Hey Fitness Pros,
As things start to wind down for the Holiday season, now becomes the most important period of time for me. It’s when I put aside time to plan and prepare for 2012. Remember the saying “Fail to Plan and Plan to Fail!” We want to enjoy an incredible 2012 year and so my preparation over the next month or so puts everything in action to ensure our success. Fail to take the time to do this and you’ll be ‘behind the 8-ball’ all year!
So here’s what I’m collecting right now:
1. Client Feedback – Using Survey Monkey, we’re collecting feedback from clients on what we’re doing well and what we need to do better. We ask them which programs, classes, educational seminars and special events they would like us to host in 2012. Since it is our clients that we are trying to service, it’s absolutely critical that we know exactly what the majority of them want.
2. Staff Feedback – I also collect the exact same information from our team. I want to know what they believe we are doing well, what we need to do better, what we should add, what we should get rid of, what we should budget for etc.
3. Community events – I take the time to gather all the dates of important community events in 2012 so I can ensure we are involved and/or I don’t program our special events on a date that would compete with an established community event. For example, our local Susan G Komen Race for the Cure in September draws about 50,000 people each year. It would be smart to ensure I don’t plan one of our events on the same day or risk very poor attendance.
Once I’ve gathered all the information, I pull out a big calendar and I start programming everything in for the entire year. I try to ensure everything is balanced month to month. I don’t want too many things in one month and not enough in another month.
Included in our yearly marketing calendar is:
1. Internal marketing initiatives
2. External marketing initiatives
3. Specials/promotions
4. Educational seminars
5. Specialty classes/programs
6. Events
7. Team meetings
8. Community outreach
9. Team Birthdays/Anniversaries
It takes me about a full month to pull this all together. Once all items and dates have been finalized, then I program everything into my calendar with triggers to ensure everything gets done in a timely fashion. I use “Outlook” as my time management system and I swear by it.
Both of our studios generate over a million dollars in fitness and training sales every year and I believe this is one of the key reasons for our success. So whether you own your own business, run a PT department or are a sole proprietor, do not neglect this key entrepreneurial action step.
Side note: If you are part of our Personal Training MasterMind group, not only would you know all this, you would have all the forms, templates and systems already done for you so you could just tweak it for your business. If you’re not part of our Personal Training MasterMind group, are you crazy?! Seriously, contact kari@nwpersonaltraining.com if you want to learn how to generate more than a million dollars in training sales every year and make your life a whole lot easier!
Yours in health, fitness and business,
Sherri McMillan
