A story that has a point, I promise:
During my time spent as a salon owner I had a business coach that instilled this concept in me when I was struggling to build client retention with my new hires. I was spending an enormous amount of time training them and money on bringing in new clients but their new client retention rate was less than 30%! That’s a ton of time, energy and money being spent for little return. Not to mention the frustration felt by the new hires not being able to build a clientele!
As I was complaining about this my coach asked me what was going on, why clients were not coming back. Was it the service itself, the service providers or the business structures such as pricing, hours etc. to which I replied: I DON’T KNOW.
To which she replied : HOW WILL YOU KNOW?
That comment led me to create a “Standard Of Service” that provided the steps for my new hires to create client retention. Turns out they were highly skilled, they just lacked product knowledge to build the confidence that brought clients back. Now we KNEW what was lacking and could provide the training.
You’re thinking; what does this have to do with paddlers?
People, whether in sport or service want to and need to know HOW to advance. Whether it’s in a skill, a role in the club or a team selection they need to know the exact steps that will get them where they want to go. Most paddlers want to feel confident and excel in their skills. Paddlers are attracted to the clubs and teams that provide this opportunity for them.
Let’s talk about team selection:
The danger of not having a process of selection that is based on criteria is paddlers can come to believe that their success lies in the coaches opinion. This does not help paddlers build confidence or advance their skill sets.
When we can provide the training that gets tangible measurements it takes the guess work out of a paddlers development process and shows them how to get a seat on the “A” boat.
I get the icky feeling that comes over coaches when they have to make decisions but the only thing I EVER KNOW FOR SURE is numbers and they don’t lie.
Our job as coaches is to develop the criteria that gives us the numbers for paddler selection. The problem is we don’t always know what criteria to use or how to measure it. Developing the process and the criteria is the only way both the paddler and coach WILL KNOW.
