Use Competitions to Beat the Competition

Here's the third guest article from Colin Scott, BDM at 222 Sports Ltd, the developers of SWIMTAG. Click here to read the series.

In my last blog post, I talked about how challenges help to motivate swimmers. The reason that they are so useful is that they can be inclusive. If you challenge everyone to Swim the Channel over a couple of months, you’ll get one or two who’ll race ahead and try and be the first to finish… but for most it’s about a sense of personal achievement. Not everyone enters the London Marathon with the aim of winning, for some just finishing is a challenge in itself.

For others though, it’s a chance to compare and compete, a chance to get under 3 hours, or to get into the top 20%. They want to measure themselves against the general population.

Proinsight - Mystery Shopping Video

A review of the Proinsight video from the recent GGFit Stick Around Seminar... If you missed it, treat your eyes and ears to 1 minute 20 seconds of why you should employ a professional mystery shopping organisation to improve your sales processes.



So many presenters stand up and "run VT" these days, I worry that the art of presentation is dying out. However, David simply used this as a snappy introduction to Proinsight, so that he could then deliver some good educational content about mystery shopping, consumer research, and benchmarking.
You can find out more about the Sales Benchmark Report here.

Sales Benchmarking from Proinsight - at the GGFit Stick Around Seminar

All our delegates learnt a lot from Dave Hopkins of Proinsight at the GGFit Client Seminar last month. One of the great takeaways was Proinsight’s Sales Benchmark Report. You can find out more on Proinsight’s website, but here’s a couple of the key pages and metrics from the report:

Face 2 Face 

The flow of a mystery shop starts well in the leisure industry, with 88% offering a positive welcome. But this is followed by a constant decline down to asking the member to join, and follow up.

On the "Technical" sales process, "data capture" has improved slightly in 2015, and "follow-up" shows the biggest step-up (although it previously scored below 20%). 

Challenging for Success

Another guest article from Colin Scott, who is the Business Development Manager of 222 Sports Ltd. the developers of SWIMTAG. Prior to joining the SWIMTAG team in 2014, he worked as Sales and Marketing Manager at Westwoods Health Club, an exclusive private club which is part of Fettes College in Edinburgh. Westwoods were the first SWIMTAG operator in Scotland.

As we know, different people are motivated by different things. Everyone coming to your centre will have a different reason for joining, whether it’s to stay healthy, shift a few pounds or train for a specific challenge, it’s your job to keep them motivated, because the more they visit, the longer they stay!

Not everyone will enter a marathon, Tough Mudder, or the Great British Swim series, but there is still lots you can do to keep them interested after the initial enthusiasm has worn off!

The Problem with Engaging with Swimmers

This is a guest post from Colin Scott, the Business Development Manager of 222 Sports Ltd. the developers of SWIMTAG. Prior to joining the SWIMTAG team in 2014, he worked as Sales and Marketing Manager at Westwoods Health Club, an exclusive private club which is part of Fettes College in Edinburgh. Westwoods were the first SWIMTAG operator in Scotland.

We all know that staff engagement with members is crucial to building rapport, making members feel welcome and ensuring they remain a member for longer!

In the gym this is comparatively easy to do.

Chase the Turkey – Bonus December MyWellness Challenge

One of our clients has come up with a great festive ‘outside the box’ challenge for December that we had to share with you. It’s really going to get your members interacting, exercising, and having fun!

If you’ve already set-up your MOVE or Calorie challenge, you could tweak it, or save this for 2016…

MyWellness Challenge - December - MOVEs

So to round off the year, you could pick your best challenge to date, but otherwise, we'd suggest a simple, all inclusive, MOVEs challenge. MOVE for Christmas, MOVE to keep warm, MOVE to offset the mince pies, however you want to bill it...!

An individual MOVEs challenge, but limited to exercise in the club, will motivate a lot of members, but also prepares members for the Let's Move challenge in a few months time...

Keeping Active Members Active - Stick Around Seminar part 3 of 3

While there’s a big focus on new members in the New Year, this is nearly always to the detriment of existing active members, who make up the majority of memberships and income. 

Ensure your active members stay active three ways: with Programming, Classes, and Challenges.

Welcome Dormant Members Back - Stick Around Seminar Summary part 2 of 3

Another big focus for the start of the year is returning members – those who have been dormant but return.

If your systems will identify these members to instructors on their first return visit, this is invaluable, a you can interact with the member there and then. Alternatively, or in addition, you can trigger a welcome back message to be sent, and use this to produce a report of list of members to interact with.

Engaging New Members – Stick Around Seminar Summary part 1 of 3

If you missed our Stick Around Seminar earlier this month, here’s a summary of the first part of Guy’s presentation, “A member is for Life, not just for January”

To maximise engagement for new members, we are focusing on three key areas:- inductions, first month visits, and communications.

The induction (aka getting started, welcome session, stage 1, appointment 1) is critical for your new members, because it ensures they make one visit, and gives you the chance to encourage one more.