Articles & Tips
Building Your Ski Lesson Business
By Sandy Millar, CSIA IV, CSCF III
Published in ProView – October 21, 2004
As we get ready for another great ski season, our attention turns to things such as getting ourselves ski fit, organizing our equipment, planning for our next level of certification… preparation for each is vital to ensuring a successful season. One thing that often gets neglected is preparation for the business of ski teaching itself.
”...it costs up to ten times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer.”
In my consulting business, I must constantly be prospecting for new business, as well as managing relationships with the valuable clients that I already have.
An interesting fact of business is that it costs up to ten times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer. This cost shows up in areas such as marketing and advertising, travel and entertainment of prospects, free demo’s, not to mention each and every moment of your time devoted to “selling” that customer on your service.
How can we as ski teachers take responsibility for our own business, doing our part to retain our own valuable customers? How can we build our own request business?
Here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling:
- Check with your ski school database to get names, addresses, and email of your previous clients. Create your own “Client database” and distribution list, easily done in MS Outlook and most email programs.
- Send out a pre-season fitness outline for your clients with comments relevant to the ski skills you worked on last season.
- Send a regular email “letter” with details of your pre-season prep.
- Give updates on the snow conditions, resort opening dates, early season “specials”, new programs that might be of interest…include anything you believe is interesting and relevant.
- Lay out a full season customized plan for skier development…
The more these contacts can be personalized, the better the response will be. Perhaps create a specific season lesson agenda for that student, outlining how you propose to build on last year’s coaching to achieve the student’s ski goals.
In surveys of repeat ski resort guests, “friendliness”, “the people”, “had fun”, are all at the top of the list of reasons why they chose to return. It is YOU that makes a big impact. Lets take advantage of that to build our business. Many of the top ski pros have taken this approach, in many different forms, to cultivate long-term relationships with their students. As a result, they are often “sold out”! It pays off in regular business, as well as the pleasure of skiing each year with old friends who share a common love of skiing.
Good luck and have a great season.