People see through your cryptic sales pitches and you’re going to piss them off. That’s how you trash your database.
Tag Archive for: Membership Sales
Stuart Lindsay has been in technology and data-driven marketing research since the early ’80’s. He’s one of the golf industry’s foremost thought leaders on industry trends, localized marketing research, weather impact statistics, and fact-based decision-making for club operators.
Today, we’re digging deep into where the golf business has been and where it’s heading…and most importantly, what club owners can do about it.
In today’s Golf Course Owner and Operator’s Forum, we’re discussing how to market your golf facility.
I’m leading a discussion on strategies that golf courses typically fail to consider. Golf is what we call a “Considered” buying process. The time it takes to usher someone along the customer lifecycle from stranger to loyal customer is often considerable – 2 to 6 months or more.
The private club model is changing. In the past, exclusivity and privacy was highly touted. Nowadays, younger generations don’t look nearly as favorably on these kinds of policies and clubs in general – of course there are elite exceptions.
Most golf courses are working harder and harder to attract and retain membership.
Read more
KPI Golf responded to 2 requests for proposal today – one of which was a whopping 90 pages long!
So, you can probably imagine the work that went into composing a 90-page RFP. I won’t mention which golf club it was, but they spent a whole lot of time, energy and money on conducting market research, surveys, competitive analysis, and outlining much of the club’s recent history. Read more
John Brown discusses the options that struggling and underperforming golf courses have. The first big misconception is that professional advice and exploratory conversations only come with hard sales pitches for club management contracts. This isn’t the case at all.
The logic first step to take is to pick up the phone and call a consulting or golf management company. KPI Golf offers free phone consultations, investing hours in learning about the club’s challenges and assessing best fit.
Visiting my parents in Southwest Florida this week. Their golf community lost their golf course a couple years back and it’s super sad to see.
All the residents came here for social golf, sunshine and fun…now they have to take their games on the road.
I talked with a group of them about strategies for underperforming clubs and how things could have been different. Read more
KPI’s John Brown and Casey Bourque discuss the advantages of golf course clustering for golfers, staff members and for operators. According to John, this was a hugely successful strategy that helped many of his managed clubs in the past. Whether it’s buying power, shared supplies, or improved opportunities for customers to play golf, clustering is a great idea.
Case Study
Facility: 18 Hole golf club with small clubhouse
Location: Resort area in the Southeastern United States
Ownership: Member owned
Focus: Growing revenues while trimming operating expenses
About: A small annual budget of $850,000, but a great public golf course with small food and beverage operation. A typical story after the market downturn – the club was originally built as part of a moderately priced housing development that had long since been sold out. This facility was losing money.
Case Study
Facility: 18-Hole golf course, practice facilities and fine dining
Location: Northern New England
Ownership: Privately owned by a single individual
Focus: Market positioning, membership sales and establishment of golf operations
About: This was a full golf course design and construction of a brand new exclusive private golf club. The course was built over the top of a failed public golf course on a large beautiful piece of ground. This was a startup project, owned by one man, engaging a high profile golf course architect.
Case Study
Facility: 18-hole championship course, fitness center, large pool complex, indoor and outdoor golf practice facilities, multiple restaurants with catering.
Location: Southwestern United States
Ownership: Formerly owned privately until membership group purchased the club in the mid-2000’s.
Focus: Cost Containment
About: This club was struggling to break even financially despite a rich history and strong local reputation. With so many amenities and club assets, there were a few major, and unique hurdles that we needed to overcome to be successful.
Case Study
Facility: 18-Hole championship golf course, indoor and outdoor pools, indoor and outdoor tennis, large fitness center, and multiple dining and catering venues.
Location: Northern New England
Ownership: Formerly developer owned. Membership group bought golf course and facilities out of bankruptcy.
Focus: Pivoting club operations for a locally underserved private golf market
About: This was a developer owned private facility that went through bankruptcy. It has world class amenities and a great golf course designed by a famous architect. The current membership group bought the golf course and facilities out of bankruptcy.
Case Study
Facility: 54-Hole public municipal golf course
Location: Southeastern United States
Ownership: Municipal – County Owned
Focus: Containing Costs and Return to Profitability
About: This is a county-owned golf facility that was losing several hundred thousand dollars on an annual basis. Because of its municipal status, they couldn’t make a great deal of money through the operation, but certainly didn’t want to lose. We were charged with helping the facility break even.
Case Study
Facility: An 18-hole, 350 members country club with golf, pool, tennis and dining
Location: Northeastern United States
Ownership: Individual Private Ownership
Focus: Containing Costs and Return to Profitability
About: This is a well-established country club with an annual operating budget of $3 Million. When we were brought in, the club had been managed by another golf management company. The club was losing $350,000 annually
Case Study
Facility: Private Full Service Country Club on a Barrier Island
Location: Southeastern United States
Ownership: Member Owned
Focus: Financial Turnaround & Cost Containment
About: Club offers 18 holes of top-end golf, beaches, pools, tennis, fine and casual dining, property ownership, equestrian, and other amenities in a secluded private island environment. Despite a roster of over 900 club members, this facility was bleeding money. The annual operating budget of $20 million was sinking this extraordinary place slowly but surely.