Brutally Uncomfortable Question #6

If your restaurant loses money every year, but your golf course makes money...then why does your website have more pictures of the loser than the winner?

It’s all about Sales and Marketing (right?)

A lot of businesses talk about Sales and Marketing.  They speak about how they need to increase it, cut it, make it work better, hire new people to run it...but before making the needed change they say they need, I wonder if they understand how these two functions should work together?

Marketing (my definition) is anything you do on purpose to drive traffic into your business.

Sales is converting traffic into dollars for your business.

In the traditional world of selling, you often hear the term “features and benefits” thrown around, a lot.  Features and benefits are cozy, often bullet-pointed phrases that make people that create them feel good after putting them on a brochure, spreadsheet-style.

Guess what?  

They don’t work.

Members and potential members buy two things:  Increased pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

Pleasure is a predictable pace of play (under four hours).  Pain is slow play (five plus hours).

Pleasure is a culture that respects the course and the game.  Pain is one where you constantly putt over untouched ball-marks and hear obscenities flying from two holes away.

As these relate to Sales and Marketing specifically:

You market your conditioning, you sell putts that hold their line properly over the local muni.

You market your reputation, you sell a membership base that loves and respects the game just like you.

You market a sparsely populated course because play is limited only to members, you sell the speed of the round. 

You market the ease of finding a game with other members, you sell an interactive community.

“This all sounds great, but how do I translate all of this into picking up new members when they visit”?

Great question.

What is the first thing vehicle sales trainees learn?

GET THE CUSTOMER IN THE CAR.  

Nothing is more valuable than a positive experience.  

How does your club treat potential member visits when they come to your “showroom”? 

Do you hand them a shiny brochure with pictures of some of your best holes...or do you take a cart and show them your best holes?

Do you hand them a membership packet...or do you arrange for them to meet and play with similar, demographically selected members who you know will speak highly of the club?

Do you tell them about how you have the “best greens in the area”...or do you walk them out to a few of your greens with a putter and ask them to roll a few balls and let them decide if they are truly the best greens in the area?

Do you brag about how good your restaurant is and hand them a menu...or do you schedule a lunch with the potential member to let them decide for themselves if the food is as good as you say it is?

You wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive, but clubs throughout the country (somehow) expect potential members to join because they played once a few years ago, have a “great reputation” (does anyone ever say they have a bad one), or have it priced right with the latest membership special.

Potential members are looking for an experience that transcends the things written on your brochure or member packet, it is your choice whether you give them a memorable one.

What are you doing to make your membership more interactive?

One of the greatest benefits of being a member in the “golden years” of Country Clubs was the networking opportunities afforded to those who were smart enough to seize the opportunity.  Of course, back in those days, members were much more interactive in person than today because...well, what choice did they really have?  Without Facebook, Twitter, text messages, instant emails on their mobile phones, or phones themselves connected 24/7 to the individual, people had to meet in person to get anything done.  

The reality is, todays member is much more transient than fifty years ago.  His time is much more compressed and more instantly demanded.  Think about the last time you saw several members congregated together, sharing a cigar and after round drink, just talking about life? 

I am not suggesting that these “old customs” can be easily brought back or forced, but when you think about it, how many of your members really know their fellow members?  

Since few clubs have formal initiation programs, have adopted very relaxed admission standards, and/or make little effort to introduce new people to current members, how do new people or older members for that matter “plug-in” with one another?

Have you ever considered creating an on-line directory for your members? 

“...I don’t know how one would be received?  Many members I know wish to remain private and just want to play golf and leave”.  

With the proliferation of sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, I think the opposite is true.  I believe since few interact in person like they did fifty years ago, an on-line directory would be a welcome addition to your membership.

Wouldn’t it be helpful to know that John Thompson sells insurance and since he is a member at the club, wouldn’t you want to support him before you would a random stranger in the yellow pages?

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that Larry Smith has three children and two actively play golf...and they just happen to be the same age as your children?

Wouldn’t it be great to know that Jerry Baker’s wife is an avid Tennis enthusiast?  

With more and more people trying to buy local and support those in their immediate community, I can’t think of a better way to facilitate positive interaction with fellow members (today) than the creation of such a directory.

Outside events and their impact on your club

With membership roles down, for some, to an all-time low, clubs are increasingly looking to outside events to make up the difference in lost revenue.  On paper it looks like a great idea, but in reality, you may end up running off your normal paying customers, your members.

If your club cannot eliminate outside events completely, what then is the “right” amount of events to hold per year?  

The answer will (of course) vary from club to club, but in general, and with respect to your budget, the best approach is to take your revenue goal for the year and divide it by the fewest events you can feasibly hold.    

For example, if your goal is $100,000 in gross sales and you expect $5,000 per event, you will need twenty outside bookings to meet your goal.

Obviously, the fewer events you hold, the better.  Or is it really that obvious?

For clubs with few guidelines other than the simple formula given above or worse, the policy of, “we need as many events as possible so don’t turn ANY down”, the word “obvious” never hits them between the eyes until members start disappearing.

If you don’t think twenty events or more negatively impacts your members on what was sold as a private club, then you are kidding yourself.  

If you are already knee-deep in every other weekend outings along with another 3-4 events per month for good measure, it’s not too late to turn the ship around but you need someone (or several) at the club committed to the goal:  Maximum revenue, minimum impact.  

Below are few suggestions to accomplish MRMI:

1. Keep in mind, you have a (perceived) quality advantage -  If you are like most private clubs you directly and indirectly compete with multiple public golf courses that have conditioned their customers to pay discounted rates through sites such as golfnow.com and groupon.com.  When these courses go back and try to charge “rack” rates after discounting heavily at $15-20 more per round, trust me, it is a tough sell.  Since you probably don’t discount, the perceived value is higher for your course, and as such, should be an easier sell as most people perceive playing a private club as a higher value and a more special outing.  Use this to your advantage!

2. Steer events to Mondays (or slow days) ASAP -  I know, I know, the customer is always right...and for years you have let them dictate what day what works best for them.  But in this case, let’s keep in mind who our real customer base is, the members.  Remember:  Maximum revenue, minimum impact.  If you have traditionally hosted an event for years on a Friday, you should nicely and humbly say to the tournament director, “we have always appreciated you having your tournament with us and are eager to have you come back next year.  One change our board is implementing as a result of several membership survey’s is moving outside events to Mondays when possible.  I know you have always had your outing on Friday and I wish we could continue in that manner but we have decided for the health of our membership to move things to our slower days...”.  If they balk, you could always charge, for example, $85 for weekend events, instead of your standard $60 rate.  Ninety-ninety times out of one hundred, the tournament director will pick the lesser rate and free up your weekends or may hold the event elsewhere which brings up the next point....

3. Focus on Premium events - To maximize revenue and maximize buzz, make it a goal to hold as many “premium” events as possible if you find you need the revenue outside events bring.  “Premium” could and should be defined by the number of players that traditionally play and/or good press, i.e. mega-charities.  If XYZ organization is slow to communicate, promises 80 players, and instead delivers 50-60 players, and you don’t have a group minimum charge (which you should), you might re-think having them at your club going forward.  

4. Get it in writing - One of the biggest problems with country clubs and public courses in general as it relates to tournaments/outside events is their lack of salesmanship when it comes to renewing events?  I have been the tournament director for three separate tournaments, at three different courses, and after playing none of the three said anything more than, “thanks for coming and we hope to see you next year”.  Wow!?!?!  Why clubs/public courses are afraid to ask for a two to three year contract is odd when so many places work on contracts these days.  You could sell them the advantage of locking in the date NOW, locking in food/course rates, and maybe throw in a few extra’s for booking out in the future.  

5. Generously reward the tournament director - this again is so basic, yet so underutilized.  Why?  People love to feel and be appreciated and at times will make their decision based soley on this factor when two seemingly equal offers are on the table.  Do you give the tournament director a few round passes?  A nice shirt with the club logo?  A custom-fit driver or putter?  A couple of lessons with your pro?  When you consider the revenue they bring in and the influence they have, throwing them a few bones is cheap insurance on future business.