"What gets measured gets managed". This famous quote from professional intellectual (for lack of a better title) Peter Drucker puts forth an incredibly useful, and truthful, tool for improving your gyms systems, efficiency, and profitability.
The act of measuring something, whether it be an operating system for your business or your weight each morning, gives you a direct comparison to your performance over a set period of time. For a simple example, stepping on a scale once will tell you your weight, but will not tell you how much weight you have gained or lost since starting your new workout or dieting regiment. To know that, you would need to have weighed yourself prior to beginning your new "system." The same is true in your business practices!
Comparison is the Answer!
If you want to improve any part of your business, you must start tracking your important data. Many companies today, used by our gyms, utilize tracking software like Mindbody or SmartWaiver, which allow you to look up various analytics and compare them to previously recorded analytics. This is a great place to start, if you utilize these types of programs, as they are doing the measuring for you. If you don't have a type of tracking software then it will be up to you to figure out what numbers are worth tracking and how they tell the story of your business. It's now up to you to Manage it! What is an example of Measuring? Ex: I've been using the Firestorm Operational System to convert first time Trial Students into paying Members in my facility. (I'm using the Trial to Sign Up Operational System found in the Free PDF download I gained access to when I signed up for Parkour Professor) But I have recently hired 5 new Coaches who have just finished their training. I am planning on paying them to come in for a full day of practicing the system.
5 Coaches @ 8 hours @ ($15/hr + $3/hr taxes) = $720 The question is.... Do my Memberships improve enough to make the additional training, in terms of monetary cost ($720) and additional work on my end, worth it?
Create your Baseline
I need to take a measurement of what my standard amount of Trials in a month is and my standard amount of new Memberships are. I need to track these numbers so I have a good idea of how my current system is doing prior to the additional training my new Coaches will be receiving. Once I know this I will be able to compare it against how my new Coaches are now doing post training and decide of the training was worth it. From here I can decide of this additional training should be done for future new Coaches.
(New Coaches hired in March) (Training session performed on May 1st) January February March April May June
Trials 90 85 91 78 81 65
Sign Ups 46 44 30 27 52 43
Conversion % 51% 51.7% 33% 34.6% 64.2% 66.2%
What does it Mean?
The important number to look at here is the Conversion % (What percentage of Trial students signed up to become a Member)
Jan. & Feb (Before hiring new Coaches)
We can see that prior to hiring the new Coaches we had an average conversion of around 50%, or one out of every two Trial students signing up.
Mar. & Apr. (New Coaches hired and working with Trials) Now we see our conversion % drop to roughly 33% percent, meaning only 1 out of every 3 Trial students is signing up for a Membership. First, if I did not have this measured data to track, it is entirely possible that I might never have known that my new Coaches were losing me an 17% of my possible new Members. Without this data to let me know my new Coaches are not yet well trained enough, imagine this going on indefinitely, losing me 17% of my possible new Members forever! ***If my Memberships run at $100/month, this means I am losing out on $1500/month. AND this compounds month after month because I would lose these Members this month, and their payment next month, PLUS the new members I could be gaining next month! In two months that's $3000.00!!!!!!!!! Second, seeing this data allows me to MANAGE the situation and look for a solution.
May & June (After new Coaches additional day of training)
My conversion ratio has now jumped to nearly 66%, meaning my Team is now converting nearly 2 out of every 3 Trial Students into Members! This is a 16% jump over how my Team was doing prior to hiring my new Coaches.
Was it worth the coast of the Training?
The additional day of training for my staff cost $720. Not cheap for a Parkour gym. If, in May, my conversion percentage had stayed at 50% instead of jumping to 66%, that means I would NOT have gained an additional 10 new Members! Ten new Members, at $100/month, equates out to a $1,000.00 jump in revenue! Not to mention, next month these Members will pay again, and I will again have gained MORE new members next month! What we have learned from MEASURING is that in the first month alone, I have made back the INVESTMENT I made of $720.00 for training, and even made a $280.00 profit on it. New month, with my investment already paid off I'll now be making roughly an additional $1,000.00 month with no cost to me!
Now it's your Turn!
Start tracking the data from the systems you have in place and see how well your systems REALLY work, not just how you hope or "feel" they work.
Ex: I have run Birthday Parties in gyms for nearly 20 years. I kept the cost of parties cheap so I could attract more new people into my gym and convert them into paying monthly members. I always assumed that some people from the parties, which barely ever made a profit, signed up and therefore offset the cost, and low price point, of the parties. It wasn't until my wife, Angel Griffin (Owner: Firestorm Talent & Entertainment) ignored my answers of, "This is how every gym does it, it works fine" and jumped into our Mindbody data to see how many people converted from attending a party to a Membership.
The answer.... a paltry four. We had only ever successfully converted four birthday attendees into Members in 4 years of Birthday Parties. ONLY 4!!!!!!!!! And none of them stayed in our programs for more than 3 months. All that work, all the lost income from offering a low price point to entice more participants at Birthday Parties, I had been doing for four years for results I "felt" were happening that absolutely were not! Four years wasted! Now, I charge a premium to rent my gym for a Birthday Party, nearly double what I used to. I make a healthy profit on each party, while having less participants per party and doing less work. I make more money, doing less, now that I have looked at my measurements and changed tactics appropriately.
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What get measured gets managed, so get out there and start measuring!
Research. Design. Implement. Improve.
Parkour Professor
Justin@ParkourProfessor.com
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