Opportunity: Typically, the drop out rate of members during their first year is more than double the drop out rate of other members. Supporting new members through that first year successfully, and helping to make exercise a lifestyle for them, is generally the single biggest opportunity for dramatically improving overall retention rates. But it isn’t easy.

Challenge: The science of helping a new or returning exerciser to succeed is well documented. Both the physiology (method) and the psychology (motivation) have been researched and taught for decades. The problem is that putting the science into practice means continual coaching, handholding and personal encouragement. Few fitness centers can afford to provide the level of staffing required to give beginners the amount of consistent, daily support they need to succeed. As a result, the majority of new members, except for a small percentage who can afford regular personal training, don’t make it through the first year.

Solution: FitLinxx adds Intelligence to your existing fitness equipment to enable even a small staff to provide new members the support they need to succeed. FitLinxx "learns" each member’s program, "coaches" them through their workout, and "tracks" their progress to provide motivational feedback and to ensure that your staff knows which members need help. FitLinxx provides the necessary handholding and motivational edge that helps members succeed.

Outcomes: Using FitLinxx, members are more confident, feel safer, and stick with their programs at a much higher rate. Staff is more effective and efficient in helping new members succeed. And the facility as a whole achieves a higher retention rate among new members.

Opportunity: Many prospective new members set out to join a fitness center in your community every week.

Challenge: Prospective members may tour several competing facilities, many of which have fairly similar facilities and equipment, , making differentiation difficult.

Solution: Fitness Intelligence Technology is a new high-tech product category that has great "floor appeal." FitLinxx in particular, with its touch screen Training Partners, networked data collection, and interactive kiosks and web site, revolutionizes the fitness experience and gives you the edge in creating market differentiation.

Outcomes: FitLinxx provides...

• A real "wow" factor in attacting word of mouth referrals from existing members
• Something different to show for those giving tours
• Publicity opportunities for the site as a whole

Opportunity: Most of the fitness industry continues to compete for the minority of the population that is already exercising regularly. However, with constant news reports about the benefits of exercise for everything from weight loss to healthy aging, to disease prevention and stress management, the opportunity to attract the "other 80%" has never been more appealing. From the aging of the baby boomers to the expanding of our waistlines, there has never been a better time to appeal to new exercisers and to exercisers who have tried and failed before. The consensus view is that most of the industry’s growth for the next decade will come from these consumers. Given that most fitness facilities are set up to service regular exercisers, having a tangible and successful beginner program can provide a substantial differentiation in attracting this prized growth demographic.

Challenge: New and returning exercisers require a great deal more handholding to succeed. Many facilities claim to support them, but limited programs undermine that promise. Without some tangible evidence to the contrary, prospective members quickly see the reality - another facility built to serve regular exercisers. A small percentage may join anyway (and likely soon drop out ). But the lion’s share of this growth market is left unaddressed.

Solution: Having a beginning exerciser program in your facility, powered by FitLinxx, offers you an opportunity to show prospective new exercisers a tangible tool to help ensure they will succeed. For those who have tried and failed before, you will be able to demonstrate a revolutionary difference in what your facility offers them in contrast with their previous experience, giving them hope of breaking the cycle that has led to failure and dropout in the past. The revolutionary difference between Intelligent Technology in your facility and the same types of equipment familiar to everyone for the last several decades, gives you a substantial edge in attracting these members.

Outcomes: With FitLinxx, you can increase close rates among prospective new and returning exercisers. In addition, given their high success rate based on using FitLinxx once they join, they tend to become loyal long-term members, and a great source of word-of-mouth memberships. As you gain a critical mass of such members, and as you gain a reputation in the community for being able to help create lifestyle change for them, you will have a long-term edge for growth in this target consumer segment.

Opportunity: Most facilities, even those with highly successful programs, are generating the vast majority of their personal training revenue from a relatively small number of regular clients - generally less than 10% of the full member base. Most of the rest of the members, however, including those who can’t afford or don’t want personal training on a regular basis, would benefit substantially from an occasional session, particularly when they hit a glitch in their program – such as a plateau, or a loss of motivation.

Challenge: Most non-regular personal training clients do not proactively seek help when their program falters. Usually, they quietly lose motivation. Passive attempts at selling personal training (signs, promotions, mailings, etc.) don’t move them to sign up; they need someone to approach them. But approaching members at the wrong time, when their programs are going fine, for example, also results in no interest, and many trainers are shy about “selling”. Members need to be offered training in a targeted way, at their personal moment of need. Identifying that moment, however, is difficult at best. Reviewing workout cards can indicate where progress is trailing off, but this task is tedious and it assumes that members accurately record their workouts.

Solution: Using the Intelligent Staff Tools in FitLinxx, trainers can overcome these challenges. Workout results are collected automatically and accurately by the system for all users – resulting in a complete and fully accurate workout record for every member. At a click of a mouse, FitLinxx can search through the workout records of thousands of members and identify those who are most in need of help, based on years of workout analysis Intelligence built into the FitLinxx Trigger system. With another click of a mouse, trainers can send messages to the identified members, automatically noting the specific area of concern (e.g., “I see you have hit a plateau on your strength program,” or “I notice your attendance has become less consistent in the last few weeks”), and offering a training session. This is an easy to implement one-to-one marketing program for training. Intelligent Technology makes it possible.

Outcomes: FitLinxx is of minimal interest to regular personal training clients. There’s nothing that technology can do to take the place of the personal touch a trainer can give to someone who wants it and has the means to pay for it. For the rest of the membership, however, Intelligent identification of members at their moment of need gives trainers the edge in selling occasional sessions. Using FitLinxx to identify members at a critical time is proven to increase overall personal training revenue by as much as two to three times by enabling staff to target a much larger base of members.

Opportunity: It’s hard to imagine a greater gift that a fitness center could give to beginning exercisers than to help them overcome the odds and make fitness an ongoing part of their life. Exercise is widely considered one of the single best sources of lifetime health and wellness, but it is difficult for many beginners to get the hang of it and stick with it. Whether it’s a senior’s goal of healthy aging, a teen’s heartbreaking challenge with weight control and self-esteem, a patient’s recovery from heart disease or injury, or anyone’s desire to get in better shape--your facility’s ability to systematically help members, overcome the physical and psychological challenges they face in the first year on a program, can make a lifelong difference.

Challenge: The science of helping a new or returning exerciser to succeed is well documented. Both the physiology (method) and the psychology (motivation) have been researched and taught for decades. The problem is that putting the science into practice means continual coaching, handholding, and personal encouragement. Few fitness centers can afford to provide the level of staffing required to give beginners the amount of consistent, daily support they need to succeed. As a result, the majority of new members, except for a small percentage who can afford regular personal training, don’t make it through the first year. And of those who do make it, many use poor form and fail to get the results they seek

Solution: FitLinxx adds Intelligence to your existing fitness equipment to enable even a small staff to provide exercisers the support they need to succeed. FitLinxx "learns" each member’s program, "coaches" them through their workout, and "tracks" their progress to provide motivational feedback and to ensure that your staff knows which members need help. This allows your facility to provide the necessary handholding and motivational edge to help members succeed.

Outcomes: Consistent feedback and encouragement makes exercisers more confident, enthusiastic, and motivated right from their first workout. And the interactive "coaching" ensures members use proper form at every session, which in turn leads to better physical results. Together, improved mental motivation and proper exercise form give new exercisers a much higher prospect of locking in the new lifestyle they seek, and staying with their fitness programs long-term.

Using FitLinxx, members are more confident, feel safer, and stick with a program at a much higher rate. Staff is more effective and efficient in helping the new members succeed. And the facility as a whole achieves a higher retention rate among new members.

Opportunity: The fitness staff is the front line of any facility’s effort to serve its customers. The impact of having instructors that do their job well is significant in meeting nearly any goal – from mission achievement to economic outcomes such as member retention. But service levels tend to vary from instructor to instructor, often even more dramatically than management might realize. In one study, a site with a retention rate between 60-70%, overall, found its individual instructors were achieving retention rates that ranged from below 50% to nearly 90% with members assigned to them. The site’s management was also very surprised to find that the top instructor was not whom they expected, but rather someone who was quietly dedicated to helping members succeed. If sites can accurately measure staff performance, rewarding top performers and managing poorer performance, service and success can be managed as well.

Challenge: Unfortunately, in spite of the importance of good staff-member interaction, it is very difficult to track and reward. As a result, most sites end up having to review instructors on their personalities and anecdotal feedback from a few vocal members, rather than rating them on the true quality of their day-to-day member service.

Solution: FitLinxx has a number of tools to help staff do their job well. In addition, the system has tools to allow management to see how well instructors are using these tools and positively impacting their members in these ways:

• First, by tracking the frequency and consistency of each staff member’s interaction and follow-up with members, the system gives measurements of the staff’s quantity of follow-up.
  
  
• Second, by keeping an online record of the content of messages sent and notes about verbal interactions, management can easily spot-check the quality of interaction with members.
  
  
• And finally, by tracking and comparing the adherence and retention performance of each instructor’s members, management can quantify and compare the outcomes each instructor is achieving.

Outcomes: FitLinxx’s tools collectively allow management to measure staff directly on the quality of their performance. Many facilities use these metrics as part of their staff development and performance review process. Motivated, professional staff members truly appreciate being recognized for the positive impact they have on members, while poorer performers can be more effectively managed for success going forward. Some facilities use the staff performance information as part of a pay-for-performance program, believing that if the sales team on the front-end of the membership process is paid on commissions, the staff on the backend, who are responsible for service and retention, should benefit in proportion to the quality of their results as well? The bottom line is that information empowers management to better manage staff, and that results in better service to the members.