Whether your competition is down the road or across town, big or small, old or brand new, hip or old-school, competition is still competition. Your job then becomes marketing a difference or competitive edge that brings new members through your doors, not theirs’.

So, how much do you invest in each new member?

You probably already know what it costs you in dollars to have a member go through the entire membership cycle – sales time and commissions, marketing and promotions, processing cancellations, and all the other “hidden” costs of the membership cycle.

I can already hear you saying that you invest a lot in your members and I haven’t even mentioned the operational costs of the bells and whistles that get members excited about joining the club – group fitness, new equipment – and on it goes as we try to market ourselves as something different than the competition.

However, there’s more to it than the financial or operational costs of memberships. Another way to ask the question is, how invested are you in each new member? It’s not all always about the dollars. Are you investing in time, education, personal relationships, follow through and the steps to success?

There’s real value placed on the feeling of being genuinely cared about, and there are a lot of success stories that are built on that foundation. Think of the number of times that you’ve read or heard or seen someone succeed because someone else took the time to listen, or educate, or care for, or something – something genuine.

It’s a difference between investing in the building, the equipment and the programs, and investing in your members’ success. New equipment and an updated facility won’t, in and of themselves, lead to success stories. How and what you invest in with your new members will. As we’ve iterated before, it’s the difference between a member and a member forever.

Steve Jobs once said, “[B]e a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

Make your difference be your investment in your members’ success and your competition will always be measuring your quality.