Today’s business world moves fast.

The longer it takes to get day-to-day tasks done, no matter how necessary they are, the less effective you can be at running your health club. In fact, a recent survey of small-business owners showed that they spend 32 percent of their time working ON the business (instead of just day-to-day operations), but 73 percent prefer spending their time on building their business.

That’s why the most efficient health-club operators are sure to use a high-quality gym management software system to help cut time out of the routine—and not-so-routine—tasks that help keep their clubs and studios growing. This not only can help them run the club more efficiently, but also help grow the bottom line by cutting out waste and improving sales and customer satisfaction.

Here are just four of the top gym management software tools that successful health clubs are using to run their businesses better:

1. Lead Generation

The Old Way: You or your sales team would spend your days cold-calling; placing lead boxes; putting fliers up around town; and spending countless dollars on newspaper, TV, and radio ads.

The Smart Way: Instead of using resource-heavy methods to beat the bushes for leads, smart club operators are using their gym management software to get their target audience to come to them. Providing content in the form of blogs and videos, along with coordinated social media, can not only bring in more prospects more quickly, but it will also typically bring in better prospects that are easier to convert into members, all for less money.

2. Lead Nurturing

The Old Way: Sales staff is required to follow up with leads. They use spreadsheets or a simple database to log a call. A separate calendar is needed to schedule future actions if the lead isn’t misplaced under a pile of scrap papers, often with names and numbers and little else.

The Smart Way: Automated email campaigns and workflows. Tasks to keep your salespeople on track. Being able to track behaviors. All of this is taking your database beyond just a phone list, allowing you to segment your audience and make sure you are sending the right message to the right prospect based on what he or she is interested in and how he or she has already interacted with your health club. Successful studio owners know that utilizing gym management software to help nurture leads takes more of those hard-earned leads through the sales funnel until the salesperson (or online portal) gets them to sign on the dotted line.

3. Billing

The Old Way: You run your billing every month. Send out notices. And then hope that your members send in their payment before you must chase them down—or turn them over to someone for collections.

The Smart Way: Having as many of your customers use electronic fund transfers (EFT) or Automated Clearing House (ACH) not only cuts the time it takes for you to be paid, but it also shows financial folks that you have a steady and anticipated flow of receivables, freeing up cash that you can use to grow your business. Therefore, the most successful clubs use software that handles point of sale, down payments, billing, and other financial transactions seamlessly and with easy-to-understand reporting.

4. Managing Staff

The Old Way: Writing up paper schedules. Manually doing payroll by looking at timecards and matching them to a paper schedule. Pouring over spreadsheets to ensure that tasks are done and staff members are accountable for all parts of their job descriptions.

The Smart Way: By utilizing a gym management system that incorporates team management, successful health-club owners can help them do their jobs more efficiently, maxing out their productivity and member satisfaction. By having a one-stop, readily available way to see schedules, understand and check on tasks, and run payroll, owners are free to grow their business.

Investing in a gym management program can help take some of the workload off of you and the staff, making owners and managers not only be more productive but more profitable in the long run.

What would you save time doing by using gym management software?