Essential business planning to thrive in 2025

Steve Bird, Foremost Golf Business Development Consultant and Education Lead, highlights some simple steps that will stack the odds in your favour as we approach 2025.

The most successful businesses we work with at Foremost all have one thing in common: they make a simple plan for the following year.

Will Johnston Photography 240624 – Foremost Professionals’ Championship 2024 at The Oxfordshire

We advise taking some time away from the business to take stock of how it is performing, successes to build on, mistakes that have been made that shouldn’t be repeated and how to improve going forwards. Here are some key areas to focus on to thrive in 2025:

Cash flow

How did you manage your finances in 2024? Were there any pinch points that you could plan for next year? We are coming off the back of two years with long winters, so it makes sense to plan for this going forwards. Every business needs to do a cash flow forecast for the following year to set sales targets, how much stock that requires and what you can spend and when. Here at Foremost, we have a fantastic document that ensures there are no nasty surprises the following year.

Stock

Your till system is your best friend in helping to predict what you will need for 2025. Our advice – never go into pre-books without this data. Place your orders based on what you are likely to sell, not the numbers you need to do to get a ‘better deal’. When it comes to shoes and bags in particular, make sure you factor in a 15 percent deduction that you will inevitably have to special order in for customers.

It sounds obvious, but it is an extremely common mistake to go into pre-books without this essential information. If you don’t have it, invariably you will get tempted into buying more than you need to ‘get a better deal’. Remember: the number one way to lose margin is not buying at the wrong price….it is overstocking.

Example case study: Shoes

• How many pairs of shoes did you sell on average each year over the last two years?

• Deduct 15 percent from this, for the number you will inevitably have to order in.

• Do not pre-book any more pairs than this number.

• This can be reduced even further if your retail group have any exclusive higher margin products or special buys planned.

• According to FootJoy, in 2023, 80 percent of shoes sold were between sizes eight and 10. Therefore, it makes sense to order a full size run in your most popular shoe but concentrate on sizes eight to 10 in the other ranges.

Marketing

Retail turnover is now governed by how well you market yourself. If you aren’t digitally communicating with your golfers when they aren’t at your facility, you can guarantee your competitors are. Obviously, these communications need to regularly promote your services, choice and value, but also make sure you include fun local content. The objective should simply be this: when people think about golf, make sure they think about you.

Part of your planning should be to put together a basic marketing framework for 2025 that includes the key events the pro shop will be running, as well as product campaigns your retail group has organised and important dates in the golfing calendar.

Foremost have developed a digital marketing calendar that enables our professionals to input and view all of this key information, coordinating with their ‘Marketing Editor’ in the office to provide support for each event.

Staff

Are your team providing the same level of service as you? If not, plan staff training and development for 2025. There are a number of club managers and head PGA professionals that always seem to have brilliant staff around them and this is not a coincidence. The stronger your staff are, the better the business will do and the less reliance on one person to do everything.

Take advice

If you are in a retail buying group, there is lots of support available to help you plan. Use this support: We’re here to help.

In conclusion, make sure you diarise time away from your business, so you can plan to capitalise on the strengths of this year and not repeat the mistakes of the past. It will help make 2025 as strong as possible.

Foremost members can book into one of the Conference Roadshow educational events in November, which have a heavy focus on helping plan for 2025.

For further advice, email steve.bird@foremostgolf.com or call 07843 619377 or visit https://grip.foremostgolf.com