Set up a “Dojo alliance” An example would be teaming up with a business that caters to people like your ideal student.
Let’s say you train people in a soft art like Aikido.
Your claim to fame is that you are able to teach breathing in ways that increase the student’s health, energy and focus.
This would put you face to face with potential students and you can leverage the goodwill that the owner of this store has built with their customers.
You are providing the health food store by educating their customers and bringing more people into the store on the day of your talk.
Who has these types of people in and out of their shop? Gun and military surplus stores maybe? You could have them promote your free three hour hand to hand workshop to their customers.
The DVD educates potential students about how to choose a self defense style that is realistic and has a number for them to call to train with you.
If your potential students don’t know what makes your martial arts school different from everyone else then you are going to have a hard time charging what your programs are worth.
People will think “Of course they charge twice what everyone else charges, it’s worth it because they are the only school that offers.” When you find out how to fill that blank with something nobody else in your town is known for, you will sell much more of your programs and give your students something exceptional to share with their friends about your school.
Your students might invite their friends to train by saying “Hey Ted, you should check out this dojo with me on Monday cause it’s the only school around that offers Military style hand to hand. The instructor is ex military…” This is noteworthy.
It’s something unique you might not have thought to lead with but if you can boil what makes you different and boil it down to one or two lines, you can develop buzz very quickly along with helping you grow your dojo in other ways.
Increase how many potential students turn into paid students: Increase the ratio at which your potential students convert to paid ones.
Teach your staff to sell: Do they know why you are the best school in town? Can they sum it up in a few sentences? Do they understand your packages and pricing? Are they taking the potential student from one step to another in the sales process with ease? Work with your staff to improve their selling ability.
Sometimes you see desk people in school just sitting around playing solitaire.
What a great time for them to be doing follow-up calls with potential students.
Increase your followup: Simply increase the amount of followup you do with each potential student that doesn’t come back after a free lesson or one that you talk to on the phone that never showed up.
Just doing this can alone allow you to increase your closing ratios and get you more students.
Leverage your student’s testimonials: Does everyone who sees what your program has to offer know the awesome results everyone else is getting from your program? Testimonials are easy to get from your students when you know how to ask.
Nothing sends a powerful message to your potential student quite like the idea that someone just like them was able to get great results from your training.
You can say all you want about how great your programs are but when you have others saying it for you, it’s hard for new students to argue.
Find Aikido in your local area
