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Selling Your Club and Retaining Last Year’s Athletes

By Phil Bush, Junior Volleyball Association, 11/14/18, 12:00PM PST

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Retaining players from last year requires a different approach than selling to the new players. Your club's retention rate should be about 80 percent. You will never make everyone happy.

It is the time of year most Club Directors dislike. You must position your club against other clubs and make a case for why an athlete should choose your club over all the others that are in your area. You may not have a degree in sales, but you're now competing with other clubs in the junior volleyball industry, and therefore you need to speak the sales language.

Not only are you competing with the other volleyball clubs, but other sports and activities that are also attracting your target market.

Have you identified your Target Market? Don't say "everyone" because that is not a target.

You need to determine specific Segments and Sub-Segments of the Population. Depending on the size of your Potential Market, it is usually important to determine what Subsegment of the market you want to appeal to.

These factors can help you determine your Subsegment of the Market:

  • Level of success you have had in the past: If you have focused on being highly competitive, that is fine, but you can't make a leap overnight, unless you have the staff in place.
     
  • The type of club you want to be: are you highly competitive or do you strive to just provide playerswith  a chance to improve their game and have fun?
     
  • Physical location. You can't decide to be all things to all people and be in a location that is hard for that population to get to.
     
  • The year your club was founded: This can be someting that is more important to your coaches, but parents are also going to look at your history to see if you are stable as a business and have a track record of success.
     
  • Other competing sports. Whether it be high school, middle school, or club sports.
     
  • Consistent visibility and presence. No, it is not club season all the time. But in this day and age of 24/7 news cycles, attention spans are very short. As such, you must try to stay "On the Radar" on a frequent basis.
    • This is a combination of newsletters and emails, but you need to ensure that you are using social media to stay visible.
    • For parents, this is likely a combination of several Sources: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.
    • However, YouTube is becoming 'Table Stake" in Visibility. More and more, wideo is the new medium, so use it to expose your club. Set up a YouTube Channel for your club, and post to it on a regular basis
       
  • Marketing Costs: It is not that expensive to do marketing. Your marketing budget can be a percentage of your club's revenue. I would start with 3% of revenue as a budget. This can be done in a combination of on-line services, but someone must be maintaining feeds. The worst thing you can do is to have a channel you are using, like Facebook, and then not update it. The expectation is for on-going updates.

Notice I did not use the word "Sell" once. But make no mistake, with each you take or don't take, you are selling or not selling. If you just say: "We are great, come join us," you are likely going to be very unhappy with the results.

Retaining players from last year requires a different approach than selling to the new players. Your club's retention rate should be about 80%. You will never make everyone happy. Some just assume the grass is greener, and will try another club and return to yours the following season. It's important that your club tackle "the issues" that may cause players/parents to consider other clubs to try to avoid this from happening too often.

Retention rates are going to vary by location and density of the volleyball market.  Engaging players from last season through off season youth coaching opportunities, in-house fitness/strength training classes, and honoring their high school achievements on social media or in newsletters will increase the sense of communtiy and connection the players have towards your club.

Make the dialog interactive with parents. Take questions as you go. Have visual aids to support your story and your sell. You've got this.

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About the JVA

The JVA is an association of Junior Club Directors and Coaches who are dedicated to all facets of junior volleyball and have a desire to offer the best programming possible to their members. We are the leaders and forward thinkers in Junior Volleyball Programs and we are a voice for junior clubs. Our number one goal is to help club programs and events thrive.