I would like to share with you a Legendary quote, from my friend, Brian Tracy, in answer to the question, “What Should You Do When Your Club Is Doing Poorly?”
“Sometimes doing exactly the opposite of what you have been doing up until now, can turn out to be the perfect solution. The natural tendency for a person, when they find themselves in a hole, is to dig deeper. In many cases, the solution is to go and dig somewhere else. Remember, the first law of holes is, “When you find yourself in one, stop digging.”
Take a gander at these scenarios of DOOM and THINK about them:
Play is not what they expected so what do most daily fee clubs do? DISCOUNT their rates! (In one famous case, we doubled rates and quadrupled business!)
Memberships are down, so what do most private clubs do? Remove their joining fees. (At one club this year we did just the opposite and added a $1,000 initiation fee, we ending up selling 194 memberships!)
Competition heats up and money gets tight, so what do most resorts do? Spend LESS on marketing!
Housing sales are down, banquet sales are down, outing sales are down, so what do these organizations do? Spend money on training to increase their sales peoples’ skills?
Hell NO, whip ’em till morale improves more likely!
Yet it is a proven FACT, that the fastest way to increase income in any organization is to increase sales skills. Very often the exact opposite of what you or your competitors are currently doing is, in fact, the best strategy to shoot you out of the hole like a V-10 Rocket!
- If all your competitors discount, then you should add value instead.
- If all your competitors run ads in the local paper, Golfer Guide or similar, you should use direct mail. (Send only to golf lists.)
- If all your competitors have crummy low end websites, you should launch a top of the line site. A website with content and features that keeps people coming back automatically each month. If they come back, you have an ongoing chance to sell them. If they have no reason to come back, THEY WON’T!
- Look for Fusion alliances in your community. What non-competing businesses are servicing the same people YOU want to reach? What can you do with them that would be mutually beneficial? For example: offer a trial, month membership for everyone who buys a Cadillac, Mercedes or Lexus at the local dealership.
- Come up with a MUCH higher priced option than whatever you have now. If just a few people take advantage of your offer, it can get you out of the hole. For example, if you sell four lifetime memberships at $50,000; that’s a cool: $200,000 you can use for marketing, sales training or that big YELLOW tractor you wanted since you were six! This is one of the simplest and least used strategies of all; you know why? Because people don’t believe it will work… if you package it right is does!
You need to think of out of the box ideas. Doing the same thing the other golf courses in the area are doing will just set you up for failure!