Learn the newest concepts, unique approaches, and strategies that will affect your everyday activities as well as those who use your fitness center. Share insights from fitness, sports and wellness professionals—your peers and colleagues—as well as learn new strategies and techniques from industry leaders.
You’ll leave with the ability to tell your JCC’s story to the right people in the right way so that you get them in the door—and keep them coming back. You will go home with new ideas and the tools to make it happen. Most importantly, you will meet and spend time with the others who do what you do and have the opportunity for an open exchange of ideas.
Fitness/Sports & Wellness Job Track Leader: Steve Becker, Vice President, Health and Wellness Services
Consults with sports and wellness staff about programming and facilities. Oversees programs and services for health and wellness, including Discover @ the JCC, DiscoverCATCH, and Lenny Krayzelburg-JCC Swim Academy. Educational coordinator for Sports and Wellness conferences, and preferred vendor contact for sports and wellness-related vendors.
Session Title #1: What’s Unique About JCC Fitness? Ask the Experts
Speaker: Jay Jacobs, CEO, Valley of the Sun JCC
Description: After a brief ice breaker, Valley of the Sun JCC executive director, Jay Jacobs, a former JCC fitness and sports and recreation professional, shares the keys to using everything JCCs have to offer to position your department as the leader in fitness programming in your community. Jay will then be joined by a panel of JCC Association fitness and membership consultants to discuss the best practices they have learned from their JCCs and their visits to the field, which will include everything for how to best use your current space for programming, to creating a true partnership with your membership department for effective onboarding, to program pricing and more.
Session Title #2: The Power of Engagement (Joint session with Membership & Engagement)
Speakers: Christopher Laurin, Director of Marketing Communications, HSG, General Manager, Quebec Region and Tonya Faganely, Vice President, Eastern Canada, Health Systems Group
Description: If you want to keep JCC participants around for a long time, and even more importantly, if you want to help them reach their goals, harnessing the “power of engagement” is vital. Engaging them at the J should not be left to chance. It should happen by design, carefully thought through, and planned out. This workshop will review the framework for creating an environment where your participants will thrive, exhibit a strong sense of belonging, commitment and loyalty.
Session Title #3: Seal the Deal: Elite Sales Strategies for the Fitness Professional
Speaker: Jason Stowell, Health and Wellness Division Director, Pittsburgh JCC
Description: Most fitness professionals are excellent practitioners but rarely receive substantial sales training. This in turn is why closing percentages on new client agreements hovers around 25%. We can do better by professionalizing not just how we train, but how we sell fitness. In this session we will focus on a number of elite tactics developed by some of the sales greats like Zig Ziglar. We will learn to leverage the small nuances in language, tonality and presence to intentionally build subconscious rapport. Couple that with a well designed and powerful fitness presentation and you will earn more clients immediately. By the end of this session not only will you have the tools to build out an exceptional sales process, you will also leave with 20 low-or-no cost ideas that you can implement today.
Session Title #4: Coaching for Service Excellence (Joint Session with Membership & Engagement Track)
Speakers: Christopher Laurin, Director of Marketing Communications, HSG, General Manager, Quebec Region and Tonya Faganely, Vice President, Eastern Canada, Health Systems Group
Description: This program transfers essential skills to managers, supervisors and team leaders for assisting and encouraging employees to excel at serving the customer. Methodologies for establishing motivating, non-negotiable performance standards and systems for tracking and measuring performance are the focus of this workshop. You will gain the tools and techniques required to achieve and maintain high levels of service excellence.
Session Title #5: JResponse: Fitness and Sports & Recreation’s Role in Times of Crisis (Joint session with Sports and Recreation Track)
This session will focus on preparing for disaster. The rest of the time will be a facilitated discussion about what might be needed at your JCC in your department if you were faced with a disaster and how might you be able to help another JCC if it were faced with a disaster. What do you currently have in place at your JCC or in your department to be ready for such a situation? What do you need to do to ramp up and be as ready as possible?