Systemizing your New Member Process

In this article, I'm going to show you what we do when a new student enrolls. We want to ensure that we are delivering a consistently awesome experience.  To us, this is important because it establishes our relationship, communicates our brand, and ensures our culture.

Get excited about the process

If you don't get excited about systems and procedures yet - just wait until you start hiring more staff. This kind of information is a godsend.  We've cut down our training time by months using trainings like this. Take what works for you and toss the rest, and as always - if I can help your studio succeed in any way - let me know in the comments!

Systemizing authentic relationships

Our first priority is to build rapport with the new client so that they feel good when it comes to the data entry part of the signup process.  To do this, our staff asks important questions such as, "what are you hoping to get out of this program?" and "how did you hear about us?"

All of these prompts will be listed in our New Member Process Sheet and will end up helping our staff fill out the Zen Planner profile fields without making the process feel arduous for the client.

We get all of the important information on the first day

Although we want to build a relationship, the meat and potatoes of the new member process is gathering information to enter into Zen Planner.  We want to do all of this on the first day so that we can get it out of the way.

• Contact Info
• Profile photo
• Billing info
• Signed Medical Waiver
• Signed Membership Agreement
• Referral Information

We hand out a Program Folder full of goodies

No matter what program our student signs up for, we want to make sure that he/she gets something in their hand to walk away with to really anchor the fact that they just bought something of value.  Our program folder contains the following:

• Their program information and training schedule
• Information on our other programs
• A set of guidelines for new students
• Guest Passes so they can refer us to friends and family
• Info on how to login online and sign in at the Kiosk
• Info on how to make membership changes

Inside our Kids Martial Arts program folder

We don't stop serving our new member after they sign up

We have a certain protocol that our staff follows after new sign up to make sure that we deliver "Wow!" type of service.  This involves writing a postcard, letting their instructor know to expect them in their first class, and putting them correctly into Zen Planner so that they get into our automatic 2 week, 4 week and 6 week follow up system.

I suggest coming up with your ideal follow up measures and combining it with the sign up process.

Making a beautiful form that is easy for your staff to fill out

Now you should have a good idea of what you want in that first real business exchange with your new client to look like.  It's time to put it all onto a single sheet of paper that is easy for your staff to follow.

We call this our New Member Success Checklist - and you can see our version of it here.

Note: We use Google Docs for all of our forms so that they are easily found on any device and edited quickly from any browser window. I highly recommend having cloud based documents of some sort.

Train your staff how to use it

My favorite staff training quote is from my mom who said, "Showing someone something is not training them.  Training them is training them."  We roleplay and show staff members how to use the form and then we audit each form once they're finished to make sure that everything gets done correctly.  We are also updating this form every few weeks to fine tune the process.

Need help with your systems?

I'm here to serve!  austin(at)kickboxers(.)com