As a gym manager you have limited resources and time available each month to support your members.
In order to maximise member retention for your health club it is important to ensure you direct as much resource as possible towards member retention.
The equation is simple
More time and effort spent on retention= better retention results.
When this is strategically planned, you can ensure that each month a certain amount of time is going to be spent on retention tasks that will improve member support and drive improvements in member retention.
The key to success with this is to PRE schedule your key retention activity.
For example, a typical medium to large health club will have somewhere between 250 and 300 hours available of gym instructor gym floor time. This time should be structured in a way that ensures a large focus is placed on member retention each and every month.
Below is an example of how to best schedule your gym floor resourcing to maximise member retention
60%
Appointments (health consultations, exercise demonstrations, support sessions, re-assessments)
15%
Retention tasks (follow up)
10%
Gym floor interaction (touch points/spot surveys)
5%
Cleaning
5%
Admin
5%
Misc
Based on 275 hours of gym floor availability this would results in the following time spent on key task groups.
165 hours – Gym appointments
25 hours – in retention tasks
27.5 hours – for gym floor interaction
13.75 hours – hours for cleaning
13.75 hours – hours for admin
13.75 hours – hours for misc activities
By scheduling these tasks each month you will ensue that you are maximing the amount of time and effort spent on retention activities.
We recommend blocking off time on the calendar for these tasks. For example, on the FitDesk booking system you can use trainer blocks to block off periods of time each week for these tasks.
We also recommend measuring what we call occupancy. This is the percentage of gym instructor availability spent on gym appointments. If this is over 60% then it may be time to add some more availability. If its less than 60% perhaps you can remove availability or focus on actively increasing member appointments.
Clubs that do not pre schedule these activities each week will find that time can quickly vanish each week leaving little left over to focus on member retention.
By making member retention a priority you will lay the foundations of long term retention success.
