says Joe De Sena who we have covered in the past and presently has a new book in print. Spartan is the endurance fitness event company that is De Sena's brainchild; he's a believer in finding the edge of exhaustion, and then to start doing some real training. Endurance events provide a test that few other things in life can do safely. There are plenty of things that will test your endurance unsafely; war zones, being lost alone in the wilderness, but I think [...]
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What is marketing about if not finding new customers? And when business is at its slowest surely that is the time to shift down a gear and get the marketing efforts going properly. Marketing is about customers, who they are and what they want, as well as how you can mold your business to pick up some new members. You can bring in new members who want what you have and to do it at the lowest possible cost to you in the process. Of course, marketing takes an investment of time and energy, if not capital. If you are [...]
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I Am About To Contradict Myself Strange as it may seem, this is a rebuttal to my previous post about boosting revenue. Yes, increased margin is good, but too much of a good thing can take your gym off focus, especially in the early days. Some of the most successful companies have the simplest offerings, i.e., they stick to what they do best. In that post, I gave a list of different things that gym owners and managers can do to boost revenue, based on the various points on the profit and loss statement and how you can leverage them [...]
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