For Silver Sluggers Academy, growth is measured by client retention as well as growth.
One of the metrics that Woodall uses to gauge the growth of Silver Sluggers Academy is facility capacity. Through Upper Hand, Woodall is able to track how each space as his facility is being used, as well as make decisions about how to allocate his resources to maximize use of each space. This flexibility was put to the test last March, as COVID-19 shutdowns cancelled spring sports and forced Woodall to temporarily close his doors.
“We lost one of our facilities last year because it was a healthcare facility that was closed down during COVID. So, we had to move all of our players, teams, and programs into our other, smaller, facility. We had to do some work and look at the schedule to see how we could put things together on Upper Hand to make those adjustments.”
In just 10 days, Woodall was able to rework his entire business structure and schedule to begin offering online training.
“Upper Hand was essential in doing online, remote training because nobody could come in and just hand me a check. So, we processed payments over Upper Hand. The software allowed us to do everything we needed to do in 10 days, because all we had to do was quickly transition a couple of our clinic offerings to an online version. There was nothing we needed to do other than make some quick changes in the software and allow the players and parents to start coming to us.”
The ability to quickly pivot to provide training opportunities over COVID has also helped attract new clients to Silver Sluggers Academy, which Woodall has found extremely rewarding.
“It has been cool to see some of the players that came to us that we didn’t know because we offered online instruction. Now, they are playing for our teams and they’re doing well for us because they trained all the way through the shutdown.”
Looking ahead to the future of Silver Sluggers Academy, it is incredibly bright for Woodall and his team. Whether he looks to scale up geographically or dig into the use of technology to expand the instructional component, one thing does remain certain:
“Upper Hand is going to be with us along the way.”