The Sales Process: From Leads to Members

THERE ARE three basic stages
when selling memberships.
This three-stage process incorporates
planning, teamwork
and determination.
Stage 1: Identifying leads
“Leads” are individuals whose
demographics (personal characteristics
and behaviors) align with
the demographics of your members,
and have given an indication
that they might be interested in a
membership. Examples of leads
include individuals who complete
a lead card, responded to an
advertisement or called because of
a direct-mail piece they received.
Leads are individuals who, when
exposed to the features and benefits
of your facility, may become
more interested and eventually
decide to join.
The process of generating
leads should be the top priority
of your membership sales
team and marketing department.
The lead-generation
process involves two distinct
phases. The first is marketing,
which is designed to generate
consumer interest and awareness
of your fitness center. The
second is lead tracking, or database
mining, which enables you
to place a name with a lead.
You should make every attempt
to get the mailing address,
phone number and email
address for each person who
calls your facility, responds to a
lead card or marketing piece,
attends a health fair or visits
using a guest pass. Generating
leads is a full-scale effort that
ties marketing to information
collection.
Stage 2: Qualifying prospects
A prospect is a lead who has
expressed a need for or an interest
in your fitness center.
Accordingly, a prospect is more
likely to become a member than
someone who is a lead. Turning
leads into prospects occurs
in many ways. The most critical
factor is talking with the lead
and identifying his or her
desires and needs, and then
having the salesperson offer
solutions through a facility
membership. Core marketing
strategies that are likely to be
successful at generating
prospects include member
referrals, guest visits from distributed
guest passes and referrals
from corporate accounts.
Leads turn into prospects
when they indicate, verbally or
non-verbally, that your fitness
center offers them an opportunity
to fulfill a specific need,
when they have previously been
members of another fitness facility,
have a history of exercising
and want to resume the activity,
are looking for a way to achieve
a fitness or weight-loss goal, have
contacted the facility based on
the recommendation of a current
member, have taken a tour
of the fitness center or have used
a guest pass. When your sales
members determine that a lead
has become a prospect, it is their
responsibility to move forward
with the final process of closing
the sale.
Stage 3: Closing the sale
The process of moving a
prospect to membership usually
takes place in one of two ways.
The first is referred to as “relationship
selling,” where
prospects choose to become
members because the facility has
demonstrated that it can fulfill
an expressed need. The second
method is often referred to as
“high-pressure sales,” wherein
the salesperson applies pressure
for the prospect to join using
certain “closing” techniques. The
relationship approach is likely to
generate the highest closing percentage
(i.e., the percentage of
prospects who become members)
and the highest quality
member, while “high-pressure”
closing techniques usually produce
high closing percentages,
but low-quality members.
Relationship selling usually
brings in members who will
remain members. This method
involves an indepth process of
uncovering a prospect’s needs
and then connecting your services
to those needs. This process
does not intimidate the
prospect, and it does not
employ discounting or other
rehearsed processes to move the
prospect to membership.
As easy as 1–2–3
Membership sales — like
most things of value — do not
occur by accident. Rather, they
are a byproduct of a wellthought-
out plan. Each stage
involves a number of key steps
that are an essential part of selling
memberships.