trend_summer_2012_initial

Stimulating your fitness career, lifestyle and future.

1-800-726-3506 www.thenfba.com

SUMMER

2012

SAVING THE WORLD one health club at a time!

Helping You Be Successfu

l

in every aspect of your busin

ess!

How Measuring Member

Movement Enhances

Engagement and Length

of Stay - Pg 6

By Emmett Williams

Summer... A Perfect Tim

e For Your

Marketing Checklist - Pg

14

By MaryBeth Bradley

Is Your Business Plan a

Roadmap

or a Roadblock? - Pg 16

By Howard A. Tullman

Death by the Pareto Pri

nciple - Pg 18

Baseball... Playing The P

ercentages - Pg 25

By Sean Kirby

The Best Post-Workout

Meals- Pg 26

By Mike Roussell

How To Keep Tabs On T

he Competition- Pg 30

The Trend - Summer 20122

The Trend - Summer 2012 3

dotFIT has the only program application utilized on Sharecare, exclusively powering programs trusted by Dr. Oz and millions of health-seekers around the country. And now you can offer our weight loss program to your members for free. Call today, so your members can start losing weight tomorrow. 877.436.8348 | www.dotFIT.com

HOW TO OFFER NUTRITION IN YOUR CLUB.

Figure it out on your own.

Trial-and-error + confusion and frustration = less profit for your club.

Use dotFIT.

Simple nutrition solutions + proven systems = more profit for your club.

Through the NFBA workshops we have worked with count-

less owners and managers! We know that when a business

is struggling to sell memberships, their profit centers arent

earning cash flow and staff isnt motivated to reach success,

thats because theyre lacking a business system.

Our Business System Program delivers you the knowledge

and hands on skills that the NFBA has earned through our

years in the fitness industry. In 12 weeks the NFBA can

change the entire direction of your business.

Call us today for more information 800-726-3506

Saving the World One Health Club at a Time

NFBA BuSInESS SYSTEM

PRogRAM

I never thought that my business lack of success was because of my in-ability to implement systems for staff to use. Once I started working with the NFBA team I was able to understand why systems are such a key component to a business success. They walk me through the steps, help train me and my staff and just help us get it done. - Sarah W. - California Club Owner

Business systems: Complete Selling System Group Training System Find Your Reason


In THIS ISSUE Featured ArticleHow Measuring Member Movement Enhances Engagement and Length of StayBy Emmett Williams

Brought to you by

national Fitness Business AllianceP.O. Box 929, Mashpee, MA 026491-800-726-3506 www.thenfba.com

Editor: Jillian Russo

Assistant Editor: Madison gardner

Assistant Editor: Lilly gilrein

Assistant Editor: Jaime gilrein

Designed By: Susan K. Bailey Marketing & Design www.susankbaileymarketing.com

Contributors:

Emmett Williams

MaryBeth Bradley

Howard A. Tullman

Thomas Plummer

Mike Roussell

THE TREnD


A LETTER FROM THE

EDITOR

Hello from Cape Cod! I am lucky enough to have an office based on one of the top vacation spots in the world.

Last summer the big news around our area was great white sharks! They have been coming to the Cape waters for the last few summers enjoying a feast of seals.

This has created a fabulous business opportunity to the local small businesses. With new shirts and meals named after these great whites it keep the tourists spending their hard earned money.

As entrepreneurs we have to be on top of our game all of the time. The owners on the Cape saw the chance to make money off of these sharks and adjusted the business accordingly.

Would you have been able to do this in your business? Notice an area to improve and increase cash flow in the business and do it quickly?

Many wait to see what other owners will do and then decide what to do. How effective is that? Waiting for someone to make a decision on something that doesnt even affect you or your business.

Its like we tell our kids when they are in elementary school, it doesnt matter what other people say or do, it is how you represent you.

Take the initiative in your business. Start making decisions in a shorter period of time that will help improve your business immediately. Lacking new leads then get some marketing into the community. Need to increase cash flow? Start offering daily specials on the profit centers you offer in your facility.

If you are waiting around hoping something will happen remember Hope Isnt a Business Plan! Write it on the wall of your office to remind you every day that its up to you to make something happen!!

REMEMBER HOPE ISNT A BUSINESS PLAN Jillian Russo

Happy Summer Friends!

Editor: Jillian Russo

Assistant Editor: Madison gardner

Assistant Editor: Lilly gilrein

Assistant Editor: Jaime gilrein

Designed By: Susan K. Bailey Marketing & Design www.susankbaileymarketing.com

Contributors:

Emmett Williams

MaryBeth Bradley

Howard A. Tullman

Thomas Plummer

Mike Roussell

THE TREnD

The NFBA offers workshops throughout the country year-around! We have support on our website:

www.thenfba.comand we are always available to chat:

800-726-3506


An intangible benefit:

The product we sell, fitness is an intangible experience. The

member doesnt get to take the treadmill home, therefore the

satisfaction reaped in consuming a gym membership is about

the immediate endorphin hit, and a belief in the long term

payoff of exercise. The long term payoff is fine for those that

are savvy, but for the most part it is a long reach. It takes faith.

Not long after attending the gym the member forgets about

the satisfaction that was provided from the endorphin hit.

It was short lived. This intangibility and forgetfulness

causes a problem for achieving customer engagement, so these

members typically become high maintenance to retain. You

have to keep selling them. Tiring stuff.

The spiral of death:

As an industry we are very good at many things, like picking

locations for our gyms, we are exceptional at lead generation,

we are experts at the selling process, but retaining members

must be our Achilles heel. Our collective retention rate sits at

about 40% a year according to IHRSA, that means if we start with

1000 members we will be left with only 400 of those members

in 12 months time. A pretty atrocious metric compared to

most businesses. The banks and telecommunication companys

runs circles around us! Ok, why are we so bad? It is due to

2 things, 1) lack of results for the member and 2) members

becoming disengaged with the experience. These two issues

of course go hand in hand.

What normally happens is this: The discipline of attendance

per month and effort per session drops as the member is

tempted to cuts corners. They cut corners simply because the

initial burst of adrenalin that got them into the gym has now worn

off, and the benefits of exercise seem such a long way away. The

member doesnt have the education or the embedded beliefs to

uphold a medium term outlook, let alone the long term. And as

for endorphin hit, well chocolate can give them that! Much easier.

After this drop off in attendance and effort the results

slow down even further, and the cost of attending the gym

then exceeds the benefit. At that point it becomes really hard

to maintain the gym routine, attendance essentially falls all the

way to 0 visits per month, and payments follow about 3 months

after. Thats it, end of story!

It is the spiral of death and it all started with a lack of discipline

and motivation from the start, where the critical success factors

of attendance and effort were left to drift. There was

no alarm system, there was no coach re-energising the member.

The member no longer had the sales adrenalin in their system,

they didnt have the faith in the medium term benefits, they saw

a short cut, lost interest, and they let their critical numbers of

attendance and effort fall off the page. The spiral is hard to

stop. Consider this - If a member drops in attendance and effort,

but the club doesnt notice it, did it really happen? Let me say this,

with an annual retention rate of 40% , yes it absolutely did.

Motivation boils down to this:

Dr Daniel Pink spoke at the recent 2011 IHRSA convention

about the science of motivation. His 2 hour key note pinnacled

at one point, and that was if you can show somebody, be it

your child, your student, your gym member, anybody, that

they are making progress, then there is nothing more you

can do to motivate them.

David Lowe who recently presented a paper on Attracting and

Retaining a gym member, and said members want clubs to

encourage routine. They dont need the end benefit of a dress size

continually sold to them, they just simply want to be encouraged

to uphold a routine.

Consider then that the most effective thing a club can do to

fight the inevitable spiral of death is to show progress with the

process. If you can achieve early wins and show the member they

are making headway, making progress, then as Pink says, there is

nothing more than you can do to motivate them.

How MEASURINg MEMBER MOvEMENT


David Lowe who recently presented a paper on Attracting and

Retaining a gym member, and said members want clubs to

encourage routine. They dont need the end benefit of a

dress size continually sold to them, they just simply want to

be encouraged to uphold a routine.

Consider then that the most effective thing a club can do to fight

the inevitable spiral of death is to show progress with the

process. If you can achieve early wins and show the member

they are making headway, making progress, then as Pink says,

there is nothing more than you can do to motivate them.

Showing members that they are progressing not with their

end result (ie dress size or blood pressure) but with their

attendance, their workload and their output is extremely

motivating in both the short term & the long term. Sure in

the long term the end game of dress size or lower blood

pressure needs to be delivered upon, however focusing on

the process, focusing on the controllables, gives the member

empowerment, it enables them to engage.

How to Show Progress in the Process.

The old program card appears to be a obvious tool, however

there is one large problem. It requires effort. It requires the

member to fill in the blanks. This inconvenience we know is just

too much, so it doesnt get done, therefore there is no tracking,

no progress shown, and the spiral of death begins.

The next best tip is to have a notice board at your front reception

with a list of members who attended the gym more than 8 times

this month. Next to that have how many session they have

attended for the year, and then a rolling 12 month average. Set

targets for all members. A new member could be set the target

of making the leaders board, and therefore focus on the

process. The annual counting tally you will notice also focuses on

progress with the process. Maintaining anything above an 8 is

admirable, and proven to limit attrition.

Another idea is Thoms most famous Fat tax. Consider this.

Those members who join up on the VIP deal pay $40 a month,

but if they attend a minimum of 8 times a month they will get

$10 reimbursed, so their membership becomes $30 a month, a

huge $150 a year saving for those that use You may think it is

throwing good money away, but try it, and measure the average

length of stay. Is 14 months x $30 better than 21 months x $30?.

Hardly. I will let you do the math.

To use technology would be to use the CFM product MYZONE

(yes I am getting a plug at the end of the article). Myzone is a

heart rate monitor that tracks and collates the physical activity

of your members, stores the output data in a cloud through

wireless technology, and provides the member and the club

with a convenient and accurate way of tracking physical activity.

Given the memory chip it even works when outside the 4

walls of the gym, and the system effectively acts as a log book

of members activity. An ideal way to show progress in the

process, where given targets can be set around effort level,

duration, and visits per month.

Either way, our core business is attendance and effort per

session if we can master that, then retention takes care of itself.

enHAnCeS CUSTOMER ENgAgEMENT and LENgTH Of STAyemmett williams, Director of CFM,the international group of businesses

emmett williams is director of CFM, the international group of businesses with over 300 staff and he also owns 7 gyms. emmett is passionate however, about the fitness industry going beyond marketing, beyond sales, and truly engaging its member-ship base. Here is why

Looking to add some

INTo yoUR cLUB? fUNCTIONAL fITNESS


INTo yoUR cLUB?Song Artist

RICKS TOP WORKOUT MUSICRICKS TOP WORKOUT MUSIC

What the Fitness Business Superstars are listening to!

We caught up with Fitness Guru

RICK MAyOto see whats on his playlist!

Here are some quICK IDEAS you can use

to get started!

Light of the Morning Band of Skulls

no woman Bob Marleyno Cry (Live)

Breathe, MaseStretch, Shake

Gods Gonna Johnny CashCut You Down

How we Do 50 Cent

nasty Letter Otis Taylor

Just Breathe Pearl Jam Simple Man Shine Down(Acoustic Version)

Home Marc Broussard

Apache The Sugar Hill Gang

The appropriate dance is a must do!!!


SUCCESSquOTES FORWinning is not a sometime thing; its an all time thing. You dont win

once in a while, you dont do things right once in a while, you do them

right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing - Vince Lombardi

No action, no change. Limited action, limited change. Lots of action -

Change occurs. - Catherine Pulsifer

Anyone can do something when they WANT to do it. Really successful

people do things when they dont want to do it. - Dr. Phil

Never wait for the proper mood to start a thing, nor until the spirit moves you. Make your own mood. Make your own spirit. How? ACT. Do something - anything. Inspiration seldom generates action. Action

always creates inspiration. - Author Unknown

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. - Aristotle

Ive missed more than 9000 shots in my career. Ive lost almost 300 games. 26 times, Ive been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. Ive failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. - Michael Jordan


Heres to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. Theyre not

fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you cant do

is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the

people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. - Apple Inc.

5 Things WE LOvE Right Now!1) Mobile websites. In November of last year, Nielsen reported, that almost half of American cell phone users (a full 44 percent) now have smartphones, and among those aged 25-34, that percentage jumps to 62 percent. Tablet computers and ereaders are also seeing a spike in sales and ubiquity. That said, this is another trends that small business owners cannot afford to ignore. At least, small business owners should make sure that their websites are mobile device ready. At most, some companies may stand to benefit from mobile-based marketing strategies, such as QR Codes and other forms of mobile advertising.

2) iCloud. Why it is so cool! Free to users of Mac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Keeps contacts, calendar appointments, and email synced across your Mac (if you are using Apple Mail, Address Book, and iCal), iPhones, and iPads. When you purchase Music, Apps, or Books from the iTunes Store, theyll automatically be downloaded to your other computers and devices. Provides Photo Stream, so that any picture you take, or any picture you import into iPhoto, is automatically visible on all your computers and devices. Backs up iPhones and iPads automatically, over the air, and can restore that way too. If you set up Find My iPhone, it will show you on a map where your iPhone or iPad is, and will also let you remotely erase its contents. COOL!

3) extreme 5k Races. The popularity of non-traditional 5K races (and other runs) has undeniably increased in recent years. From the widely publicized warrior Dash to the Spartan Run to the Dirty 30, completing a 5k has suddenly become about far more than simply running

for just over three miles. Instead, the intensity of a distance run has been upped through the inclusion of obstacles such as mud pits, barbed wire, tire jungles, and rope climbing walls. Because of such runs, many individuals are finding motivation to get out and run for exercise for the first time in their lives.

4) 2012 Summer olympics and Michael Phelps - known as London 2012, was a major international multi-sport event, celebrated in the tradition of the Olympic Games, that takes place in London, United

Kingdom. Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985) is a retired American swimmer and the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals (18, double the second highest record holders), Olympic gold medals in individual events (11), and Olympic medals in individual events for a male (13). In winning

eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, Phelps took the record for the most first-place finishes at any

single Olympic Games. Five of those victories were in individual events, tying the single Games record. In the

2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four golds and two silver medals, making him the most successful athlete of the Games for the third Olympics in a row.

5) VeGAS Life Lessons in the Fitness Business and a 30 Year CeLeBRATIon of Thomas Plummer and his impact on the fitness industry. PARTY AnD eVenT is November 2nd and 3rd at the Planet Hollywood Resort!


Call today! 800-726-3506 or

www.jointhenfba.com to order your copy!


WHERE Did that MEMBER gO? Rediscovering the Lost Art

of Customer Service

Service can be taught. Systems can be created that any owner can apply to his business. This book is about rediscovering

the lost art of member service and then implementing it in your business. Your goal with this book is to move toward building a business that retains its clients through the creation of legendary customer service.

Contact Marketing Coach Tracey Bourdon

1.888.349.4594 ext. 261or email [email protected]

Mobile devices are predicted to overtake desktop use by 2015. Dont miss out on connecting with your on-the-go customers. A mobile website is a simplified version of your desktop website and includes:

5 pages One year of hosting Unlimited access to our View-As-You-Build editor

Access to a comprehensive help section

Change the look and feel from colors to headers and images, add content (text, image, video, one-touch features, social media), and so much more. There is absolutely no-programming skills needed. Easily add one-touch calling and emailing as well as links to your favorite social media platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Maps and more. Use the QR Code Manager to automatically generate a QR code for every page of mobile website which allows you to integrate QR codes into your print materials.

MARKETING & DESIGN

MARKETING & DESIGN

www.susankbaileymarketing.com

Mobile Websites

Scan this to visit our mobile site or go to skb.mviso.com

m a r k e t i n g s t r a t e g y

The Trend - Summer 2012 The Trend - Summer 2012 13


A Perfect Time for... Welcome to summer! Unless you are on the west coast of the country, where it is summer twelve months of the year, most health clubs will slow down until the little kiddies get ready to return to school in the fall. Family and friends will take their major vacation at this time of year, attend cookouts and other social gatherings and move to the outdoors to get much of their physical activity.

By this time you will have already created your marketing plan for the summer, to maximize all the relevant opportunities (outdoor fitness classes, member parties, community involvement, etc.) so it is time to get on the ball and plan for the rest of 2012. Take a deep breath, pause and reflect on what just happened and what lies ahead.

Plan, execute, Track, Rinse and RepeatOkay so I added in the part about rinsing, but you get the idea. The summer is an ideal time to review your Marketing Checklist. You do have a marketing checklist, dont you? Position yourself for a successful fall and second half of 2012 by taking a step back and reviewing your overall process. Here are just a few important items that are worth some attention during the long, dog days of summer.

1. Review!Go back and revisit the first six months of the year from a marketing perspective. What worked? What didnt work? Are we on budget? You do have a marketing budget, dont you? Organize your files so that you can readily access all your campaigns and overall marketing efforts, with a summary of results and budgets for each month.

2. Plan!Create a marketing blueprint for the rest of the year. Chart your marketing course, being sure to include all of these target areas in your plan, complete with campaigns and budget projections; prospects, members, former members, tours and guests, referrals, retention, corporate, community outreach, events, functions and social communication. Integrate any or all of these media vehicles to convey your message; website, social media, guerilla marketing, direct mail, email communication, traditional portals (radio, newspaper, television, billboards) and internal club signage.

3. Listen!Gather your staff for a meeting, company picnic or team building event and ask them for feedback, comments and opinions. Ask them how can we improve? They are the people

who are on the front lines and will be able to provide valuable information as you put together your upcoming marketing plan. This should also include your members. How can we improve your experience at the club? This can be done with a short little survey, either electronically or the old fashion way. Make sure to offer them something to thank them for their time.

4. evaluate!Once you have reviewed the first six months and have gathered the staff and member feedback, develop an operational plan for the next six months of the year. Share this information with your management team and other key staff members, establish priorities including assignments and deadlines. Be sure to communicate these results and your plans on how to maximize them based on the input you have received.

5. Member experience!Review the new member experience. How are new members being introduced to the various areas of your club? Are we making the most of opportunities to create more revenue per member by offering training, spa services, lessons or other programs? How are members meeting one another? It goes without saying that the first 30, 60, 90 days


A Perfect Time for... of a new member joining your club are the most critical in shaping what their experience is going to be. Focus on this aspect of your overall process as developing a core member, someone who visits your club on average of eight times a month for optimal member retention. If you truly have your eye on retention numbers this exercise is essential to do every six months, at least!

6. web, web, web!Nearly 70% of people will visit your website before they ever call or set foot in your club. A pretty sobering statistic but it is now the way of the world, and has been for over five years. Stroll around your website. Is it time for a makeover? What is not on the site that you implemented this year? Is it easy to navigate through the site and find information? Do you still have that electronic newsletter from 2008 on your website? Are you coming up in the top three spots when you search for a health club in your town? Most importantly ask for feedback from members and non-members alike. There is a good chance if you were the original architect of your website, or it was done by your brother in law for free, you may not have a clear, unbiased view of how good or bad it truly is.

Mid-August to Labor Day is the unofficial start to the second January in the fitness industry. Summer is the perfect time to plan for the rest of the year. Planning ahead allows you to take advantage of unique opportunities that come your way, especially when you have everything else already in place. It also doesnt mean that your plan is etched in stone and immovable. In fact planning ahead allows you to focus on the important aspects of running your business because you are not constantly putting out fires or only dealing with daily emergencies.

So go ahead and jump right inand plan.

The Marketing Coaches at Susan K. Bailey Marketing & Design are here to help you achieve your marketing goals.

Call us at 1-888-349-4594 or visit us at susankbaileymarketing.com to get started today.

...Your MARKETINg CHECKLIST!

E

MaryBeth Bradley is a Marketing Coach at Susan K. Bailey Marketing & Design and has been in the fitness industry for over 22 years. You can reach her via email at [email protected].


IS YouR BUSINESS PLAN aROADMAP oR A

That business plan you worked so hard on? Its downright DAnGeRouS! It wont be long before young

entrepreneurs skip the business plan

altogether. Personally, Id rather be sent

a demo URL or a prototype than a 50-

page business plan I dont have time to

read. Showing me what youre done

beats telling me what youre gonna do by

a country mile. If youve got it, flaunt it.

If not, come back when you do.

Sure, you will probably need a business

plan to get some early funding. But

the real value of your plan depends

entirely on how you develop and use

it. It can be a roadmap or a roadblock.

At any moment in time, your business

plan reflects your best educated guess

at the future. And its going to change

a million times as you progress,

because thats what building a business

is really all about its about evolving

and advancing a central idea through

continually changing circumstances.

You should use a business plan as a

tool and a starting point to recognize

and measure changes, so that you can

react to them and adjust. Its not an

operating manual to run your business.

Trying to stick to a plan that was written

in the past assumes that youve learned

nothing since the time it was written,

or form the unforeseen events youre

encountered. In fact, in times of rapid

change, your past experience may be

your worst enemy.

Think about what would have happened

to Encyclopedia Britannica if it had

followed its original business plan, or

allowed itself to become too tied to

its history. In March, Encyclopedia

Britannica announced after 244 years

(but only 22 years after the founding

of Wikipedia), it was discontinuing

the publication of its print edition. At

its peak, Encyclopedia Britannica sold

120,000 hardcover sets of its books. By

the time the company abandoned print,

those editions accounted for less than

1% of the companys revenue.

Meanwhile, about 500,000 households

were paying annual fees for online

subscriptions, representing about 15%

of the companys revenue. The lions

share of sales came from curriculum

products. The company had responded

to aggressive new competition and low-

cost delivery systems by changing their

entire business in less than a decade.

They became a new, agile player in the

information marketplace.

Too many businesses run into serious

problems because they waste time

trying to make their circumstances fit

their plan rather than changing their

plan to fit their circumstances. The

longer you benchmark or measure

your progress to an irrelevant or

outdated standard, the more time you

waste and the more ground you give

up to the competition.

A model or plan doesnt necessarily get

you to the truth. Eventually the math

stalls out and something more human and

personal takes over. Great entrepreneurs

are pioneers. They embrace change so

quickly that their decisions will never be

totally justified by the numbers.

Remember: You get what you work

for, not what you wish for!

ROADBLOCK?By: Howard A. Tullman, Inc.com


The Pareto Principle states that roughly 80% of the effect comes from about 20% of the causes. Stated in our business terms, this means that we make about 80% of our money in business from about 20% of our clients. Or yet another way, most of what we get comes from a small segment of the people we deal with each day.There seems to be a somewhat different version of this that affects what we do in the fitness business. We will call this the Plummer Principle for obvious reasons. The Plummer Principle states that the bottom 20% of the members in most box clubs, and even in some training clubs, should be driven into the wilderness with fire and pitch forks because of the drain they put upon the owners and their resources.People go broke by ignoring the Plummer Principle by trying to build a business for the bottom 20% of the food chain that are too poor, too ignorant and too classless to understand or use the product. Their needs are simply beyond the scope where you can offer service and support and still make money.Airlines are a perfect example of the Plummer Principle gone too far. Almost every decision a major airline makes is based upon dealing with a client that should be sitting in the last seat of a Greyhound bus rather than flying in a cheap coach seat.Fares are set for the bottom 20% who complain that flights are too expensive and will shop 10 different sites before buying a ticket

that is $4 less than the first nine sites. The fares attract the low priced idiots and then the rest of us have to pay for every extra a marketing person can create to make up the difference of what it really takes to maintain the business.Realistically, if you cant afford $400 to fly from Boston to San Francisco, take the bus. Imagine flying across the entire country in about five hours and back, for only $400 and then complaining that the cost is too much. But the low priced shoppers complain that life is unfair and they cannot fly unless the fares are around $200 so the airlines fold, offer cheap prices and then make it up one bag and upgrade at a time.This category of flyer is also the same poorly dressed customer wearing nasty clothes, that were mostly likely stolen from a homeless shelter, who pack 80 pounds of unneeded clothing, wine bottles, ball bats, cameras, giant basketball shoes and other assorted mess in their suitcases then complain about the overweight baggage fee.These folks also complain about paying $6 for a beer and are people who in any sense of traveling in the brutally harsh reality of the modern world should not be flying on an airline when they cant grasp the basic concept that you cant operate an airline on the $50 round trip they want to pay. They simply are not sophisticated enough to understand the product they are trying to buy, and therefore, there is nothing you can do to make them happy. We have the same version of this person in the fitness business. Perhaps the best way

to classify this client is as a drive-by workout meaning that she goes from unaware to must do it today in the length of an old Richard Simmons commercial. This person has no fitness history, has done no research except to talk to a friend who lost 50 pounds eating popcorn and walking on a treadmill slowly every day and who is so unaware of fitness that their only decision making process hinges on the belief that the cheaper the better.Yet we let this person drive our business plan in most markets. This is why we have $9 clubs, 30-minute training sessions, free childcare and group exercise as part of the membership in most box clubs and give away cheap, tasteless coffee to the morning guys who havent paid for even a munchie bar in their entire nine year membership.Since these people are the ones who scream the loudest over the smallest things, such as a class getting cancelled or the nickel increase in the price of a bottle of water, we tend to react to them the most often and with the most intense response. The old adage that the squeaky wheel gets the grease is true here meaning that the mouthiest members/clients usually get the most attention, service and discounts.A radical thought is why not build a business on the 20 percent who most appreciate what we do and why we do it? But wait, this has already been doneit is called a training center where almost every client-there is the small percentage who are there but no one never knows why they show up and refuse to

DEATH by thePARETO PRINCIPLE

Contd on page 20


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5 TIPSTo GeT

MoRe Sh !t Done!1. Create routines. Make a habit of, well, sticking to habits. Choose actions like writing emails at a certain time or hitting the gym after work, and try to do them daily. Soon that routine will happen on autopilot.

2. Get enough sleep. Whoever coined the phrase Ill sleep when Im dead didnt have all the facts straight. Not getting enough Zzzs could hinder productivity at work, so try to get those recommended seven to nine hours of snooze time!

3. wake up earlier. If still able to squeeze in enough sleep, try extending the day by getting up an hour earlier when its still quiet and there are fewer distractions.

4. Step away from the inbox. Incoming emails can be a nuisance. Make a habit to only check the inbox at certain times of the day to avoid getting sidetracked with requests and responses.

5. Make a daily to-do list. Stay away from huge to-do lists. Instead, create a daily list of realistic jobs to tackle, like folding laundry, scheduling a doctors appointment, or paying the cable bill. Break up big goals into micro-tasks, like going to a yoga class over getting six-pack abs, or writing a page over completing a thesis. Soon, the small things will add up to big accomplishments.

2 BonuS TIPS:1. Shut off social media. Sayonara, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Social media can be a huge time-suck. Studies have found that it can take up a significant chunk of time at the office, and may even predict lower grades in school. Lets unpin that.

2. Say no. Dont stretch yourself too thin learning to say no keeps us focused and may even ward off sickness.

sweatis vested in getting results and paying for the privilege.The emphasis in the training center/gym is that everyone is there with a common goal and that goal is to use a coach to achieve maximum results. In other words, everyone gets help and there are few if any drive-by workout people. If you are there, you get it and are willing to pay for it.In the mainstream box fitness world, some of the market is actually shifting toward this business approach again. Many of the cheap clubs, meaning $19 or less per month, have found that providing even minimum service to drive-by workout people is costly let alone trying to offer a full service gym for that price. You simply cant build a consistent receivable base around people who are dabblers and who try it, fail and are gone in a few months.Yes, they do keep paying for a while after they drop out with the thought that they might start again sometime in the near future, but as most cheap clubs have found you reach a saturation point in your business where in about five years there are simply not enough drive-by workout people to replace all the losses. This business plan is just not sustainable over any real length of time.The box players need to understand the Plummer Principle and how it affects their business. Many of the decisions a box owner or manager makes is based upon a small number of clients who bitch, squeal, squawk, moan, throw fits, threaten to leave or cancel and post crazy things on every social media outlet they can find.We have to learn that sometimes the answer is no, we cant or wont do what they want because what you want is not reasonable and too costly for the small number of members it would benefit. When we give these people what they want, it often results in a lesser product done poorly since there is really no money in the effort. We do build it cheap to stop the bitching but the product or service is never really something we are proud of or that enhances our brand in the market.There is no free childcare because it would force us to provide service with cheap kids in a badly decorated room. There is no group exercise included with your membership because it cost me money to hire good instructors. We will offer group, but it is $10 more than the basic membership allowing the gym to offer a quality, updated product that will set the standard for the market.And there is no 30-minute training because we know from our research that the satisfaction point for training client is 45 minutes and that we are not willing to offer a product that isnt the best experience we can provide. If your name is on it, make it the best you can or dont do it, but never compromise a product because you are trying to satisfy a small, but vocal, segment of your membership that should not even be in your business.The Plummer Principle states that the bottom 20 percent of any client base drains the life out of a business and sucks the cash out like the biggest vacuum ever invented. We are in the business of providing service to a more limited clientele than we currently service. Instead of chasing volume we have to learn to chase a higher return from a smaller segment of the marketthose that will understand and appreciate a product done well.

DEATH by thePARETO PRINCIPLE Contd from page 18


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When literature student

Anastasia Steele goes

to interview young

entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a

man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating.

The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize

she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic

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tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings

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tormented by demons and consumed by the

need to control. When the couple embarks on a

daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers

Christian Greys secrets and explores her own

dark desires.

Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty

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possess you, and stay with you forever.

50 SHADES OF GRAY By: E L James

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes

in our companies, in our communities,

and in our own lives?

The primary obstacle is a conflict thats built into

our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically

acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered

that our minds are ruled by two different systemsthe rational

mind and the emotional mindthat compete for control. The

rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind

wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change

something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the

existing routine. This tension can doom a change effortbut if it

is overcome, change can come quickly.

In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday peopleemployees

and managers, parents and nurseshave united both minds and,

as a result, achieved dramatic results:

The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched,

decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients.

The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique

for overcoming the dread of housekeeping.

The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-

support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool

of customer service

In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together

decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology,

and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect

transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes

follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that

matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or

changing your waistline.

Switch By: Dan Heath, Chip Heath

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Todays exercising adults are caught in a bind: Those who take it seriously and work out aggressively end up with chronic aches and pains in midlife because they dont know how to adjust their programs as they get older. And those who take it easy end up with overfed, underdeveloped bodies that dont respond well when they decide to get serious about exercise.Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove, fitness experts and authors of The New Rules of Lifting series know all too well that these readers need a program of their own. Thats because they are these readers. Schuler started working out in his early teens. After forty years, he realized he couldnt do the programs in his own books without lots of modifications. And Cosgrove, a former European champion in tae kwon do, is a two- time survivor of stage IV cancer who found himself with limited endurance and a body that stubbornly refused to add muscle or shed fat.So the authors set out to create a new template for exercise, one that delivers serious results but is also flexible enough to accommodate individual limitations. The New Rules of Lifting for Life offers a six-month plan that balances total-body strength, endurance, mobility, balance, coordination, and athleticism. The workouts are challenging and, in conjunction with the suggested diet modifications, will help readers change the way their bodies look, feel, and perform. And not just temporarily- The New Rules of Lifting for Life allows you to enjoy productive and pain-free workouts for many years to come.

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Im listening to the Colorado Rockies opening day game and instead of a baseball game its a walk-a-thon. Okay, Im not enjoying the game, but it triggered this thought. They say that baseball is a thinking mans game, meaning that youre always trying to think one step ahead, based on the statistical trends of the past. If you think about it, this is exactly the same way we should be managing our companies. Ill expand on my thought.

Baseball coaches are constantly quizzing their fielders about situations. Situational awareness is a trait valued on a personal level as well as your business collectively. What will you do if the ball is hit to right field? Or a long fly ball? How about a soft grounder with a runner on first and third, or second base only? This may seem intuitive, but keep in mind there are a finite number of actions for each scenario, each with a statistical probability for success. We want to be committed to the action that will produce success more often than not because we need to set ourselves up for success in the next situation. We are not thinking about what happens if the runner is slow, trips or the fielder drops the ball. We focus only on what we have control over.

Baseball is a statisticians dream! There are more statistics in baseball than any other sport and those statistics play a huge role in managing and playing the game. Lets look at another example: the home team is down one run in the bottom of the ninth inning and they send up their best left-handed pinch hitter.

Why? Because the visiting team in the lead has a right-handed pitcher who gives up a .325 batting average to left-handed hitters. This

means the left-handed hitter will have an easier time seeing the pitch and a

better chance to hit it. (Lefty on Righty)

What does the visiting team do? They call the bullpen for a relief pitcher, a lefty, whos only giving up

a .128 batting average against left-handed hitters. Advantage

goes to the visiting team!

However, the pinch hitter for the home team has an overall hitting average of .275 (.320 as a pinch hitter, and .290 against lefties). Hes actually worse against right-handed pitchers. And now the advantage goes back to the home team! I could go on and on about how baseball teams manage by the numbers. The reason I bring this up is when I speak with owners about their business is because I often run into the question, What do we do when this happens?

This is the proverbial issue that comes up and the owner wants to know how to deal with it. My first question about this is, How often does this happen? The response is usually, A lot! My next question is, What is a lot? Thats really the starting point. What is a lot? To some, its a couple of times. Others say its several times. Still others will answer, More than 100 times. Do you see where Im going with this? They have no statistical information about this. How can we manage our companies without understanding the statistical

trends of our past? Making decisions without knowing the numbers used to be referred to as WAG ing (Wild A_ _ Guessing).

Reviewing six month trend reports can bring an enormous amount of insight to managing the future of your company. Are you tracking your attrition? In other words, comparing new sales and the monthly payments associated with those memberships to your accounts lost through cancellations, non-renewals and returns, and including the monthly payments associated with those memberships?

Are you tracking why members are cancelling? What percentage of the reasons for cancellation can you prevent or are beyond your control? Are you managing your team to prevent the cancellations you have some control over? Im not talking about trying to save the sale as a member requests to cancel their account. Theyve already got one foot out the door. Im talking about the reasons that you and your team can prevent by proactively managing your business based on the reasons people have been leaving in the past.

This statistical approach can be taken in any aspect of your business including marketing, closing percentages, and collection trends. But before you begin tracking any statistical number, ask yourself, What is my goal? What am I going to use this information for? There has to be an end result for using statistical information. Every number in baseball has a reason. Its never a nice to know situation. These are necessary numbers that need to be known for future decisions. By knowing your stats you can make educated decisions about the future of your company and improve your chances for success.

BASEBALL... PLAYInG THe PERCENTAgESBy: Sean Kirby, ASF International.

THE BEST POST-WORKOUT MEALS


BReAKFAST IS no LonGeR THe MoST IMPoRTAnT MeAL oF THe DAY!By Mike Roussell / livesrtong.com

IF you want to build muscle, lose fat or perform at your

best, then what you eat is of the utmost importance. But

nutrition researchers have recently come to understand

and appreciate that when you eat could be just as significant

as what you eat. Arguably the most nutritionally important

period of the day is during your workout window, the time

just before your workout and several hours afterward.

Proper nutrition during this period will take your fitness to

the next level. Many people dont understand the nature

and value of the workout nutrition window, though, or they

believe certain myths about what to do during this time.

But its not as complicated as it sounds, and you can easily

maximize this time of day to accelerate your progress.

We take workout nutrition so seriously at Results Fitness that there

is a post-workout shake checkbox on our clients training programs.

Clients record their post-workout shake just as they do sets and reps

from their training program. Alwyn Cosgrove, co-owner, Results

Fitness, Santa Clarita, California

PRACTICAL woRKouT nuTRITIon

Before- and During-Exercise Nutrition: Start sipping on

a workout shake 20 to 30 minutes prior to working out,

and continue sipping on it throughout the duration of your

workout. A simple shake is a 32 oz. sports drink with 1

scoop of whey protein. A more advanced drink is 50 g of a

glucose & maltodextrose sugar blend with hydrolyzed whey

protein. In the 45 to 60 minutes following the completion

of your workout have a meal of 1 grilled chicken breast

sandwich with 2 pieces of fruit; or 6 oz. boneless, skinless

chicken breast along with

1 1/2 cups of brown rice

and a small salad of baby

spinach, mushrooms, red

onions, olive oil and red

wine vinegar.

THe woRKouT nuTRITIon wInDow

Physical exercise causes a distinctive hormonal and

metabolic disruption in the body, which you can take

advantage of with certain nutrition strategies. Of particular

importance is the workout nutrition window. The more

you know about this specific timespan and how to utilize

it, the greater your fat loss, muscle growth and athletic

performance will be. The workout nutrition window begins

20 to 30 minutes before you exercise and lasts for one

to two hours after the workout. During this period, your

body uses nutrition to counteract muscle breakdown and

take advantage of increased insulin sensitivity, preferentially

shuttling nutrients toward muscles and away from fat cells.

There is also an increase in blood flow to working muscles.

This blood delivers nutrients, stimulating muscle regrowth

and repair. Alwyn Cosgrove, co-owner of Results Fitness,

chosen by Mens Health as one of Americas 30 top-rated

gyms, makes sure that every client at his fitness center is

getting proper workout nutrition. We take workout

nutrition so seriously at Results Fitness that there is a post-

workout shake checkbox on our clients training programs,

said Cosgrove. Clients record their post-workout shake

just as they do sets and reps from their training program.

THE BEST POST-WORKOUT MEALS


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For years, myths about workout nutrition have been mistakenly accepted as scientific fact, causing avid exercisers to settle for less than optimal results, decreased performance and poor recovery. Dont eat after your workout. For years many exercisers commonly accepted that abstaining from eating or drinking anything for 60 minutes after a workout would accelerate fat loss by increasing levels of growth hormone in the blood. A 1998 article in The International Journal of Sports Medicine notes, however, that immediately after a workout is the best time to refill the muscles energy stores, and waiting two hours can decrease their ability to rapidly replenish these stores by 50 percent. John Ivy writes in Nutrient Timing: The Future of Sports Nutrition that avoiding food following your workout may actually decrease insulin sensitivity for the following 24 hours. Joe Dowdell, fitness expert and co-owner Peak Performance, always makes sure his clients get proper nutrition after training. His gym was ranked No. 1 in New York City by readers of a popular web portal. During training, the stress hormone cortisol increases, he said. After training we want to lower cortisol, while at the same time providing the body with the proper nutrients to start the recovery process. By using a carbohydrate and protein shake, we can accomplish both things simultaneously. Post workout nutrition is what matters. Post-workout sports drinks are deceptively titled because you should actually start drinking them before you begin working out. Start sipping on a workout shake 20 to 30 minutes prior to exercising to increase muscle blood flow and muscle protein synthesis, writes Kevin D. Tipton and his team in the American Journal of Physiology, Endocrinology and Metabolism. Carbohydrates are the most important nutrient to get during and after you exercise. Most sports drinks contain only carbohydrates; thus, the majority of people at the gym sip on carbohydrate-only beverages during and after their workouts. But adding as little as 10 g of protein to a carbohydrate-based sports drink can have significant metabolic effects. The simple addition of protein decreases the muscle- catabolizing hormone cortisol, increases muscle energy store replenishment rates and

boosts protein synthesis, or muscle building.

Maximizing the workout nutrition window is simple. Start sipping on your workout shake 20 minutes before exercise. This primes your metabolic pump, getting amino acids and sugars into your bloodstream, where theyll be ready for your body to use by the time you start working out. Continue to sip on your workout shake as you train. This is especially important if your workout lasts longer than one hour. Sipping on a workout shake throughout your training session provides a constant flow of carbohydrates and amino acids to working muscles, allowing you to maintain top performance during your entire workout. Then finish off your workout shake when you complete your workout; and if muscle growth is your goal, have another one immediately. During the hours following exercise, the human body is essentially a nutrient sponge. Its ready to soak up carbohydrates and amino acids and use them to restore muscle energy reserves, repair torn muscle fibers and fast-track the recovery process so you can train longer and harder during your next session. Therefore if your aim is bigger and stronger muscles, adding another workout shake is a simple and effective way to supplement more calories into your diet and have them used for muscle-building and not fat-cell expansion. Finally, workout nutrition meals should be liquid. Liquid protein and carbohydrates enter your bloodstream and reach your muscles faster than those in a solid meal, which must be broken down and digested. Additionally, shakes help keep you hydrated during your workout, another key to optimal performance. In the end, if you want to recover from workouts faster, experience greater fat loss and increase muscle growth, remember why, when and what kind of nutrition your body requires and make certain you get it. The amount of calories, the type of calories and the time you consume the calories are all factors that affect your

health and fitness.

woRKouT nuTRITIon MYTHS

THE BEST POST-WORKOUT MEALS Contd from page 26KeY STePS FoR MAXIMIZInG THe woRKouT nuTRITIon wInDow


Keeping a close eye on the competition is often thought to be a big boys game. Many Fortune 500 companies have entire departments devoted to competitive intelligence, or CI, and theres a whole subindustry of CI-focused management consultants to serve those departments. Small companies, on the other hand, are thought to be too busy minding their own businesses to mind others.

In fact, competitive intelligence may be more important to small companies than to large ones, because small businesses feel the impact of competition more immediately and more deeply. All small-business owners do CI in some way or another, says Craig Fleisher, a management professor at the College of Coastal Georgia in Brunswick and a former president of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

Not all of them do it well, though, and Fleisher says research increasingly demonstrated that the lapse is holding these companies back. At successful companies, he says, competitive intelligence is part of the day-to-day operationpart of the fabric of the enterprise.

The following is an introduction to keeping track of your rivals. It will require some dedication, but it need not cost a lot of money or take too much time. And you wont have to resort to employing spies or subterfuge.

CoMPeTITIVe MAPPInG

Getting StartedBefore you can begin to understand the competition, consultants say, you have to be able to articulate your own businesss goals and strategyknowing both where you stand in the marketplace and where you would like to be. Youve got to find ways to clearly put yourself side by side with your competitor. says Anne House, an Arlington, Virginia-based competitive-intelligence consultant. Because its in the difference between the two of you where opportunities lie.

Determine who matters. Keeping tabs on your rivals, formally or informally, usually occurs one of two ways. Either you are monitoring them regularly, updating your store of information as circumstances warrant, or you are suddenly faced with a surprisein the form of a new challenger, saythat requires a prompt response.

The latter case often reflects a failure to think broadly about whom your competitors really are. Though most business owners can identify their current top direct competitors, they assume what exists today is going to be true tomorrow, says Fleisher. Leonard Fuld, principal in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, CI consulting firm Fuld & Company, recommends war gamesin other words, anticipating moves by existing competitors or new entrants that could rearrange the market.Still dont watch more than five companies at any one time, or you may find yourself overwhelmed. Spending too much time on competitive analysis is spending too little time on truly being competitive, says Rich Galbreath, president of Performance Growth Partners, a small-business consultancy in Bloomington, Illinois. How do you become a dominant factor in your marketplace if youre looking over your shoulder 24 hours a day?

Focus on what matters. According to popular CI theory, a thorough investigation into a competitor will analyze four aspects of its behavior (or four corners, in the jargon): 1. its goals (or drivers, often expressed in terms of revenue or profits);

How To KEEP TABS ON THE...

COMPETITION2. managements assumptions about the market; 3. its strategies and tactics to achieve those goals; and 4. its capabilities for meeting the goals.

In practice, most companies are mainly interested in the third and fourth elements, tracking strategies and tactics and capabilities. For the most part, that boils down to collecting information on your competitors products, marketing, and operations. (See Gathering Intelligence)

Formalize the process. Part of making competitive intelligence a discipline is discipline, says Fuld. Start by designating someone to oversee the effort. (It need not be you, but your employees must know that you back the effort.) Establish a repository of competitive informationfolders on the server or mail server, for examplethat is accessible to anyone on staff who could contribute to or benefit from it. Finally, executives should review and analyze the data that are collected periodically, say, once a quarter. Competitive

intelligence in and of itself has no intrinsic value, says House. The value accrues when you use it to make better decisions.

Gathering IntelligenceBusinesses have always watched their rivals closely, but the advent of the Internetand especially searchhas changed the game. Not only are vast sources of data instantly available, but the process of collecting data can be largely automated.

In the news. First, sign up for e-mail alerts about the search terms of your choice from Google News (news.google.com), which tracks hundreds of news sourceswhen one of those terms appears in a news article, you will know about it. (Choose search terms carefully to avoid a flood of needless messages.) CI investigators say the best sources are very often

small-town newspapers or local business papers that avidly cover hometown companies, particularly when they are big fish in a little pond. Google News does not always reach those outlets, but you can often sign up directly with those news sources for e-mail alerts or daily digests of stories.

Online. A competitors website is an obvious place to begin. After you study it, deconstruct it using Fagan Finder, a bare-bones but very useful research site. Plug the address into the search box at faganfinder.com/urlinfo. You will be able to quickly learn, for example, the other sites that link to it, which can reveal alliances, networks, suppliers, and customers. Sometimes youll see directories theyre listed inperhaps you should be in that directory, too,


How To KEEP TABS ON THE...

Contd from page 32

A lot of times, your sales folks know a lot about the competition,

but nobody ever asks them.

The Trend - Autumn 201132

How To

KEEP TABS ON THE COMPETITION! Contd from page 31says Robin Lasher, director of the Navarro College Small Business Development Center in Corsicana, Texas. Fagan Finder also links to trackers, like the free site WatchThatPage.com, that monitor specific pages and alert you by e-mail when they are changed. When a company changes its website, it certainly speaks to how their messaging is changing and how they prioritize what theyre communicating, says Toni Wilson of MarketSmart Research Services in suburban Dayton, Ohio. For example, the online bio of a new manager might hold clues about a competitors new direction.

Business data aggregators such as Dun & Bradstreet (dnb.com) and InfoUSA (infousa.com) provide detailed company information, including financials, although the services are not cheap. Often, however, local academic and public libraries have subscriptions (in libraries, InfoUSA is branded ReferenceUSA) and a willingness to share themand other resourceswith local small businesses. Ditto Small Business Development Centers and other economic development organizations.

From the bureaucracy. Government agencies hold a store of public but often unpublished information, available simply through a Freedom of

Information Act request (or its local equivalent). Wilson, for example,

once requested Occupational Safetyand Health Administration accident records from landscaping companies competing with her client. It just provided a wealth of information about where these companies did business and what their safety records were like, she recalls. And ultimately, it helped our client position itself as more conscientious about safety.

MoDeL MADneSSConsultants are perennially devising new analytic models for evaluating a business and its competitive landscape, often with catchy names or abbreviations. But Craig Fleisher, the management professor, argues that these tools are not interchangeablethey work best, he says, when put to specific uses.

For strategic planning: Particularly popular is SWOT, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. SWOT divides these into quadrants on a grid. The challenge of using this tool, says House, is that it requires you to be somewhat dispassionate about strengths and weaknesses, and most people arent with their own organizations.

To analyze new market opportunities: A simple, if crude, way is to draw up whats known as a strategic group map. You plot your company and your competitors on a grid, against two variables that most define success in your field, such as

pricing and product quality. The grid, which is divided into quadrants, illuminates the strategic space that remains open. To anticipate how competitors might react to your next move: Fleisher suggests returning to the four-corners analysis. As discussed, you match up your company against the competition in terms of goals, assumptions, strategies, and capabilities.

Several websites offer detailed descriptions of various analytical tools for intelligence. Start with mindtools.com, quickmba.com/strategy, and 12manage.com/i-s.html.

ASK YouR STAFFA lot of times, your sales folks know a lot about the competition, but nobody ever asks them says MarketSmarts Toni Wilson. These employees dont always see collecting intelligence as part of their job description, so company leaders have to institutionalize it, in part by fully embracing it as well as recognizing employees who contribute. Consultants recommend encouragement such as regular contests that are perhaps more fun than profitablesay, a scoop of the month party that rewards good tips with certificates for free ice cream.As long as you keep the feedback loop coming, it builds on itself without adding costs, because theyre doing their jobs anyway, says consultant Leonard Fuld. In fact, it makes their jobs more interesting. Make it easy for employees to participate, with simple forms (that are perhaps part of the standard reporting process) in addition to a central repository.

Youve got to find ways to clearly put yourself side by side with your competitor.


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METHODS AND TIPS FOR BETTER RENEWALS

While no one absolute way exists to help you go after your renewals, some methods and tips that will help you become fore efficient at the process are as follows. The overall key to hitting a targeted 65 percent renewal rate is to have a set, consistent system in place and not to forget that renewals are a 365-day-a-year project because of their importance to your

business plan.

Dont use a team approach on renewals

Renewals represent an extremely important part of your business plan and shouldnt be left to anyone but your single best staff person. Assign your renewal follow-up programs to your strongest staff person in terms of longevity, follow-up skills, communication skills, and sales ability, and make this part of the persons job on an on-going basis.

Let your third-party collection company take the first shot

Your third-party company should have a system of auto renewal, or automatic contract extensions in place that lets them take the first shot. Auto renewals are nothing more than contract extensions that the member receives in the mail, signs,

mails to either the club or third-party

financial company, and obligates them

to another 12-month period without

ever setting foot in your club.

These normally work well because of the psychology behind them. If you dont sign it and send it back you are admitting to yourself that your fitness program is over and youll be fat forever. As an additional part of your renewal system with your third-party, you should be able to access what members are coming up for renewal at least two months prior to their expiration date. Based on this list, you want to approach the renewals using the following system:

45 days prior to members expiration

date send an auto renewal from the third-party financial-service company.

30 days prior to the expiration date

send a second auto renewal.

15 days prior to expiration

send a third auto renewal.

From the date of expiration to 30 days past have your most experienced person work the members who didnt

auto renew through the mailings. Expect at least 50 percent of all members who will renew to do so through the auto renewals.Send three identical auto renewals because it is a cost effective method to ensure the member at least sees one out of three. Your key staff person then works the list because the members rate is guaranteed if he renews within 30 days of expiration. If he doesnt renew within that 30-day period, he must then pay another membership fee and rejoin the club at whatever the current rates are.

An often-asked question is should an owner pay commissions on renewals? The answer to this is yes and no. Its no to the salesperson and general team since the owner, through reinvestment in the club, contact with the member, adding programs, and keeping the club fresh is actually the one who is earning the renewals.

The yes part means that the key person who is chasing the renewals each month should receive a commission since she is protecting one of the clubs most valuable assets. The national average for a renewal commission would be about $20 to $25 for each 12-month renewal generated. Keep in mind that at least half of your renewals would be done automatically through your third-party financial company.

Continued on page 36


Dont discount to buy renewalsThe temptation is to wait a week before a member comes up for renewal and then throw a discount at him hoping to buy the deal. This is simply a matter of too little too late. The member already made up his mind if he was going to renew months

before a discount would ever figure in.

The real issue here, however, is that the member has faithfully paid for a full year. He is trained and already has the payment amount budgeted into his monthly living expense. By guaranteeing not to raise his rates, through protecting his monthly dues no matter what your current prices have gone up to during his membership you are already giving him a deal and still protecting a higher

return per member.

Discounts are negative images that tell the member your membership is actually worth less than it was last year. By protecting the rate, however, you send the message that you appreciate their loyalty and want to reward it by guaranteeing their rate for another year, as long as they commit again to the

club within 30 days of their expiration.

You can reward the member if the club is profitable

On the positive side, you can reward the member at time of renewal if

your club is profitable. This added value enhances the membership for the member and confirms that she made the right choice in committing for another year. The reward doesnt have to be extravagant but should be something conveying value. For example, a signature gym bag that cant be purchased by the member but only earned through renewing will cost the club under $15, which is very little compared to receiving a full-price 12-month renewal. If you are going to offer a reward, send a special oversized postcard to the member 30-days prior to the members expiration date listing the give and the terms: bring this card in and renew prior to

expiration and pick up your gift.

Dont assume the member has cash every year

Some members have money and prepay for the entire year at one time. Dont assume, however, they will have cash every year. Always give a member a choice of either pay cash again or make monthly payments if that works better for them that year.

For example, a member might have paid $400 for a years membership several years back and is again up for renewal. Last year he had cash, a job, a home, a wife, and a loyal dog. This year, his ex-wife has cash, a job, a home, a new boyfriend, and a dog whos loyal to the new boyfriend. He kept his job, but all it does is pay her bills.The guy still wants to belong to the

club but just doesnt have any cash left. He thinks, wrongly, that because the club sent a renewal letter citing his $400 renewal rate that the cash option is his only option.

Suppose that the clubs current rates are $40 per month, or $480 per year. His renewal could have given him the old option of $400 cash or monthly payments of $40 per month, allowing the club the chance to gracefully bring his rate up to a higher level and still reward his loyalty by guaranteeing his old membership amount.

Target the best members

All members arent born equal. Some are kind, caring, and supportive of you and your club and others are the lunatic fringe gross disgusting non-human gym hogs who by day are normal people and who by night in the gym turn into weight droppers, fountain spitters, or gossip pigs. When you work your renewal list, spend your time and energy on those members who really do make a difference in your club and eliminate the lunatic fringe.

METHODS AND TIPS FOR BETTER RENEWALSContinued from page 35

Weve had the pleasure of working with Susan K Bailey (skb) for the past 8 years and are very pleased with the work theyve done for us.

Initially, it was an occasional flier or mailer and now we are fully committed to using their services from direct mail pieces, internal signs, web design banners, and comprehensive member referral pieces.

From experience with other agencies, weve discovered that SKB understands our customer and how to target them. We could easily refer to them as experts in our industry who can enhance and make significant contributions to any marketing plan.

In addition, the library of existing marketing material and initiatives are a wonderful resource. You can always customize it but its nice to have a proven successful program at your finger tips.

Thanks again to the team at SkB for helping us achieve our success and we look forward to a continued partnership.

Yours in good health,

Mark Stupp, President of Womens Fitness Clubs of Canada

b e t t e r t h i n k i n g b r i g h t e r v i s i o n

1-888-349-4594www.susankbaileymarketing.com

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