A valuable quality for successfully selling gym memberships is the ability to meet your potential members where they are in the sales process. This requires getting a deep understanding of your potential member’s mindset at a given time. For this reason, sales objections can help you increase your membership sales.
🌟 Emily Strasfeld of Mark Fisher Fitness sold millions of dollars in memberships. She says the first step in handling objections is to acknowledge and validate the prospect’s concerns, making sure they feel understood.
You can find a comprehensive breakdown of her 3-step process here.
The key to leveraging sales objections into membership sign-ups is knowing how to evaluate and properly respond to them. Before your next membership sales meeting, you can create an effective strategy for using sales objections to boost your membership sales. This guide covers:
- What are sales objections?
- What are the most effective approaches to overcoming a sales objection?
- Using effective approaches to overcome the most common objections
Let’s dive in.
What is a Sales Objection?
A sales objection is a verbal or written response from a prospect indicating doubt or hesitation about continuing the sales process. It differs from a rejection in three ways:
1️⃣ An objection is not a final decision
2️⃣ It typically concerns one issue, while a rejection is usually non-specific
3️⃣ A prospect poses an objection before a rejection, giving you a lifeline
In most cases, an objection is better than silence because it hints at how to proceed in your presentation. For this reason, overcoming your prospective member’s objection increases your odds of signing a new member.
The Most Effective Approaches to Overcoming a Sales Objection
Creating an effective sales plan is essential to successfully selling gym memberships. Along with highlighting the primary features of your gym, the plan must include potent responses to sales objections. With that in mind, here are 5 ways to overcome gym sales objections and increase revenue.
1. Stress Value of the Membership Instead of Price
Regardless of how much your membership costs compared to the competition, price will always be a pain point for some potential members. It’s your job to convince prospects that your facilities, staff, and service are well worth the money invested. Your plan should stress the benefits of your gym and the tremendous positive effects of regular exercise on their immune system, stress level, moods, overall health, and longevity.
Even though LifeTime raised their prices last year, they justified it and still grew revenue by 40%. We cover the details in this article.
If you sell an onsite fitness membership, you can stress the strong support prospects would get from your community of members and staff. You can also highlight the following:
- Flexible operating hours
- A wide range of exercise classes
- Professional trainers
- Any extra services like nutrition counseling or special events
- Convenient location
To appeal to prospects interested in digital fitness memberships, talk about the advantages of exercising anytime and anywhere. Also, you can point out the benefits of privacy and safety features of remote exercise.
2. Use Active Listening to Make a Deep Personal Connection
Keen listening skills are a powerful asset in gym sales. When most people decide to take steps to improve their health and well-being, it is a monumental point in their lives, especially when they intend to commit money to the cause. This is why communicating with your prospective members as you would a close relative or friend is an effective sales approach.
📌 Related post: How to sell more gym memberships via Instagram DMs
To achieve a deeper connection with a potential member, ask open-ended questions and carefully listen to the answers. Use constructive questions, such as:
🎯 What are your goals? (Benchmarks, stats, measurements)
🏋️♀️ Tell me about past experiences with exercises and gyms.
⚖️ What were your likes and dislikes about those experiences/efforts?
🚧 What challenges do you face in terms of reaching your fitness goals?
👨👩👧👦 What do your family and friends think about you starting a fitness program?
These types of questions (in your own language) will help you package a solution that may address many of your prospect’s objections before they surface. For this reason, you should use active listening to gather as much information about your prospects as possible. This empathizing approach can demonstrate your commitment to your prospects’ goals and help them feel more comfortable.
3. Leverage the Power of Storytelling
After using active listening to understand your prospect’s needs, you can use storytelling to overcome objections by showing how your gym’s facilities and services can solve their concerns.
Compelling sales storytelling usually includes success stories and testimonials from satisfied members with similar objections, challenges, or starting points as your potential members. Sharing how some of your members overcame obstacles to reach their goals adds confidence and trust in your brand. However, you must write down your stories and memorize them.
For the best effect, you can compose your stories using one of these two proven frameworks:
1️⃣ Pain, Agitation, and Solution (PAS). The PAS format requires defining the problem, describing the agitation, and sharing the solution.
For example, Mark is a long-time member of your gym. His pain was being over 100 pounds overweight with a body mass index (BMI) over 30.0 before joining your gym.
The agitating part of Mark’s story describes his frustration in trying to lose weight, how his weight was causing problems in his life (personal and professional), and his embarrassment in being unable to fit in theatre and airline seats.
The solution was to join your gym, giving Mark the support and resources he needed to lose 150 lbs and keep it off. At this point, you can list your gym features, such as classes, professional training, nutrition counseling, and a goal-setting program.
2️⃣ Before-after-bridge (BAB). This is a simple "how it started and how it's going" story.
Using Mark’s story again, start with a brief description of Mark’s struggles and agitations with his weight challenges.
Then, quickly transition into the remedy to Mark’s weight loss dilemma. You should deliver the solution with excitement and pride.
After you have aroused the prospect’s attention, close the story with the factor that links the before and after stages, your gym’s facilities, staff, and services.
4. Introduce a Sense of Urgency
You can offset delay-related objections by motivating potential members to act quickly. Limited-time promotions and other time-sensitive offers work well for this purpose. When prospective members believe they’ll miss out on a deal by delaying, they are more likely to ignore specific objections.
That being said, you want to give an offer that’s:
✅ Highly attractive
✅ Irresistible
✅ Time-sensitive
For example, you could offer prospects half off the first month’s membership fee or waive any initiation fees if they sign immediately. Mark Fisher Fitness offers 50% off the first membership payment, but it’s only valid on the day of the sales call. They also add a 30-day money back guarantee to reverse the risk.
5. Display Understanding
Your ability to tap into your prospect’s emotions is essential to steering the membership sales process in the direction you want it to go. For this reason, asking questions about their desires and feelings about reaching their fitness goal can help you show empathy for their ambitions.
Showing a genuine understanding of your prospects' fitness ambitions helps you build trust and credibility with them. It also allows you to present a membership package with a remedy for their issues.
Addressing the Most Common Objections
The most effective method for preparing a membership sales message includes a sales plan and script. It must also include ways to overcome the most common objections. Although there are others, here are the most common sales objections you can address using one or several of the five approaches we discussed.
The Membership Cost Too Much
The good news about this objection is your prospect is interested in signing up, but the price point is an issue. Now is not the time to haggle over numbers. Your price is your price. Instead, you should emphasize the value of your gym membership and the difference it can make in the prospect’s life.
Suppose you’ve used some of the methods we suggested. In that case, you have already gathered the information you need to respond accurately, including benefits specific to your prospect’s preferences and goals. This response can include a flexible payment plan or off-hour membership. In addition, you can create a sense of urgency by offering a discount if the prospect signs on that day.
You could say, “I hear your concern about the price, and I really want to help you start your fitness journey. Let’s see what we can do together. How about that offer we discussed earlier? Would that make the price more comfortable for you?”
The prospect will either agree or still find the price too high. If they’re hesitant, offer a few alternatives:
🏷️ Down-sell to a cheaper membership
🆓 Offer free resources as a bonus
🌟 Highlight other perks of the membership
This is a non-slimy way to help them make a decision. It gets them closer to reaching their goals and yours too.
I Don’t Have Enough Time
Many prospective members feel they don’t have enough time to exercise in the gym. This objection provides a perfect opportunity to use your storytelling skills to ease your prospect’s concern about time commitment. You can share a story about a member who achieved success by:
✅ Using 30-minute exercise classes to reach fitness goals
✅ Finding a convenient time slot with your gym's flexible hours
✅ Sharing babysitting chores with a neighbor to free up time to workout
✅ Taking advantage of your virtual gym workouts (if available)
The critical part of your response to this objection is to show you understand your prospect’s plight and intend to do everything possible to make this work.
I Don’t Know How to Use Gym Equipment
This objection often reveals the level of intimidation the prospect feels about working out in a busy and full-service gym. This is another opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the prospect’s needs. In this case, a free introductory session with a professional trainer would be a great sign-up incentive.
You can explain how easy your equipment is to use and how helpful your staff is in demonstrating its use. It is also an excellent time to promote some of your gym's classes, including cardio and resistance training.
I’m Too Out of Shape
Many prospective members feel insecure about joining a full-scale gym. They may fear being judged or being too far behind the others. To effectively address this objection, you must understand how they feel. You can ask questions about what activities they think they are too out of shape to do. This is also a fine time to share some member stories, especially ones that highlight the community environment in your gym. For example, several members in your gym formed a group called the “Over the Hill Gang.” You can also highlight classes that cater to beginners, seniors, physically challenged, or expecting mothers.
Gym owners tend to use Facebook Groups or Instagram to highlight their work quality and build a community. This strategy also helps grow memberships effectively.
I Want to Try Other Gyms Before I Decide
This objection is challenging because it is an obvious attempt to create space between a final decision. However, it is essential not to get emotional with this prospect. Instead, find out the important qualities the prospect is looking for and emphasize your gym’s advantages over the others in your area.
Pete Dupuis says that the competition isn’t other gyms, but rather, the prospect’s indecision. Your goal is to help them make a decision and take action.
You can show your understanding of your prospect’s wishes by offering a trial or temporary membership. This is also an opportune time to create a sense of urgency by offering a time-sensitive discount.
I Don’t Like Being Tied to a Contract
There are several ways you can handle this objection. The most common option is to offer short-term or month-to-month contracts. However, if you detect a pattern of the prospect giving up on past exercise and diet efforts, you can suggest that signing up for the gym membership can also represent a commitment to stick with the game plan this time.
Remember to empathize with the prospect to build trust and rapport. Make them feel comfortable and valued, avoid confrontation, and offer reassurance when needed.
Use this moment to highlight your gym’s primary services to help your prospect stay engaged. If you have one available, you can tell a story about a member signing the membership contract as a catalyst to achieve his fitness goals. In addition, you should have a transparent and fair cancelation policy.
I Need to Speak to My Spouse First
The “I need to talk it over with my spouse” response is a classic sales objection. It is very effective at slowing down the sales process. When you hear it, there is very little you can do to move the membership sales effort forward. The best response is to show empathy for the prospect’s situation.
You could say, "I know what you mean. I don't make any financial or time commitment decisions without discussing them with my spouse. But let me ask you something."
A response like this allows you to ask some follow-up questions, such as:
🗣️ What do you think your spouse will say?
🎯 Does your spouse have fitness goals?
🆓 To give your spouse a better idea of what we offer, do you think they would like to work out with you here on a free pass for a week?
These questions can help you better understand your prospects’ perspectives and current issues. These questions may also get the other person involved in the sales process. However, to avoid this type of objection, involve all the decision-makers before you begin the membership sales process.
I Don’t Think I’ll Use the Membership Enough
Explain how achievements from your workout regime motivate you to commit more time and energy to a fitness plan. Nothing inspires like success. For this reason, this situation provides an excellent opportunity to share a story of how fitness and body-shaping gains motivated a member to go from a few days a week to 4 or 5 days a week.
You can also highlight the various classes and amenities of the membership package. Be sure to mention online classes if you offer them.
Preparing to Win
Each sales call allows you to lead a prospective member along the best path to purchasing a membership. However, your success in the sales leadership role depends on how well you understand your prospect’s needs and attitude at key stages in the process.
Sales objections are excellent cues for helping you choose the best approach to increase your chances of signing a new member. As a result, preparing for the most common objections can significantly improve your membership sales numbers.
To find out how Kilo can prepare you for a more successful membership sales presentation, book a free call with an expert today.
