Business Challenge: 7,000-member fitness club offered all sorts of interesting programs for a broad range of target audiences but there was a problem. They didn?t have an effective way of taking the message to the market and the club ended up losing money on most of its marketing initiatives.

Diagnosis: In one pragmatic sentence, the club simply failed to generate qualified sales leads for its programs and the traditionally practiced hard sales method just didn?t work.

Solution: The club desperately needed a clockwork-like system to generate sales leads on an ongoing basis, so staff members were not condemned to ?pestering? existing members to sign up for additional programs. Considering pros and cons, investments and potential return on investment, the club decided to tear down its ?look-at-us-how-pretty-we-are? type website and get it rebuilt with a different purpose in mind: Marketing their services and generating a preponderance of qualified sales leads for their programs, so happy clients and members could spread the club?s name and reputation, thus building its brand.

Value Received: As a result of developing the new website, instructors and personal trainers had their own web sections and were required to make their own changes and keep their sections up to date. So, first the club saved an annual $ 37,000, the salary of the former webmaster. The club reduced the number of sales staff by 42% because the website properly qualified prospects and by the time they would come to the club, they were ready and willing to get started. Salespeople just filled in the paperwork and got new members started. The club perceived value went up because now instead of chasing people, people sought out the club based on what they read on the website. Also, to further reduce workload, members could make certain changes to their account. All in all, the website was doing almost all the selling, and it also masterfully started screening out tire kickers and bargain hunters.