TAP system aims to keep dealers connected to customers after the sale

Sales trainer Joe Marcoux recently launched his latest endeavor: an online keep-in-touch fitness system called TAP — which stands for Total Accountability Partner — to keep the relationship between specialty fitness dealers and their customers alive long after the equipment sale.

“Unfortunately, as specialty retailers, we’ve gone away from customers’ needs to focus on how much do they want to spend and how quickly can I make the sale. You get the customer in, you get the customer out, but people don’t follow up. What’s been effectively happening is we’ve been flushing our customers out the door, never to see them again,” Marcoux, founder of Just Did It Training and author of “Boutique Thinking in a Big Box World,” told SNEWS®.

To help dealers maintain relationships with clients to keep them coming back, Marcoux developed TAP, a multi-level automated system that sends emails to clients to confirm they have been working out via a yes/no email response. If over the course of seven, 14 or 21 days — based on what the client and dealer have set up — no workouts have been registered, the retailer will be notified via email, which then gives him the authority to call the client to check in.

“TAP is your total accountability partner. It is a follow-up tool with the intent of getting the customer committed and keeping them accountable to the product that they purchased in a specialty fitness store,” Marcoux said.

TAP sends retailers a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly account of their clients’ progress. As part of the program, dealers provide customers with a free fitness assessment four times a year.

“It becomes a marketing tool for their store based on permission marketing. The customer pays for it, but it’s a minimal fee. For the dealer, it gets the customer back in the store, which is what they’re all craving because they don’t have enough traffic,” Marcoux told us.

Users who sign up through a retail store pay $90 for the year as opposed to $120 for those who sign up directly through the Internet. They can program their workout schedule into an online database that includes biometric information for tracking and analysis. Data tracked includes weight, body fat percentage, resting heart rate, and chest, waist and hip measurements.

The TAP website also features original content, such as workout and equipment information, specific to a client’s needs. All information and emails are branded with the participating retailer’s logo.

“Whenever a client logs in, the store’s logo is on the page and makes it look like the store is the educator. It always comes back to the store,” he added.

Marcoux said programs like TAP create more store traffic on a consistent basis and increase sales through relationships.

“Dealers want their customers to come back. They don’t necessarily need to buy every time they come in — although it would be nice — but if they come back and they’re getting results, the dealer’s business is going to grow,” he said. “If customers buy-in, they’ll buy more. There’s no way that just by being an order-taker that the business is going to grow.”

To learn more, visit http://doyourworkout.com/ or contact Marcoux at 204-233-6048.