Welcome to Sports Facility Expert – your one-stop shop for building, running and growing your sports facility
The Easiest Ways to Improve Customer Service at Your Sports Academy
If you want to keep customers coming back to your sports academy, you need three things. First, you need to deliver what they paid for: excellent physical training in a professional environment. Second, you need to invest time in marketing that will show your appreciation and keep clients away from competitors. (Related: The Ultimate Guide […]
A New Sports Complex Birthday Party Idea: Nerf Wars
If you haven’t updated your party packages lately, here’s a new birthday party idea to consider for your sports complex: Nerf Wars. DNA Sports Center, the sports facility I used to own, recently started offering Nerf Wars as one of its birthday party themes. When I looked into the idea, I noticed the popularity of Nerf […]
Use a Web Form to Land More Sports Facility Clients
When someone new visits your web site, they’re not usually ready to become a customer yet. If you don’t get their attention and keep it while they’re on your site, you risk losing it forever.
Unfortunately, most of the sports facility web sites I see (and I see a lot of them) don’t take the few simple steps available to keep in touch with these prospective clients.
Marketing Lessons From a Standout Soccer Club
To rise above the competition and get clients excited about your business, you need more than a unique mission. You need to be able to explain and sell your distinct advantages to potential players and their families. For a great example of how it’s done, we can look at Alchemy Sports Complex, home of Alchemy […]
4 Tactics This Big Indoor Sports Complex Uses to Stay Profitable
Running a big indoor sports complex comes with big overhead expenses. Add in seasonal cash flow changes throughout year, and business management can get pretty tricky. So when a three-person team opened Center St. Louis in a shuttered, bank-owned facility with eight volleyball courts, a fitness gym, and a 90-by-135-foot turf field, they knew they […]
How to Make Profitable Recruiting Videos for Athletes
Not long ago, getting a college coach to notice an athlete generally meant a lot of traveling and overcoming some pretty long odds. Times sure have changed. These days, even novice videographers can put together a basic recruiting video and email it to a coach with a few clicks. Recruiting and highlight videos can make […]
How to Open a Volleyball Facility
Most volleyball clubs start out practicing on the rented courts of school gyms, health clubs, or multi-sport complexes. However, if you have the capital or have been running a well-established club for a while, you might be considering finding a place for your club to call its own. Running a facility with multiple indoor courts […]
How to Start a Volleyball Club
Wondering how to start a volleyball club? Want to run your own club? Start by making a basic business plan. Sure, your end goal isn’t to make big money. Like most club directors, you’re probably doing it for the love of the game and a passion for helping kids, and it won’t even be your full-time job at […]
Why You Should Get Ready to Sell Your Sports Facility Now
Most of us go into sports facility ownership with little idea how we’ll get out of it someday. That’s because having our own sports academy or sports complex is often our dream job, something we’ve worked toward for years. It takes so much energy to get our doors open and keep them that way that […]
How Much is Your Sports Facility Worth?
How much is your sports facility worth? Not in terms of what it means to you personally or even what it means to your athletes or the community. I’m talking about the dollar value. Most of us don’t really know. I didn’t know much about it myself until I decided to sell my sports academy. […]
3 More Easy, Low Risk Ways to Add Revenue at Your Sports Academy
Relying too much on any one service for your sports academy’s cash can put your business at risk. As I explained in this post, you can hedge against that risk by adding more variety to your services, which many sports complexes do by selling retail products or concessions. However, the easiest way to diversify your […]
The Ultimate Customer Retention Guide for Sports Academies
Sometimes providing great service isn’t enough to keep your clients coming back to your sports academy or complex year after year. Markets change, clients’ needs evolve, and new competitors appear. Keeping clients interested and coming back through your doors takes work. Don’t overlook these customer retention strategies for your sports training business. Remember that retaining […]
A Sports Academy That Runs Perfectly – Even When You’re Not There
No sports facility owner can stay in their facility all day, every day. But many of us still try. When you’ve worked so hard to create a brand and have invested hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars, it’s tough to let go of control. Maybe you’ve even convinced yourself that you’re so essential to […]
This Sports Academy Program is Perfect for Weekend Evenings
There are a few times each week when it’s especially tough to get customers into your sports academy. School days can be slow, of course, but you can fill the time with programs for pre-school kids and their parents, for adults who work nearby, and even for homeschoolers. However, filling your facility on weekend evenings […]
What do you want to know about running a sports facility?
I thought I’d check in with you to find out what you really want to know about running a sports facility. If you have a minute, please let me know with this survey. Don’t worry if you can only fill out one or two answers, or even if you don’t own a sports facility yet. […]
The Ultimate Guide to Stopping Losses from No-Shows
Pop quiz for sports academy owners: How much money do you lose each month from clients who cancel at the last minute or just completely fail to show up for appointments? Years ago when I was first building eSoft Planner, I worked with one of my new scheduling software clients to help them figure that […]
How Your Sports Academy’s Waiver Can Fail
I see a lot of participation waivers for sports academies. That’s because I help dozens of facilities set up their scheduling software each week. Electronic waiver approval is part of that process. Unfortunately, I often find myself repeating the same warnings about these waivers, which have the power to save your business. It’s just not enough […]
How to Fire a Sports Academy Employee
I’ve had to fire several employees over my past 15-plus years as a businesses owner. It’s never easy. But as owners, we all have to do it at some point. Our employees work too closely with clients and reflect too directly on our brands to keep them on staff if they aren’t the right fit. […]
Should You Hire Trainers as Independent Contractors?
Hiring an employee for your sports academy is no simple task. There’s a lot of paperwork to fill out, regulations to learn, and decisions to make about salary and benefits. Instructors and trainers are essential to most of our facilities. Sometimes, it’s much easier to hire them as “independent contractors” than official employees. As the […]
How to Keep Clients When Instructors Go
Employee turnover hits sports academies especially hard. That’s because our trainers and instructors tend to have close relationships with clients, helping them with very personal goals during a lot of one-on-one time. Our school-aged clients, in particular, look up to their instructors and can get very attached. These relationships are the reason many of us […]
Boost Retention and Sales With a Sports Academy Loyalty Program
When we make our marketing plans, our first instinct is to focus on getting new, potential clients in the door. That’s because we trust that the value of our services will sell itself again and again once we’ve made that first impression. But if we don’t make an extra effort to keep existing clients, customer […]