The first step in any sales process is to get information from prospective members and then to make them feel comfortable. The main way that we can do this is by actively listening. The old adage “you have two ears and one mouth is relevant in sales so that you listen twice as much as you speak” and is something that should really be applied in the fitness industry.
Gone are the days where a great salesperson was someone who could `talk underwater with a mouthful of marbles’. Great sales people are those that can build rapport with `any’ client and build that element of trust by actively listening to them. Selling requires an information exchange and that exchange cannot be one way. The people that enter your club should give you information about their experiences, needs and aspirations. In turn you will give them information about your club, prices and how you can provide the solution to their needs and aspirations.
To really improve your listening, you need to provide the opportunity for prospects to `open up’. Hence you should focus on asking `open-ended’ questions. These enable the prospect to go into more depth about their experiences, unravelling important information to see whether your club is suited to them. For example, “tell me about your gym experience?” Close-ended questions only elicit a one-word response, so are not great at opening the waves of communication. For example, you can ask a question such as, “have you been to a gym before?” and they can give you a one-word answer, which is not ideal when you want them to `open-up’.
Brian Tracey, an internationally renowned speaker on sales and personal development puts it this way: “Only when you and the prospective member have completed a thorough `examination’ and probing of what their wants and needs are, and then have mutually agreed upon the `diagnosis’ or solution, are you in a position to begin talking about your product or service. This means you cannot bring out your brochures or price lists and begin telling the customer how your product or service can solve his problems or achieve his goals until about seventy percent of the way through the sales process. Until then, you have not yet earned the right. Until then you don’t even know enough to begin an intelligent presentation without embarrassing yourself”.
So obviously the answer is to build rapport with your clientele by actively listening to them. Once the prospect opens up and tells you their wants, needs and aspirations, only then should you start talking about how your club and prices will meet those needs.