One mistake I see a lot of tennis pros and clubs make is waiting until January to put together a plan to take full advantage of the opportunities in the first quarter of the year.
Clubs scramble to put together a plan without really thinking about what their goals are for the upcoming year. It is an absolute requirement to have all of your systems in place, your employees at all levels trained, and a marketing plan ready to go. If you head into January without a plan of how you are going to attack the new year you are going to be disappointed with the outcome. So let’s find a few things that you need to do by December 31 to get ready for the first quarter of 2014. 1. Make Your Goals Count In order to be able to have a positive first quarter, you have to produce the numbers and objectives that you consider to be successful for your business. You have to know the numbers that you want to reach and your entire staff has to know what the goals are which means that they need to know the numbers you are trying to reach. Don't hide it from them. If the goal is to increase lessons by 6% you need to show them how to get it done. Once your know the numbers then you need to break them down into daily, weekly, and monthly goals for each staff member. Remember, “Sell as many lessons and memberships as possible” is not a goal. Goals have to be specific and they have to be measurable. Be sure to have goals for everything: lessons, new members, referrals, personal training, stringing, and other profit area, etc. Everything that you sell needs to have a goal linked with it. 2. Design Your Marketing with a Plan There is no magical plan that is a perfect mixture of strategies that is going to always work best for your facility. To decide what plans you should implement, refer to what has worked best in the past years….but don’t just copy and paste! Think about what has produced a positive return on your investmetns in the past and see if it will work again this year. You have to have an approach that is planned out and not just done by the seat of your pants. You have to plan for the day, week, and next month but don't just copy and paste last years plan. 3. Update Your Systems Make sure that your systems that you have in place are running smoothly. If any of them are not running as you would like them to be you need to start fixing them now rather than in January. The systems we are talking about include the way in which phone calls are answered, how lessons are scheduled, billing, maintenance, marketing, membership tours, follow up with clients and anything else you do on a daily basis. In the club business your systems are important to make sure the little things don’t get missed. 4. Staff Training From the maintenance staff to the managers everyone must realize the mission of the business and the plan you have in place to make 2014 a success. Now is the time for everyone to understand what is expected of them. You need to spell out the expectations for them on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. If there are any problems with the staff now is the time to take care of it. 5. Everything has to be cleaned All clubs need to be clean but the end of the year is the time to look at the club with new eyes. If you have had a busy year take the last week of the year and clean everything so you start 2014 with a “fresh start”. One of the biggest complaints of club members is how clean the facilities are so now is the time to clean up! Clean all of the fitness equipment and any other equipment that needs to be cleaned. Get the dust cloth and get behind the front desk and make sure that every area is cleaned. You need to realize that members notice everything. So now is the time to start getting ready for the new year and new revenue. By starting now you will be way ahead of the competition!
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AuthorPatrick Kearns Archives
October 2016
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