Golf Blog | Golf Convergence

by J. J. Keegan, Managing Principal of Golf Convergence
Author of the ING Media Award-Winning Book
The Business of Golf—What Are You Thinking?

On March 1, 2011, we crossed the threshold asthe 500th copy of “The Business of Golf” was purchased. On March 15, 2011, the 600th copy was sold. Amazing, I am so grateful to you.

The GCSAA sold 50 copies in its Bookmart in two days during the Golf Industry Show. Keiser University College of Golf just adopted the book as its capstone class for graduating seniors, and theUniversity of Wisconsin – Stout PGM Program adoptedthe book for its Fall, 2011 class, purchasing 70 copies.Wow! I am deeply indebted to the GCSAA and the universities. Thank you.

What has been driving the book sales that you can learn from?

Word-of mouth is the primary driver of sales. While I continue to passionately market via email, advertisements in Golf, Inc., Golf OperatorMagazine, and rented targeted lists from the National Golf Foundation, you telling others about the book is having a substantial impact on sales

Our passion is to listen, learn, help, and lead you as you optimize the financial return of your golf facility. Truth be told about publishing, if you sell out the first run (1,000 books in this case) you might breakeven. This is a labor of love, this desire to ensure that your vision becomes reality.

The lesson learned for you? Your customers’ word of mouth has a significant influence on your results.

I still like the idea of giving away complimentary bag tags with your course name and brand message to each golfer. That bag tag becomes a marketing message that your customers carry to the 4 to 7 other golf courses they play annually. Personally, I always look at the bag tags of my playing partners and ask, “Did you enjoy your experience at that course? Is that a place I should play?”

What That Means to You – Free continuing education!

We believe that the successful formula for the operation of a golf course is value = experience – price. To the extent that the experience exceeds the price charge, customer loyalty is created.

Therefore, we will continue to provide a flexible approach to our independent thinking in providing a vision for the operation of golf courses. To do that, we are offering the following complimentary resources.

Webinars

To ensure that you are receiving full value from the book, we have launched a complimentary Webinar series. As a purchaser of the book, you are guaranteed a seat at each presentation. If you miss a seminar, the Webinars are available for download at: http://www.golfconvergence.com/library/webinars.

The webinars presented so far focused on:

• February 1, 2010 Strategic Planning
• February 10, 2010 Geographic Local Market Analysis
• February 22, 2010 Leveraging Weather to You Advantage
• March 8, 2010 Technology: An Investment or Expense

At each one of these Webinars we are offering value-priced opportunities to get customized answers for each of your courses.

PICTURE

Our next Webinar on March 22, 2010 will focus on financial benchmarking: valuable or inconsequential. We will conduct a national survey of golf course operators integrating the results in the Webinar, just as we did for Technology.

The National Labor Study and the Technology Survey of Golfers and Golf Course operators can be downloaded at:

Blogs

We remain prolific in writing and have posted blogs http://golfconvergence.com/blog/ that you might find of interest. They focus on the following:

• Do These People Have Lives? Social Media Adoption by Golfers
• What Are the Best Options for Discounting?
• The Golfer Ultimately Determines the Price
• The Surge in Privatization of Municipal Golf Courses

If you want to keep really current with new perspectives as we travel, follow us at twitter.com/golfconvergence.

Operational Tools

We have posted the resources discussed in the book online for your FREE download at: http://golfconvergence.com/interactive-content-gc. These tools include:

• Valuing the Golf Experience – what is the correct green fee price?
• Green Fee Calculator – set prime time Saturday and the rest of your fees are automatically calculated
• Calculating deferred capital expenditures
• Determining if your maintenance labor hours are appropriate
• Assessing whether your equipment fleet can produce the proper playing conditions for your designated tier

Speaking Engagements

It is always a pleasure to speak in front of a live audience. This month we are featured at the Atlantic Golf Symposium on Prince Edward Island for HollandCollege and the Canadian PGA Pros. We are also speaking before the PGM class at theUniversity of Colorado.

If your local chapter of the CMAA or the NGCOA is looking for a speaker, it would be my pleasure to customize an interactive session based on your perceived goals.

The Vision

As for Golf Convergence, we are very pleased to be emerging as one of the leaders in education for the golf industry. This education component complements our strategic consulting practice, which is based on our philosophy of “listen, learn, help and lead.“ We empathize with the challenge large associations have in creating and updating meaningful curricula in a timely manner.

Our Webinars are complimentary and provide the registrants operational tools that can be implemented immediately at their facilities. With each class filled to capacity, we are thrilled to be guiding golf course owners as they seek to ensure that their vision becomes reality.

Please call us when we can help you on your journey. We excel at solving problems and finding answers that are easy and cost-effective to implement. We hope to have the opportunity to work with you to develop solutions to your problems.

Thank you

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2011 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.