No wonder we're all such miserable bast**ds.
Embarking on a new season, club pros eagerly await a flood of customers to buy gear and coaching - their two biggest streams of revenue. Horribly, it may well unfold like this:
... 15p for a pencil, 75p for a Kit Kat ... "Oh, and I'd better take a bottle of water because every time I go out, I really make myself hoarse screaming at all the ****ING PUTTS I MISS!"
A custom-made solution
Customer loyalty can't be taken for granted, but it can be custom-made. And if pros don't strike with a set of irons straight away, they can reel customers in with one club - the putter.
In the same way people see their holiday videos from Disney World and think, "Is that fat bloke really me?" when they view a video of their putting stroke they are often horrified. Give them a putter that rolls pure and throw in on-the-spot custom-fitting that slots a new flat-stick smoothly into their stroke, and they can not refuse to buy. It makes them feel like they own the greens.
And - most significantly - despite what some companies claim, golfers cannot get a genuine custom-fitting on the internet!
The difference between Yes! Golf and the Wall Street brands is that we have successfully transplanted our Tour philosophy to club golf. At Tour events, our face-to-face technical treatment of pros has always marked out Yes! Golf as something special on the practice greens. Today it's probably one of the few tactics left for club pros to fight back against the web, and to convert those browsers back into paying customers.
We learned one vital thing on Tour: by offering real-time digital video capture, stroke analysis and consistent coaching methodology (courtesy of the Harold Swash programme) - custom-fitting works because of face-toface consultation, static and dynamic analysis, and trial and error.
This practice green strategy brings training aids into the equation, which can aid putter sales. Harold Swash is held in the highest esteem as a Tour putting maestro. As a result, Yes! Golf is deluged with putting aids seeking our seal of approval, and Harold scrutinises them all. The vast majority are politely declined, but those that work - and they have to work damn well - make it onto the Yes! Golf approved list.
Some of these are curiosities that brilliantly draw golfers into a dialogue, as they ask what the hell they're all about. These range from the criminally cunning to the insanely basic. Once the customer is drawn into dialogue, the sale of putter and putting aid as a package is within a pro's grasp. By delivering a holistic putting experience instead of just a cold iron stick, we reckon pros can quadruple putter sales.
Engaging with the customer
Here's how it works:
A customer picks up a putter, assumes the position and makes a couple of purposeful practice strokes before missing the point entirely. Now is the time to pounce.
"How does that putter feel, madam? Sorry ... Sir. It was the hair, Mr Edfors. I notice your lie is very toe-up. Do you often have a problem with misses to the right?
"We could very quickly look at that and adjust the lie. Have you ever seen your stroke from a face-on view, with a freeze-frame analysis? You'd be surprised..."
Nothing sells like instant improvement. You can tell customers they have improved until you're blue in the face, but with video analysis, a new putter and custom-fitting for under £200, you have embarked on an on-going, instore relationship.
It's an easy soft sell, because you're not ‘selling' anything, you're chatting about putting. Without that engagement you let customers bore themselves out of the shop.
Hear your customers. "See you later", means; "See you once I've been on Amazon.com".
