Help More People Join Your Gym

by Dave Wright (Sales Guru)

There are many `tricks and techniques’ used today to encourage people to close more sales. Judging personality types, watching particular eye movements, analyzing a prospects body language, mirroring and matching prospects movements and many more. I think many club owners and sales staff should be focusing on the basics of sales on what to do when a new prospect enters their gym.

So here is an easy way to make sure that you and your staff are getting the critical information required to close more sales. It’s basically called the

H.E.L.P acronym.
H- hear,
E- experience,
L- lifestyle,
P- problem.

H Stands for Hear. How did the person hear about the club? This should be one of your first questions that you ask someone when they enter your gym. The member may have a husband and a wife who is a member, they may have a best friend who has told them that they must join, they may have been a previous member under different ownership or they may have seen your special offer in the newspaper and are responding to it. Either way, the information that they give automatically enables you an opportunity to build early rapport from the onset. And the more rapport leads to more trust and therefore the more likely the person will open up about what he/she really wants to achieve and why.

E stands for Experience. What is their previous experience? Finding out what type of experience someone has with exercise and gyms can often determine the decisions that they make in the future. If you found out that a person had joined the gym down the road that closed down, they may be justifiably skeptical of your club. Also, if you found out that a person was a very serious trainer who knows all the equipment inside out, you would treat them differently to someone who had never walked into a gym before. This knowledge is powerful so as to save you time by not `patronizing’ your prospect on areas of the club that they may be familiar with and focusing more on areas suitable to their experience and knowledge.

L stands for Lifestyle. What is their current lifestyle? Now that you would know how the prospect `heard’ about the club and you have found out their `experience’, by understanding their `lifestyle’ you can work out what time they may use the club, how many times they may use it and even what financial standing they may be. More importantly, it helps you figure out the appropriate membership that would suit their particular lifestyle. For example an off-peak membership may be more suited to an OAP who plans to use the club during the days.

P stands for Problem. This is undoubtedly the most important bit of information to find out from the prospect. This is the main reason `why’ they may want to join your gym. They may want to lose 2 stone so that they can fit into their wedding dress in 18 months time, they may want to compete in a bodybuilding competition in 6 months, or they may want to lose their belly and give up smoking so that they don’t die before they see their grandchildren grow up. No matter what the `reason’, there is always some `problem’ that brought this person into your gym in the first place. As soon as you uncover this problem, then you must work hard at providing the solution. When you do that, you will be extremely close to having the sale.

What’s so fantastic about the H.E.L.P acronym is that it reminds you that you are there to `help’ someone improve their quality of life and not just `sell’ them a gym membership. And more importantly, you can do this without having to worry about eye movement, body language or even the seating positions of the prospect before you!