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5 Tips For Managing The Health Club Prospect Funnel

February 26, 2012

If you haven’t considered your health club membership recruitment process as a business sales funnel, it’s time to change your thinking. The top-performing clubs not only have the best health club software, fitness programs, staff and facilities, they also understand that gaining new members can only happen when you effectively find leads and convert them into members.

While you may be selling fitness and a healthier lifestyle, you still need to work your sales process the same way a successful business does, by finding prospects in multiple places, nurturing them in their buying process so that they turn into leads, educating them on how your health club and services are the perfect fit for them and finally, making a sale.

Follow these 5 tips for managing your health club prospect funnel:

1. Use More Online Channels To Find Prospects
The key to a high performing health club sales funnel is drawing in a wide scope of the right prospects.

Create a profile of your ideal potential member and then find them in their natural online habitat. Where do they hang out on the net? Are they on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn?

When you have a good idea of where they are, you can create content that fits those channels. For example, on your Facebook page you can create “10 Reasons Why Cardio Training Isn’t Enough For Weight Loss”, then invite them to your website to read “10 Ways You Can Boost Your Cardio Success Now”.

2. Get Them To Your Website
Finding the prospects is one thing. You have to bring them to your website and engage them even further.

The content marketing you do across the web should always be geared at bringing them back to your blog, landing pages for free passes, educational pages with subscriptions to your newsletters or Q &A pages with your fitness experts.

All pages, titles, headlines and content should be optimized for SEO search integrating the keywords your prospects use to search for health and fitness clubs.

3. Compel Them To Act
Congratulations, you’ve gotten this potential member to peruse your Facebook page – which led them to your blog, which motivated them to visit lots of pages on your website. Now what? Don’t let that visitor slip away without compelling them to act.

Encourage them to sign up for your email newsletter, invite them to visit your locations, register for new member seminars on weight loss, kick starting your fitness plan, or learning new activities such as yoga or tennis.

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4. Make Contact – Fast
Sales studies have shown that the faster you respond to a lead (for example one who has signed up to receive your emails) the better chance you have of converting them to a sale.

Once your potential member has engaged with you, don’t drop the ball. Keep a stream of conversation during their on-site visits with tours and introductions or through their email connection via your informational targeted email marketing.

By providing regular touches to your leads, you can gauge how far into your sales funnel they’ve actually moved. At every point of contact, give them the opportunity to sign up.

5. Turn One Sale Into Two with a Referral
Now that you’ve converted that lead into a new member, keep them happy and turn them into a strong referral for your next batch of prospects. Your cutting edge fitness programs and high level fitness staff are crucial to their in-club experience but your health club software will keep them engaged both inside and out of the club.

The best health club software should provide user friendly electronic membership and personal training agreements so you can make it easy for them to join your club and get working on their fitness goals.

You can also provide them a 24-7 online experience with their own profile on your website so they can track their purchases, view their account history, find new classes and learn new tips.

Your health club business should be as fit as the people who frequent it. Make your sales funnel a healthy one and drive new members to your door.