Dive Professional Career
Valuable Selling Skills for Dive Professionals To Learn During the Lockdown — and After!
Increasing sales and customer satisfaction can be done simultaneously
Darcy Kieran is the author of the handbook “Your Career and/or Life as a Scuba Diving Instructor: How to Make a Good Living Out of Your Passion for Scuba Diving” and a unique advanced logbook & checklists for scuba divers, divemasters & instructors.
Part of your post-coronavirus success in the scuba diving industry depends on what you do now, while on lockdown. And if you didn’t do anything yet, we’re suggesting a quick sales training program to increase your sales right now and once businesses are starting to re-open.
Your financial situation is most likely difficult, and you are worried about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the dive industry.
It’s tough! But you have solutions available to you. I suggest we cut a few hours of Netflix and work on developing skills that will help us once countries start to lift stay-at-home orders and tourism gradually restarts. Let’s talk about customer service and selling skills.
Knowledge & Skills for Scuba Diving Professionals
There are many skills you can work on, from home, with online support. At the top of that list, there’s your ability at understanding what customers want and at improving your chances of getting them to purchase it from you. It’s called “selling.”
This word, “selling,” is not the most popular one in the dive industry! Many scuba diving professionals believe that selling is beneath them. The “capitalist dive shop owner” should take care of selling while the instructor simply teaches scuba diving.
It’s not that simple.
Most dive store owners are also passionate hobbyists. Everybody in the dive industry can benefit from learning how to provide a better quality of customer service.
Furthermore, as I wrote recently in a Medium article, everything you do in life has a selling component.
“You can benefit from better selling skills in numerous life activities, whether it’s whooing somebody into going out for dinner with you, or convincing your boss to give you a pay raise.”
Customer Service & Selling Skills for Dive Professionals
In our case, in the dive industry, selling is part of a dive instructor job.
Teaching and selling are very similar activities. In both cases, you are trying to convince the other party either at doing something that will save their life while scuba diving or at coming with you on a dive trip to Bonaire.
It’s been demonstrated that your student divers count on you, the instructor, to explain what they need in dive gear and continuing education courses. Answering these questions follows the rules of selling: First, you need to ask enough questions to figure out what this person is looking for, then you want to match these findings to what you know is available to them.
Whether you are a divemaster, instructor, dive shop owner, captain of a live-aboard, manager of a dive resort, or working in any other capacity that puts you in direct contact with scuba divers, you can benefit from mastering customer service and improving your selling skills.
Let’s work on that, while we have time!
An Online Sales Course for Scuba Diving Professionals
To help you improve your understanding of customer service and develop your selling skills, the Business of Diving Institute recommends Harry Friedman’s famous “Gold Star Selling” retail training course.
What will I learn in Gold Star Selling?
Friedman’s Gold Star Selling program is specifically designed for retail sales. You will learn better ways to serve customers walking into a local dive center, your dive class, or your next pool session.
Most of Friedman’s principles and skills can be applied in other life settings. In all cases, it’s about understanding what the other person is looking for and finding ways to satisfy him/her.
You will learn how to:
- build rapport,
- investigate needs & wants,
- summarize and present solutions and benefits,
- proceed with demonstration,
- answer concerns, and
- “close” the sale.
Whether you are selling a dive computer or the idea of continuing to the next level of scuba diving training with you, we are convinced you will see an improvement in both your sales and your customer satisfaction.
Plan for about 14 hours to study all the material — the equivalent of binging a Netflix series.
Also from Darcy Kieran:
- Handbook: Your Career and/or Life as a Scuba Diving Instructor: How to Make a Good Living Out of Your Passion for Scuba Diving.
- Logbook: Advanced Scuba Diving Logbook with Checklists for certified scuba divers, divemasters & dive instructors.
- Handbook: Advanced Guide to SPF Scuba Diving for Scuba Divers, Divemasters & Dive Instructors: Develop Better Scuba Diving Skills, Dive Safer, Save Money & Have More Fun!
- Handbook: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To Scuba Diving: How to Increase Safety, Save Money & Have More Fun!
- Logbook: STARTER Scuba Diving Logbook with Checklists while getting your open water diver certification!
- Reference book: Scuba Diving Industry Market Reports, Data & Statistics.
Side note: During your surface intervals, have a look at my novels with a scuba diving twist, starting with “Mystery of The Blue Dragon” and “Shadows on Ocean Drive.”
You could help the dive industry by taking part in ongoing dive industry surveys. You will also find results from our past scuba diving market studies here.
Don’t be left out! Subscribe to Scubanomics: The Dive Industry Compass to be the first to know about new dive industry market data & insights. Otherwise, be our “dive business buddy” on LinkedIn, Facebook, and elsewhere.
What now? Have a look at the complete Scubanomics Table of Contents.
