Premium service facilities don´t have to give “Black Friday Deals”!
When you run a business, it´s important to understand your market and to understand your own services. You seldom see premium brands giving discounts or giving things away for free, do you? The reason is, they don´t HAVE to, because their brand, and their services/products are so strong that people are willing to pay for them no matter what.
In our business, the fitness industry, it is very common to see large gym chains do campaigns of different sorts. That is because their business model is based on volume, they need a constant and large influx of clients to stay alive.
Micro gyms are not, or at least they should not be, competing in the same way. Our service is a premium service. We work closer to our clients, we coach them more and better and we deliver better results. Therefore we should price our services much different from the large gym chains!
I get really frustrated when I see CrossFit gyms doing insane discounts and campaigns on social media. They clearly haven´t understood their own services and they clearly haven´t done a proper analysis on who their ideal customer is. There is NO WAY we can compete with large gym chains on their conditions, because we sell totally different services!
You will see no discounts in our gyms. You will see no campaigns for free trial periods. You will find that all members pay the same amount for memberships. Because we ALWAYS deliver a top class experience to our clients. It doesn´t matter if someone buys PT-sessions for a year, we still charge the same because every hour will still be coached by a professional. It doesn´t matter what time of year you start, we don´t care if the whole family is training with us, we still charge the same because every member of that family is going to get the best possible service from us.
We, as gym owners, need to better understand what differs us from regular gyms. We need to do the math and see what we need to charge in order to be able to pay ourselves, have profitable businesses and to be able to pay our coaches so they can become professionals. We can NOT set our rates based on what “other gyms do” or based on what we think people are willing to pay. You are making a disservice to everyone…
- To yourself because you are going to work your ass of without being able to support family, go on vacations and live a happy life
- To your coaches because they will never get the chance to see that being a professional in the fitness industry can actually work really fine
- To your members because chances are you are going to close your gym some day instead of building a solid business that can help people forever
Let other gyms do their campaigns. Let them give their services away for free and let them lead the race towards the bottom. Rise above, stand up for your values and for your services.
If you feel a bit “lost” or a bit nervous about these things, you definitely need to seek help and advice. I recommend finding some sort of coach or mentor that can help you. I definitely recommend coming to the Coaches Congress and listen to experts, talk to other owners and start getting the confidence to charge what you´re worth
“only the dead fish follow the stream”
