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Who would you meet at your club in the good old days?

Funny question you might be thinking.

However, I believe that the answer to that question lies at the heart of the current decline of bowling and bowling clubs.

If you can answer it thoroughly and properly you have one piece of a two piece puzzle.

Now you just have to find (or create) the other piece.

In my travels I hear a lot of bad news about bowling clubs and I hear the same reasons for this decline; smoking ban has reduced sales over the bar; can’t get any juniors in; everyone is getting older; green maintenance is too expensive; supermarkets selling cheap booze; people aren’t taking up the game etc etc.

These are largely assumptions with no hard evidence behind them.

What I never hear is: the club projects a gloomy, unwelcoming image; we don’t allow or encourage the general public to come along; we are really only interested in people who want to bowl; we have the best red tape in the county; we don’t take any notice of what’s going on elsewhere in our local community.

Conversely, whether you like it or not there is hard, measurable evidence for this at many clubs.

The Successful Bowling Club Manifesto lays out a plan for taking your club back to the good old days and creating something you can really be proud of and that your local community will support and enjoy. You can get it Free here

Don’t get in the way at Feeding Time!

2 things in bowling green maintenance annoy me more than anything else. One is the feeding frenzy stirred up and enjoyed by many bowling green maintenance contractors in the autumn, usually driven by an unsolicited sales letter offering “Autumn Programs” sent by someone who has never seen your green!

Many clubs across the country will succumb to this sales gimmick year after year  without ever realising that it isn’t necessarily the best thing to do. You see Autumn has traditionally been Read more

How to Increase your Prices without Losing Members

Many bowls clubs struggle with the concept of increasing their prices whether it is for the actual membership fee or bar prices.

The fact is that members are used to price increases in every aspect of their lives outside of the club and giving the impression that the club is somewhat insulated from market forces is a dangerous one.

Here are 7 things you can do to increase your prices painlesslessly:

  1. Take the improvement of your facilities very seriously, especially the green.
  2. Make regular adjustments to prices in line with other businesses and when required for the smooth running of the club.
  3. Increase membership fees every year without fail, so that it becomes accepted that this will happen.
  4. Take every opportunity to add value to being a member.
  5. Behave like a business that wants to delight its valued customers and attract many more through the word of mouth marketing this creates.
  6. Be transparent about club running costs.
  7. Involve members in creating the future direction of the club.
Bowling Club Membership retention and growth
Bowling Club Membership retention and growth
How do you increase club membership numbers in a time of economic turmoil? How do you retain members when there is a natural decline in bowling participation? This eBook sets out a plan for transforming any bowls club into the central hub of its community. FREE download for Academy Members more details
Price: £9.97

The shocking truth about bowls green maintenance

When traditions get hold they are somethimes hard to shift and this is no more true than in bowls green maintenance.

Over the past 3 or 4 decades bowls green maintenance has been transformed into a weird science that is designed to baffle greenkeepers into rejecting common sense and observation in favour of bottles and bags of ever more expensive fertilisers, pesticides and conditioners.

Bowls green keeping is essentially very simple and all of our actions and maintenance procedures can either add or detract from the performance of our bowls greens.

A detailed explanation of what has gone wrong is included here and a step by step process
for turning this situation around is included here.

Instant income for your bowls club

If you had to find instant income for your bowls club, hard cash to keep your club alive this week, where could you look?

Probably not right in front of your nose but that would be a mistake.

The successful bowling club of the future will be about a lot more than just bowling; it will be a centre for community involvement and readers of my eBook Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround will know that there are hundreds of ideas that can be applied to clubs to start the process of turning them into vibrant and thriving institutions.

Anyway, back to today’s quest: where can you look for immediate cash?

Pick up your local paper and turn to the clubs and organisations news section.

In my local paper this week, 20 different clubs and organisations had a report published and they included; Rotary, Probus, Horticultural Society, Speakers Club, various medical support groups, Inner Link, BNi, Ramblers, Wildlife Trust, Parent and Toddlers. Events were also publicised such as Whist, Bingo, Films, Quiz Nights, etc etc.

Have a look in your own local paper and invite the leader of each group along to get a free viewing of your facilities, coffee, meet the members. If one or two of these groups could change their meeting venue to your club this month, that is instant income.

Ok so you will (this is not a maybe) need to make changes to accommodate this, but view it as the start of something that will grow and the justification for the changes is much easier.