How to Run a Successful Golf Membership Drive

As one of the premier golf course operations companies in the Carolinas, we get asked a multitude of questions on what makes your golf membership drives so successful at your semi-private and private country clubs? As you can imagine this is not a simple answer, but here are simple tips that assist our company in providing clubs with a competitive advantage.

1. Customer Service: As elementary as this may seem this is the first factor that we look at as we enter into a club operation. When you enter the doors at one of our managed clubs, you feel a sense of belonging, and your asked "how may we serve you today?". This immediate sense of importance that the potential member/member experiences is a key success factor in creating/maintaining a successful golf membership drive. Every task we perform, we are asking our clubs how does this effect our membership? You never miss customer service until you are not receiving it. We make those around us simply feel like they are our only "customer", and that they are the reason we are here.
2. Market Yourself: Utilize the current membership as a means to achieve your maximum exposure of potential new members. Find yourself "raving fans", or "cheerleaders" to influence your membership into helping the club grow. These are key people in your membership or staff that truly have a unique passion for your organization and would like to see it grow to it's full potential. Use social media as a site specific marketing tool to capture a completely diverse market share that you normally would not be able to penetrate. Most people fail to see the inherent value of social media and how it allows you to connect to your consumer.
3. Communication & Follow Through: You must be a high level communicator. The majority of the clubs that we manage, in our initial evaluation one department is never talking to the other. This creates a wide array of challenges for not only your staff but also your membership and is a reason why members are resigning from your club. The staff fails to follow through with the member because they are either un-aware or do not care. Either way it has already set you up for failure. Develop a problem and action sheet, where a problem is recorded on one end and an action on the other to help ensure these things to go unattended.
4. Accountability: Holding the clubs staff accountable for what tasks they are performing is a key success factor. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. Measure everything you do as a means to improve yourself and those around you. The majority of clubs we walk into haven't had a P&L in "X" months, who are completely unaware of their current financial status.
5. Totality: Having a successful membership drive or club turnaround initiative, is not a any "one thing". It is a complete overhaul of operations, evaluation & training of staff, and customer service revamp. You cannot just do one thing great and expect others to follow, everything must be executed with excellence.

Our business model includes all of the above information and much more. We have proven strategies and methods that are effective in turning clubs around into profit centers. With our staff we have over 175 years of golf course operations experience. We use marketing methods that work and draw members in to each of our clubs. As elementary as these tips may seem, it is often the most simple things we need to do to keep a customer!