As you probably know, the two most important aspects of running a gym or health club are sales (getting new members) and retention (holding on to the members you already have).

Traditionally the key aspects of sales is thought to be advertising and positioning.  Positioning meaning knowing your market and being where there is demand.

Retention is all about customer service and learning to notice when a member is in danger of leaving.  You can monitor your records for signs that a member may not renew.  Have their visit frequency reduced or even stopped for example ?

Increasing your new member signups is not about what you think, it’s about what you know

If you’re not recording how each new inquiry heard about your club, if you’re not recording how efficiently your staff are converting enquiries into memberships then you are leaving your success to mere gut feel.  And while we all feel we have a good gut feel and intuition about our businesses history tells us that this isn’t true.

Are the number of people hearing about your club from word of mouth recommendations going up or down over time ?  If they are going down or are static you may have a customer service issue holding your business back.

What percentage of people who phone or visit your club are male and what percentage are female ?  Note, I didn’t say members of your club.

What percentage of people who walk through the door do you convert into members ?

Do you convert males or females better ?

How many enquiries did your last flyer drop produce ?  Was it an improvement on the previous time you sent out flyers ?

Which staff member is most effective at converting walk in inquiries to members ?  Not which staff member do you think, probably, is most likely to perhaps be converting walks to customers, what are the numbers ? the percentages ?  If you knew you would be able to get other employees to model the behavior of this star.

The amazing thing is, all of this information is freely available to you.  You don’t have to guess, if you want success start recording the facts.  You will most likely learn things about your business, marketing and staff that your gut would never have told you.