Cruise Lines
We were recently on a Caribbean Cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) and if there was one thing we learned from it, it was that the Cruise Line Industry does an excellent job at sales. In particular and quite different from the golf industry, they spend there time focused on your next Cruise, not the one you are currently on. Just like golf, the Cruise Line Industry is not hard selling but selling experiences using some great soft sell techniques. If you like, you can read our paper on selling in the golf industry here.

Sales Strategy 
Cruise Lines work on the future, not the present. Think about it for a minute… when your green fee customer is paying for their current round of golf why not use that as an opportunity to sell them there next round of golf? Focus on the future, not the present.

Selling Future Golf
Let’s use this example:

The customer is at the counter paying their green fee and your green fee is $50. Why not have your staff offer them an opportunity to purchase their next round of golf, right at the counter, at that time only for $45 (or some sort of discount). You collect the cash up front, more or less guarantee that they will return to your facility and hopefully increase your volume of play and loyalty. Remember all gift cards, certificates etc. have a burn rate of 10-15% which means you may not really be discounting your golf after all!

Selling Golf – A Step Further
Try this first, but consider taking it up another level with your team. If you are doing a good job using your Point of Sale system you could only offer this promotion to golfers who have played less than 20 or 10 or 5 games of golf in the past year. It doesn’t have to be offered to your “regular” players. Often it to those players that you want to become more regular. (If others do become aware of it, no problem, offer it to them in a pinch to keep them happy).

It’s amazing what you can learn from other industries about sales and growing revenues! You can view other blogs we have written on sales here.

Stay tuned for our next Biz Blog… Increase Your Golf Revenues – Part 2

We, Jeff and Tara Ciecko of CK Golf write two blogs, one is our 19th Hole Blog where we share personal experiences and the other an Industry Blog where we comment on general business and internet marketing best practices, sales strategies and give golf industry related opinions. We have owned CK Golf  for 10 years and provide marketing, social media and business services to the golf and other industries. As of August 2016 our life and our business have been ‘location independent’. Our 19th Hole Blog is about the places we visit and the things we do. If you have any questions or comments, or happen to be in the same location as us please reach out and contact us anytime.

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