While Advance has run many successful campaigns in Darwin, this recent campaign was a first for YMCA Top End.  A massive success in terms of member numbers, the promo generated over 319 new members and over $304,000 gross in 22 short days.  Club Manager, Caleb Johnstone shares his feedback on the campaign...

Presenting prices is a notoriously tricky part of a fitness sales presentation.   Increase sales easily with these 9 simple steps to an effective price presentation.

Turn your website into a lead generation machine! 

I was recently asked to critique a client’s website with regard to effectiveness for generating sales leads.  As is usually the case, our client was working with limited time and budged so they wanted to address only the elements that would have the most significant impact on lead generation in the first stage of their site upgrade.

Now, I would consider my expertise to be in sales and not website development – the scope of which goes well beyond what is being considered in this article.  However, reviewing how our client’s website would impact on their sales process has resulted in the development of the following top 6 “must haves” for your Home Page to ensure that you reap the greatest financial rewards from your website.

During the review process I reviewed 5 of the big fitness chains and 10 independent fitness centre websites to see which of the following elements were featured on their sites. 

Following is certainly one of the shortest, yet most effective sales lessons I have received.  I received this lesson at the very beginning of my career while chatting with a friend who was also in a sales role and I still use it every time I am developing a new presentation or troubleshooting a current sales process.

The lesson: "So what?"

How to put this lesson in to effect.  When making a statement about your service or product imagine that your customer follows up with the question: "So what ?"  If your statement has not yet reached the core of what you customer will find beneficial about your service, answering this (imagined) question will help you to get to the point.

Perception Versus Reality

Most business people would acknowledge the importance of “knowing your numbers”.  That is, knowing the business measurements that will indicate whether your business is performing at its best, or not… 

We find that most of our clients have a good handle on their key business metrics.  However, there is always more that they would like to measure and sometimes performance feedback is more anecdotal than measurement based.

This month we take a quick look at a phenomenon relating to perception versus reality in terms of business performance.  Throughout my career in sales and marketing in the fitness industry I have witnessed many wide gaps between perception and reality when it comes to assessing business results.  My initial reaction was to give little or no credit to any anecdotal feedback unless it could be backed up numerically.  Over time I began to see why the variations occur and when to be on the look out for discrepancies.

Following is a quick look at why we might get one feeling about a business situation when the reality is quite different.

At Advance we view the sales process as two distinct processes.  (Note: while we are considering these two sales process elements separately, both parts of the process must work together to achieve the optimum result.)

1. Facilitate the prospect making a decision to either “buy” or "not buy".  (The part we are looking at in this article.)
2. Promote/motivate a positive “buy” decision.  (This relates to creating "value" and is addressed in another article.)

The key role of the sales person is to help the prospect to make an informed decision regarding the service being offered.  In order to do this, the prospect must receive the information in a manner that enables them to evaluate it fully and methodically, so that at the end of the presentation they can decide on how they would like to proceed.  Structuring a presentation to facilitate a decision is as important as explaining how “good” the service is, because if the prospect is still unsure about whether or not they wish to buy at the end of the presentation, they will leave to “think about it”.  Once a prospect leaves the club, the probability of them joining is significantly reduced.

So what causes your prospect to say: "I need to think about it"?  The simple answer is - they haven't yet thought about it. The key to a successful sales presentation is helping your prospect to "think about it" during (not after) the sales presentation.  The goal is to have nothing left for them to think about by the end of the presentation.  So what structural elements help to "facilitate" a decision?

Advance now offers not only the most sophisticated, but now the most flexible large-scale fitness membership sales campaign available in Australia and New Zealand.  After spending the last 6 months refining the use of SMS, email and print marketing for inclusion with our campaigns, we are now offering clubs the option of which marketing elements best fit with their current marketing plans.

Advance is very pleased to announce the launch of our new Recruitment Club service.  Advance has teamed up with HealthyPeople to provide the ultimate time and money saving sales staff recruitment solution.