7 Goals You Need To Set For Your Business in 2016

It's hard to believe but the year is almost over and 2016 is fast approaching.  

So while you’re preparing to help all of your clients and members reach their goals and follow through with their resolutions, don’t forget to set your own goals for your tennis business as well. 

Adjust this list according to your specific needs or use it as inspiration to create a list of your own. 

1. Learn something every day. Education, Education, and more Education.  Guess what? You’re already doing that by reading this! Congratulations on reaching your first goal!  When you wake up in the morning, or before you go to sleep, or at 2:00 in the afternoon when you need to relax, grab a book or an article or plug in your earphones and listen to an audio book. If you make it a point to learn one thing every day this year, think of how much smarter you’ll be one year from now. 

2.  Make Strategic Planning a Priority.  You need to make planning a priority in your business.  Quit copying and pasting last years programs into this years programs.  You need to spend time each week going over what is working in your business and what needs to improve. Its too easy to go from season to season without evaluating your programs.  Sit down with your staff at least once a quarter and go over what is working and what needs to change.  Take 1 hour at the end of every season with your staff and really think out what is working and what needs to be improved.  This is a must for 2016.

3. Organize Your Office. Nothing kills productivity faster than walking in to your office with stacks of papers piled up on your desk, file folders all over the floor, and sticky notes everywhere. Make it a point to organize and de-clutter your office. 

4. Delegate more tasks, more often. I’m as guilty as you are. I think no one else can do as good a job as me so I tend to take on more than I should. Write out the tasks you do on a regular basis and find someone to do those tasks that don’t absolutely need your assistance. 

5. Know your numbers. Have one of your tennis staff members send you the most important numbers every day. They can tell you how many people played, how many lessons were given, how many reservations you had, how much revenue was generated, what were last years numbers for that date, and how are we trending for the month.

6. Be consistent in your marketing. This is incredibly important. Your team should be involved in community events, talking to prospects, introducing current members to your other offerings, distributing print marketing and gift cards. Never stop marketing your business. 

7. Add value for your current members.  It is in January when your current members feel most neglected. They see you fawning over all of your new members, focusing all of your attention on the new blood and forgetting about them. Remember these members have already proven they are willing to spend with you, so now is the time to sell them more! The New Year is the perfect time to talk to them about lessons and what their plans are for the upcoming year.

Remember that a goal is really just a dream unless you put it within a system and put measurable objectives in place. So for example, to accompany each of the goals above, your goal could be: read one article every morning, organize one area of your office every Friday at 2:30, Have at least 20 different marketing systems in place at all times, talk to or email up to 5 current members every day. 

No matter what is on your list, always remember that you have to start somewhere. Lots of tennis professionals set goals but very few actually take action on them.

​I encourage you to just pick one of the things from this list and make it a point today to implement it. 

Talk Soon,
Patrick