50% of lessons go unsold every day
Tough industry to be in
Selling hourly services is really difficult. Whether you teach yoga, fitness workouts, guitar lessons, painting classes or anything based hourly you have to deal with empty time slots. As a former tennis coach and freelancer from John McEnroe’s Tennis Academy, I wanted to create a working environment that would help me maximize my income for each day. If I had gaps in my scheduler, not only I was loosing money but also I had to waste time by waiting for another lesson. Or sometimes only 50% of potential customers showed up for my group lesson and I made only half of my potential income.
I tried things that did’t work and caused more harm than good.
The first thing that comes to your head is probably calling people. Even though you have good relationships with your clients, you don’t want to call your clients 3 times at the wrong time. You will piss them off and you will destroy your relationship.
Texting is probably just as bad. Texting might be less intrusive but still if your client is doing something important and they get a text at the wrong time the result will be the same as with the phone calls.
Here are some tips that you can do to solve this
- Don’t create a Facebook page
You probably noticed that your Facebook page is not getting as much love as it used to. The reason is that Facebook keeps constantly changing it’s algorithm and it favors fan pages that buy promoted content. If you don’t have a huge budget just like big corporations this might be a tough way to go.
2. Create a Facebook group
Facebook announced at their Facebook F8 conference that they are going to favor groups over anything else. If you put your clients into the group they will get a notification every time you or someone else posts something. This is how you can build a strong community around your product
3. Create very small Whatsapp groups.
By creating small groups you can quickly determine if someone wants to be in it or not. If they leave your group no harm done, you just know that what you are trying to offer is not for them. You can create groups like Evening Yoga and put customers in there who usually work out in the evening. That way you know it’s relevant.
4. Try to find a reservation system that has categories for your lessons
If you use a reservation system that is suitable for your business you know that it tracks the right data. With http://sportpass.me you can assign a category to each of your lessons. By doing that, the system knows which activities your clients like and can offer valid recommendations. For example, if some clients go to TRX morning class on Wednesday and they don’t currently have a reservation, the system can notify them.
5. Use waiting lists
This might be an obvious feature but there are still a lot of trainers and sports clubs out there that don’t utilize this feature. Put yourself in your customers shoes. You have a lesson that you are interested in. The lesson is full and now someone cancels. As a client, you are not going to be calling your trainer every 30 minutes to see if a spot opened up. You want to be notified.
6. SportPass let’s your clients find more clients
SportPass is equipped with a special link that can be shared. Each lesson has a unique link that can be shared via SMS, Email, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp etc. and it presents all the info that a new client needs to see. By using this link, their account is connected with your reservation system and now they have access to your lessons at convenience of their app. You can try the link here: https://sportpass.me/gyms/sportpass/2d896b34-1212-4571-9fc8-afe1fc8e2f1d
You can encourage your clients to invite others and reward them for doing so. After all, your clients are your best marketing channel so why not using it to the max.
For more info about SportPass and its benefits visit https://sportpass.me/en/gyms
or contact me at jay@sportpass.me for more info.