Business of Tennis Live Q&A with inspire2coach (Session 1)

Mark and Richard, masters at the business of tennis, answer questions about anything and everything relating to running a tennis business. Session 1 of 4.

Together, Mark Tennant and Richard Marklow own and run one of the UK’s largest and most successful tennis businesses. Their depth and range of knowledge is indisputable and respected throughout the industry.

In this interview Mark and Richard answer Tennis24/7 members burning questions about anything and everything relating to running a tennis business.

To make a good impression it’s important that you know that eyes are on you as soon as you walk into the building.
The work happens before you start. If I was starting a new role I’d do some research, for example mystery shopping – go to the club and get a feel for it. Get your friends to call the club and learn about it. Do research before you start.
Remember that there needs to be a discovery phase. It’s about talking to people and getting a really good feel for what’s happening. Keep your eyes and ears open. Don’t walk in and make changes immediately.
Make sure you speak to all of the different customer groups; parents, adult players etc at different times of day. The club will have a different feel at different times and the groups probably won’t know each other.
Once you’ve finished the discovery phase, it’s about formulating a good plan – and telling people what the plan is – with buy in ideas from members. Then you’ve got to deliver on the plan. Make sure that you do deliver because people are watching you!
You only have one chance to make a first impression.

100% yes. People like to get to know the person; their hobbies, what they like, who they’re dealing with.
The first impression people get of a person can be wrong or limited – particularly if they first met in a formal situation. It’s amazing what you can learn when you chat informally.

It’s a difficult balancing act between what the members want and what the coach wants. We run coaching at a lot of venues so it’s not uncommon for us to see coaches fighting for courts – particularly at peak times.
Our best advice is to avoid being in this position to start with.
Look at the situation through them members eyes. Sometimes the reality may be that the club is not big enough.
It may be that you should not be coaching at peak times every night of the week. Especially avoid taking individual lessons when the courts are really busy. If you are coaching at peak times then make it group lessons. Members are more likely to understand and appreciate seeing a lot of players on court during a busy time.
Make sure that your contract includes a good court agreement. So, if things do get nasty, you’ve got a good agreement.
Don’t be greedy. Make sure you utilise every court that you’ve got. Make sure your court occupancy is optimal.
Make sure key decision makers are on side with the type of activity you’ve got scheduled on the courts at different times.
Once you’ve got a good schedule, stick to it.

People often think that you have to drive more people into your programme all of the time. The biggest strength you’ve got is to retain your current players.
At inspire2coach we were worried about our existing players so we went out to parents of kids in our programmes and asked them what they wanted from our tennis programmes. The bottom line is that they just wanted kids to have fun and be active with their peer group. They didn’t want as much as I thought they wanted! We’ve spent a lot of time putting in place good schemes of work and good lesson plans … in many ways coaching for tennis purists. The reality is that the customer just wants fun and active kids!
My best advice is that you need to sell a tennis experience, not a tennis lesson.
Players don’t remember the forehand cross court lesson you did on a wet and windy night in January. What they actually remember is the experiences – the fun trip you took to play tennis in France.
It doesn’t have to be an overseas trip! What you can do is find soft ways to create an experience – something like a friendly match against a local club. What you’re doing is making your coaching go somewhere. Quite often our coaching goes nowhere.
What do you want them to remember in 15 years time when they meet you?
What we do in our programmes is encourage our players to play twice a week. We find the second session – and it doesn’t have to be a lesson – turns them into a “tennis player” rather than a social drop-in to the programme. Once people are really tennis players then it is easier to sell the tennis experiences that help people to enjoy the sport.
Our current target is for 20% of players on our programmes to play twice a week. Currently it’s half that.
I recommend that you red, amber, green your players.
- Red – players you can’t get to play more than once a week. Be careful not to put too many people in this category. It’s surprising what you can achieve when you start talking to people.
- Amber – players you think you can get to move from playing once a week to twice a week.
- Green – people who play twice a week. So the question is how can you get them to play 3 times a week. What experiences can you offer to them? Make sure you look after these customers.
Retention tools such as Halloween parties, club kit and term reports add value but they’re hard work and so are often not done consistently. When they’re not done consistently that’s when retention tools don’t work.
- Team kit is very important – other sports do this so much better than tennis!
- Award schemes are great motivators.
Communicate well with parents.
Don’t spend all your time setting up a Christmas party if the kids are miserable on court all the rest of the time!
The hard reality is we’re in the entertainment business of looking after kids! We’re keeping the kids entertained and having fun.

Everyone (players and coaches) are handling this lockdown differently. Some people really aren’t handling it well, so check in on them.
Some people want to be communicated with all the time and some just want to be left alone. One size doesn’t fit all.
My advice is to remember that your contact with customers at this time is NOT a sales call. It is checking in on people to make sure that they are OK. To understand that they are missing tennis and looking forward to getting back on court.
Although I say it’s not a sales call – it absolutely is – but don’t treat it like that. Just check in, listen and see if they want to play more tennis. I honestly don’t think people now want to be sold to right now. Make notes and perhaps get in touch a few weeks after things return to normality.
It’s a great opportunity to reflect on where you career is going. Are you where you want to be?
- I find it really interesting that top performing people have mentors. I think that it’s a good time to hook into a mentor.
- Educating yourself is a great opportunity – but be selective. Try don’t to set yourself up to be everything to everyone and choose good content. There is a lot of stuff out there. Pick a couple of subjects and then research those subjects rather than jumping around.
I think we’ll be back on court quite quickly – by which I mean that when things start up again it will be quick. So, when you’re planning your get back on court strategy, plan it to go over a short period. Don’t plan it to go over a month. Arrange your social media campaign which is over a 2 week period, not a 4 to 6 week period.
Keep fit. That’s an industry given. It’s got mental and physical benefits.
I don’t think this long time away from our jobs will come again. Don’t regret not using it correctly.
We’ve all of us started doing a lot of great things during lockdown; personally and professionally. It may be worth making a commitment to continue doing some of those things that are important to you. For instance, why not keep doing weekly Zoom calls with a group of parents? A lot of positive things can keep going.
When we work hard we forget about ourselves. Its important to diarise to keep doing things for yourself.

Recruit the person first, not the skill set.
The tennis world is really small. You can learn a lot about a person before you take them on. It’s easy to take on someone high performing because you’re desperate, but don’t do that, make sure you take on the person first.
An easy warning sign to look out for, if a person joins you but gave no notice time where they were previously employed – then be warned, that’s how they will leave you!
There are loads of tell-tale signs.
Administration is often not a coaches strong suit so I recommend that you spend some money and get some administration into your business. Your business rises and falls on the quality of your service to your customer.
If you are great at admin, still get someone in! Having good quality admin support frees you up to run a good quality business.

Before we moved to direct debit we ran a traditional model of charging.
We initially changed only one club to direct debit.
We lost hardly any customers.
Then we did a second tranche and rolled the model out to a couple more clubs before we went across our whole base.
Having our customers on direct debit payments also allows us to manage and control our price-increases really well. We raise our prices by a very small amount at the same time, every year. I don’t believe in raising prices by a large amount every few years.
It has allowed us to give our coaches security and stability over 12 months. It protects our business by evening out cash flow.
As a business, we don’t accept cash. We had too many horror stories with coaches forgetting to pass over money and money lost in bags etc! It’s just dangerous and we lose control when cash is floating around. It protects our customers and coaches not to operate with cash.

We run for 45 weeks of the year; customers pay for 40 of those 45 weeks. So there are 7 weeks where we don’t run. Those 5 weeks are our lee-way for when the weather is too poor to play.

We have a list of minimum standards as part of our coaches’ contracts. For example:
- Must arrive 10 minutes before a session.
- Courts must be laid out.
- Coach must look smart.
- We’re sponsored by Wilson, so our coaches must have the “W” logo on their racket.
We also have a list of the way lessons should look and feel.
We also train our coaches and watch them.
Parental feedback and retention are a great indicator of quality. But don’t ask parents to comment on the quality of a lesson because they’re not qualified to tell you how technically good a lesson is. What they can tell you is whether their kids are having fun and enjoying the lesson – was the coach there early.
In the past we’ve sent in “mystery shoppers” but it’s got to be secret or it’s natural for people to up their game when they’re expecting a mystery shopper.

Our coaches are self-employed but our managers are employed. There are positives and negatives to both of these positions.
A big plus is that self-employed coaches can claim against tax. But we’re not experts so we strongly recommend that anyone interested should look into this and stay up-to-date.
When someone is employed by you, you have more control but you have to look after holidays and disciplinary issues too.

Listener responses:
- Extended services off-court
- More online content
- Online coaching services
- Padel tennis
- Smarter booking systems
- Technology
- Relationships with schools
- More timed matches
- More indoor venues
- Hoping more girls keep playing into their teens.
Richard’s reponse:
- All of the above!
- Committees are finding it harder and harder to get people to commit. One, two or three people are doing all the work. The committee structure may change. That’s an opportunity for coaches to step up.
- COVID will have repercussions on the online piece for years.
- The growth of parks tennis has surprised me – even though it shouldn’t have. People will start to recognise the market that is available there.
- The pressure to erect indoor tennis venues will drive down the price on those facilities.
Mark’s response:
- Things are going to become more automated. More apps and online coming through.
Rob’s (the question’s author) respond to his question:
- Following a more structured approach to coaches and head-coaches at clubs.
- Variety in the services that the coach can offer.
- Way to book lessons that doesn’t involve WhatsApp or texting!

Key take-aways for coaches

The work of making a good impression starting a new role happens before you start. When starting a new role do some research, for example mystery shopping – go to the club and get a feel for it. Get your friends to call the club and learn about it.
The first impression people get of a person can be wrong or limited – particularly if they first met in a formal situation. It’s amazing what you can learn when you chat informally.
Court allocation at clubs can be an issue. Don’t be greedy. Make sure you utilise every court that you’ve got – for instance, avoid taking individual lessons when the courts are really busy and consider not coaching at peak times every night of the week. If you are coaching at peak times then make it group lessons. Members are more likely to understand and appreciate seeing a lot of players on court during a busy time.
To keep standards high at venues when we can’t be there in person we add conditions to coaches contracts and ensure we train our coaches.
People often think that you have to drive more people into your programme all of the time. The biggest strength you’ve got is to retain your current players.
When inspire2coach surveyed parents they learned that the bottom line is that they just wanted kids to have fun and be active with their peer group.
Our best advice is that you need to sell a tennis experience, not a tennis lesson. Players don’t remember the forehand cross court lesson you did on a wet and windy night in January. What they actually remember is the experiences so find ways to create an experience – something like a friendly match against a local club.
We have found that when players play more than once a week – it doesn’t need to be a 2 lessons, a match counts too – it turns them person into a “tennis player” rather than a social drop-in to the programme. Once people are really tennis players then it is easier to sell the tennis experiences that help people to enjoy the sport.

inspire2coach

Business of Tennis Live Q&A with inspire2coach (Session 1)

Mark and Richard, masters at the business of tennis, answer questions about anything and everything relating to running a tennis business. Session 1 of 4.

Key take-aways for coaches

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