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Our brand new website is imminent!
We have some exciting news for you! We are due to launch our new interactive website very soon. As well as being a shop window for The Harlands group, we are providing a secure client login area just for our current clients. This will allow you to check member status, payments, and feed queries or instructions back to us. it will be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, no longer will you be restricted to office hours to find out member information. We'll be in touch with you all soon to get you started.
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Online sales continue to boom
Since we launched online membership sales in the UK, now over 3 years ago things have gone from strength to strength. No longer do we have to explain why online sales works clients are more interested in when they can get online and how to maximise the potential. We are now processing as many agreements online each day as we receive paper mandates. The convenience and the additional sales opportunity has proven to be hugely successful for leisure operators. Facilities are now using a combination of off site online joining attached to their web site and also on site online joining which provides a more efficient solution for many.
Are you still using 3 part paper forms and posting them to Harlands? Did you know that our popular on-line sales tool, Snap, can also be used in-club for all types of membership? You simply need any internet connected PC and a printer, and there is no software installation required.
Snap when used in-club will verify the bank details and postcodes live (no more rejections!), then once the process is completed, Snap transmits the membership straight into our collections system. Snap also produces an OFT compliant plain paper membership contract so you can get that signature. No more delays due to posting! Why not get started and ditch those expensive carbonated forms? Contact now to get started.
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Summer Sales Slowdown?
The good weather is here at last, for a while anyway! And I bet you've all seen a bit of a slowdown in sales. Why does this happen? Why do we always see a slowdown in sales at this time of year? I think we miss a trick sometimes and although it's a cliché, every problem presents an opportunity.
Here is a sample of lead generation tips gained from one of the industry sales specialists. During these quieter times, perhaps take a look at your overall marketing strategy:
a) Do you know where all your sales are coming from? It is good practice to carefully log every single sale with the specific reason they joined. Was it a current member referral? Word of mouth - what does that mean exactly? Advert - which advert?
Once you have a clear picture of where your leads are coming from, then you can start to produce far more effective strategies for increasing your sales. For example, if your regular advert in the local rag brings in only 2 sales a month, then ask yourself, can I use that money far more effectively elsewhere? If only 25% of joiners come from existing member referrals, then concentrate on increasing that figure, as this is one of the most effective and cheapest routes to gain new members.
b) Talk to your members - floorwalking is a great way to interact. Ask your members "is there anyone you'd like to exercise with?". Offer to let them bring a pal or two for a week for free. Once they come down, you can work on converting the sale! Make your members lead generators, they will want friends to chat and work out with.
c) Map the area - get a large map of your local area and mark every current member. Where are the gaps? Why are you weak in some areas? You will see some surprising patterns emerge. If for no good reason, you are weak in a particular street or estate, then perhaps hand deliver a batch of encouraging leaflets - call it a "Fit Street" campaign and offer to let everyone in that street exercise free for two sessions, again work on the conversion once they're in the club.
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Harlands & Your Sales Solutions Training Academy
A big thank you to all that have attended our recent Training Academy days at Northampton and Swindon. These sessions are proving increasingly popular, and the recent one, held at Swindon (pictured below) provided many of our clients with invaluable information on how to generate new leads.
We'll be hosting further sessions in the future, covering areas such as lead generation, marketing planning, working with corporates, member retention and more. However, if your organisation would like The Academy to come to your site, please contact us with your needs and we'll see what we can do for you.
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Sincerely,
Kevin Scott
Harlands Group
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| How effective is your current membership collection?The collection of membership fees is central to the success of the vast majority of Health & Fitness providers. There are numerous ways in which businesses choose to offer subscriptions to members from month to month memberships with only 30 days notice to 12 or 24 month contracts.In order to ensure maximum efficiency most operators now accept that collection needs to be delivered by Direct Debit. Over 75% of adults in the UK have at least one Direct Debit and around 100,000 organisations use Direct Debit for collecting a variety of regular and occasional bills including utility payments, insurance, council tax, mortgages, loans and subscriptions.It is the preferred payment method for over 50% of the UK bill paying population.Harlands Group provides organisations with a low cost high quality Direct Debit solution for regular payments and can advise on the effectiveness of any monthly contract solution and provide template agreements and stationary.With our broad range of packages including third party collection or Bureau and proven collection all our clients benefit from reduced internal costs and increased revenue.Contact us now for a free independent membership collection auditWe have found that an audit of current processes has been extremely effective for many companies and we would like to offer an audit to anyone considering changing their current collection methods. This is a no obligation offer and we deliver this via a third party. |
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