We’re welcoming two new members to the International Training family to represent SDI-TDI-ERDI in the Caribbean. These two familiar faces will be managing the current accounts while sharing the benefits of doing business with our organization with dealers that are looking for an alternative, better costs, better customer service as well as an organization that works for them.
Are your SDI OW students requesting a referral to someplace “special” to complete their training? As a professional, you want to make sure your customers get the same kind of outstanding treatment that you give them.
Today, consumers like shopping online, it isn’t your fault – it is the way we do things now. However, what we can do is to learn how to make our store warmer, friendlier and more appealing than our competitors. Here are a few tips that can help you as a retailer improve.
While most retailers think that by making things cheaper they will be able to close the sale easier because people focus a lot on cost, well, that’s just lazy selling.
What worked yesterday may not work today so it may be time to reinvent ourselves – again.
A few things you may be doing wrong with your customers… and you don’t even know it.
In an effort to make instructor crossovers more profitable to our Course Directors and Instructor Trainers, we have an incentive program allowing a CD/IT to receive a portion of the crossover fee as compensation for conducting the program.
What does this mean to you as a CD or IT? You can get more benefits out of your ratings by using our streamlined crossover process to make money and help grow the agency!
How the Incentive Program Works:
Important Reminders:
Pre-Course Considerations
Communicate with the regional representative for the candidate’s home territory so they are aware of the new member crossing in their region and can provide any necessary support.
What are you waiting for? Start crossing over new members today and make money doing it!
Not a Course Director or Instructor Trainer yet? International Training World HQ is hosting their next Instructor Trainer Workshop soon.
We all love diving. That’s what brought us to become a professional in this industry. But as a dive shop owner, it comes down to one thing: trying to make enough money to stay in business so we can support our divers, our industry, and more importantly our families with a steady paycheck. Well… that and taking a killer dive trip once in a while, and sampling all the cool toys for ourselves for less money. But really, it’s about staying in business.
As rebreathers become more popular, the profit margins and dollars will make it much more appealing and worth the high cost of training and stocking the units to sell. Get there much quicker and start reaping the benefits of not only having better dives yourself, but offering your customers and students an opportunity to get in just above the ground floor on what is surely taking off as the next generation of diving technology and gear.
The ways to increase your profits on the backs of rebreathers are equipment sales, including reoccurring gas fills, and training and running rebreather friendly or rebreather specific trips.
Though rebreather units will vary in price, they are generally not inexpensive, and it will be important to identify your general market. Rebreathers are an investment, and you will find that research on your clientele would warrant the investment you are willing to make on the units and how many you will need.
Like with any new piece of equipment, there needs to be training and a certification that follows. Technical Diving International has several manuals that are unit specific as well as TDI’s Generic CCR manual that works in conjunction with the unit operator guide. This course is also available online.
Once your customers have bought a new rebreather unit and have completed their training, it is time to take them out someplace cool, such as places like the Galapagos, Coco Islands, Sea of Cortez and so many more. Get the best for your customers and take them to places where they can now experience the critters coming right up to them as bubbles will no longer be a factor in intimidation. Contact Scuba Travel International to find out where STI can take you and your group next.
Rebreathers may end up drawing you more business right off the bat. It is a hefty investment and many dive centers will not attempt to get involved in rebreathers. It may not be cost effective or they may not have a certified instructor that has been properly trained. So get started! You will automatically be the dive center people go to if they require training or just have questions about it. This gives you the opportunity to gain more business because you offer something exciting and different…and to many people, “new.”
It’s not in everyone’s budget. However, it is definitely true that many of the most successful dive centers are the ones that offer as many aspects to our industry as they can handle and afford while making diving more fun and exciting, and in your case, more profitable.
Contact SDI TDI and ERDI
If you would like more information, please contact our World Headquarters or your Regional Office.
Tel: 888.778.9073 | 207.729.4201
Email: Worldhq@tdisdi.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SDITDI
Sidemount has historically been a scuba diving gear configuration used almost exclusively by technical divers in the realm of advanced cave diving but it has recently become a huge success in the recreational market over the last couple years. It wasn’t so much that sidemount wasn’t a very well kept secret that just got out; it just wasn’t something that non-cave divers did.
By definition, sidemount is the carrying of the cylinders worn at the driver’s side. The most common set up for side mount is one tank under each arm, though single sidemount is growing in the recreational market.
The popularity of sidemount has grown mostly because of a need to do something “different” for the average diver who has issues carrying a tank or a set of doubles on their back. Sidemount slowly became an alternative for comfort and not just a configuration to enable a diver to move swiftly through small cave and cavern openings. Why should this set up be reserved only for a specific activity like cave penetration when it can be used for comfort on any given recreational dive? And so it begins…
Who is your market?
Beside those technical divers that are looking for gas redundancy or better accessibility to their regulators and tanks valves, comfort may be the biggest seller to the diver out there. Many divers will offer their reasons for advocating sidemount to greater stability and easier-to-attain trim and control in the water.
Many divers who have back issues or shoulder issues, such as torn-rotator cuffs, confess that sidemount diving has given them a new outlook on scuba diving. Carrying the tanks under your arms greatly reduces the psychical exertion as opposed to having them on your back. This is especially rewarding when diving off a small vessel or doing a shore entry. The ability to have access over to the valves and regulators without having to reach back is a major benefit to those who have mobility issues in their back and shoulders.
A sidemount system does not always have to be with two tanks. With proper weighting, a single tank can be used on a dive. The option to use various sizes of tanks becomes an option as well. Sidemount is a good way to start and grow your skills from recreational to technical without having to change how they dive very much. The configuration stays the same and new gear is added to the mix as the diver gets more proficient.
Though sidemount should not be looked at as a silver-bullet solution intended to take the place of some other scuba system configurations, there certainly is a very large market for it. And as a full service dive center, there is one more important aspect to sidemount; you are not only expanding your curriculum and offering your customers additional solutions to diving, but in doing so, you are increasing gear sales.
Contact SDI TDI and ERDI
If you would like more information, please contact our World Headquarters or your Regional Office.
Tel: 888.778.9073 | 207.729.4201
Email: Worldhq@tdisdi.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SDITDI
In many cases, people believe the scuba diving season may be over due to the change in the weather – there is snow on the ground. They will either put their gear away or travel some place warm to get wet. Though this may hold true for the “warm water divers,” it does not mean that the sport comes to a full-stop, by any means.
Dive centers have figured out that the best diver to create from the get-go is the “year round diver.” This is the diver who wants to ensure that his newly embraced life-style is not a sport that can only be practiced during a 4 month window. From California to Denmark, the year round diver is one who will dive no matter what the water temperature may be…warm or cold.
The SDI Dry Suit course is the perfect course to get your students comfortable with the equipment needed to dive year round. As a matter of fact, dive centers may offer this course in conjunction with their open water course so that the new diver is comfortable with his dry suit from the very beginning. Not only will this increase equipment sales on your dive center’s behalf, but creating the year-round diver will also increase the number people who feel comfortable diving locally, increasing the profile for the sport, as well as its popularity. With more people diving year round, tank fills and servicing of equipment also comes into play.
Safety is also a key issue for promoting the class. Buoyancy techniques, along with the “do’s” and “don’ts” can very well mean the difference between a successful dive or an experience that leaves the new diver less than enthused. Maintenance and caring for a dry suit is also covered… after all, when making such an investment in a piece of gear you want to be sure you are properly trained in its up keep to ensure that it functions properly.
And let us not forget the main benefit of the dry suit itself…staying warm. The temperatures do not have to be in the 60’s in order for a diver to enjoy the comforts of a dry suit. Multiple dives in places on the equator, like the Galapagos, can provide the additional comfort that wet-suit divers would not get simply because they are losing body heat with every single dive…and after a week of diving, that makes a world of difference.
Create the year round diver at your facility… start promoting the SDI Dry Suit courses today.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Tel: 888.778.9073 | 207.729.4201
Email: Worldhq@tdisdi.com
Web: https://www.tdisdi.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SDITDI