Here is an article I wrote that was just published in Sources magazine, which for you non NAUI types is the NAUI Membership magazine.
The BIG LIE you may have believed.
I first heard of it while I was in a sales meeting in 2006. At the time I was the Southeast sales manager for one of the major scuba brands and we had all gathered to hear about our latest new products, sales and promotions, discussion on what the folks on the ground (Reps) were hearing and seeing in the field and also to hear what the ADULTS (Our boss was hearing in discussion with the bosses at other big brands, training agencies, DEMA, large retailers, etc. A.K.A. The Cartel ) were talking about.
So there I sat as it was explained to us that the younger generations, namely Gen X (1965-1979) and even more so the Millennial or Generation Y (1980-2000) no longer were interested in pursuing scuba as a lifestyle. Instead they were coming into dive shops looking only to check something off their personal bucket list. I sat there as virtually the only sales manager who belonged to one of the aforementioned generations and was simply stunned at this news. While I would like to say I sat quietly and absorbed this valuable and groundbreaking revelation of marketing information and mulled it over while excited to run to my dealers and tell them that we finally had a reason for the lack of non-baby boomer participation! Oh the joy! Finally, we were starting to understand what we were seeing, it could all be fixed! But I didnt sit there quietly; I bypassed my very inefficient brain/mouth filter and stated that I disagreed, in the manner that only a diesel boat submariner that I used to be can. I was given a death ray stare by my boss as he explained the industry had done extensive and expensive research and reached this conclusion, thus the baby boomers remained the important demographic that we as an industry needed to continue to pursue. I muttered something about developing a funeral home prospecting kit and decided to shut up on this particular matter as now the entire room of baby boomers was giving me the stink eye for discussing their looming demise.
Over the next 7 years I watched as this little nugget and gem became accepted industry lore. Spread from dive shop to dive shop by eager representatives of the various agency stakeholders that had quite literally bought into this line of thinking. Soon, dive stores across the nation were well versed in the mindset that anybody who was not a baby boomer that walked through the doors was only there to experience scuba and get a scuba license, that these potential customers walked in the door with zero intention of pursuing continuing education or buying gear. Every younger face was greeted by a store owner, manager or employee who had been conditioned to believe that this individual who just walked in and said I want to learn how to dive was really saying I want to fill a check off box on my bucket list and I need a scuba card, I need it fast, cheap and you will never see me again, oh and dont try and sell me any of your overpriced scuba gear either. Not surprisingly, these younger customers seemed to prove the myth.
This weekend at a dive show in the mid west I had no less than three of my fellow dive industry pros share this little nugget of a cow pie with me.
Its BULL. Complete and utter BULL. We bought into it and its killing us.
First of all, think about when you were young. You werent pursuing a bucket list, you were invincible! You were trying new things, new people, new sports and possibly even stuff that you dont want your spouse, children or parents to know about even today possibly the law as well. You walk in to a dive shop and you want to learn to dive, if its fun and cool you will keep doing it, if its not you wont. Sometimes things really are simple.
I can hear people saying that kids today live on their smartphones, buried in social media, they dont want to actually engage in activities outside. That couldnt be more wrong. They are sharing their life, and more than anything, they want to share an awesome life. One filled with beautiful people, places, experiences and adventure. They want to be the star in their own reality show that they produce on that silly little smartphone using social media as the media of their life memories much as 35mm film was the media of our memories. Im jealous of that actually, I dont have such a scrapbook of my life to share with my loved ones, no well recorded and documented personal history for my daughter to one day see her old man when he was young. To many moves and too busy making sure I never spent a minute doing what I didnt love to do. Stuff got left behind. I sure wish I had it now, and that of my parents .but I digress.
We moan about them not buying into our lifestyle. WHY WOULD THEY? They dont even know what it is. We shut them out when we decided they wouldnt buy in. We pre-judged them and found them lacking and they responded in turn by simply finding us not worth being around.
Its been a perfect storm. We decided they had a bucket list and they only wanted to experience scuba, we also embraced better methodologies of academic learning for new divers during the same period. How does that correlate? Let me elaborate a little. Current academic teaching is mostly presented as self directed home study. Mostly computer based, lately online. The results of this approach to teaching the academic principles of diving have been proven to more effective than the old style of lectures when it comes to retention of knowledge by our students. Its a good thing. However, what have we lost? We no longer spend as much time with our students, less time, less relationships. Less relationship equals less continuing education and less equipment sales. If they do buy they are going to find the lowest price possible because frankly, they dont know you and they dont care about you and expect that you in turn care nothing for them, why would they buy something from you? Especially if its more expensive. They dont know you let alone like or respect and most importantly TRUST you. You can be the cheapest dive shop in town, unless your shop is located at an awesome dive site in a warm location where people travel to dive you will NEVER get a volume that makes selling low margin gear a good idea. So forget about selling gear, or continuing education to these folks. Or dive travel or fills and when they dont buy equipment they dont need service. Thats not gonna end well.
Does this mean a return to lectures? Not if youre smart. It means spending more time doing other activities. Spend an evening going over equipment, dive safety in person one evening, have coffee and donuts (or carrot juice and celery sticks). Make an two hour presentation on dive travel, aquatic life and continuing education part of your course. Show images (on a projector from your PC,tablet or phone, NOT your old Kodak carousal!) that you and your customers have taken in the adventures you have done together!
We have discouraged war stories in the instructional setting because they detracted from the educational process. That didnt mean we should get rid of them! In sales features are things something has, what it does is the benefit. People buy the benefit, not the features. The academics of a dive class are our features, the war stories and lifestyle are the benefits. That is what they actually want! We need to share them if we expect people to buy them. Ask any sales professional how showing features without the benefits works out for them.
Show the dive lifestyle, not just bemoan that people who have never seen something dont want it. Run a class that is taught by your youngest instructor and only enroll young adult students. Let them form a dive club of young adult divers. I promise the first thing they will do is make a facebook group and tweet about it.
During the open water dives, bring a grill, break bread with your students, talk and have fun. Dont try and free up their afternoon because they want to do it as quick as possible but make it SOCIAL because its FUN. Learn to connect with your customer base using social media, sometime it sucks and its work and we may not like that it involves putting ourselves out there but quite frankly it you dont you really do need to start putting flyers in funeral homes. Leave instructions for the home to cremate the flyers when they do the last baby boomer.
None of these ideas are new, in fact they are old as dirt and in fact it was how our industry became an industry. Making a tank from an old fire extinguisher, taking a 12 week course or diving in a wool sweater SUCKED. But it was an adventure and the people were awesome. Somewhere along the way we lost all that. We made diving so easy that grandparents could do it with their grandkids and then wondered the grandkids dont think that doing something their grandparents can do is an adventure.
We know most of this in our hearts, weve been so worried about being PC and marketing diving as safe (it isnt, its forgiving of little mistakes quite often, until it isnt. Then its deadly) that WE, the dive industry have suppressed the adventure, hidden the lifestyle and then wondered why people arent terribly impressed. The problem is NOT the newer generations, it is NOT the economy, weve been underperforming the economy for years, its NOT shorter courses (when they are taught well using modern methods and you make a comfortable diver). The problem is the face looking at us from the mirror. Until we reconcile that what we have been doing and believing as an industry these last 15 years has been an abject failure nothing will get better.
Its time we stopped blaming the young for our problems. Without them we have no future. If you REALLY believe they are the problem can I suggest you volunteer with SUDS? The young men and women there have been fighting a 12 year war for us, they show strength, integrity, courage of their convictions and they are every bit as worthy as the greatest generation.
The BIG LIE you may have believed.
I first heard of it while I was in a sales meeting in 2006. At the time I was the Southeast sales manager for one of the major scuba brands and we had all gathered to hear about our latest new products, sales and promotions, discussion on what the folks on the ground (Reps) were hearing and seeing in the field and also to hear what the ADULTS (Our boss was hearing in discussion with the bosses at other big brands, training agencies, DEMA, large retailers, etc. A.K.A. The Cartel ) were talking about.
So there I sat as it was explained to us that the younger generations, namely Gen X (1965-1979) and even more so the Millennial or Generation Y (1980-2000) no longer were interested in pursuing scuba as a lifestyle. Instead they were coming into dive shops looking only to check something off their personal bucket list. I sat there as virtually the only sales manager who belonged to one of the aforementioned generations and was simply stunned at this news. While I would like to say I sat quietly and absorbed this valuable and groundbreaking revelation of marketing information and mulled it over while excited to run to my dealers and tell them that we finally had a reason for the lack of non-baby boomer participation! Oh the joy! Finally, we were starting to understand what we were seeing, it could all be fixed! But I didnt sit there quietly; I bypassed my very inefficient brain/mouth filter and stated that I disagreed, in the manner that only a diesel boat submariner that I used to be can. I was given a death ray stare by my boss as he explained the industry had done extensive and expensive research and reached this conclusion, thus the baby boomers remained the important demographic that we as an industry needed to continue to pursue. I muttered something about developing a funeral home prospecting kit and decided to shut up on this particular matter as now the entire room of baby boomers was giving me the stink eye for discussing their looming demise.
Over the next 7 years I watched as this little nugget and gem became accepted industry lore. Spread from dive shop to dive shop by eager representatives of the various agency stakeholders that had quite literally bought into this line of thinking. Soon, dive stores across the nation were well versed in the mindset that anybody who was not a baby boomer that walked through the doors was only there to experience scuba and get a scuba license, that these potential customers walked in the door with zero intention of pursuing continuing education or buying gear. Every younger face was greeted by a store owner, manager or employee who had been conditioned to believe that this individual who just walked in and said I want to learn how to dive was really saying I want to fill a check off box on my bucket list and I need a scuba card, I need it fast, cheap and you will never see me again, oh and dont try and sell me any of your overpriced scuba gear either. Not surprisingly, these younger customers seemed to prove the myth.
This weekend at a dive show in the mid west I had no less than three of my fellow dive industry pros share this little nugget of a cow pie with me.
Its BULL. Complete and utter BULL. We bought into it and its killing us.
First of all, think about when you were young. You werent pursuing a bucket list, you were invincible! You were trying new things, new people, new sports and possibly even stuff that you dont want your spouse, children or parents to know about even today possibly the law as well. You walk in to a dive shop and you want to learn to dive, if its fun and cool you will keep doing it, if its not you wont. Sometimes things really are simple.
I can hear people saying that kids today live on their smartphones, buried in social media, they dont want to actually engage in activities outside. That couldnt be more wrong. They are sharing their life, and more than anything, they want to share an awesome life. One filled with beautiful people, places, experiences and adventure. They want to be the star in their own reality show that they produce on that silly little smartphone using social media as the media of their life memories much as 35mm film was the media of our memories. Im jealous of that actually, I dont have such a scrapbook of my life to share with my loved ones, no well recorded and documented personal history for my daughter to one day see her old man when he was young. To many moves and too busy making sure I never spent a minute doing what I didnt love to do. Stuff got left behind. I sure wish I had it now, and that of my parents .but I digress.
We moan about them not buying into our lifestyle. WHY WOULD THEY? They dont even know what it is. We shut them out when we decided they wouldnt buy in. We pre-judged them and found them lacking and they responded in turn by simply finding us not worth being around.
Its been a perfect storm. We decided they had a bucket list and they only wanted to experience scuba, we also embraced better methodologies of academic learning for new divers during the same period. How does that correlate? Let me elaborate a little. Current academic teaching is mostly presented as self directed home study. Mostly computer based, lately online. The results of this approach to teaching the academic principles of diving have been proven to more effective than the old style of lectures when it comes to retention of knowledge by our students. Its a good thing. However, what have we lost? We no longer spend as much time with our students, less time, less relationships. Less relationship equals less continuing education and less equipment sales. If they do buy they are going to find the lowest price possible because frankly, they dont know you and they dont care about you and expect that you in turn care nothing for them, why would they buy something from you? Especially if its more expensive. They dont know you let alone like or respect and most importantly TRUST you. You can be the cheapest dive shop in town, unless your shop is located at an awesome dive site in a warm location where people travel to dive you will NEVER get a volume that makes selling low margin gear a good idea. So forget about selling gear, or continuing education to these folks. Or dive travel or fills and when they dont buy equipment they dont need service. Thats not gonna end well.
Does this mean a return to lectures? Not if youre smart. It means spending more time doing other activities. Spend an evening going over equipment, dive safety in person one evening, have coffee and donuts (or carrot juice and celery sticks). Make an two hour presentation on dive travel, aquatic life and continuing education part of your course. Show images (on a projector from your PC,tablet or phone, NOT your old Kodak carousal!) that you and your customers have taken in the adventures you have done together!
We have discouraged war stories in the instructional setting because they detracted from the educational process. That didnt mean we should get rid of them! In sales features are things something has, what it does is the benefit. People buy the benefit, not the features. The academics of a dive class are our features, the war stories and lifestyle are the benefits. That is what they actually want! We need to share them if we expect people to buy them. Ask any sales professional how showing features without the benefits works out for them.
Show the dive lifestyle, not just bemoan that people who have never seen something dont want it. Run a class that is taught by your youngest instructor and only enroll young adult students. Let them form a dive club of young adult divers. I promise the first thing they will do is make a facebook group and tweet about it.
During the open water dives, bring a grill, break bread with your students, talk and have fun. Dont try and free up their afternoon because they want to do it as quick as possible but make it SOCIAL because its FUN. Learn to connect with your customer base using social media, sometime it sucks and its work and we may not like that it involves putting ourselves out there but quite frankly it you dont you really do need to start putting flyers in funeral homes. Leave instructions for the home to cremate the flyers when they do the last baby boomer.
None of these ideas are new, in fact they are old as dirt and in fact it was how our industry became an industry. Making a tank from an old fire extinguisher, taking a 12 week course or diving in a wool sweater SUCKED. But it was an adventure and the people were awesome. Somewhere along the way we lost all that. We made diving so easy that grandparents could do it with their grandkids and then wondered the grandkids dont think that doing something their grandparents can do is an adventure.
We know most of this in our hearts, weve been so worried about being PC and marketing diving as safe (it isnt, its forgiving of little mistakes quite often, until it isnt. Then its deadly) that WE, the dive industry have suppressed the adventure, hidden the lifestyle and then wondered why people arent terribly impressed. The problem is NOT the newer generations, it is NOT the economy, weve been underperforming the economy for years, its NOT shorter courses (when they are taught well using modern methods and you make a comfortable diver). The problem is the face looking at us from the mirror. Until we reconcile that what we have been doing and believing as an industry these last 15 years has been an abject failure nothing will get better.
Its time we stopped blaming the young for our problems. Without them we have no future. If you REALLY believe they are the problem can I suggest you volunteer with SUDS? The young men and women there have been fighting a 12 year war for us, they show strength, integrity, courage of their convictions and they are every bit as worthy as the greatest generation.
