Posts Tagged ‘Introductory Course’

After Marketing Comes Selling – Where The Real Fun Begins…

While the phone may seem initimidating to you at first, the sooner you start seeing it as your friend, the faster you will be able to grow your school.

Many would-be school owners and aspiring full-time instructors have convinced themselves that they don’t need to know how to sell to be successful. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Accept this now – you have to be a good salesman (or “sales person” if you prefer) in order to run a successful school. However, this doesn’t mean you have to use sneaky tactics or adopt a hard sell approach to enrollments.

On the contrary, these tactics will work against you as you grow your school. Tricking or manipulating potential students into signing up often creates problems down the road, especially if your programs and customer service are substandard.

Instead, learning to be a good salesman as a martial art school owner requires learning how to treat people right, and selling by demonstrating the value of your programs. Remember – telling informs, but showing convinces. And, only the truly convinced will invest both their money and their time into becoming a long-term member of your school.

Treat ‘Em Right, And They’ll Stay – But First, You Have to Get Them To Try It Out

The thing is, demonstrating value requires that you actually get the prospective student (hereafter referred to as a “prospect”) to try your school out. The introductory course is where the real convincing occurs (this is sometimes called a “trial course” – language you should avoid, since it suggest a lack of commitment on the student’s part). But in most cases, a bit of selling is required to convince a complete stranger to try your school.

So, how do you do it? It’s simple really, if you follow a few basic principles. And while I can’t really go over the complete sales process in a short article, I will go over the basic principles here to get you started. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s No Need To Be Afraid Of “FREE”

Let me ask you a question…

What have you given away for free lately?

Now, I’m not talking about giving away a bunch of free lessons – that’s not very wise, and if done too much it’ll cheapen the value of your service in the prospects eyes.

Think about it, you don’t see doctors giving away free surgeries, or attorneys advertising “First Case in Court Free!”

However, there are times when you can give away something for free and have it work in your favor. The trick is finding ways to do this while meeting two very important criteria:

1. First, the free offer must perform the function of enticing the prospect to give up something valuable – either their contact information, their commitment, or their time -
2. Second, the free offer must NOT be constructed in such a way that you are giving away too much value and thereby reducing the perceived value of your services (and I’ll explain how to determine whether this is so – read carefully because this is important!)

Meeting these two criteria is crucial to your free offer’s success. Fail to meet either one and you’ll end up on the losing end of the deal, every single time.

So, how do you do this? Here’s how… Read the rest of this entry »

Although most of the martial arts school owners and instructors I have coached don’t want to have a huge mega-studio, many of us would like to earn a comfortable living teaching between 150 and 200 students. While for some that may seem like an easy goal, for many others reaching 150 students seems near impossible.

The biggest hurdle to most school owners in hitting their enrollment goals is that they tend to look at different aspects of their business in isolated terms. Over here we have “curriculum”, here we have “advertising”, here we have “retention”, here is “billing”, then there’s “scheduling”, “pricing”, etc.

The problem with this is that it leads to a skewed sort of thinking – that is to say, you start to think that one part of your operations won’t affect the whole. And that can be hazardous to achieving your goal of having a small, profitable studio.

Let me explain… Read the rest of this entry »