Most health clubs though rely on referrals in a passive way, hoping that one of their members will mention to their family and friends about their positive experience. But relying on passive referrals does your health club a disservice when all you need is a little effort and a process in place to create a positive impact on the number of referrals you can generate.
Referrals are a cheap source of leads, you don’t really have to spend advertising or marketing or effort. Referrals leads also tend to have a higher closing conversion and stay longer making them desirable for any health club.
You could expect improvements in your referrals by implementing a system that proactively orchestrates referrals rather than passively hoping for the best. All you need to do is help your members actively refer others to your gym.
In a case study by Jay Abraham a marketing consultant, Paddy Lund an Australian dentist, made a decision to change the way he did business making his practice by referral only. The condition was that for someone to see him, that person would have refer at least two of their friends or family members before he would have them as a patient. He made into a referral only business. Which allowed him to focus on the more important things rather than marketing and generating new customer.
When you proactively focus on generating referrals and making it easier for your members to refer others, this is when you will the jump in the number of leads coming into your club.
Referral Strategies to Increase Your Leads
- 1.
- Joining process – train your membership staff to proactively suggest or ask for referrals, once a member has made the decision to join your club, you could have a welcome packet including some free passes and ask your staff to make sure to mention about referrals and how referring friend and families helps you spend less time on marketing and more on serving them as members. You can prepare a script for your staff and conduct some training sessions to drive this in.
- 2.
- Email automation – you can also automate an email to do this same process, you might want to have an email go out a few days after a member joins thanking them for joining and afterwards again reiterate how referrals can be an essential part of your health club. You can provide them with a voucher or a free pass for their referrals.
- 3.
- Having a proactive referral system after 90 days – Hopefully your members have had great results within this period then you can send them a follow-up email, ask them how they are and are they happy with their progress. Once good feedback is given this is the perfect time to mention referring friends and family and how much you appreciate getting referrals. Use your timing strategically.
To summarize, by having a proactive referral system, you can dramatically increase the number of leads that come to you.
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