2023 will be the year defined by pricing principles.

Please ensure you give a whole lot of time and a whole lot of discussion to the realities of your pricing for 2023. It is too important.

You can't get this wrong in 2023.

We had the pandemic in 2020 & 2021. We re-entered a kinda new transitional reality in 2022. That makes 2023 the full-on reset button for what our new realities will be for the next 5 years and beyond. Let's all be very responsible about how we do that. We only get one shot at this. Our customers are watching. They are sharp consumers and paying close attention. This is no time to blink. They will hold us to task for what we will do this year.

Discounting is just a word. An easy word to invoke and a far too acceptable word in our industry. It needs to have the edge put back on it. It needs to be a coldly calculated end game resulting from precise pricing strategy discussions. We need to sweat more when we end up playing the discount game. It can never be a reflex and shouldn't be introduced without complete awareness. This word has tripped us all up before and it is more than able to do the same again.

Time for theoretical chats. We are trapped between a monster shift in general retail pricing and our own unchanging realities of managing an inventory of perishable product. It's an uncomfortable spot. Discounting is everywhere. It's very different than before. Just one generation ago a retail price was a rather unmovable number. That's why the trope about the car salesman and the haggling banter became part of pop culture. It was one of the few places where bargaining and discounting were in play. Our inner deal-maker got a chance to stretch its legs when closing the deal on a car. The price of a pair of winter boots or kids pajamas? Unwavering. All that has changed over this last generation.

Now discounting is everywhere. It's a built-in strategy. Make note though, this discount strategy is mostly built for non-perishable items. Those industries are welcome to it. It's a successful strategy. We should use it widely for selling our golf shirts and putter covers - not so much for our perishable tee times.

I do most of the grocery shopping in my household - I know I can become a bit smug about getting a good deal when I shop. Making that extra trip to a 2nd grocery store for the weekly price offering on fresh Chicken Drumsticks or a 10 LB bag of potatoes. I've been trained. I watch the flyers. I behave appropriately and I proudly announce my conquest at the dinner table. Finding a good deal makes me feel good. But I am buying a packaged good.

Please continue to price your F&B and your 1/4 zip layering pieces as the packaged goods that they are. Built from some formula of cost-of-goods + labour and margin expectancies will spit out a number to put on those price tags. Then you can knock 20% off as you see fit. Keep it up. But not for your green fees.

The formula for green fees is not a formula at all - it's a perspective. The perspective of what your customers will pay + what your competitors are charging and the knowledge of what they have been willing to pay in the past.

As I coach my clients - most every course is in a purchase consideration relationship with their golfers made up of just the Big 3. Price + Location + Quality.

How much is it? Where's the course? Is it any good?

As a lifetime marketer I have had to come to terms with the reality that for a majority of customers, their consideration window, at the time of purchase, is rarely more than those 3 questions. So first things first - you'd better have your positioning inside the Big 3 nailed down and evaluated constantly.

You need to look in the mirror and pass some self-judgement on this because 1 of the Big 3 is tantilizing to muck around with. Price. You can't change your address and you can't really make too big a change to the course you have as it is.....but boy oh boy you can certainly screw around with price as often as you want. It's too tempting because it scratches an itch we all have. The itch to Do Something. We aren't do nothing people. Careful.

Discipline. Self awareness. Consumer behaviour knowledge. Competitive landscape realities. Trend identification.

Your green fee pricing strategy must be born of these. It can't be born singularly of cost realities. And any discounting off that must be coldly calculated and controlled by your own distribution methods. When you discount you risk resetting the price perception threshold of your customers, so tread fearfully in this neighbourhood.

Price drives revenue which is on the uncomfortable side of the ledger for too many of us. We've become masters of the expense side - watching every dollar spent and developing a lopsided skillset. We're all experts on saving, but not really on earning.

There are too many case studies of businesses that played a bit too fast & loose with discounting and ended up with a customer base that became unwilling to pay regular price so please enter this game with eyes wide open.

This is a very important year.

My market evaluation summary will set the baseline for what you need to be watching out for. Call me to discuss.

I am at [email protected] or 416-300-2075.

Review my Industry articles at https://tgreensolutions.com/blog/

Happy New Year!