Posts Tagged ‘membership upgrades’

Why It’s Not Always Good Idea To Try To Build A Better Mousetrap

Learning the business of martial arts is a lot like working your way up through the ranks. You take things in sequence, learning new skills that build on those you learned in previous stages.

One thing I’ve observed since I started offering business coaching to martial art school owners is that we have a tendency to want to do our own thing.

Take for example the numerous styles and systems that exist today. There are as many styles and systems as there are instructors who believe they have something unique to offer. As one of my students once put it, “It seems like every instructor reaches a certain level, then they want to create their own system.”

In similar fashion, I’ve observed that martial arts instructors seem to want to create their own systems for starting and running their businesses as well…

Creating a unique expression that bears the mark of one’s individual personality and preferences is fine in the context of artistic expression. But in the context of running a martial art school, this often has disastrous results.

Mastery In Martial Arts Does Not Translate Into Martial Arts Business Mastery…

Think about it… by the time an instructor decides to codify their unique expression of a martial art style or system, they typically have decades of martial arts experience, study, and training under their belt. Thus, their unique approach is based on decades of trial, error, and experimentation. Read the rest of this entry »

The Key to Easy Upgrading – Stop Selling and Start Recruiting

It’s important to have the right mindset when you start offering upgraded student memberships. It has to be a privilege, something that a student earns the right to be a part of, instead of just a way to make more money. Remember that you are choosing students for elite membership upgrades on their merits, and they should be honored that you have given them the opportunity to join.

Once you adopt this attitude, upgrading students becomes much simpler. In fact, more often than not you’ll have students approaching you about joining, versus your having to approach them instead.

The Upgrade Process – Make Them Work For It

Here is the process we used to get students to upgrade their memberships: Read the rest of this entry »

Black Belt Club, Shmack Belt Club…

A lot of people in the industry make a big deal out of Black Belt Club upgrades – in fact, some business systems that are being taught revolve around upgrading students to BBC after only a few weeks.

To me, this is like the old illegal “bait-and-switch” sales tactic, where a business advertises a product or service at an extremely low price to get people in their store and then tells the customer they are sold out (or gives some other excuse) and offers to sell them a similar product at the regular price. Shame on those schools that line their pockets by upgrading all their students to a BBC program right off the bat!

Because of the widespread use of these types of tactics, I suggest you find other names to use for your upgraded memberships. For example, I recently spent some time with an Israeli martial arts instructor, and suggested he call his upgraded memberships “Krav Club.”

You could also use the terms “regular” membership, then “Gold” and “Platinum” level for the elite/upgraded programs you offer. The possibilities are endless; the object is to choose a name that is unique and that separates your elite memberships from your typical run-of-the-mill martial arts school.

Okay, enough with the soapbox lecture. Here’s what I recommend you do to make your BBC something your school can be proud of -

Benefits – What Your Elite Program Will Provide

It’s common sense – if you’re charging more, you need to offer more. Typically, you’ll want to offer the students in your upgraded programs something you don’t offer in your basic programs.

You can do this in one of three ways: Read the rest of this entry »