“INVESTMENT IN FITNESS STAFF WOULD YIELD MORE INCOME PER MEMBER COMPARED WITH INVESTMENT IN SALES STAFF”
Figure 2. Average number of fitness staff interactions by month after joining
Figure 3. Number of fitness staff interactions as a percentage of club visits by month after joining
A reason to reward: Fitness staff could save up to 1.5 memberships an hour by
chatting to 12 members for less than five minutes each
fitness staff as sales staff One way to interpret these findings is to think of fitness staff as sales staff. What is it that they are selling, you might ask? The answer is repeat visits. Every visit a member makes to a
visit their club at all in a month is high. In the fi rst month after joining, most members attend at least once, but in month two the proportion of non- attenders is already up to 25 per cent and by month four it’s just short of 50 per cent, where it stays for the duration of the membership. Interestingly, data gathered using
TRP’s software suggests that each time fi tness staff talk to a member in a given month, the probability that the member attends at least once the following month doubles, thereby reducing the risk of cancelling; the potential for preventing attrition through interaction is high.
july 2011 © cybertrek 2011
club is an opportunity to sell them another visit. Fitness staff are extremely well-placed to make this sale given the opportunity they have to interact with members. So how often do fi tness staff currently talk to members? Again using TRP data, Figure 2 shows that it varies considerably over the life of a membership. On average, members can expect just one interaction every 12 weeks, with new members least likely to be spoken to and long-standing members most like to be spoken to. This isn’t especially surprising, as
of course long-standing members get to know the staff over time and tend to attend more frequently. However,
long-standing members are the least at risk of cancelling compared to new members – the focus of interactions should in fact be on new members. It’s possible that one reason why
new members (who turn up frequently in the fi rst month) rapidly drop their visit frequency is that they are unlikely to be spoken to in the fi rst month of their membership. Of course, members can only be spoken to if they attend – Figure 3 shows interactions as a proportion of club visits. Again, it can be seen that new members have only a one in 20 chance of being spoken to each time they attend in their fi rst month, compared to members who are in their 12th month who have a 30 per cent chance of being spoken to. The importance of speaking to
members when they visit is greater than just the effect on club visits. Independently of the number of visits a member makes to a club, if fi tness staff talk to members they save memberships. Figure 4 shows (p40) that, in members who attend at least once in a month, the
Read Health Club Management online at
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% of visits that receive an interaction
Mean number of interactions per month
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