Good evening all,
Hope you have all had a nice summer vacation.
Something has been playing on my mind since a couple of Friday's ago when I visited a really good club in Oslo.
I was being shown round the club for the first time. I got the studio tour, the various group exercise studio's, spinning etc, I was then shown into a room which had a U shaped table and a projector in the middle of the room.
'This room we use for our weight loss program' I was told. The club had approximatly 700 members and they had a grand total of 55 people enrolled on the course.
Now, I have been in this industry for a good while, and I know that the majority of people who join clubs are still wanting the same outcome. Weight Loss. This is a fact. Some clubs will have a higher proportion than others but I would stick my neck out and say that between 60 and 75% of your members joined wanting to reduce their weight/bodyfat.
It is also a fact that the majority of people that are overweight do not want to or do not enjoy physical exercise.
Lets face it, if Health Clubs were the answer to permanent weight loss, we would all be full and turning people away at the door.
So where are we going wrong?
My first suggestion is that the education programs that our 'expert trainers' have done to become qualified do not set them up to deal with the vast majority of customers.
Secondly, we do not set our new, nervous, overweight members up to succeed. (see previous blog)
We do not have a good enough 'Weight Loss Program'
Let me try to put this in simple terms to try to demonstrate how bad we are at this.
Imagine you own a restaurant. You have a menu offering 10 dishes. As customers start to come in, you can see a trend forming. The steak is selling like crazy. 7 out of 10 customers coming in want steak. You start to get a reputation in the area as THE place to get steak and more and more people come from further away to try it. They tell their friends and very soon you have started to market your restaurant as 'the talk of the town', best steak in town etc. It is a simple case of meeting the needs of your customers and ensuring that you deliver results.
What do we do? We open a club, we start to see a trend of people coming in are asking for the same thing, we dont automatically enroll them into the weight loss club/program because we have either priced it so out of reach of the majority of members that we are afraid to tell them the price, or, we dont have a dedicated program for this group of people. We therefore put them into the same catagory as the rest of our members, give them a program and hope to seem them in 2-3 months all happy and thinner. If they ask for steak but we give them fish, can we be suprised if they dont come back or tell anyone.
One of the reason I think that we do not get more people to enroll on WLP's is that we are unable to effectively show the results that are achieved by previous students.
Answer honestly, how many of you reading this can answer the following questions if I called you right now?
1. How many people have achieved their weight loss goal since you started the program?
2. What is the percentage success rate of your weight loss program?
3. What is the normal success rate of a weight loss program (are you better)
4. How many of your members are aware of your weight loss program?Hope you have all had a nice summer vacation.
Something has been playing on my mind since a couple of Friday's ago when I visited a really good club in Oslo.
I was being shown round the club for the first time. I got the studio tour, the various group exercise studio's, spinning etc, I was then shown into a room which had a U shaped table and a projector in the middle of the room.
'This room we use for our weight loss program' I was told. The club had approximatly 700 members and they had a grand total of 55 people enrolled on the course.
Now, I have been in this industry for a good while, and I know that the majority of people who join clubs are still wanting the same outcome. Weight Loss. This is a fact. Some clubs will have a higher proportion than others but I would stick my neck out and say that between 60 and 75% of your members joined wanting to reduce their weight/bodyfat.
It is also a fact that the majority of people that are overweight do not want to or do not enjoy physical exercise.
Lets face it, if Health Clubs were the answer to permanent weight loss, we would all be full and turning people away at the door.
So where are we going wrong?
My first suggestion is that the education programs that our 'expert trainers' have done to become qualified do not set them up to deal with the vast majority of customers.
Secondly, we do not set our new, nervous, overweight members up to succeed. (see previous blog)
We do not have a good enough 'Weight Loss Program'
Let me try to put this in simple terms to try to demonstrate how bad we are at this.
Imagine you own a restaurant. You have a menu offering 10 dishes. As customers start to come in, you can see a trend forming. The steak is selling like crazy. 7 out of 10 customers coming in want steak. You start to get a reputation in the area as THE place to get steak and more and more people come from further away to try it. They tell their friends and very soon you have started to market your restaurant as 'the talk of the town', best steak in town etc. It is a simple case of meeting the needs of your customers and ensuring that you deliver results.
What do we do? We open a club, we start to see a trend of people coming in are asking for the same thing, we dont automatically enroll them into the weight loss club/program because we have either priced it so out of reach of the majority of members that we are afraid to tell them the price, or, we dont have a dedicated program for this group of people. We therefore put them into the same catagory as the rest of our members, give them a program and hope to seem them in 2-3 months all happy and thinner. If they ask for steak but we give them fish, can we be suprised if they dont come back or tell anyone.
One of the reason I think that we do not get more people to enroll on WLP's is that we are unable to effectively show the results that are achieved by previous students.
Answer honestly, how many of you reading this can answer the following questions if I called you right now?
1. How many people have achieved their weight loss goal since you started the program?
2. What is the percentage success rate of your weight loss program?
3. What is the normal success rate of a weight loss program (are you better)
5. Can you prove it!
So how do we use the Wellness System to effectively 1. support your WLP?, and most importantly, how can we show the results in an effective way.
The first step is simple. Every member who enters your club looking to lose weight MUST join the program. If they are not, what was the barrier for the customer. It is rarely about price. This is simply the easiest excuse and we often are not comfortable or confident defending it.
As business people are we honestly saying that 10% of our customers getting what they NEED is OK?
So how do we use the Wellness System to effectively 1. support your WLP?, and most importantly, how can we show the results in an effective way.
The first step is simple. Every member who enters your club looking to lose weight MUST join the program. If they are not, what was the barrier for the customer. It is rarely about price. This is simply the easiest excuse and we often are not comfortable or confident defending it.
As business people are we honestly saying that 10% of our customers getting what they NEED is OK?
The next step is to get every single one of your trainers to accept that most of the members in your club are not interested in their qualifications, how many different things they can do with the latest trend e.g. kettle bells, redcord etc.
They want support, simplicity and above everything else to be surrounded by people who are going through the same thing as them. Any trainer that thinks that a weight loss member has the strengh and will power to do it alone is simply increasing that members Drop out Risk.
Could I call your club tommorow, ask the receptionist to tell me about the weight loss program and get a good enough response that I think i should come down and join? If not, you are missing a huge opportunity
Creating quality, calorie based programs in your system is the first step. Make sure that they are fun and do not keep people doing the same thing for very long. Mix them up so a member has a 300, 400 and 500 calorie program with a recommended total per week. Do not forget to add some activity when they are not at the club, walking etc.
Ensure that you take benchmark readings of the customer at the beginning of the program. two reasons for this. 1. You will be able to demonstrate to the member that it is effective and 2. You will be able to collect the data and use it to market the program to new prospects.
The Fitness test and the strength test are a great start as they improve very quickly and will motivate the member to continue. Body Fat is not such a good test and neither is body weight as they do not move very quickly.
Go through the test with you member and then print out the result for them to take home.
After you have done the test, it is critical that you make the appointment for the next test. This provides the member with something to aim for short term.
Think about your weight loss Program and if you would like to respond to this blog with any suggestions or good ideas it would be great.
Busy period coming up.... Good luck out there
Hi!
ReplyDeleteGreat- an idea ...we started a weight loss/ Personal Training program... 12 1 hour sessions to be taken within 4 weeks. We measured, did BIA mätning, and they wrote a food analysis tabel for at least 7 days and redid tests afterwards.PT times 2-3 times a week. We had a competion 3 people got to win. We will use them now for advertising purposes for autumn...they got great results and are now continuing monthly with PT. We set goals all the time and a great way to get the members we allready have to get a new incentive to buy the program...let you know how it goes...:)
At our club we have a "plus-membership", where nutritional counseling, measurements (cardio, bodyfat, weight, circumference, cholesterol, blood pressure etc) and monthly appointments are included. Most of these members have weight loss goals, and they succeed lots better than members on a basic membership. Taking measurements, giving more counseling and including nutrition definitely help people succeed.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it most members will not succeed in weight loss with exercise alone. Say 2-3 exercises a week burn a total of 600-1200 calories, while 1 kilogram of fat is 9000 calorier. Needless to say people also need help with what they eat, and with how much daily movement they have...
As health professionals we are however far from good enough at seeling this product. We know people suuceed better, we know people need it...and still we are reluctant to recommend it because it costs a little more. It`s absurd...We have decided to to salestrainig this autumn, in order to get better at this...
We also have plans for a group-based course, aimed at getting in shape and loosing weight. Doing things in groups makes it possible to give people more for a less heft price than individual counseling. Look forward to try it out! :-)
More and more people get overweight, and currently 9 of 10 people who loose weight regain it within two years. So this i definitely and attractive market for us! :-)