More from John Wall
Well-known dive retailer John Wall, of “The” Dive Shop in Fairfax, Virginia, had a number of comments after reading the previous page (“Get Customers Diving”) — enough so that he deserved a page in this article all to himself. Here is what John had to say:
To Promote Continuing Education, You Need
to Actually Have Continuing Education
When discussing the link between getting customers diving and equipment sales, John points out there is no better example of this than continuing education classes. People in advanced, specialty and leadership courses buy more gear. It’s that simple.
The catch is, for this to happen, you have to actually schedule continuing education courses and make certain all of your customers know about them. John tells the story of a competitor who, when asked when his next Advanced Open Water course was, always answered, “Whenever we get four people to sign up.”
As John points out, customers can’t base their schedules on information like that. Not surprisingly, the competitor is no longer in business.
Individual Travel and Profitability
John makes a number of points here:
- There are costs associated with group travel that many retailers ignore. Yes, the trip leader goes for free — but who pays his or her salary while he or she is away?
- What about the costs associated with the group leader’s airfare? This eats into group trip profits as well.
- What if the trip leader’s spouse (co-owner of the store) goes along? How does that affect profitability?
As John points out, booking travel for individuals, couples, families and small groups not only pays commissions that go directly to the store’s bottom line, it has few of the expenses associated with group trips.
- When booking individual travel, there is no trip leader salary or airfare to pay.
- As was pointed out earlier, in the section on cutting costs, many stores have to generate $10,000 to 20,000 in equipment sales to make $1,000 in net profits. This requires the up-front expense of carrying inventory. Booking individual travel earn an average commission of around ten percent (about what a well-run store nets on equipment sales) — but requires no up-front inventory expense.
- If you aren’t selling individual travel to your customers, somebody else is. If you let your customers know that it’s okay to shop for dive travel outside of the store, then you imply that it’s okay to shop for other items outside of the store as well.
Look for more information on how sound management affects profitability in upcoming issues of DiveRetailing.com.
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