It might seem logical to start pre-sales as early as you can. However, the long wait will create anxiety and may develop a negative impression on your members. There is a limit to how far in advance you can begin your pre-sales activities simply because you are selling something that doesn’t exist yet.
Keep a close monitor on project management and make sure that deadlines are met by your contractors and external suppliers so that you don’t miss on your launch date. It would be good to announce your opening date about one or two weeks before you actually open.
With this in mind, it would then be ideal to wait 8-12 weeks before the launch date to start pre-sales.
What to sell
What can you sell during pre-sales? You can offer trial packs and foundation memberships that are priced specially for opening. Make sure that you have your target audience in mind as well as a list of pain points you can address before you go out there and aggressively start pre-sales.
- Build Trust – establishing trust is very important before you sell anything to your target audience. You can do this by creating a professional looking website with instructor credentials. Provide great customer instead of focusing
- Convenience – when talking to your prospects, remind then that your gym is located in a place that they frequent. Focus on the accessibility and transportation connections that will make it convenient for them to visit the gym.
- Barriers to entry – prospects will take an interest with the products that they havent tried before, but how do you sustain this interest. For prospects such as these, it would be difficult to sell them the full memberships. It is better to offer them the option of a trial pack first so that they can have a proper go at it without committing.
The follow-up
There should always be after-sales care and support for your fitness business. After successfully selling pre-sales membership, do not go silent and just wait for launching day as this will create doubt and anxiety for your paying members. Keep them engaged and use this as an opportunity to build your community.
- Get them involved – keep your new members engaged and provide information on your renovation period. Everybody wants to know about the development of a new space, so updates on how things are looking will be good content. Have your audience sign up to email waitlist and feed them regular content that will keep them excited
- Let them get to know YOU – this will be a good chance to run awareness campaigns. Posting content such as video intros from your team or a quick peak of your gym will be perfect.
