7 Metrics you Need to Track for Your Tennis Coaching Programme
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the 10th episode of the Tennis Business Academy Podcast!
And today I’d like to discuss business reporting for your tennis coaching programme.
Or, in other words, I’d like to discuss how you can measure the success of your coaching programme.
And let’s be clear here, you SHOULD be measuring your coaching programme thoroughly and consistently.
There’s no two ways about it, as far as I’m concerned.
Numbers are the language of business.
Numbers allow you to see exactly how your business or organisation is performing, and more specifically since that’s the topic for today’s episode, numbers allow you to see how your coaching programme is performing.
Numbers represent facts. Which means that if you don’t know the numbers you don’t have the facts.
And you need facts to run any business, any organisation effectively.
You need facts to be able to assess how your coaching programme is performing, so that you can then make decisions that make sense and are inline with what is actually happening.
If you don’t have the numbers, then you’re making decisions based on what? On feelings? On assumptions?
That’s never a good idea!
Now, don’t get me wrong, instinct and experience can and should sometimes play a role in making decisions to move your coaching programme forward.
But, and this is a big BUT… it cannot be the only tool you rely on when making decisions.
At least not if you want to get decisions right more often than not.
Instinct and experience only gets you so far.
Consistently tracking the important numbers of your coaching programme will actually give you the info that you need to make good decisions.
Real data about your coaching is what you should be basing 99% of decisions you make on.
And the good news is that it doesn’t have to be difficult to track the right metrics.
You don’t need to track dozens and dozens of different numbers, if you don’t want to, or don’t have time or patience to do it.
Tracking just 7 key metrics is enough to paint a very accurate picture of where your coaching programme is at any point.
So, for the rest of this episode I’m going to cover these 7 key metrics.
And let’s jump right into the first one which has to be the financial stuff.
1) Financial metrics
Now, I’ll admit that I’m cheating a little bit here. Because the financial stuff can’t be tracked with just one figure. You need to track a few like, revenue, expenses and profit.
The collection of these metrics is usually referred to as the P&L or Profit and Loss Statement, or the Income Statement.
Those are all different names for the same thing, which is basically a sheet that shows a company’s revenues and expenses for a particular period and then calculates the profit off of the revenue and expenses figures.
Tracking these figures is obviously very important. For any organisation to thrive it needs to be financially feasible.
And your coaching programme is no different, of course.
Make sure that you create a P&L sheet and fill it in at least once a month.
You just have to do it, or find someone else to do it for you, so that you can be aware of how much money the coaching programme is generating, how much you’re having to spend to service customers, how much you can expect to earn from the business, how much needs to be saved for tax purposes, etc.
Tracking the financial metrics through a P&L is non-negotiable!
2) Session Capacity %
Which is just a measure of how full a particular coaching session is.
You calculate it by dividing the number of players booked onto a session, by the maximum number of players you are willing to accept on that session.
Sounds way more complicated than it is.Let me give you an example so you can see that it’s actually very easy to calculate and understand.
If you had a session where you would accept 6 players to book onto it and currently have only 3 players booked onto it, then the Capacity % for that session is 3 players divided by 6 spots which comes to 50% capacity.
Meaning that that session is 50% full. If you had 0 players booked in then that session would be 0% full, and if you had all 6 spaces booked then the session would be 100% full.
Keeping track of this metric is important because it will allow you to understand which sessions are busy and which ones are not.
And if you track it consistently it will also help you see which sessions are getting busier (trending up) and which ones are getting less busy (trending down).
And the idea here is that if you’re keeping a close eye on session capacity you’ll very quickly be able to see which sessions are doing well and which ones might need a bit of help or attention.
You can then make decisions regarding the coaching programme and the sessions within it with a full understanding of which sessions are popular and which are not, which is a much better place to be making decisions from than just guessing.
Which brings us to metric number 3, which is
3) Session Attendance
One thing is capacity which has to do with the number of people who have paid to save a spot on one of your courses or coaching sessions.
A different thing entirely is how many people are actually showing up to the sessions.
Of course that the 2 numbers are related. But they’re not the same.
So, it’s also important to track session attendance as that will give you a clear idea of how many players are taking part in the coaching programme each week.
People who paid for a course, but have stopped attending after 2 or 3 weeks, for example, are people that aren’t likely to renew at the end of the term, right?
If they aren’t actually participating in the sessions, then why would they sign back up again, right?
By reporting on session attendance you’ll be able to see which sessions are being well attended and which are not.
And you will then be able to do 2 things with this information:
You’ll be able to reach out to any players that aren’t attending to see if there’s anything that you can do to get them back on court.
You’ll be able to look for patterns that might indicate why a particular session or sessions aren’t being well attended. Is it a particular coach? A particular type of session? A particular time of the day? Or is there anything else that you can spot that might be the reason why people aren’t attending a certain type of session.
If you spot a pattern like that, you can then act to resolve the issue that’s preventing attendance from being higher.
But it all starts with tracking attendance since that’s what gives you the heads up, the warning sign that something needs to be looked into.
Ok, let’s move onto number 4
4) Customer Churn %
Which represents the % of players who leave your coaching programme from one time period to the next.
The time period you choose could be anything. Monthly, annually, or even course-by-course, so, if you run your courses termly or half-termly you could also track customer churn termly or half-termly.
You calculate customer churn by dividing the number of people that have left during a particular period, by the number of people that were customers at the beginning of that same period.
So, as an example, let’s say that on the first of January you had 100 players signed-up to your coaching programme via a monthly direct debit.
If during that month of January, 10 players decided to cancel their direct debit, then your customer churn % for the month of January would be 10%.
The 10 customers that left, divided by the 100 that were there at the beginning.
You can apply the exact same thought process for the termly model. If you had 100 players signed up for a particular term and then 20 of those players decided not to sign-up for the following term, then that would be 20% churn for that term.
The idea is that by tracking how many players are staying or leaving, you’ll get a really good sense of how happy people are with what you’re doing and the coaching sessions you’re providing.
If a lot of people are leaving, you should really be trying to find out why they’re doing so and what you can do to fix whatever is making them want to leave in the first place.
I track customer churn for my own coaching business religiously every month. It’s one of the first figures that I want to know as it gives us a really good idea of how well we’re doing.
And in fact, each month I record a video of all my coaching business’s key metrics along with my thoughts on them which I share inside the Academy.
I show the Academy members the exact spreadsheets and methods I use to track all of the important metrics. If this is something that you’d like to see then you should check out the Academy on tennisbusinessacademy.com/academy
The Academy is the essential resource for anyone who works in the tennis industry and is in charge of running or growing a tennis coaching programme or club.
Inside our community we have coaches, head coaches, tennis business owners, club managers and committee members.
And every single piece of content has been created specifically for our sport. There are no adaptations of someone else’s content that doesn’t fit what we do.
I, myself, who as you know, run my own coaching business, am constantly experimenting and sharing my learnings inside the Academy, so that you can benefit from it.
The monthly reporting videos are just one small part of what I share!
So, if you’re interested in joining a global community of tennis professionals who are keen to learn from and support each other, while also getting access to in-depth practical training and resources on all aspects of running and growing a successful tennis club or coaching programme, then the Academy is definitely the place to be.
Check it out at tennisbusinessacademy.com/academy
Alright, so the 4th key metric you should track is customer churn %.
Let’s move on to number 5.
5) Customer Lifetime Value
Which as the name indicates represents an estimate of the profit that the business will generate from the average customer throughout their entire relationship with the business.
It’s a very important metric to assess the feasibility of your coaching programme in the long term!
And you can calculate it by multiplying the avg. profit per customer by the avg. customer lifespan, during a particular time frame.
This one is slightly more complex than the other metrics we’ve covered so far. So, let’s go through an example.
Let’s assume that the average player on your programme generates your business a profit of £15 each month and that each player stays in the programme on average for 18 months, then the Customer Lifetime Value would be £15 x 18 months which is equal to £270. That would be the Customer Lifetime Value for this example.
The same exact thought process applies if you run your coaching programme on a termly basis.
Let’s say that your coaching programme generates £45 of profit per term from the average player, and that each player stays in your programme for 6 terms on average. In this example, the Customer Lifetime Value would be £45 x 6 terms which would come to the same £270.
I know that this probably sounds complicated to calculate, especially if this is your first time ever hearing about this, but I promise you that it’s super simple once you have a spreadsheet doing all the calculations for you.
Now, knowing and tracking the Customer Lifetime Value for your coaching programme will help you understand if the way in which you’re running the programme is helping you generate more profit from your customers in the long term, or not.
A dip in this metric means that your customers are either spending less money relative to the expenses you have, or they’re leaving more quickly than before.
Either one of these is a big red flag that you need to be aware of.
On the other hand, if this value is remaining stable or steadily increasing, then you know you’re making good decisions for the long term of your coaching programme.
This is a really, really important metric.
Ok, let’s move on to key metric number 6.
6) Customer Acquisition Cost
Which represents the amount of money your business has to spend to find each new customer.
Sounds complicated, but it’s actually really simple to calculate.
You just need to add up all your marketing expenses in a certain time period and divide it by the number of new customers that joined your business in that same time period.
Here’s an example: if in a particular period you spend £300 on marketing and acquire 10 new players for your coaching programme, then your business’ Customer Acquisition Cost is £300 divided by the 10 players, which is equal to £30.
Keeping track of this metric will help you understand how effective your marketing efforts have been.
If it’s costing you too much to acquire each new customer then you know you need to change something in the way you’re marketing.
On the other hand if you’re looking to grow, you’ll have a clear idea of how much you can afford to spend, before you’re spending more than what you’re earning from the players you have in the programme.
You’ll be able to know this by comparing Customer Lifetime Value with the Customer Acquisition Cost.
You obviously want Customer Lifetime Value to be larger than your Customer Acquisition Cost!
I’ll probably record another episode in the future where I explore these 2 metrics in more detail.
But for now let’s move on to the last key metric for today’s episode.
7) Net Promoter Score
I explained exactly what the Net Promoter Score is on episode number 9 of the podcast, so I’ll keep this short.
The Net Promoter Score is an objective measure of how happy customers are.
You can find out your score by sending a simple survey with 2 questions to your customers, and then using a specific formula to calculate your score on a scale of -100 to +100.
This is a simple way to keep track of customer happiness.
But like I said earlier, I won’t get into the details here. If you want to learn more about the NPS and how to run customer surveys the right way, I highly recommend you listen to episode number 9 of the podcast.
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Ok, we’ve covered all the 7 key metrics that you should be tracking for your coaching programme.
Which means it’s recap time!
Let’s go through all the metrics again very quickly:
The financial metrics. Revenue, expenses and profit. You need to keep track of these because every organisation needs to be financially viable if it’s going to survive! And that starts by knowing what’s coming in and what’s going out.
Session Capacity. Tracking session capacity will allow you to know which sessions people are booking on and which aren’t. Meaning that you can then make good decisions about which sessions you’re gonna put on and which sessions you might need to take off.
Session Attendance. This is obviously tied to session capacity but it isn’t the same thing, because someone signing-up for a session and showing up to it are 2 entirely different things. Tracking attendance will allow you to find out if people are showing up or not, and who is and isn’t. That will allow you to then reach out to the players who are missing the sessions and to potentially spot patterns as to which sessions have consistently lower attendance.
Customer Churn. A measure of how many customers left your coaching programme in a particular period of time.
Customer Lifetime Value. Which represents the profit that your coaching programme will generate from the average player throughout its lifetime as a customer. If this metric is trending down, that’s a big red flag! Conversely if it's stable or going up, you’re doing something right!
Customer Acquisition Cost. The amount your business has to spend to find each new customer. If you want to grow, tracking this metric will allow you to predict how much money you might need to spend in order to grow by a certain size.
Net Promoter Score. An objective measure of how happy your players are. Listen to episode 9 for more detail on this one.
So, there you have it. The 7 key metrics that you need to be tracking consistently if you want the facts about your coaching programme.
There are, of course, more metrics that you could, and maybe even should, be tracking.
But I can guarantee that if you start tracking just these 7 metrics, and you do it for 3 or 4 months consistently, you will definitely learn something new about your coaching programme.
No matter how well you think you know your coaching programme, there’s going to be something that you weren’t aware of, big or small, and the numbers are going to make that thing visible to you for the first time.
And when that happens, you’re going to be thankful that you did put a plan in place to track and report on your coaching programme properly.
Because at the end of the day, it isn’t that difficult to track these metrics each week or each month. It’s just a matter of setting up a system for it and then committing to do it regularly and consistently.
Alright that brings us to the end of today’s episode.
I hope it was useful and really do hope that you’ll start tracking at least some of these metrics for your coaching programme.
I’ll be back next week with another instalment of the Tennis Business Academy podcast.
Until then and thanks for tuning in.