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Achieving Excellence on a Budget

There can be little doubt that the green is one of the most important assets of any bowling club. It would seem obvious therefore that this is where the pursuit of excellence should begin for any club.  What is not so obvious, however is that the green is also where the greatest  savings can be made. It’s all about working smarter and not blindly following greenkeeping traditions that have prevailed in bowling for decades and which don’t always add value to the club or improve the green. Please browse this site to find out how you can optimise your green maintenance and ensure you are getting the best value for your budget.

Tradition and Dissatisfaction.

“Traditional” Mowing Schedules are damaging a lot of clubs

Last week’s post on green-speed has raised a few questions, a lot of them along the lines of

“How can we afford to cut the green 7 days a week?”

In the introduction to my book Performance Bowling Greens I speak about the danger of traditions.

Traditions are funny things, because they don’t actually seem to need to be very old, or for that matter very sensible for them to take hold; they only need a bit of support from a few people and Bingo! They are “new” traditions.

One of the quirkiest? Cutting the green on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, usually early in the morning. Why has this become a tradition at many clubs?

Well it probably boils down to cost mainly and perhaps convenience and possibly a little bit of misunderstanding of the growth pattern of greens.

Following this cutting plan those playing on Monday evening, Tuesday, Wednesday evening, Thursday, Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday are not seeing or playing the green at anything near its best!

That leaves a lot of potentially dissatisfied customers!

So in answer to the question at the beginning, another question:

How can you afford not to?

However, in Bowling Club Turnaround terms remember dissatisfaction can actually be a good thing as it gives you a huge opportunity to move things to a better state and make an overall positive gain from an otherwise negative situation.

 

 

 

Bowls Club Survival and Turnaround

eBook details: Bowling Club Survival and Turnaround.

The book is split into 7 sections as follows

  1. How to stem the flow of cash out of your club starting today and how to prime a pump that will see more cash flowing into your club effortlessly.
  2. The remarkable 10 Minute MBA or how to build a business model that works for your club.
  3. An amazingly simple but powerful formula that will ensure your club stands head and shoulders above all of your competition.
  4. In a revolutionary take on the Marketing of your rejuvenated club we turn the commonly accepted view and perceived “wisdom” about Marketing firmly on its head! In this remarkable section we demonstrate  “paint by numbers” instructions for achieving all of the members you want with a vastly reduced Marketing budget.
  5. Step 5 provides what can only be described as ABC style instructions and guidance to turn your club into a smooth, efficient and profitable machine.
  6. In step 6 you’ll discover a remarkable system for adding 20-30% of your current income straight onto your bottom line profit!…by dealing with waste in your club.
  7. “Step 7 is essentially a method for bringing all of the previous steps together into an automatic club improvement system. Even after you’ve applied the first 6 steps and have a thriving, profitable club; this step pretty much guarantees that even a very efficient club will improve bottom line performance by at least 10% every 3 months”.

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