Make no mistake about it. There’s a lot that can be accomplished on a golf course that has nothing to do with hitting a spectacular drive straight down the fairway or making a difficult putt. There’s just no telling how many business deals have been brokered or cemented while the participants were hitting the greens.
Roger Caldwell, owner and founder of Great Golf Events, headquartered in Prairie Village, KS, has been planning corporate golf tournaments for 15 years. He says that after nailing down the date of the tournament, the most important question to ask is “What is the business purpose?”
He shared an example of how one of his clients uses golf events to achieve stellar business results. “A corporate client of mine (a software company) created an event called ‘Revenue Accelerators.’ They brought in their top 10 clients that they were anticipating on closing by a certain date along with 10 existing clients that were running similar applications. Then they paired their customers with the potential clients along with the sales rep and somebody else. For all intents and purposes, we had 10 to 15 groups, and they were all foursomes.”