Coaching style – a new way of managing a fitness club

The need of ongoing sales activities has been mentioned many times and it is always a topic raised on an industry meeting or conference. But is the subject fully understood and skillfully implemented in our health club? What is the role of any manager or owner in this area? How can he/she effectively support the team?

The so-called coaching style management means simply less authoritarian behavior

I know some of you may not feel comfortable and  sure, but really certain elements of coaching can significantly help you with taking correct actions, increase efficiency and build team’s shared responsibility for the sales results. And we all know how difficult it can be especially the last point. The so-called coaching style management means simply less authoritarian behavior, more involvement of team thanks to conversations, asking questions, giving employees space to determine their own way of achieving goals. How does this method can be proved in selling activities in the fitness club?

As you manage a club think how you set your sales targets. Most managers or owners set goals expressed by the effect meaning number of memberships sold, turnover from a bar, number of personal training sold etc. If you work like this then it is really great –the target acts as a reference point. For an employee it is crucial information otherwise he/she is not sure where to go and what todo. Probably majority of you set the targets either alone or in a close group of higher rank employees and later communicate it to the team. Sometimes if you have more experienced team it is worth trying to get involved it in setting the goals. You can be even surprised to learn that the goals set by the employees are higher than your initially planned ones.

If you stop with setting the goals here you face the first possible danger - setting the targets only with expected effects is sometimes called "planning by hope". This means that we hope the effect is achieved as we rely on our past experience and we try to forecast the future. To reach the intended results you must move on to the next level of goal setting – planning actions that will lead to reaching those results. This translates into an action plan i.e. phone calls and emails to the members, chats with customers about personal training, promotional or informational activities, specific behaviors of receptionist or bar staff. It is extremely important that action areas have also their exact and measurable targets. And here is even more room for the usage of coaching tools as an effective manager you will not just dictate what and how to do it but you will ask your staff how they see it and what plan they have. Never stop asking helpful questions like: what actions can you take towards our customers, how often, when you do it, why you want to do it, how these actions lead you to the goal?

It is only by finding specific answers to these and other questions that you will be able to determine the precise goals of your actions. They should be expressed in terms of quantity (how many activities), quality (how conducted) and direction (towards which groups of customers). With these goals set the employees sees the path leading to the resultthey are expected to achieve and you can be more confident that this plan will work out.

Your mandatory tool should be here PerfectGym management system. Firstly all basic KPIs are visible just as you enter this section and later specific reports that you can pull out from the system. The hard data will help you to set the correct level for specific target for each group of employees or evaluate their propositions and later it will allow to measure how the plan is being conducted and which group of employees needs some extra support.