Make Your Courses
Stand Out (Continued…)
Alright, how is it you can have one basic scuba course and charge several different prices for it? Here are some examples:
Four Reasons Why Offering “Student Discounts” on Equipment is a Dumb Idea
4. It assumes you have to give up what little profit you already make on masks, snorkels and fins to keep students from running across town to buy gear. Guess what? A tiny handful might actually do that — but nowhere near enough to make up what you will lose by offering students a blanket five or ten percent off.
3. It suggests to all of your customers that your normal selling prices must be exorbitant. After all, if you are not already giving them the best possible price, how could you afford to give your students an additional savings?
2. It gets students in the habit of asking for a discount on dive gear.
1. Some students may end up never buying dive gear from you because they feel that, once they are no longer students, they will no longer be able to get the best possible price.
- Offer a modest incentive for students who purchase their mask, snorkel, fins and wetsuit boots from you. Make this a discount on the cost of the course, not the cost of the equipment (see sidebar). Also, you want to make sure that the net selling price of the course, after you deduct this incentive, is about the same as what you would charge if you had no incentive program.
- Have a separate price for academic and confined water training only (what you would charge customers who plan to complete their open-water training at a resort destination), another price for open-water training by itself, and a package price that saves customers money if they sign up for and complete all of their training with you.
- Offer a lower price for additional members of the same household who are taking the class at the same time. This will be based on the assumption that two or more people will be sharing the same textbook, video and/or CD-ROM. (To take advantage of this, you may need to put together a special “companion” student kit containing all of the items found in the normal student kit, less the text, video and/or CD-ROM).
- Have a discounted package for students that does not include use of anything more than, say, wetsuit, tanks and weights for the open-water training dives. This will appeal to customers planning to purchase a scuba package that includes a BC and a complete regulator system, with gauges (and provide an incentive for others to consider this purchase as well).
- Charge a premium price for more desirable class scheduling. You most likely already have a higher price that you charge for private/small group instruction. Why not go a step further and charge a higher price for your most popular beginning classes? For example, one Midwest store charges more for its weekend scuba courses than it does for its weeknight courses. Why? According to the owner, “Because we can.”
- Create a package that combines beginning and advanced training at a savings. (You can never start promoting continuing education too early, can you?)
Bear in mind, the ideas listed above are merely possibilities. Just because you can do any of these things doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. You must decide, based on your own unique set of circumstances, which of the ideas may or may not work for you.
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