Interview with a 23 year old Golf Course Management Mogul
by Jordan Hansen
www.acegolfmarketing.com
How 23-year-old takes the family golf course from bankruptcy to six-figure business
Need more members? Golf Course Owner Discovers Breakthrough System To Catapult Memberships By 200% Without Discounting... While Building Massive Goodwill Amongst Local Players!
What did he do that you haven’t? If you want to know how 23-year-old golf course owner built a six-figure golf course after being in the RED for 15 years, this is the most important story you’ll read in your entire life.
We’re always looking for success stories to share with you. Here’s one you MUST read:
Imagine this – You pour your blood, sweat, tears, and life savings into building your own golf course. You take pride in running your course. You hire the top golf professionals, top management, and have the best restaurant, and still, members aren’t joining. You’ve lost money for 15 consecutive years and have exhausted every possible option. Your dream is now on the brink of bankruptcy and will either be owned by the bank or even worse, the doors CLOSED and your precious greens turned into farmland.
Fast forward one year later. You’re out of debt, you took a course that lost money for 15 years straight and turned a six-figure profit, and now your golf course is the talk of all the players in your area! All the other courses envy your success, all the top pros and managers want to work for you, and golfers can’t seem to get enough. You are able to raise the price of your memberships and still have no problem selling them with ease.
And now all you have to do is watch your bank account grow, play golf, and see to high level decision making at your club. You have more free time to spend with your family, your friends, and financial freedom to do whatever you want! You never have to worry about your job or money ever again!
Does this sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not. This story is as real as the Golden Bear’s 18 career major championships. Are you curious? What did Jordan Hansen do to turn around his family golf course? Can Jordan’s strategy be replicated? Was it a fluke? Can this work for your golf club? Or did Jordan discover a system for attracting members that CAN be repeated at any club to explode membership.
We recently interviewed Jordan Hansen to see what he had to say about this incredible breakthrough discovery that saved his family golf course and has saved others:
How did a 23-year-old turn his families’ golf course around, generate a six-figure profit, and sell more memberships than any other club in the area... in only one year?
Jordan Hansen: I’ve lived in the golf business for over 20 years. It all started back in the summer of 1990… At the time, I was just a young boy who loved to play golf. My Dad got me started about the time I could walk (like most of us in the golf business).
When golf was booming my Dad and his five brothers decided it would be a good idea to build their own golf course. (Can you remember those days?) After four years of grueling labor, fistfights, and millions of dollars, the doors opened at The Woodlands Golf Club in 1994.
Back when the golf business was “good” things were still quite bad at The Woodlands. Manager after manager, head pro after head pro, the place was a like a “black hole for money”, the way my Dad put it. My entire family continued to sink more money in year after year, just to keep the doors open. The golf course never made a penny of profit. On a good year, we were lucky to break even…
We tried hiring the “top” golf professionals, new management, superintendents… you name it! Not one person was able to turn the course around.
Over time, Dad’s brothers lost interest in the family golf course. (They each owned 10%, while pops owned 50%) He was losing his shirt on the deal while his brothers saw the course as a tax write-off.
The golf business got tougher when the (not so) Great Recession set in, and people’s homes started losing value due to the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Credit Crisis of 2008. Jobs were lost. Many people experienced a credit crisis and therefore, little money was spent on golf.
It was about that same time I was finishing up my Masters Degree in Marketing at Southern Illinois University when my Dad approached me and asked, “Jordan, can you help me at the course?”
My family had been losing a lot of money at the golf course and, if it weren’t for some success in the construction business, our entire family would have been in deep, deep trouble. The housing market was now coming to a harsh stand still and lending was at an all-time low. I think my Dad started to panic (although I doubt he will ever admit it).
I took over the golf course in 2008 and immediately started by building a new website and aggressively collecting local golfer contact information.
Moreover, I tested and measured every imaginable media (trying to bring in more members). What did I discover? It’s safe to say that I found almost all advertising was a waste of money. (Especially the kind the local ad rep was selling!) It took me years of studying copywriting, direct response and online marketing, spending $100,000+ testing different media.
The BIG problem is that 99% of managers, golf professionals, and course owners are golfers, not marketers. And it’s not their fault. The PGA or other golf management and professional training schools don’t teach you how to create irresistible membership offers, they don’t teach you how to get golfers drooling over your membership, they don’t teach you the most cost effective ways to reach golfers likely to buy memberships – at the right time – and get them to take action!
I learned all of this through years of studying followed up by spending countless hours and more dollars than I’d like to admit testing, before I finally cracked the code to selling golf memberships.
“So what did you do? What is the code you’ve cracked?
Jordan Hansen: Well the first thing I did was research current members and figure out what made them tick. What was it that convinced them to buy our membership? Once I had done a fair amount of research, I took everything I had been testing, measuring, and learning and applied it to selling golf memberships.
I developed a tested and proven 7-step member-making system:
Step 1: Create an Irresistible Membership Offer – Let’s face it, the days are long passed since you’ve had a waiting list of members to join your club... You have to add creativity to your membership offer so that golfers just can’t say no! You can: make your price more attractive, use social proof to justify purchase, discover barriers to join - then eliminate, reverse the risk of joining, add scarcity to get members to join now (!), or add bonus gifts.
Step 2: Create a New Member “Bribe” – You must create a system that determines who is interested in your membership and who is not. I call this your new member bribe. Your bribe will be so enticing that golfers in your area will have no other choice but to raise their hand if they are interested in membership! There are four ways that I use to create “bribes”. First, you can offer a free trial. (Everyone likes a free trial!) Second, you can offer prize packages. Third, you can and should have a new member info packet. And fourth, you can do a membership giveaway. Giving away a membership will collect lots of new leads. I recommend doing your giveaway before your campaign so you have ammunition for marketing (contact information). In one recent campaign, we collected 1,200 new member leads in 4 weeks for about $1 each with a giveaway!
Step 3: You must use software and technology to power your membership campaign. You must segment your list of possible members from those not interested. Then target the hot prospects with multiple forms of media. The last thing you want to do is wear out your entire list, so you must segment with technology. I prefer Infusionsoft. It’s powerful software but also very expensive.
Step 4: Once you have your “bribe” and technology in place you must get maximum exposure for your offer. I’ve had great success with Facebook, Google, direct mail, on site, referrals, newspapers, and website. You really have to test and measure everything to see what is cost effective and what is not. You want to remove any wasted spend and apply your hard earned marketing dollars to what is working well. And the only way you can do this is by testing and measuring.
Step 5: You must nurture your new members leads. They need to be warmed up to buying from you. Not many prospective members will just suddenly join. And that’s why it’s important to build trust, rapport, and a relationship. Then let them show you how to sell them a membership!
Step 6: I mentioned “salesmanship” in my last step, and that’s what it’s all about – closing deals. Whether it be with your brochures, letters, in person, online, or via fax. I’ve sold memberships with all of these. The main thing to remember is that your prospect has an opportunity on the table to join now or miss out for good! Having a designated member of your staff or membership “closer” is the most effective strategy. You MUST have scripts, systems, and processes you use for closing that are proven to work. Use these processes day in and day out - never deviate from them. It’s also a good idea to have a member of your staff be your “member closer”.
Step 7: Create a membership referral machine! Your job here is to start a promotion within your current membership base that turns all your members into your clubs’ sales people. The very best way to get members is with word of mouth referrals. If you can get your current members to be proactive in the member recruiting process, your membership roster may just DOUBLE. Again, I have a number of strategies I use here. The one I like best is the new member referral packet where all new members receive after joining and can give to their friends with incentives for each.
WOW! That’s a lot of membership selling wisdom right there! So, tell us how your club is doing now...
Jordan Hansen: We have never done better! I first launched this membership campaign back when I was running the club in 2009. Over the next three years, I continued to refine my membership selling system, making it better and more powerful every year. This past year we climbed into the multiple six-figure profit range without me even being there.
You see I love marketing, and love helping golf courses succeed. So, after I turned things around at my course, I hired new management and trained them for an entire year. I have always been a marketer, not a manager. I like making money, not managing people. I now own two courses and they are my babies, but I don’t manage them. I have managers that handle that for me. I do all the marketing, testing, measuring, and perfecting member-making strategies I use for my clients. I also handle all executive decisions, but that’s about all the management I do these days.
Now I live in San Diego and I work with golf clubs around the world – helping them increase membership by two, three, or even four times over!
So can any golf club who wants more members copy your system? Do you need any special skills? And how can our readers learn more?
Jordan Hansen: Any golf club that sells memberships can instantly use my system and leapfrog the pack, and almost immediately see increases in membership. They can finally break free from financial burdens that cause you to lose sleep (and hair), if they simply follow my step-by-step system for making more members. You can quit worrying about your job at your club, and may even get a raise when you double your membership roster.
I’ve tested this system for years with $100,000s and another years learning these strategies. It’s not something that happens overnight. However, I do have a free Guidebook on my website – (www.AceGolfMarketing.com) - that explains these battle-tested steps in much greater detail, which will help refine the skills necessary.
The best place to go is my website: www.AceGolfMarketing.com. There are countless resources on my blog, a free book, and a new case study “How to Sell $24,753 Worth of Memberships in 10 Days When it’s ZERO Degrees in 5 Simple Steps”.
If you aren’t looking for info, and you’re ready to start brining droves of members to your club immediately, call me toll free: 1-855-480-GOLF or email me: [email protected]. We can explore opportunities of working together. Maybe it’s a good fit, maybe not... Either way you’ll get a plan to sell more memberships and fresh ideas you can immediately use at your club!
Thank you Jordan. We hope many course managers and owners will follow your lead and turn their courses around, and live the life they deserve too!
