Data Driven - Winning in the Golf Business

I played the Golden Bear Club in Orlando today. It's outstanding. 

My friend just joined the club and he's super excited about playing more golf with his friends out there right now. It's the ideal time for the club (if they were hurting for members) to engage him in actively referring his friends to come out and experience the club with him - and possibly join as well. 

Fascinating to see the power of the 85/50 program in action from the member's standpoint. 

In this episode, we're interviewing David Mayo, the General Manager at Blue Sky Golf Club in Jacksonville, Florida. The club is managed by Hampton Golf, a company that KPI Golf is closely collaborating with on data-driven solutions to help country clubs compete.

Hampton Connect is a brand new proprietary software just entering the golf facility marketplace. It allows club managers to access real-time performance data at their facilities, and the effects are incredible.

David shares how his team at Blue Sky Golf Club is leveraging data and collaboration with Hampton Golf HQ to refine operations, contain costs, drive additional revenues, and streamline staffing levels like never before. He also shares  the tremendous cultural shifts that have occurred at the facility with added transparency and understanding at all levels of the operation.

Hampton Connect software is offered in conjunction with KPI Consult - a package offering recurring lightweight and affordable insights and deployable tactics to reach performance benchmarks at golf facilities.

KPI Consult's "Guide Posts" bring aggregated data from thousands of facilities to help clubs understand where certain spending and performance ratios need to be in order for the club to be successful.

Contact KPI Golf for more information

Stuart Lindsay has been in technology and data-driven marketing research since the early '80's. He's one of the golf industry's foremost thought leaders on industry trends, localized marketing research, weather impact statistics, and fact-based decision-making for club operators.

Stuart's of the opinion, just like Rory McIlroy, that the rules are the rules...just deal with it. At first, his opinion surprised me. Stuart is a big proponent of making golf accessible to the next generation of players.

As we talked further, he made it clear that the rules themselves are not the issue making newcomers feel confused or overwhelmed - it's more in the messaging to newcomers and the "on-boarding" processes in our sport.

Many of the rules, especially those having to do with etiquette, are designed around safety, pace of play and convenience. If our messaging would do a better job of clarifying, he believes that the rules would not be nearly the sources of confusion they seem to be.

In fact, things like our focus on medal play rather than match play seems to be perpetuated by media coverage of the major tours. Match play simply isn't conducive to television.

Stuart has many years of experience consulting and performing research for golf facilities - marketing research, feasibility studies, comparisons, operations reviews, etc.

As his career has taken him through various technological endeavors, he is one of the most qualified individuals I can think of to speak to the importance of data-driven decision making in golf operations today.

Data allows club owners to understand the ecosystem that they exist in - their customers, competition, and potential differentiators.

The problem is that aggregated data in the golf industry has been extremely hard to come by. Rounds, spending, and participation data is complete fragmented largely because point-of-sale systems haven't evolved to the point of truly integrating their respective data sets yet.

Stuart points out the importance of comparative data - simply measuring performance relative to prior weeks, months, years in real-time will prove to be a game changer for golf facilities.

He also points out that club operators need to be paying attention to this stuff and who is "owning" their customer data. Companies like Google and Facebook, as well as 3rd party bartering systems are really good at selling off customer data. This can drive a wedge between your club and your customers if you're not careful.

If you'd like to reach Stuart, he can be reached at (262) 241-7088. You can also check out  pellucidcorp.com for an incredible array of golf industry data or Edgehill Golf Advisors for more info

In today's Golf Course Owner and Operator's Forum, we're discussing how to market your golf facility.

I'm leading a discussion on strategies that golf courses typically fail to consider. Golf is what we call a "Considered" buying process. The time it takes to usher someone along the customer lifecycle from stranger to loyal customer is often considerable - 2 to 6 months or more.

Data in the golf industry is completely fragmented. There are more than 20 major point of sale systems (think cash registers with accounting software)...and they don't speak the same language.

There's really no system of aggregating and using big customer data in the golf business...until now.

KPI Consult is leveraging tools called Hampton Connect to allow clubs to track, measure and leverage real-time performance data to improve club operations. Club operators have access via phone app anywhere, with the ability to make metrics-driven decisions every day all day.

At the core, KPI Golf is built around the principle that golf courses serve as the epicenter of the communities in which they reside. The local living environment goes the way of your country club - jobs, recreation, real estate values, quality of life.

This is a story of how we have chosen to model our company - giving without expectation of anything in return.

I lost my wedding ring in the ocean this weekend.

We were on a family trip to Southwest Florida. We were staying at a beachside rental in Englewood, just south of Sarasota.

Our family is very close, and we always have a great time together, laughing and playing games. Well, the silly game that we came up with this time was volleyball...or a modification thereof. We basically all stood in a circle and tried to keep the ball going (we're terrible).

After we were finished, as I was toweling off I realized that my wedding ring was gone. It feel off my finger in the middle of the ocean while we were playing. The story that ensues is a true representation of giving without any expectation whatsoever...and a ton of luck.

Our friend John, who we met randomly on that beach modeled exactly how we have chosen to conduct our business. Intent matters and the outcome is always positive.

Cheers

We're working with a couple different golf courses right now to deploy a test run of free golf lessons as a marketing instrument. The program is part of KPI Golf Management's push to get golf courses reconsidering the relationship golf instructors have at their facilities.

I'll be dedicating 4 - 6 weeks of my time for these free sessions. I'm marketing and taking registrations all on my own. Any business that comes of it is going to the golf facility instructors and to the club. I have no interest in benefitting personally other than to document the experience and the results that come of it.

The private club model is changing. In the past, exclusivity and privacy was highly touted. Nowadays, younger generations don't look nearly as favorably on these kinds of policies and clubs in general - of course there are elite exceptions.

Most golf courses are working harder and harder to attract and retain membership.

KPI Golf's 85/50 Membership Program was developed by John Brown through his work with Troon Golf and as he build his prior golf course management company - Brown Golf Management.

The 85/50 program is about engaging your newest members to become your most important evangelists for the club. The sooner you can engage these members in the recruiting process, the more likely you are to succeed.

By creating a structure where new members are encouraged to invite their friends to experience the club, close rates are greatly increased. It's play on social proof and the natural inclination for people to justify the decision they made to join the club.

It works.

If you’re 20 or 30-something and you don’t know how to play golf, you’re making a huge career mistake. All the old dudes running companies are retiring and play more golf than any other part of the population right now. It’s not going to last forever though.

When you play golf with someone, you’re got a captive audience for 5-6 hours. All these retiring business owners and execs still have all the networks and connections they’ve accumulated their entire life. You’re one fun day away from the keys to the castle.

Learn to play golf for your career…simple as that. If you’re not getting invited to company tournaments, you’re missing out on more than a fun day in the sun. You’re not in the room and you’re not moving up the ladder my friends.

KPI Golf responded to 2 requests for proposal today - one of which was a whopping 90 pages long!

So, you can probably imagine the work that went into composing a 90-page RFP. I won't mention which golf club it was, but they spent a whole lot of time, energy and money on conducting market research, surveys, competitive analysis, and outlining much of the club's recent history.

Ownership is looking to present all relevant data (I mean ALL data) to all comers in hopes that they will be able to provide an adequate business plan to help the club turn things around. The problem that we see is that the work/reward ratio just isn't there under this kind of format.

In order for us to respond to this RFP completely and as ownership intended, we estimate 100 - 150 man hours. How can any effective organization invest this kind of effort into their own research, data analysis, strategic planning, and presentation on pure speculation? It just doesn't make sense.

It's kind of like asking all real estate agents out there to do a bunch of work finding homes for you. Whichever one happens to come up with the home you choose is the only one to get paid. If you do the math on this, each real estate company might spend 20 hours researching and touring sites with you. This, for a 10% chance to earn a fee. It's bad business.

Better strategy is to spend time properly vetting candidates. Choose the most reputable, most authoritative and trustworthy firm...and go with them. Now that they know it's their deal to keep, they'll go to the ends of the earth for you. From KPI's perspective, once we get the deal, we'll conduct all of our own intensive market research, interview staff and leadership, research historical trends, perform competitive analysis, and otherwise. But without knowing we're hired, we can only expend so much time on any project.

I know this club is trying to be thorough in their request for help. Logic would tell you that more information and more data is best, but it really isn't. I have a feeling they're deterring a good number of highly qualified firms from jumping through those hoops.