Golf club survey shows what successful clubs are doing

In its recent survey of 105 golf clubs, Kent-based accountancy firm A4G established that nearly 50 per cent did better in 2011 than in 2010. So what did the survey tell us about what makes one club more successful than another?

Critical success factors

The report analysed and weighted clubs’ results and was able to identify a matrix of four types: Stars, Ineffectives, Could Do Betters and Bunkered. Comparing the Stars with the Bunkered reveals the most glaring differences. Stars represented 31 per cent of all clubs and these tend to:

• Have staff who had received formal sales training

• Produce regular informative emails to their members that also promote various events and functions

• Have a database that includes details such as email addresses of more than just members (such as visitors)

• Keep the website up to date

• Have tee-time booking software

• Produce regular management accounts (mostly monthly).

By comparison, the Bunkered tend to see a relative loss of income and low levels of proactivity by management. They represented 23 per cent of all clubs, tend to rate their website poorly and do not:

• Have any kind of corporate membership scheme

• Email their members regularly

• Provide their staff with sales training

• Provide their members with incentives

• Have a referral marketing strategy.

Target audiences

A4G’s managing partner Malcolm Palmer saw clubs starting to understand better how they needed to adapt what they were offering for the target market of new members in the 35 to 50 age range:

“These people have very different lifestyles to their members of 20 years ago and golf clubs need to adapt their offerings to attract and retain these types of golfers,” he said.

Malcolm also felt even the Stars could do more to engage with their local business community by improving their referral marketing techniques.

Plus he felt that having a decision-making body that understood the club as a business and the market they were in, and then acted in a business-like fashion, is critical.

Other ideas include tools, such as online booking, whether used for members and visitors or just by the office as an electronic club diary shared by the different departments, which make for greater operational efficiency. Websites are now much better understood by more clubs, but too many still don’t exploit their website’s extraordinary power and impact on the visitor by using them to showcase the club and course with top-notch photography.

Looking at cultural aspects, making the club more attractive for families and engaging more with local businesses, are two that will certainly help many more clubs to prosper.

It is imperative that clubs find ways of fitting into both the leisure lifestyles and working lives of their members, and with the odd exception, become much more relaxed about the implications of becoming places that are attractive to members with families.

Use your PGA pro

The PGA professional is actually pivotal to the club’s ability to attract people into the game and thus their local club, building up junior, ladies’ and senior sections and generally acting as the welcome area of a club for societies, visitors and members. So their position within the club footprint is also critical, and can serve to maximise footfall through their shop as well as be a reception for the club.

Malcolm Palmer summarised the differences between success and failure as: “If you ran a business, you’d expect to know your market, be able to act fast to adapt to changing circumstances, aim to know what your customers wanted and then do everything you can to satisfy those needs, keep a tight rein on the business and its cash flow, identify your club performance indicators and enthuse and lead your staff to do their best. More golf clubs are learning to do these things, and are finding that success doesn’t have to be elusive.”

• Share
• Tweet