When it comes to growing club revenue and sales, many clubs make the mistake of focusing all their attention on gaining new members, and neglect the wealth of sales opportunity that come from upselling new offerings to current members.

Conversion of any type—whether it’s buying a new class package or upgrading a membership—relies on a member’s connection with you. That connection is rooted in how well you understand your members.

With connection and understanding as central pieces of the sales conversion puzzle, it pays to get to know your members. Find out everything from who they are to what they like to what they are ultimately trying to accomplish by becoming a member of your fitness club. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be prepared to tailor your talk track and speak directly to your members’ desired outcomes and goals.

It’s essential to create member personas in order to segment your member base into smaller groups based on their goals, outcomes, and interests. Here are some common questions to ask that will help you understand your members better and ultimately lead to more effective sales:

1. What demographic(s) does this member represent?

It’s important to pinpoint exactly who your members are so you can determine which of your offerings will appeal to them. Knowing your members’ basic demographics, including their age, whether or not they have children, and even their background and ethnicity, can help immensely when determining what and how you’ll sell to them.

For example, you wouldn’t market an over-50 group training class to a 25-year-old, nor would you waste time and effort trying to sell family membership to a member who doesn’t have a child.

2. What communication channel or channels are they most likely to respond to?

Knowing your members’ demographics can inform other key decisions you’ll make when creating marketing and sales strategies. With information on your members’ ages, you can determine which communication channels will be most effective to reach them. For example, email may work better for older members, while text or mobile app push notifications may be better for younger members. Having a health club management software partner that provides several different communication channels to fit the needs of all your members is essential to success.

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3. What’s their background or prior engagement?

Another way a health club management software can help you understand your members is by providing insight into their prior engagement. Find out what programs and classes they’ve signed up for in the past, then sell them other experiences that are similar to the ones they’ve already shown an interest in. Maybe a member was seeing a personal trainer pre-COVID but has yet to return upon re-opening. This may be an easy sell, where all it takes is a little reminder of their previous progress to convince them to jump back on board.

‍4. What are they motivated by?

In addition to knowing your members’ prior engagement, keeping track of what motivates them is key. Does your member tend to use your facility independently or do they prefer group settings? For example, if you know that a member signs up for a swim lane nearly every day of the week, it’s safe to say that they appreciate the solitude of having space to him or herself. Maybe they’ll also be interested in hearing about your new meditation rooms or the fact that you’ve partitioned private areas for individual strength training. Remember: Sales also encompasses retention, so keeping your members happy and informed about your current offerings can be just as important as selling them on something new.

5. What do they say about themselves?

The best way to understand your members is to go directly to the source. Ask your members what they like and dislike about your club with regularly distributed surveys. Leave room for them to give specific recommendations on the types of programs and offerings they’d like to participate in. If you notice a record number of members requesting a specific group exercise class, once you add it to your offerings, the job of selling them that additional class package is essentially done for you.  ‍

Mastering sales for your fitness or health club requires a multifaceted and ever-evolving approach. However, one of the easiest ways to improve your sales is to get to know your members. Once you’ve got a deep understanding of who your members are, what they are trying to achieve, and what they’re motivated by, you can tailor your sales approach with offerings like bundled services and special membership upgrades based on fitness club use. From there, the sky’s the limit on how far you can take your fitness club sales.

Ready to improve your club sales? Learn how to improve your lead funnel, increase member bookings, streamline communications, and provide an unrivaled staff and member experience with our Strategy Playbook for Fitness Clubs.

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