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Share your knowledge

You can help this industry by telling us what has worked successfully for your business.

Our thousands of readers represent a wealth of information and experience about how to run a successful tennis business. Now, we’d like to collect and share this knowledge in the pages of RSI with our Best Practices Contest.

We’d like to tap into the knowledge you’ve accumulated as a tennis director, facility manager, pro shop retailer, stringer, teaching pro or other industry insider. Tell us what has worked successfully in your business, or how you successfully handled a situation.

Our Best Practices Contest, organized in conjunction with Dr. Robert Heller of The Winning Edge, is designed to do two things: identify those who are doing an excellent job running their businesses and, even more importantly, help to disseminate this information as a way we all can learn from each other and continue to grow and improve in what we do.

We realize that determining best practices opens up a vast area. To keep it manageable, though, we’d like to limit the first installment of RSI’s Best Practices to these four topics: Programming, Retail, Personnel and Personal Well-Being. In future issues, we will solicit more of your best practices about other aspects of the business.

Pick one or more of the areas below and briefly tell us what you did that worked in a specific instance and, where applicable, the results you obtained.

The questions we list can be used as a guide, to help you narrow in on a particular topic. You may well have a best practice that would address a different topic or question than what we list here.

Our panel of experts will go through each submission and will select the three or four best practices in each of the four categories. Those selected will be featured in upcoming issues of RSI and will receive a certificate from the magazine.

A few ground rules:

• We must receive your submission by July 15.
• Please make sure your submission is typed, not handwritten.
• Each submission must have complete contact information (your name, your title, facility or shop name and address, your phone, and your e-mail if available).
• Each submission must be identified by the applicable category (Programming, Retail, Personnel or Personal Well-Being).
• We appreciate brevity; please keep your submissions to the point. If chosen by our panel, we will contact you for more information.

Programming

Possible topics could include:

• How do you determine which programs will work best at your facility?
• How do you evaluate your programs to determine their effectiveness?
• What specific strategies do you use to ensure programs run smoothly?
• How do you market and promote your programs for maximum exposure and participation?
• After a program ends, how do you ensure that participants continue in other programs you have to offer?
• What mistakes have you made in the past and how have you addressed them?

Retail

Possible topics could include:

• How do you choose the products to sell in your shop?
• How, and how often, do you interact with sales reps?
• How do you handle unsold merchandise?
• How do you use the internet to sell or order merchandise?

Personnel

Possible topics could include:

• How do you hire and select the right employee for the right job?
• How do you maintain and keep good employees?
• How and how often do you evaluate your employees?
• What strategies do you use to manage conflicts BEFORE they lead to blowouts or burnouts?
• If an employee isn’t working out, how do you let them go?

Personal Well-Being

Possible topics could include:

• How do you balance your work, family, and health?
• How do you know when you are out of balance?
• What personal strategies and philosophies do you use to cope with stress?

Mail your submissions to:

RSI, Best Practices, 330 Main St.,
Vista, CA 92084.
Fax them to: 760-536-1171.
E-mail them to: RSI@racquettech.com (put “Best Practice” in the subject line).

From the June 2004 issue
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