The long-debated question of how much to give away for free is easily disposed of by Lenny Schloss, the owner and director of the "Feel the Difference" tennis academy in Baltimore, Maryland. For years Lenny and his staff have been offering a free 30-minute tennis lesson to every person who even expresses interest in any of their programs. The free lesson serves many purposes and has quickly and dramatically grown his program over the years. Benefits include bringing more people into the lesson program, establishing an early rapport with new students, developing an increased customer base for programs beyond tennis lessons, and being able to accurately evaluate a new player’s game to place them in the right program.
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Another similar idea was advertised last year in a local tennis newspaper in Tampa, Florida: A buy-one, get-one-free tennis lesson. If a professional is new to an area and just starting up developing new clientele, what better way to get to meet people and establish a following. This idea comes from USPTA and USPTR professional Tomas Ollestad from the Carrollwood Village Golf and Tennis club, and from the looks of his ad proved to be a real winner.
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Talk about building friendships in your community, here’s another idea from Margaret Ruemenapp, USPTA Pro and high school coach from Petoskey, Michigan. In order to set up competitive tennis matches for her girls team she has found it very effective to invite 3.0 to 4.0 women from local clubs to scrimmage against her girls. This type of competition toughens her girls more than playing against themselves or other teenage players, and the women have a great time as well. She has also found that the local support and encouragement for her girls has also risen substantially. And, if you’re not a high school coach but like this idea, Try it out with a club’s junior development program and you’ll quickly see what a winning idea it is from many different perspectives.
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Now let’s share another great idea in the fund-raising department from Karen Langs, yet another creative coach from Petoskey, Michigan. Karen found out that grocery stores in her community have on occasion donated one percent of grocery receipts on a certain day to non-profit organizations. By contacting a grocery store and advertising it well ahead, everyone in her community came out a winner. The store got recognition and increased business, the members of the community who intentionally supported that store were happy to contribute to the high school tennis team, and the team benefited by substantial fund-raising which helped with many of their financial needs.
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This next idea almost sounds like a Polaroid commercial, but it’s not. It’s a cutting edge marketing idea from USPTA professional David Turrin. With all private lessons David includes a Polaroid picture of the student posing with the right form to execute the particular shot of that lesson. In a recent phone interview, he shared with me that the benefits of this practice far outweigh the small cost and effort involved. His students are then able to refer to that photo before practicing or playing and bring all previous photos to each lesson for reference
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Here’s an idea from Chad Redwine and Dan Pulattie, coaches at Snyder High School in West Texas. They run a very successful booster club and shared a fund-raising idea with me at the 1996 Texas Tennis Coaches Association Convention. It is incredibly simple yet has been extremely successful. They have their players sell raffle tickets. Now this alone is not a novel idea. But what is unique is the prize which they selected for this raffle ticket. Think about it. For a successful raffle, the prize must be something that everyone uses and needs regardless of their age, sex, or occupation. In this small town in West Texas, they were able to raise $3-5,000 each time by simply raffling $100 worth of gasoline at a local gas station. Thus far, they have used this raffle idea for their booster club two times and have netted in excess of $8,000. Pretty amazing.
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Our final point for this issue is a mild thought-provoker: Between 1994 and 1996 the average adult in America spent 12 minutes less per day at work. However, they spent 7 minutes more per day watching television and 9 minutes more sleeping. Statistics and surveys also reveal that that time at work is simultaneously more stressful. Perhaps a natural marketing tactic would be to emphasize the anti-stress features of our lifetime sport. Let’s try getting people to spend their extra time on the court to relieve stress instead of watching extra television and extra sleep. Well-respected sports scientist Jim Loehr has made the point that when people increase their fitness levels they require less sleep. Tennis is certainly both a great alternative and apparently a simple solution to the dilemma of increased stress in our lives.