Black Belt Ideas Applied to Sales and Service: How to Grow Your Business

There are two basic area to focus on for getting and keeping more students/customers:
1. sales
2. retention

To get a new student you have to "sell" them on the benefits of your stuff. To keep a customer you already have, you have to do two things:

1. Meet their needs and;
2. Make sure they understand where they're going (understand the benefits of continued study/practice).

Again:

You have to make promises -and then deliver on those promises. Second, most of the time (moving and death are two exceptions), you only lose students/customers when you aren't meeting their needs and/or they don't really "get" the benefits they're working towards.

Sales

Here are some action-steps:

1. Meet people; talk to people about whatever it is that leads you to their interests and your services.
2. Get people's e-mail and/or other contact info; then invite them to classes (about 500 times in about 100 different ways).
3. Convince new students that they play an important role in getting new students (and they do). Get them to help you meet other people.

Restated: Meet lots of people, build as BIG a mailing list as you possibly can (and, of course, then write/film as many wonderfully creative and interesting "pitches" for your services as your level of intelligence and ambition can produce).

Retention

Here are some action-steps:

1. Take really, really good care of your current students. Let them know you care and treat them like VIP's.

2. Track their attendance and call, genuinely concerned, when they miss a single class. They have hired you to teach and coach them.

3. Keep them focused on the benefits of the long term study and practice of the martial arts (it REALLY helps if you're a living, breathing example of them --on ALL levels). If you have the ability to 'paint the picture" of where their headed, vividly, then they're less likely to be discouraged by the short term difficulties of continuous attendance and practice.

Summary: You're business is like a piggy-bank. If you add coins to your piggy-bank and you don't take any out, it's eventually going to fill up.

Scenario:

You have 10 students/customers (you want 20). Over a 60 day period, you take the following action steps:

1. Talk to your current students. every day, about your desire to have 20 students, what it means to the school, and how it will increase the quality of instruction/energy of training.

2. Hand each student a handsome envelope with 20 student guest passes in it --and you ask them to give them to people they think would make good students.

3. Make a nice poster, actually about 100 of them, announcing MARTIAL ARTS FOR CHARITY. and host 60 days worth of classes for a $5 drop in fee per class. All money goes to a cool local charity (find one). Put these posters everywhere possible.

4. Send a press release to all media in your community about your charity project.

5. Film a YouTube video describing the project; mail it out to all interested people.

6. Distribute, either through your own labor or someone else's, 1000 to 5000 fliers announcing your work.

7. Shake hands and talk to no less than 10 people a day, 7 days a week, talking about your charity event, your school, and your work.

8. Keep an on-going blog, completely internet-search optimized, talking about your school, your work, your charity, and all things martial arts. Have an opt-in newsletter which is mailed out to everyone on your growing list. Each article has a small and subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) pitch for your lessons in it.

If you are diligent about this work, if you know how to tell someone about your services in a way that makes them interested, and if you work on keeping/servicing your current students, your school will grow.

Final Lesson

This isn't something you do for 60 days. This is 24-7, 364 days a year (take your favorite holiday off).

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