Your club is talking to you every day. Are you listening? It is telling you that the floors need a little more attention, staff needs additional direction and its image needs updating. Your club is dropping hints about the locker room towels, the street entrance signage and the member who hasn't spoken to a staff representative since he or she signed up. Did you pick up on that? With a proper walk-through, a good manager will realize all of this and more.
Many managers go through the perfunctory steps of performing a walk-through daily or several times per week as a measure of control and standardization. However, these 20 minutes are often spent focusing on the wrong things and looking for what is out of place rather than seeing what is wrong.
The club walk-through should be anything but routine. Once it gets to the point of merely looking for sweat-stained mirrors and missing light bulbs, the fight has already been lost. Keep the following ideas in mind the next time you and your staff evaluate your club:
1. Keep track of the physical. There is a certain standard that every club manager should establish with his or her team about how the facility should look. This standard should address things such as where the fitness accessories are stored, how the studios are arranged and where locker room amenities are placed. Identifying when these items are not where they belong is easy, as is assigning accountability for these items. The hard part is deciding what to do when these are the recurring issues at your club, which is a sure sign that there is a disconnect somewhere between management directives and staff implementation. Persistent physical issues at the club require immediate corrective action, or sales, retention and member satisfaction will be substantially affected.
2. Consider the big picture. A walk-through can help operators make big decisions regarding the overall look, feel, and experience of the club. A club promoting itself as a luxury brand cannot have ripped benches, messy locker rooms, out-of-order equipment and staff that look disheveled. Likewise, a gym that claims to be a leader in personal training should offer adequate meeting space for the client-trainer discussions, high-end amenities and a fitness area with ample space for individual attention. If these criteria are not met, then conceptually the club is sending mixed messages and doing itself a great disservice in attracting, retaining and satisfying the clients it aims to accommodate.
3. Monitor staff engagement. Regardless of what type of club you run, staff should always be engaging. Trainers should talk with members on the floor, front desk staff should acknowledge guests by name and sales staff should look for clients they have recently signed up to ask how they are enjoying the club. Additionally, you want a staff that intuitively knows when something is out of place or needs to be corrected. When you walk the floor of your club, look for these touch points. Staff will always try to look busy when a manager walks by, but it's the manager's job to know the difference between who is active and who is productive.
4. Take notice of members' interactions. Watching how your members interact with the club and the staff is crucial. Do they know your front desk staff by name? Do they inquire about group exercise classes? Do they talk to other members on the floor? These are all signs of a well-functioning club. If you are not seeing this level of engagement at your facility, then it is time to reevaluate your business. Unhappy members or members who feel distant from their club will not refer friends or speak enthusiastically about the club and will probably not rejoin.
5. Make a Plan. A manager needs to constantly grade the performance of his or her club and staff, and he or she needs to be a tough grader. Have a checklist not only for the physical, but also for all the previously mentioned intangibles. It also is important to walk through the club with various managers at various times of the day. Routine can be a detriment to a manager who walks the same route at the same time with the same staff member. Mix it up and get feedback and suggestions from both managers and line staff alike. The people who know the facility the best are the ones who are working in it 40 hours per week. They can provide valuable feedback on how things can improve.
BIO
Matthew Cicci is the general manager of The Mercedes Club, New York, which is on Manhattan's west side. With more than 15 years of experience in the health and fitness industry, Cicci has operated businesses in the not-for-profit, commercial, franchise and residential fitness environments, including a regional fitness consulting position and managing an 80-acre residential complex in New York. Cicci has held several industry-wide certifications, has a bachelor's of science degree in management and studied under the master's program for exercise science at Syracuse University. He can be reached at [email protected].