Running a gym is hard!
It entails many functions, from starting a business, to creating service offerings that resonate with your community, to winning new clients.
And once you win clients, it’s all about fulfilling the promise you sold them on – getting them results through a combination of your knowledge, skills that manifest themselves through a good program that works for them (custom or templated), holding them accountable and a consistent, personalized experience.
As you start getting better at those two activities, you realize that you now need to bring onboard other staff members and further augment your skillset to recruit, hire, train, and build a team that can then initially deliver with the same consistency and intensity as you would, and later even excel that so you all are working in your respective zone of excellence to build a reputable name for yourself in the community. At that point, you have indeed arrived and built a business to last.
This journey starts off with much chaos – one filled with challenges and surprises – the likes of prospects ghosting you, to members demanding refunds and devaluing your service to staff not showing up on time or worse stealing your clients. Gym ownership is definitely not for the faint of heart with the proverbial roller coaster of ups and downs holding true. It takes a unique person who can actually function amidst this chaos.
And, at the same time – this chaotic journey can be made easier, more predictable – one where you gain back the control of your business and build an asset that can provide you with cash flow to enjoy your life – through the use of Technology and software.
The right gym management software can make a major impact in completing a project in 4 hours Vs 15 mins, not to mention the time saved in correcting human mistakes that are likely when you have mundane work being done by your team.
But, there is no need for us to go overboard. After all, just like you don’t need every single fitness equipment to help you get your clients results – the same thing goes with software.
In this article let’s break down some of the key gym management softwares that you need to invest in so you can do more with less time, energy and effort and genuinely set your business and yourself up for long-term success.
- Website
A website is your business card in the digital world and is a must have in today’s digital era. It’s the first place a prospect goes to learn about your business and make a decision of pursuing the conversation or dropping it off altogether.
A great website is the perfect blend of science and art where you want it to be just right such that it advances the discussion for your prospects.
There are a number of website specialists available to help – right from freelancers that you could hire, to an intern to a member whom you could barter with to well defined companies that create and maintain websites for you.
At Naamly, we recommend the use of one of our partners 97 Display or 321GoProject – both of which are focused on the fitness industry and provide for solutions that provide for both the creation and the maintenance of your website. And, when you sign-up with them you buy into their collective experience, learnings and expertise of serving 100s of other fitness studios.
- eMail Marketing Tool
This tool helps you to broadcast your message to your email list and ensures you stay on top of mind primarily for your prospects, leads and clients too. This ensures that when the contact is ready to purchase they think of you.
Most of the tools are pretty similar so our advice would be to try out a few and see which one really fits your need. Think list size, the type of content you want to share, what is most intuitive to you and pricing.
Some offer a free plan depending on the list size and enables you to embed images and pictures, In another instance, you could even ditch having this tool altogether should you decide to use your email provider such as google or outlook incase you don’t have that many subscribers and are comfortable in sending simple text centric messages (without fancy embedded images).
At Naamly, we use Mailerlite ourselves, while the most popular one remains MailChimp.
- Lead Management System
The famous Dean Jackson had shared through his studies what is now regarded as a principle that of 100 people who opt-in for your information on your website, 50% will never buy. And, of the 50% that do buy, only 15% will buy (meaning 7 people) within the first 100 days and the remaining 85% of the buyers (meaning 43 people) will buy in the next 100 weeks.
This principle formed the basis for a large number of companies to come out with their softwares whose sole purpose is to nurture and build automated follow-up processes with these potential buyers so they don’t fall through the cracks.
Some of these solutions provide for more bells and whistles helping you build out native integrations with common advertising platforms such as facebook to creating custom landing pages while others may opt for the use of yet another software called Zapier to help in connecting two separate softwares together.
For example, remember the website situation – think if someone opted into your website then through zapier you could bring in the lead into your lead management software.
Two of the most commonly used gym management software that cater to the gym
community are Keap (formerly known as InfusionSoft) and GoHighLevel (GHL) which is
primarily sold by agencies through a white labeled version. A white label means that the
end user doesn’t know that they are actually utilizing GHL for they see a different name
and brand colors on their end.
- Billing and Scheduling System (CRM)
As the name suggests, this is all about helping you bill your clients through a safe and secure way especially on a recurring basis so you don’t have to spend hours and hours keeping track of payments received and then chasing your members for their card or Venmo/Zelle post every workout or after a defined period of time.
The right billing system automates the entire billing process and also helps in spitting out simple reports that can be used by your accountant for easy tax filing purposes. So, the magic word is to keep things extremely simple, easy and most importantly cost effective. This is one area where you do want to dig deeper for a few percentage points on the outset, it sounds insignificant but trust us when we say this, it adds up to a significant amount of money, out of pocket especially as your business starts to grow.
The scheduling capability allows you or the client directly (if there is a client facing app) to book and reserve appointments, sessions and classes.
There are so many tools out there – some of the most well recognized names include MindBody, Zenplanner and Wodify that provide for both capabilities.
There are other alternatives such as Square or Stripe which may also work for your gym.
Like most things, it really comes down to your business model, number of members and really your specific need. Check out how you can choose the best personal training CRM for your business for more details.
- Programming
Another gym management software that you definitely want to consider depending on the size of your gym is one that you can use to create training programs complete with workouts sets/reps, video libraries and help track your clients performance.
This becomes really useful as your client roster increases alongside your staff.
These kind of softwares ensure that a consistent choreographed experience is provided to your clients based on their unique situations and saves you tonnes of time – imagine you doing this all by yourself every single time for every new client that walks into your facility.
The reality is that a lot of the people you create programs for fall into some kind of cohorts and for each you could create a template that would make your life easier in the long run.
Some of the most notable softwares in this realm include Teambuildr, TrueCoach and BridgeAthletic.
- Project/Task Management
As your team grows, you would need to start tracking the list of tasks/activities you want them to perform complete with deadlines and responsible person. Initially you could start off with a shared spreadsheet that is accessible to all and with passage of time, you would need to commit to investing in a gym management software that helps you simplify your daily operations.
Some softwares that gym owners have used include Monday, Trello and Asana
- Communication
This software is one of the most under-rated technology that most gym owners miss out on though we strongly feel it’s the one software that is necessary as you go beyond your 2nd hire or have more than 20 clients to manage.
Almost all the activities require some level of ongoing interactions with prospects, clients and team members. Further, there are so many channels where the communication can happen – think personal emails, business emails, personal and business phones, texting or even other applications and softwares that you might already have currently – including the ones we listed above; with the result this causes a lot of confusion and more chaos since nothing is centralized and one ends up having to go dig in multiple places to get a handle of where things really reside.
Most gym owners resort to fixing this challenge through applications such as slack, or resort to using facebook messenger or whatsapp or group texting for internal staff exchanges and for client exchanges utilize either the in-app messaging capability between softwares or using business phones to centralize that communication.
Each one of these tools is powerful and time-saving on its own and have so much depth that it’s unlikely to ever use all of it’s capabilities…but, they don’t talk to each other with the result that when a team member ends up looking at information in your billing and scheduling system, they have to go to their personal phone to reach out to the client.
So, as a gym owner – depending on your situation – you really want a gym management software that connects and combines these capabilities so you can boost your efficiency and make a difference in your business operations productivity and profitability.
At Naamly, we have worked tirelessly to solve for this very unique situation by bringing the different pieces together into one single platform so they all work seamlessly with each other like a well oiled machine and in the process you can even consolidate some of the above softwares and just use one – Naamly.
For instance, we will connect directly with your website as well as your billing and scheduling system and provide for member communication, task management and staff collaboration all in one. In essence we streamline your business operations.
Naamly understands training gyms and their inner workings – having part-time coaches, creating and maintaining spreadsheets, to maintaining notes on clients, to text messages falling through the cracks to holding clients accountable, and much much more. We provide for shared visibility and help you save both time and money.
In the dynamic world of gym ownership, where chaos often reigns supreme, harnessing the power of technology can transform your business from surviving to thriving.
By having the right gym management software, you can streamline operations, deepen client engagement, and reclaim valuable time to focus on what truly matters – delivering exceptional consistent and personalized experiences at scale.
Schedule a FREE demo with Naamly today and discover why and how countless gym owners and the most trusted names in the fitness industry are choosing to revolutionize their businesses with our comprehensive platform.
Take control of your gym’s future and unlock it’s full potential with Naamly – your partner in fitness success. Schedule a FREE DEMO with Naamly to learn how you can benefit.