Reducing Cancellations

It’s important for any business to gain new custom. Time, energy and budgets should all be spent trying to get new members or students through the doors. While this is important and can be achieved in many different ways, it’s more important, easier and cheaper to keep the loyal members you already have and reduce your cancellation rate.

Remember to approach your business with a business mind, there’ll always be people who want to process cancellations on their memberships no matter how good your facilities are or how much time and effort you put in to your business. Try not to take it to heart and use it as an opportunity to find out why people are cancelling. Gaining feedback is essential to finding out where you can improve your business. Although it can be disappointing to hear a customer wants to leave it’s always good to leave everything on good terms. Even though it can be uncomfortable, opening a dialogue on why a member is cancelling it is a great opportunity to provide incentives to stay or offers to rejoin. This could either keep a member or regain them in the future. Another great compromise can be a freeze, this means pausing the membership for a while and is really useful for injuries or long breaks a member may need – you’re much more likely to keep the member!

Keeping members motivated can be tricky but it’s key to them sticking around. Most members join a fitness facility with a goal in mind; whether to lose weight or to gain the next colour belt and once this is achieved attendance can slip. A few easy ways to keep members motivated is to track their goals, help them create new achievable goals and give them a freebie one to one or personal lesson every now and then. P.S This is also a great way to up-sell your membership options!

We all know working out with a friend is much more fun and can motivate members to stay, offering a ‘refer a friend’ scheme is a great way to reduce cancellations and the easiest way to get new members.

Members that have left are the easiest and cheapest people to market to. It’s likely that you have a lot of contact details and they have previously shown interest in the services you’re providing. Remember to communicate any new promotions or services direct to them and give them an easy way to sign up!

Managing a lot of members can be difficult, but remember to meet the needs of the members you already have before spending all your time trying to get new members!

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