In our last article on member retention, we talked about using action lists to keep your staff organized when it comes to member follow up.
You know how important member follow up is so you want to make sure that each member receives several contact points throughout the first 90 days.
Despite setting up an action list, we found that many of our clients only see a small improvement in the amount of follow up their trainers are completing.
This is often frustrating but something that is common for most clubs.
You see, whenever you implement a new process for your gym instructors to follow, there will always be a percentage of staff that revert back to their original habits.
You may find that for the first week or two, everyone is using the action list, however, compliance slowly begins to drop and after a couple of months, only a few trainers are completing all of their follow ups.
It’s at this point you probably feel like giving up!
However, giving up is not going to get you an improvement in your retention rate.
The missing ingredient here is accountability and persistence.
If you enforce accountability through monthly performance reviews of your staff actions, you can slowly turn your follow up system into a habit which is ingrained in your club’s culture.
It’s the first few months particularly of implementing this new process that are the hardest and where continually reinforcement is required.
Eventually with enough persistence, the new process will begin to become a part of your standard processes. From then on, such behavior by your staff will become part of your centre’s culture. It’s just a shift in expectations and standards that will atomically flow onto new staff as it will be so ingrained into your centre.
The key is maintaining this accountability in the early stages and remaining persistent.
You can maintain accountability through FitDesk’s action reports.
Go to report’s in your menu panel and you will see the action reports.
This will provide you with a clear summary of the number of actions your staff has completed for the month, the number they were assigned and their completion percentage.
This information does not lie!
It gives you a clear view of which staff are complying with your follow up plan and those who are not.
We recommend that this report becomes a part of your monthly reporting process.
You should share the results with your staff each month and highlight areas where improvement can be made.
You may even consider opening this up where all staff can see each other’s performance as this really drives accountability.
This depends on your management style as to what you think motivates your team best.
By following this process, your follow up compliance should reach close to 100% meaning that all members are receiving the support and nurturing they need.
Action Steps
* Build into your monthly reporting process a review of your team’s action report.
* Share these results with staff and workshop with them to improve results.
* This will require some ongoing maintenance however, after a few months, this process should become automatic and a part of each of your team’s ongoing processes.
