Page 10 - english winter 2017

Golfmax Purchasing Program signs first suppliers in 1992.
Mark and Jeff land in Vancouver to sign their first members outside of Ottawa.
Using Ottawa as their home base, they travel the country selling the idea to potential members.
The next step? We needed to find some members. This is easier said than done when you don’t yet have any member benefits to offer.
I focused on getting a few suppliers to commit to national account pricing, and the rest of the membership pitch would have to be about the vision of needing a strong golf course owners association in the future. It wasn’t exactly a powerful value proposition at that stage, but we did manage to sign early supplier agreements with Spalding, Rain Bird, ICG Propane, and a Scorecard Program. At least that provided some tangible member benefit to lead with, along with the vision.
We did an initial direct mail campaign to every golf course in Canada. Only a handful responded by taking our membership offer but that was better than nothing and it spread the word that we existed.
Realistically, the membership drive would need in-person presenta- tions and, if we were serious about the importance of a national associa- tion, that would need to be done across the country. The next move was to schedule NGCOA Canada group presentations in about a dozen cities and invite every golf course operator in each market. Here’s how the first presentation went...
Mark and I flew from Ottawa to Vancouver, rented a car, took the ferry over to Victoria, drove a couple of hours up the Island, checked into a no frills hotel, and headed to the lounge for a night cap to celebrate our plans to recruit lots of new members on this trip.
Wetriedtogetadecentnight’ssleepbeforethebiggrouppresentation the next morning but with the time zones we were awake at 3:30 AM. So, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the host golf course, Eagle Crest, where we played a quick 18 as the sun came up. Then it was finally time for the much anticipated first NGCOA Canada group presentation.
With our signage set up, the NGCOA Canada paperwork nicely spread out on every chair, our presentation well rehearsed, and a few thousand kilometers of travel invested in getting there, we waited patiently for all those we invited to arrive.
Total attendance? Two people! One was Mike Riva, who owned the golf course and had agreed to host our meeting, so he had to be there. The other was Barrie Ingborg, from Crown Isle Golf Club, who immediately stated that he had come to resign from the NGCOA Canada membership that he had inadvertently joined as a result of our first direct mail offer.
Mark and Jeff lead group presentations in major cities across the country.
We talked Barrie out of resign- ing and he would go on to become a great NGCOA Canada supporter. We also made a believer out of Mike, who would later agree to be elected to the NGCOA Canada board of directors.
We repeated those group presentations in each city with only marginally better attendance, but in every case we made a good impression and were getting some buy-in for the importance of an NGCOA Canada to represent the business voice of golf.
1993
Although still in the start-up phase, the next year we made significant progress.
Once again, Mark and I did a cross-country set of NGCOA Canada group presentations. Attendance improved slightly and we contin- ued to pick up a few new members with each meeting. I was able to add more Golfmax suppliers, including a very strong fertilizer program with Nu-Gro that positioned Golfmax with distributor pricing for our members. We were also laying the groundwork for chapters that would eventually combine regional benefits with the national programs.
In October ’93, a very strong Toronto meeting at Parkview Golf Club introduced about 50 golf course operators to the NGCOA Canada. Brian Sambleson, who was already working with me on other contracts, coordinated that
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Golf Business Canada