Business of Coaching

Apr 22 2021

Business of Tennis: Q&A With inspire2coach (session 3)

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Business of Tennis Live Q&A with inspire2coach (Session 3)

A rare insight into the running of a successful tennis business from experts in the business of tennis, Mark and Richard, Directors of i2c. Session 3 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.

Business of Tennis Live Q&A with inspire2coach (Session 2)

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Tennis24/7 Coach Academy: Business of Tennis session 2

Business of Tennis: Q&A With inspire2coach (session 2)

Mark and Richard, masters at the business of tennis, answer questions about anything and everything relating to running a tennis business. Session 2 of 4.

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

Business of Running a Club Programme

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Business of Running a Club Programme

John Cavill shares the secrets of running a club programme; understanding club culture, a fair deal, growing programmes and building trust.

John Cavill is the Director of Tennis and Co-Founder at Tennis Works, a tennis development and educational resource company, based at Stony Stratford LTC in Buckinghamshire. John is an experienced LTA Level 4, RPT Europe Level 4 and Bollettieri Tennis Academy International Coaches Programme Level 2 qualified coach.

This 45 minute interview is aimed at tennis coaches who are running their own club coaching programmes, who are interested in developing their relationship with the club, and who manage a team of coaches and assistants. John shares insights from his own experiences, including:

Changing a micro culture – When we started at Stony Stratford Tennis Club, which is quite traditional, there was a large section that saw us as a threat and caused a few stinks. Many of these are our greatest supporters now but it took a while to reassure and re-educate without being bullish and being very sensitive
Club contracts…what’s a fair deal? We negotiate very fair contracts with our clubs / centres and have walked away from a few offers as they didn’t feel right. I can share what we’ve done at Stony, what our deal is, why it’s fair and how it benefits both us and the club for the long term
Trusting your team – how we’ve developed a coaching team that is working hard together with long term ambitions sharing a common methodology.
Growing a programme – where we started with a basic framework that includes schools and how this spirals as numbers grow and needs change. We inherited a cheap and unstructured programme with about 40 people in a 9 court club. We had to change the format, increase prices and reduce ratios to ensure the quality is high. We now have 71 players in our competition programme of which are county, regional and national level and we have over 300 players in the programme who play recreationally at the schools and in club events / competitions.

Business of Tennis: Q&A With inspire2coach (session 1)

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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.

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.

What You Should Know About Club Programme Management

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What You Should Know About Club Programme Management

For coaches running a business or programme this interview has unique inside information from 2 of the industry’s most experienced managers.

This session is primarily for tennis coaches who either coach at or manage programmes and teams of coaches. Richard Marklow and Brad Rowbottom discuss aspects of club programme management and running your own business that we’re sure most coaches won’t have heard discussed before.

Our speakers

Richard Marklow is an LTA Level 5 coach, qualified mentor and Master Coach Education tutor with over 30 years’ experience in running businesses in the commercial and traditional club sector. Since 2007 Richard has been one of the Directors of inspire2coach and has headed up the company’s club programmes, dealing with over 30 different tennis clubs and facilities, their committees and coaching teams.

Brad is i2c Head of Commercial Operations, joining at the beginning of 2020 from his previous role as UK Head of Racquets for Virgin Active. He has a wealth of experience in commercial operations within tennis from overseeing some of the largest clubs in the UK to building partnerships with leading brands such as Castore, Adidas, Asics and Wilson. Brad now leads i2c’s commercial and internal projects, sourcing new business and partnerships, and streamlining the efficiency and effectiveness of the business.

Key take-aways for coaches

inspire2coach’s best relationships have always been partnerships. It’s all about in it together with the facility. To that end, it’s important that the coach understands what the club goals are so that they can work hard together on the partnership.
The relationship between the coach and the facility has got to be built on trust – which takes time to build.
The best relationships are built on trust and autonomy. The facility should allow the coach to get on with their job of coaching and what they’re best at. With the facility naturally being a part of big decisions.
How important is the contract between the coach and the provider in building the relationship?
- If you’re a coach on court with a contract – get one. Apparently stats say that around 30% of coaches don’t have a contract.
- Facilities and clubs are sometimes not keen to set up a contract but 100% as a coach you should have one. It might help to provide the club with a template or draft. In every walk of life you’d expect to have a contract.
- When setting up a contract I [Richard Marklow] always think about what can go wrong if you fall out. The reality is that when things are going well the contract sits in the drawer. Also be sure that you know what you want out of the contract and what the club wants. Both parties must be getting a fair deal. Look at the contract from your own and the club’s point of view.
- Things to consider include:
  - Court allocation – make sure it is clear and agreed exactly what court allocation you will get.
  - Coaching members or non-members – who are you going to be coaching?
  - Fees – what fees you’ll be charged and how will they change over time?
  - Responsibilities – what is expected of you as regards to keeping the club clean and tidy?
  - Reviews – if reviews are built in to the contract, definitely make sure you look at it again at 3 months and 6 months etc.
Do you think that coaches should pay fees for using the facility?
- My view is that yes, coaches should pay fees to use the facility; you’re leasing facility (just as a hairdresser leasing a chair). It comes down to the deal being fair. It doesn’t need to be cash though. Our preferred option is that we commit to 90% of people on our programmes being club members. So, what we give back is lots of memberships. There can be a target based on that.
- We do also pay for floodlights. That’s the fair thing to do.
- We also add value helping with club websites and strategy.
Clubs are often run by volunteer committees. Do you believe that coaches should have a role on that committee?
- Committees often have members who aren’t that familiar with the tennis industry.
- I think that coaches should definitely be on the committee.
- At every point coaches should understand the drivers of the committee or other key members. That way you can deliver on what is important to the committee.
- Always be well-prepared with honest factual numbers when talking to the committee. Keep subjective stuff away from discussions.
- Be flexible.
How can coaches improve their relationship with the club and committee?
- If you understand the club/committee’s key drivers then make sure you deliver on that.
- Make sure that you show that you really care. Be involved in fund raisers, social events, working bees etc. Go the extra mile to show that you care. It goes a long way to building the relationship.
- The coach is an important part of building the club’s culture.
- You can’t keep everyone happy. Just make good decisions that you can stand by.
- If people on the committee are not part of your programmes or part of your products then that’s dangerous. I recommend aiming to have at least 50% of the committee as part of your programmes.
- When people start complaining about small things it is usually about bigger issues. It can be an indicator of a bigger problem.
- If you are not at a meeting and the meeting notes come out with negative feedback about the coaching – that’s a red flag.
- Another red flag is when committee members start talking about other good coaches and programmes in the area.
How do you prevent a coach working with you from cutting you out with the club?
- To me it’s about protecting yourself with a contract or agreement up front.
- Make sure you have a good relationship with the club and committee.
- Drive from the front and lead with good quality relationships.
What’s your view of clubs employing the coach and coaching income going directly to the club? Is this something you’d recommend and that you think will be seen more often?
- I think that employing somebody gives the facility/club more control over that coach – but it also gives the coach more rights.
- You must have a good structure and be geared up to understand human resources and the legal requirements before you start employing someone.
What is a customer journey and why is it so important?
- To me the customer journey begins the moment a customer wants to interact with one of your products and wants to engage with you.
- It includes everything that happens to the customer whilst they’re part of your activity.
- The journey starts as soon as someone sees an advert or comes to a club – before they’re even a customer. Every stage represents your company.
- It lasts whilst ever the person continues to be a customer. It’s more than on court delivery.
- It includes making their journey as easy, efficient, consistent and quick as possible. The experience a person has should be the same before they sign up as it is afterwards.
What does that look like from a tennis viewpoint?
- Awareness – where the customer is out there looking for a tennis programme. They want to get involved in the activity. They’re not necessarily sure where to go so they’re looking at programmes and what you’re about.
- Then they’re in a stage where we’ve given them some information and they might come down for a trial. It’s important to follow up, give them more relevant information.
- Hopefully then we’re signing them up for a programme.
- It’s really important not to be selling to them all the time. You’re first follow up question should be more along the lines of “How did you get on?” It’s important that they enjoy what they’re doing rather than feel like they’re being sold to every time that we communicate.
- Its easy to forget existing customers once they’re signed on – but you’ve got to keep engaging with people (email, social media, website updates) that are already on your programmes.
- Don’t just concentrate on bringing people into the programme, make sure you take care of the people that are already in your programmes.
How has COVID affected the customer journey?
- Tennis as a whole has benefited from being a sport that people can get involved in.
- That taught us that it’s important to have a strong digital presence in your local community. If you don’t have a website – get a simple one up – because people are searching. Help them to find information about playing tennis. Also use community groups that have become very active. Keep your social media functioning.
What can you do to re-engage with your customers?
- Get the basics right. Check you’ve got the right contact details for customers. Don’t assume you’ve got up-to-date contact information. It’s a win-win because to check that you’ve got to communicate with customers which is helping you to engage.
- Check in with everyone to see how they’re doing? Can you direct them to online tennis activities, relevant YouTube channels… Show that you’re thinking about them.
- Start to be pro-active about the classes that you might run when you come back. Send people information so that they have the lead-time to prepare. You must prepare if you’re going to be ready.
- Check your digital channels are up-to-date.
- Have good plans that are ready to go as soon as we are able to open up.
What stats are out there?
- There is nothing wrong with looking at stats from other industries to see best practise.
- Open rates change a lot. In general at least a quarter of people don’t open your email.
- I like the purchase stages:
  - Awareness – you’re looking about for information and you don’t want people annoying you to buy. So it’s important to get information out there for people to find.
  - Consideration – people have information and they’re thinking about signing up (buying). This is an opportunity to engage and start to sell.
  - Decision Time – some people will come straight in and want to buy.
- The more contact and touch times you have with people – and that doesn’t mean always selling – the better your relationship will be. It can be a chat about how they’re going, how they’re enjoying tennis. Sometimes NOT SELLING is selling for your business. You’re promoting your culture and your business.
- I [Richard] don’t like the word selling because it sounds hard sell – I think our product is great and what we have got to offer is of benefit to everyone. All we should be doing is matching our product with expectations. We’ve got a great sport and great products; why wouldn’t they want to come?
- Over the last decade the amount of competition for people’s time has increased. As a sport we’ve got to offer the best value we can.
What systems or methods do we use to manage the customer journey?
- That will depend on the size of your business – but in real basics you can do it with a piece of paper and think about where the journey starts and finishes. Timeline from before they join and look at the activities that you can do. Look at activities that you can do to engage with different groups of people. Key is that it’s got to be planned.
- First step is to schedule/plan your term – when are the key weeks to deliver information. When do I send out re-enrolment letters.
- Then look at key weeks for retention activities. Activities to give back to players on your programmes.
- Start slowly and make sure you’re consistent and can sustainably deliver the activities you’re planning.
What are the pros and cons for a rolling junior programme of 50 weeks versus 45 weeks? How do you convince people that a 45 week programme is good value?
- I don’t understand why anyone does terms anymore. We didn’t lose customers when we switched from term payments to direct debit programmes.
- Paying by direct debit is gives you more security (monthly payment), a better customer database, far less administration (re-enrolling and re-scheduling classes) and fewer opportunities for people to decide they want to leave (improved retention). All that time you gain gives you time to work on retention and adding value to your programmes.
- Parents know where they are so that they can budget.
- We build in lost classes due to wet weather.
- Loses flexibility for players who want to come and go – but we don’t want those customers anyway. We want players who want to stay.
What kind of salary structure or format would you recommend to keep them motivated?
- Paying a player the same amount, say £20, for coaching 2 players or 20 players, then I don’t think there is a motivation for the coach to keep and look after the players. They’re going to get paid anyway. An incentive scheme helps the coach to buy in to the programme, retention and your business. We pay our coaches more for more players in the group.
- You can incentive in other ways; how many players they get into tournaments or on their qualification level (in countries with good education structures).
- Remember that money isn’t the only motivator. Some people are motivated by promotion, more responsibility, by being recognised.
Why would you charge coaches a fee and what would they get for their fee?
- We personally charge it because it brings in an income to pay for the things that we provide the coaches. It also lets me pay people to be great administrators. So coaches don’t have to do it.
- By calling the fee a “lease fee” [terminology can change so double check that] we protect our coaches self-employed status.

Business of Tennis: Q&A With inspire2coach (session 3)

inspire2coach

Business of Tennis Live Q&A with inspire2coach (Session 3)

A rare insight into the running of a successful tennis business from experts in the business of tennis, Mark and Richard, Directors of i2c. Session 3 of 4.

Related Articles on Tennis 24/7

Business of Tennis Live Q&A with inspire2coach (Session 2)

inspire2coach

Business of Tennis: Q&A With inspire2coach (session 2)

Mark and Richard, masters at the business of tennis, answer questions about anything and everything relating to running a tennis business. Session 2 of 4.

Related Articles on Tennis 24/7

Business of Running a Club Programme

inspire2coach

Business of Running a Club Programme

John Cavill shares the secrets of running a club programme; understanding club culture, a fair deal, growing programmes and building trust.

Related Articles on Tennis 24/7

Business of Tennis: Q&A With inspire2coach (session 1)

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

Related Articles on Tennis 24/7

What You Should Know About Club Programme Management

inspire2coach

What You Should Know About Club Programme Management

For coaches running a business or programme this interview has unique inside information from 2 of the industry’s most experienced managers.

Our speakers

Key take-aways for coaches

Related Articles on Tennis 24/7