Have you ever considered hosting a golf day with a view to developing your business? Have you ever actually hosted one and was it a success? Have you hosted a day and was it a failure? Would you do it again? There are many contributing factors to the potential answers for those questions and some that are out of our control. Namely the good old British weather! However, in our experience golf days are great and a fantastic way to build new relationships or cement existing ones. Even if they don’t always go to plan….
Our first experience of hosting a golf day was at Moortown Golf Club back in 2014. We’d never done it before and really didn’t know what to expect, despite some thorough planning. We had roughly 30 potential new partner venues attending along with five or so existing clubs. The plan was to keep things as informal as possible so people could relax and enjoy themselves on the course followed by some food and a few drinks.
But how many staff members would we need there to make sure things went smoothly? We didn’t know so we did the obvious thing, we took them all! At the time that would’ve been around 20 staff members including four directors and we absolutely didn’t need them all, not even close.
As it transpired the day was a great success and some fantastic new relationships were formed in a non-pressured environment. And that is one of the huge up sides of hosting your own golf day. Your potential clients are out of the office environment and barriers are down. That’s not to say you should wait till the end of the day then wave a contract in their face. Our advice would be to treat your golf day as the first step in a sales process – by all means broach the idea of working together in the future, but use it to build rapport so when you make the follow up call with a view to booking a further meeting the answer should be a resounding “yes, come and see me”. Then it’s time for your sales team to get to work! Since hosting our first golf day back in 2014 we have hosted numerous other days up and down the UK and all have been very successful, even one particular day that was washed out after six holes! The bar bill was a little higher than average on that occasion which was to be expected and we still did well on the resulting business so we can’t complain too much.
Whole In 1 Golf top tips for a successful Golf Day
Plan thoroughly – Everything needs considering from on course competitions and format to menu choices. Speak to the host club and find out who will be tasked with looking after your golf day at their end. They do this a lot and will put your mind at ease.
Keep an eye on the weather – Needless to say the UK is a lottery when it comes to the weather. Make sure your guests are aware if it looks like rain so they can bring appropriate kit. One of our host venues (who shall not be named!) told us on arrival that they had a trolley ban on. Then 20+ guests arrived pretty much all using electric trolleys only to be told they wouldn’t be able to go out on the course with them. Fortunately, the club eventually relented and allowed them out but that could’ve been the day over before it had begun.
Prep your staff- Let your staff who will be attending know exactly what you expect of them. Don’t try and give it the hard sell on the day. Build relationships, have fun and create an impression of your company that will go in your favour when it comes to trying to close a deal down the line.
Invite existing clients – Don’t just think of a golf day as a way of picking up new clients. Invite your existing clients and cement those relationships
If you are considering hosting a golf day but aren’t sure our advice would be definitely go for it. Where else can you have that prolonged time with a potential client (around six hours if you play golf like us). Even if you don’t play golf you can still get out and walk the course to check in with the different groups. If your day goes well, and it should with the correct planning, then your chances of converting those potential new clients will increase substantially.