As the owner of a health club, your primary objective is to help your clients meet their fitness goals. However, that does not take away from the fact that a business is run for the purpose of earning profits, which means you need to ensure you get maximum returns from your investment.

The key to running a profitable fitness business is effective management. Whether youre buying a franchise or setting up your facility from the scratch, your personal working style and the strategies you use for managing health club facilities will determine how successful your venture is.

The primary requirement for owning and managing health club facilities is to be an authority on anything fitness related. Not only do you have to be physically fit yourself, but you also need to have a thorough understanding of the fitness business.

You should be an expert on the current and emerging trends in fitness, possess knowledge about the different types of fitness equipment and their purpose, and be able to think outside the box in order to grow your business.

You may also want to consider getting professional certifications and trainings to increase your credibility as a fitness expert!

Employee Management

You may have heard the phrase that a captain is only as good as his team. The same holds true for a manager who owns and manages a business of any sort. To be able to reach your business and financial goals, you need a strong support staff.

Staffing your facility with well-qualified, talented and enthusiastic bunch of people is one of the first things youll need to learn about how to manage a health club.

You first need to understand the requirement of each position youre looking to fill and hire people who are most suited for the role. From your customer service reps to the sales and marketing executives, from service technicians to personal trainers each one of your employee has a specialized responsibility to fulfill and your job is to ensure you get people who are capable of performing that job well!

For example, the core responsibility of your customer service executive is to ensure customer satisfaction, while your sales and marketing team has the job of acquiring new clients and coming up with strategies to promote your business.

But you, as a manager, need to make sure there is seamless integration of your employees in the business and they continue to perform at the next level by being a good leader yourself and keeping the channels of communication open at all times.

Facility Management

One of the most critical decisions youll need to take as a business owner is outsourcing the maintenance of your health club to a professional fitness solutions provider.

A fitness solutions company will make sure that your fitness equipment is operating without breakdowns and interruptions through regular checks and preventive maintenance. It will also ensure the safety inspections take place on time to identify and remove any potential security hazards.

Incorporating health club management software system for managing members, employees and more can also improve the efficiency of your business.

By using health club management software, youll be able to automate some of the more mechanical tasks that you or your employees might be performing on a daily basis such as membership and prospects management, bill payment, registrations, scheduling, etc., so you can concentrate on the more personal side of your business.

Client Management

Customer management is the trickiest and perhaps the most difficult to achieve task that those managing health club facilities have to perform.

One of the surest ways of achieving customer satisfaction is to offer your patrons excellent services. Provide them with state of the art fitness equipment to use, make sure your facility is sparkling clean all the time, minimize downtime due to machine breakdowns, and offer them some value add services to win their hearts and loyalty.

But above all, treat your customers with respect, build a personal rapport with them, and conduct yourself in a dignified manner in front of them and you can rest assured they will keep coming back to you!