Weekend membership sales at Trafford Leisure have taken a jump, despite not having a sales team.

Gym floor staff are responsible for all the Trafford Leisure membership sales, which have risen from an average of 12 to around 28 each weekend, since launching Leisure-net’s online sales-Focus system in December 2016; a set of online tools to manage, monitor and measure results from the membership enquiry stage through to the sale.

Despite the marketing department being really good at generating leads, Nurturing Skills’ Lesley Aitken, who carried out sales training and mystery shopping for the leisure trust, discovered the management of leads required attention. “The team were using an old fashioned card system to see who came in to the centres and why, but not enough data was being taken and the leads weren’t being followed up,” said Aitken.

With sales-Focus, when a prospect enquires they are entered on to the system, along with basic information on how they found out about the centre and what their goals are, as well as how hot the prospect is on a scale of 1 – 10.

“sales-Focus enables us to target our work, particularly towards the end of the month when we are close to hitting our targets. It means we can identify and concentrate on the really hot leads,” said Simon Blair, General Manager, West Locality & Marketing at Trafford Leisure. “It also works well as a reporting system to identify where the prospects come from and what marketing campaigns are working well for us, which also enables us to adjust our marketing accordingly.

Trafford Leisure is already seeing a marked difference in staff hitting their targets, as well as witnessing staff selling who would previously have shied away from it. Weekends are now seen as a focus, with 30 or more calls being made across Saturday and Sunday compared to none at all previously, and a significant increase in membership sales over the weekend.

“Being able to look at activity on sales-Focus enabled the team to see why there were so few sales made at weekends,” said Blair. “Once we realised no calls were being made at all it became obvious why sales were low and so we have been able to change that. The system enables us to look at what we need to do better and how we can support our staff to make that a reality, as well as giving praise where praise is due.”

According to Aitken and Blair, staff really enjoy putting prospects on the system and it helps the manager have a clear view of whats happening minute by minute. Reports are sent at 4pm to show activity for the day so far, as well as at the end of the day to summarise the month so far.

“sales-focus has enabled us to be far more sales focussed! We can see exactly how many leads there are on the system and get an overall view of who in the team is contributing to this. Previously our focus was purely on conversion, but sales-focus has helped to change our mindset. It’s now much more about getting leads into the pipeline and then working with them to convert to full memberships. We’re doing a lot more outreach and putting all leads on to the system to qualify and determine whether they are good or not for conversion.

“This means the staff are much more efficient with their time and, whilst it’s early days, by this time next year, with a real focus on the data, we expect to see even more leads and ultimately far greater sales,” concluded Blair.

sales-Focus is part of Leisure-net’s web-based e-Focus Customer Insight Platform, which includes other experience measurement services such as call-Focus, visit-Focus, feedback-Focus and Net Promoter Score (NPS). The products sit on the sector’s DataHubplatform, a collaborative project that allows sport and leisure providers to share and align their data, giving operators access to sector-wide business critical data.

For further press information contact:
Abigail Harris at Big Fish Public Relations
Tel: 07738 331019
Email: abigail@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk

Editor’s note:
Leisure-net Solutions is the leading provider of Customer Insight, Business Intelligence and Consultation services to the UK’s active leisure, fitness and cultural services industries. Leisure-net helps leading industry organisations, local authorities and Trusts, as well as private sector operators and suppliers, to understand their customers’ and clients’ needs and aspirations, and to deliver innovative service and health improvement initiatives.

The DataHub is a repository for sport and leisure data, integrated and enhanced through a suite of business intelligence modules, accessed anywhere via a single online portal. This includes improved traditional services such as business reporting, customer insight, accident monitoring and marketing, as well as access to sector intelligence and benchmarking.