The Most Basic Question
Recently, a partner in a group that just bought a dive store wrote me the following:
“I believe we see one of our biggest challenges is keeping new Open Water students interested and continuing with classes and specialties, travel and retail sales. We currently leave a lot on the table, in this regard.
“We will need to provide our staff with the tools to keep divers enthused and as well can encourage this with the e-news, web and mailers…hopefully. Any suggestions?”
I wrote back:
“Do you have a college semester we can use to address this issue? Seriously, you just asked the most basic question any dive retailer can.
“Almost no one in this business truly makes money on entry-level diver training. In fact, if you accurately account for the percentage of overhead that should be charged off against beginning certification classes, you’ll discover that, if you are like most stores, you actually lose as much as $300 or more on every student you certify.
“Let’s assume, for a minute, that your net profit on equipment sales, before taxes, is a generous ten percent (it’s probably less). That means that every beginning student you certify will need to purchase $3,000 in equipment (at full retail) for you to break even on entry-level training.
“Sobering, isn’t it? Face it: The only justification for offering entry-level scuba instruction is if you can use it to successfully promote equipment sales, continuing education and travel. And here you are handicapped by just exactly who is teaching your entry-level students.”
NASDS founder John Gaffney used to say that dive stores should fire all their part-time instructors and rely solely on full-time employees who were motivated by sale commissions — and keeping their jobs. While this has proven practical for very few dive retailers, you can understand where Gaff was coming from.
At some level, your part-time instructors understand the importance (to you) of promoting sales, continuing education and travel. But it’s just not what motivates them. They’re more driven by the satisfaction that comes from creating new divers. Unfortunately, because their lives center around “real” jobs and careers, they’re not in a position to see (or even care) whether students ever go beyond this.
The bottom line is that, even though your part-time instructors certainly mean well in this regard, you can’t count on them to be the ones chiefly responsible for making sure students get the message about continuing education, sales and travel. You have to be the one to take the initiative.
Your website, newsletters and handouts are all important here — but they can’t do the job by themselves. The simple fact is, there is no substitute for personal interaction and good old-fashioned salesmanship.
Over the next several pages are some time-proven ideas that may help.
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