5 Reasons You Need To Stop Using A Spreadsheet To Manage Your Gym’s Leads
It’s very common for a gym to use a spreadsheet for managing leads. It’s a free and basic way to add contact info, comments and a checklist. But even the most advanced spreadsheet full of formulas and fancy tricks is still an extremely leaky bucket. Spreadsheets might be free — but they are costing you a LOT more with lost sales, and in this blog article we’re going to show you how.
You have to manually enter data.
With a spreadsheet you need to manually enter a lead’s details, status and any comments. Not only is this very time-sensitive, it leaves a lot of room for human error (e.g you spoke to them but forgot to update the spreadsheet). A lot of leads also get lost because they are coming in from so many different sources (your website, social media, walk-ins, phone calls etc) and aren’t all added into the sheet.
With a CRM, all of your leads are added to a central location with all of their contact info, no matter what source they came from. You also don’t need to do any double handling, because when you contact a lead it’s automatically added to their history. A CRM centralises all your leads which saves times and avoids missing or losing leads.
And how about when a lead converts? With a spreadsheet, you then have to manually enter them AGAIN into your member management software. Not all CRMs will sync, but with GymLeads this happens automatically to avoid any double handling (or human error).
You can’t easily see where leads are coming from.
If you want a successful marketing campaign, you need to know where your leads are coming from. This allows you to spend your time, energy and budget on the best performing marketing channels.
With a spreadsheet you’re relying on your team to be 100% accurate with updating data (which even the best admin in the world can rarely do), and how do you know what your most successful lead sources are? 50% from your website? 30% from walk-ins? Who knows.
If you DO want to try and see where leads are coming from you have to manually go through each row, and keep a tally of each channel (if your spreadsheet is even tracking it).
With a CRM like GymLeads you can see your best channels at the click of a button. Not only that, you don’t even have to input where the lead came from it in the first place — it happens automatically. Not only do you save countless hours entering or filtering data, you’ll have a better return on your marketing spend when you know which channels you should be investing in.
There’s no reporting.
From a productivity perspective, this is one of the biggest flaws with a spreadsheet. If you’re advanced you can set up some filters and do some manual calculations, but there’s no way to see things like:
Lead conversion rate
Time to close a lead
Customer acquisition cost
Best performing staff
Days between follow ups
Average contacts required per sale
Top performing marketing channels
Projected revenue based on pipeline
With a CRM you’re able to get valuable insights to help you make better decisions — so you can increase sales and grow your gym. Most CRMs will do this — but with a CRM like GymLeads, the entire platform has been designed around the workflow of a gym, and reporting is one of the most important pieces.
There’s no automation.
This one is HUGE. It saves you a LOT of time, removes human error and increases your sales at the same time. Did you know 44% of clients move on to another gym if you don’t respond fast enough? Don’t let a clumsy sales process be the reason you miss out on customers.
We’ve already mentioned how a CRM can automatically add leads and update their contact info — but the automation we’re talking about now is even more advanced. With a tool like GymLeads you can even go a step further and automate your entire sales process, with trigger-based emails, SMS and follow-ups customized for every lead.
How many more sales could you generate if leads were automatically followed up with? The cherry on top is you can send emails and texts directly inside of GymLeads (meaning you don’t have to use your phone, then manually enter that you texted them).
It’s really hard to scale up.
With a spreadsheet it’s hard to scale up your sales and marketing. Or if you do, it gets messy fast, and any problems you had at a smaller level are now amplified. To properly scale you need a marketing funnel and a repeatable sales process. With spreadsheets, this doesn’t exist.
Unless each customer’s individual journey is manually tracked with multiple cells and pages from start to finish, you have no way of knowing their sales journey. You need to scroll down to list number 84 on page 6 to find what stage they are at — only to find out your sales team forgot to update it.
With a CRM you can assign your staff contacts, show who needs what, when leads were last contacted, when to follow up etc. GymLeads not only shows your entire marketing funnel, it clearly shows you what’s working, what isn’t and what you need to do with clear tasks, reporting and automated follow ups.
These can even be customised to send at different points of the sales journey. Just finished an initial call? Have a text message sent straight after with all the important info summarised. This elevates the customer experience and sets your gym apart.
To put it bluntly — if you want to scale up, you’ve got no hope with a spreadsheet.
Spreadsheet vs CRM summary.
For a quick recap, here’s the biggest difference between a spreadsheet and a CRM.
With A Spreadsheet
You have to manually enter + edit data.
Forgot to add a lead? There goes a sale!
Not all your contacts are updated
Can’t see where leads are coming from
Forgot to add a lead? There goes a sale!
No reporting or sales insights
With A CRM
See all your leads in one place
Convert more leads into members
Save a LOT of time and double handling
Avoids missing or losing leads.
Stop sales slipping through the cracks
Automate your entire sales process
Track where leads are coming from
What makes GymLeads different?
So if you’re currently using a spreadsheet, you might be considering switching to a CRM after reading this! There are a lot of CRMs out there — how are you meant to choose?
The biggest challenge with generic CRMs (like HubSpot, PipeDrive or Monday) is that they aren’t designed specifically for gyms. There is a lot of setup required, there are so many settings and filters that don’t apply to a gym, and your team doesn’t end up properly using it because it’s confusing.
GymLeads has worked with the best fitness trainers in Australia and dug deep into what’s the best way to run a fitness business. It’s all built in — from the funnels to the outreach to the reporting, everything is designed to help you run a better fitness business.
GymLeads is a CRM specifically for gyms, trusted by fitness businesses in over 15 countries. You can read our customer testimonials, or book a free demo here to find out how many extra sales you could be generating.