Golf In The Family (Business)

The cold spring, a March Easter and the constant bad weather in the Midwest have pushed the blooms back and made the holidays feel early. This is the first year since 1992 – another weirdly cold spring and summer, part of the aftermath of Mt Pinatubo's eruption—when the lilacs, peonies and azaleas bloomed in June. The cottonwood seeds are still dotting the air like errant snowflakes and the sycamores have not stopped losing their lower leaves.

This is the weekend of the U.S. Open, which traditionally ends on Fathers Day. I know the Masters passed and saw Trevor Immelman win, yet that seems like last season, not a mere 10 weeks ago. Tiger's absence has also made it feel like the Tour is treading in place, so the U.S. Open seems too early this year and Fathers Day has caught us by surprise.

San Diego is almost season-less, which probably makes it feel like time stops to a Midwesterner. It's a good location for the U.S. Open, even if Torrey Pines is brutal. Golf has an outside of time quality that can drive you crazy or sweep you in. The U.S. Open epitomizes that quality for both the players and the audience. It reminds us of how much has changed and how much as stayed the same in this game.

Fathers everywhere who love golf are encouraged to play tomorrow. Some will make sure they are home to watch the last hours of the Open and some will only be able to play a twilight round. Whoever and where ever they are I hope they get out, feel inspired and decide they'll play through November this year.

Sunday, at The Meadows Golf Course in Blue Island, IL, a suburb directly south of Chicago, Klees Golf Shop hosted a Ping Demo Days. The Ping Fitting Van came out and parked right next to the driving range. The two men in charge, John and Matt, were young, energetic and organized. Matt ran the launch monitor, a laptop with a box below that I did not get to view.

John worked with the people signed up for fitting or who came by to see what was going on. The Men's Club was finishing their round and a few of them came by wondering if Ping clubs were being given away. Despite 30+mph winds and the threat of storms, there were a surprisingly large number of people playing golf.

John and Matt set up at least 20 bags of clubs. There were G10s, Raptures and Rhapsodies for every kind of golfer. This was a Southpaw's Paradise and a woman golfer's delight. Drivers, fairway woods, hybrids and the iron carts, multiple lofts and shafts types. If you couldn't find a Ping club that worked for your swing you weren't looking.

People came by to find out their irons didn't fit, their driver lofts were too low or their shafts were too stiff. One guy actually discovered he needed an Xtra stiff shaft, a surprise to him and me. I picked up a 16 degree Rhapsody driver and hit three terrific drivers, at least 160 yards, all straight. A couple of other women did even better with G10 drivers with 12 degree lofts and soft-regular flexes.

The Fitting Van was set up with a wide-screen TV monitor that ran a DVD of the fitting process and people's experience getting fit for their clubs. I was not in a position to view the DVD but I heard the same sequences enough times to figure out that personal testimonies were the primary selling point.

A major thunderstorm cut the fitting day short by an hour. But, everyone who came seemed to have really enjoyed the experience and I know some of them benefited. Klees Golf Shop has already written up four orders and there may be more to follow.

Surprises? There were plenty of golfers playing at The Meadows who never heard of our shop. There were plenty of golfers who hadn't been to Klees Golf Shop in over ten years and had no idea where we were. There were also golfers who came by to fool around with no intention of changing equipment. I suspect that group makes up a big percentage of who shows up at Demo Days. The guys from Ping seemed to think that, too, but they were remarkably good natured about this and gave everyone far more attention than I would have.

Ping does a terrific job at enabling golfers to experience a full range of equipment, with the tools, bells and whistles you'd expect from the company that made club fitting an industry standard. If you've never been to a Ping Demo Days you're missing something.

This is strictly a “Golf in the Family (Business)” entry about the role field sales reps play in the way we do business. For better or worse, our experience of a vendor and its brands is colored by our relationship with that vendor's sales rep.

Doing business with a major (or minor) golf company includes dealing with the inside customer support team, credit department, warranty and repairs, and in some cases, the marketing department. Charlie has always claimed that he could do business just fine with any of our vendors without an outside sales person. He's probably right.

Yet, the outside sales rep can be a big help for managing inventory, turning orders around quickly, implementing promotions and addressing problems. He can make all the difference in how we perceive a company's policies even when I know that our perceptions are biased.

In a former life I was an outside sales rep selling direct marketing services to mostly large companies. I did not recognize the influence I might have had in my client relationships until after I left that career and became a customer.

Now I see that how I feel about a sales rep affects how I see everything he stands for. Does that sales rep keep his word? Does he tell a straight story about his company's marketing, production and pricing policies? Does he take care of problems in a timely way? Does he make and keep appointments, respond to email and confirm pre-booked orders before they get shipped? Does he share close outs and product deals with us?

There are often big differences between the ways one company operates internally from another. Occasionally, a company will establish a standard for doing business because its practices or products are so clearly superior in the minds of the customer.

Klees Golf Shop benefits from a vendor's good image and we have to respond when customers request a brand because of this. However, the brands we carry, promote and repair are largely influenced by the opportunities we have to make money in what has become an extremely competitive market. And this is where the sales rep can help.

2008 is shaping up to be a year of great challenge for many industries, especially the golf business. Bad weather, high gas prices, job instability and a credit crunch are affecting almost everyone in some way, mostly bad. Given this scenario I can only hope our vendor reps step up to the challenge and do what they can to help us get through this year.