There are two schools of thought on this. Ironically, both are 100 percent correct.
Answer One: Yes, charge more for extra time and effort.
Your dive center is a business. To succeed, you must make money not lose it. You have expenses you must pay so you can keep doing business. For scuba courses, these include:
- Pool expenses: Either pool rental or the maintenance of your own pool.
- Equipment expenses: The purchase, replacement, amortization and maintenance of your teaching equipment.
- Air fills: The purchase and maintenance of your fill system and the electricity needed to run it.
- Labor: Not only what you pay your instructors and divemasters, but also the salaries of the staff who enroll students, maintain equipment, fill tanks, etc.
- Overhead: Your scuba courses must pay their share of your store’s overall overhead.
When you spend additional time with those students who need it, these expenses increase. So, yes, it makes sense to charge accordingly. Nevertheless, it can also make sense to not charge students for any additional time they need.
Answer Two: If you don’t quit, we won’t quit.
We tell our Open Water students that if they continue to work, we will continue to teach them at no extra charge. Knowing this helps remove stress among those students who require extra attention. It lets them know we are not there to simply take their money. Instead, our goal is to make them the best divers possible.
Admittedly, this contradicts what we said earlier. Yet, in our experience, it generates more repeat customers than anything else we have done. When asked by other dive professionals to justify this, I explain that we consider the extra time and effort a marketing expense.
All too often, dive stores are willing to invest considerable time, money and effort in attracting new customers. Yet they are unwilling to invest resources into keeping the customers they have. In contrast, by investing in our current customers, we get a significant return on the time and effort we spend.
What works for us
I’ve had several people, including some of my staff, tell me we should charge students for any time we spend beyond what is normally included with their class. These people say that, in so doing, we are passing up on an important source of income.
However, as previously outlined, I see this extra time as an investment. One that is designed to build long-term relationships with customers. It seems to work, too.
The vast majority of students in whom we’ve invested extra time come back to us to:
- Rent or purchase equipment.
- Sign up for additional classes.
- Join us on group trips.
An unexpected bonus
As many retailers tell us, there is a direct relationship between student contact hours and sales. The more time you spend with students, the more you sell. This holds true when spending extra time with students who need it.
As you continue to work with students, you inevitably recommend specific gear purchases. Many of these students will compare your prices to those they can find online. Does this mean you risk losing sales? Generally, no.
We’ve had students tell us that, yes, they found lower prices for the gear we recommend from online sellers. But those online retailers didn’t spend the time with them that we did. And neither Amazon nor Leisure Pro did anything to help them get certified.
But we did. And, in the process, it made them comfortable and confident in the water. We helped make their dreams a reality. So, even though our prices may be slightly higher, they buy from us anyway.
You decide
Every diving market is different. Every store caters to a different clientele. Just because something works well for us does not mean it will work well for you.
As we said earlier, we look at the extra time we spend with students who need it as a marketing expense. And, for us, it pays off 90 percent of the time.
If you could make an investment in advertising that offered a 90 percent return for every customer it reached, wouldn’t you do it? You won’t know until you try.
Kary L McNeal III is the owner of Aquatic Ventures, a small, low-overhead dive center in Fort Lauderdale that nevertheless manages to certify more divers every year than just about anyone else in South Florida. His sales reflect this, too. In our estimation, Kary must be doing something right.