72 Different Ways to Sell Tennis
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to episode number 18 of the Tennis Business Academy Podcast.
Today’s episode is going to be a bit different.
As the title indicates I’m going to go through a very long list of different ways to sell tennis, which might make the episode sound a little bit weird.
I guess I’ll only really know once I finish recording and listen to it myself.
But even though the episode might end up sounding a bit odd, I think it’s important to record something on this topic.
Which is why I'm doing it.
And to introduce the topic I’d like to start with a question.
I’d like you to take 5 seconds to answer this question: What do you sell?
And when I’m asking you to answer this question, I’m assuming that you work in the tennis industry in one role or another, of course. Or at least a very similar industry to tennis.
If you don’t, I can already tell you that this podcast isn’t going to make sense for you.
Ok, let me ask the question again because I got a little sidetracked there.
What do you or the tennis organisation that you work for sell?
5 seconds starting now.
…
If you’re a coach and answered by saying that you sell people tennis lessons, you’re not wrong. But you’re also not right.
And if you work for a club or similar and your answer was that you sell memberships, or that you sell access to courts and other facilities then you’re also not wrong. But you’re also not right.
Let me try to explain this.
On the surface, these answers are accurate, of course.
But they don’t tell the whole story. They’re not even close to telling the whole story.
And most importantly, and this is where I want to get to, these surface level answers, as accurate as they are, don’t help us sell what we do.
Yes, we do sell tennis lessons and club memberships, but as I’m sure you’ll agree we provide much more than that.
Once we start scratching under the surface we can come up with an almost endless list of benefits of playing tennis.
And it’s by being able to communicate these benefits clearly, this second dimension of what we sell, that we’re able to grab more and more people to the sport.
The best way to persuade someone to do something, is to explain how their lives will improve by doing the thing that you’d like them to do.
Because in a very real sense, playing tennis does improve lives. There’s no doubt about that, I’m sure you’ll agree.
And that improvement to people’s lives is really what we’re selling.
If you’re able to sell the benefits of the ‘thing’ clearly, instead of trying to sell the ‘thing’ itself, then you stand a much better chance of persuading people.
Hopefully that makes sense.
But if it doesn’t, don’t worry, because for the rest of this episode I’m going to list 72 different benefits of playing tennis.
And I’d recommend that you listen right through to the end of the episode, as at the end is where I’m going to give examples of how you could use these benefits to sell tennis in real life scenarios.
So you should definitely listen to those!
Now, tennis certainly has more benefits than the ones that I’m about to cover, but I think 72 should be enough to get you started!
And to make it easier to digest I’ve categorised them into 4 different categories: the physical benefits, the skill benefits, the social benefits and the psychological benefits
So, let’s do this and let’s start with the physical benefits of playing tennis.
The Physical Benefits
When it comes to the physical side of tennis when we sell what we do:
We sell health or well-being, if you prefer. This is the most obvious and broadest way of putting it.
We sell a better life.
We sell a longer life. There’s a study that has shown that tennis contributes to longevity more than any other sport. If you’ve never seen this study I will link to it in the transcript, in case you want to check it out. (Forbes article on this study)
We sell coordination.
We sell speed.
We sell agility.
We sell balance.
We sell receiving skills.
We sell throwing skills.
We sell physical prowess.
We sell improvement in other sports.
We sell an active lifestyle.
We sell relaxation. De-stressing from work and other pressures of life.
We sell calorie burning.
We sell fitness.
We sell stamina and endurance.
We sell power.
We sell strength.
We sell flexibility.
Those are some of the physical benefits that we provide through tennis - I’m sure we could find even more.
But for now let’s move on to skill.
Skill Benefits
When it comes to the skill side of tennis,
We sell more skill and new skills.
We sell speed of improvement. It’s not just that we can teach a player to improve, it’s that by working with us, the player will get there quicker.
We sell technical improvements.
We sell more efficient technique.
We sell tactical improvements.
We sell decision making improvements. Like when to defend, or when to attack, as examples.
We sell better shot selection.
We sell more powerful shots.
We sell accuracy.
We sell court awareness.
We sell anticipation.
We sell precise and efficient movement.
We sell wins.
We sell better ratings and rankings.
We sell more prize-money.
We sell an opportunity to apply for a scholarship.
And at the extreme, we sell a shot at becoming a professional tennis player.
Now, of all the benefits, these are the ones that I’m the least concerned about, actually.
For two reasons: number 1 because I think that coaches tend to be very aware of these types of benefits. They don’t necessarily need me reminding them of these.
And secondly, because the players and parents that care more about these types of benefits are the ones that are already probably quite invested into the game.
So, while these types of benefits might persuade a player to move from one coach to another, or from one club to another, and might make sense for a coach or academy who is dedicated to the performance side of the game, they are not going to be the difference maker in terms of bringing new players into the sport.
For that purpose I think the benefits in all the other 3 categories are more important to get right.
Ok, moving on to…
The Social Benefits
When it comes to the social aspect of our sport,
We sell social interaction. If you’re coming to tennis, you’re going to meet plenty of new people. That’s almost a given. And with that,
We sell the ability to work and play in teams.
But we also we sell the ability to work and play on your own.
We sell respect for a teammate’s efforts.
We sell respect for an opponent’s efforts.
We sell learning how to encourage.
We sell learning how to be encouraged.
We sell new friendships.
We sell new rivalries. Which, in my personal experience at least, often turn out to be some of the best lifelong friendships.
We sell community.
We sell camaraderie.
We sell belonging.
Those are just some of the social benefits of tennis. We could find more, now doubt, but let’s move along to the last category for now.
The Psychological Benefits
And when it comes to the psychological side of the game,
We sell fun.
We sell confidence.
We sell fair-play.
We sell learning how to win.
We sell learning how to lose.
We sell better grades in school.
We sell a positive attitude.
We sell positive self-talk.
We sell mental health.
We sell intensity.
We sell resilience.
We sell self-reliance.
We sell courage. It takes a lot of courage to just even play a point at 5-5 30-30 in the third, let alone try to actually win that point.
We sell the ability to assess risk. Is it the right time to go for this shot, or not?
We sell happiness or joy.
We sell the value of hard-work. If you want to get good at something, you need to put in time and effort and tennis definitely teaches you this.
We sell time outside. This is assuming that you have outdoor courts.
We sell challenge.
We sell competition.
We sell a sense of progression.
We sell pride in one’s achievements.
We sell standing up for yourself. Who’s never had to argue a line call with an opponent before?
We sell learning how to handle pressure.
We sell learning how to deal with adversity.
And I could go on and on. In fact, if you notice that something is missing, just send it to me on david@tennisbusinessacademy.com
I will add any new ideas to the transcript, so this list keeps growing over time. And if there are a lot of them I might even re-record this episode!
But the really important thing that I need to acknowledge is that not all of the benefits I highlighted will be right for everyone.
I fully expect that most of them probably won’t be right for you or your club or business.
And some of them might be right only for some of the players in your programme or club and not right for others.
The goal isn’t for you to have to think about all of these all of the time. That would be insane.
The goal is that by considering all of these, at least once, you’ll be able to spot which ones you think are more relevant to what you and your club or business are about.
Because even though we all work in tennis, the reality is that we all have slightly different approaches to it.
We all value different benefits a little more or a little less.
And that’s great! That’s the way we want it to be!
Because our customers will also value different benefits more or less.
So, what I’d like you to do is to pick 4 or 5 benefits from the long list that we’ve just been through that really resonate with you and use them everywhere.
This is about finding the few ways that you think are the best ways to sell tennis and what you do.
And then start using them in:
The emails you send to potential customers and members
In the phone conversations you have with parents and adult players
On your website
On your social media posts and ads
On your end of term reports to parents, if you do those
On your flyers
On your banners
On your email newsletters
Even on your uniform and your tennis balls if you want to take it to the next level.
And there’s probably other places where you could use these.
The idea here is that once you’re clear on exactly what you’re selling, beyond just selling tennis lessons or tennis club memberships, you should do your best to communicate that clearly and often.
Because the more people hear that message, the more it’ll sink in and the better chance you’ll have of grabbing new people to your programme, club and the sport.
Before we finish, let me give you a couple of examples on how this could work in real life.
Let’s say that I’m looking for a punchy headline for the page on my website that sells adult tennis memberships.
So, I go through the list of the different ways to sell tennis and I pick out one benefit from each of the physical benefits, social benefits and psychological benefits.
And I go with the active lifestyle for the physical benefits, with the community aspect for the social benefits and with challenge for the psychological benefits.
If I choose those I could put together a headline that reads like this:
Join a community of friendly tennis people.
Challenge yourself.
Stay active.
Notice that I barely mentioned tennis. The key word there isn’t tennis at all. Which is the point that I’m trying to make!
But I could pick 3 other completely different ways to sell the club’s memberships and choose just the psychological benefits of fun, competition and sense of progression and write something like:
Have fun.
Play matches.
Become a better player.
Can you see the difference between these 2 different ways of selling our sport?
If I’m a customer reading these 2 different messages I get a very different perception of the club even before I set foot on there.
And I also get a very clear sense of what I’ll really be getting if I decide to join.
And this is just the headline, right. In 8 to 11 words - 8 to 11 words - and we’ve already communicated clearly some of the key benefits of joining the club.
And you still have the rest of the page to keep on persuading them.
Let me just give you one more example.
Let’s say that you want to create a flyer to distribute through schools to get kids joining the junior coaching programme.
And you already know what the big headline is going to be. FREE TENNIS LESSON.
It’s not a benefit. It’s an offer, but that also needs to be communicated clearly.
But then let’s say that beneath the offer you put a few bullet points with the benefits for the child of joining your programme.
So, you could create a flyer that will read something like this.
FREE TENNIS LESSON at the top and then
In our sessions your child will:
Learn how to play tennis quickly with fully qualified and experienced coaches
Improve their agility, balance, coordination and speed amongst a number of other physical skills that will serve them for the rest of their life.
Enjoy plenty of social interaction with other children the same age in a fun and professional environment
Boost their confidence through team activities designed to challenge them at the right level
Be introduced to matchplay where they will learn how to handle pressure and deal with adversity
Now, that’s 83 words. Depending on the design of the flyer it might be a bit too much text. But I just wanted to show you a few different options here.
And the fact is that in those 83 words, we hit 13 different benefits across the 4 different categories.
These were the speed of improvement, agility, balance, coordination and speed, then social interaction, fun, confidence, team play, challenge, competition, handling pressure and dealing with adversity.
Can you see how for a parent reading this, they’ll be more likely to take action if they read all these different ways in which tennis will help improve their child’s lives?
I mean which parent wouldn’t want their kid to improve their agility? Or learn how to handle pressure? Or increase their confidence?
Right?
And again, once you’ve picked your favourite ways to sell what you do you can and should weave them into everything.
So, that’s my challenge to you.
Go back and listen to the full list again if you have to, and then pick a few of the benefits that you think are the most important, write them down and start figuring out ways to introduce them into everything that you do.
Because I can guarantee that it will make a difference to the way that what you do and sell is perceived.
Alright, that’s it for today’s episode. As always I’ll be back next week with another instalment of the Tennis Business Academy Podcast.
Until then and thanks for tuning in.