Prospect Follow-Up Part 1

Something has been puzzling me in the last couple of weeks. I’ve taken phone calls recently from three different club owners who haven’t been happy with the number of sales that their staff has been doing lately. After lengthy discussions and doing some troubleshooting, it became apparent that none of them had been tracking any numbers in the club. They thought they had a good closing ratio, they thought they had a lot more prospects coming in they did, and they thought they had a retention rate. The fact of the matter is that none of them knew for sure. How can someone really know what’s going on in the club without finding out where the problem lies? “Oh, we sign up almost everyone that comes through the door.” I hear this all the time. “Almost everyone” is not a number. I need an accurate exact number to evaluate systems, that’s the bottom line.

Prospect Tracking

Retail companies spend millions of dollars each year on marketing to get their message out there and are even doing target marketing to people who have been in their stores.

What happens in your club after a prospect has been toured and decides that this may not be the right time for them to become a member?

Training

A step-by-step manual must be in place and guidelines must be created for the staff. This guide must lay out every detail of the sales and follow-up process. For example, It must include a script of the tour, the intricacies of the sales process, how to handle paper work, when to call, why to call, what to say on the call, etc., etc., etc. An on-going training and testing process must be in place to increase their skills. This is the only way to grow a business.

Follow-up Skills

Once we have the procedures in place and everyone is doing their jobs, the next step is to become more effective.