by Chris Robiosn

Remember that “every interaction with every student counts each and every day.” It is important that students feel important. Try to keep in mind that there are no bad students, only bad teachers. If the school makes a mistake such as giving the student the wrong size gi or sending a birthday card prematurely, quickly go into recovery mode by taking responsibility and correcting the mistake, turning failure into success.

By Chairman Nicholas Cokinos

A high number of new enrolments is easier to achieve than you might think. Keep in mind that it requires a collaborative effort. In other words, there should be between three and five activities directed toward new enrollments. Among them are:

1. Advertisements
2. Web site
3. Open house
4. Birthday parties
5. Circular distribution
6. Signage and walk-in
7. VIP program
8. Sponsoring a new member
9. Demonstrations
10. Buddy nights

Use marketing platforms like graduation day, birthday parties, demos and open house to build interest before attempting to enroll.

On the 15th of every month, you should make a new concentrated effort to carefully plan out your strategy for the following month. The strategy should include and involve at least three of the listed activities. Another highly effective source of new enrollments is direct mail.

Keep in mind that all the listed activities work together to continuously generate new enrollments. Pursue both internal and external marketing methods as they both are equally important. Do not rely on just one method. The director should undertake this important task. Your efforts will pay off handsomely.

In order to ensure the continuing growth of your school, you must enroll 20 to 25 members each month. A minimum of 50% of those members should come from referrals. Though most school owners neglect the importance of concentrating on promotions for attracting new members, don’t let it happen to you.

John Cokinos, EFC President

There’s a passage that says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Now that passage, if understood, can bring to us prosperity and abundance. Here’s how: what you have to realize is that the love of money, to the detriment of everything else, can be harmful. The EFC mindset believes that we can have a life of prosperity with the help of “attractor” energies, which will attract new students. To understand this we must first come to an agreement. We have to agree that there is no lack of tuition dollars, no lack of potential adult students who need your services to look trim and feel good, and no lack of younger students during summer looking for summer activities or during back to school looking for martial arts lessons.

Did you know that Anthony Arango had a women’s self-defense seminar with 100 attendees? Thirty were guests of students, of whom 12 enrolled for a new regular program. Did you know that Jeff Wheeler of the LaVallee organization booked 28 demos, that is, 28 times to go visit academic schools recently? Can you imagine this kind of outreach?

Your staff has to understand that they have to articulate the values and benefits of your program in a different and unique way. Also, it would be helpful for schools to have posters for every prospect to see, which says, “Your success story begins here.” It could, additionally, have powerful student testimonials.

Are you ready to network with people who are doing well right now—even in these times? Look at the top grosses in the All Stars Journal for inspiration. In short, you have to embrace the prosperity model without hesitation.

While we’re talking about money, I would like to mention how EFC contributes to your tuition management and collections and helps you become more prosperous. Just yesterday, the Diamond Team collected 1,863, the Gold Team collected 2,549, the Green Team collected 3,727, the Silver Team collected 3,555—all this in one day.

If anybody is good at articulating the values and benefits of your Black Belt success program, it’s us. When students call while going through the peaks and valleys of wanting to be in enrolled in martial arts schools, we can save courses for you—by talking about how you care about your students’ progress. It is what we call our student care approach. Also we monitor your accounts to see when accounts are over-drawn or credit cards are over the limit. We want you to be the tiger behind the bamboo, not the tiger roaming the fields. Let us handle all issues related to tuition billing.

This month,  Kyoshi John Lynn shares with us 101 Tips to Grow Your School. These are the same principles that he uses in his schools everyday. The key to your success will be to take action everyday. Remember “the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”. Here are the first of the 101 steps.

Ask your Account Executive for extra help on any ideas you are unsure about

· Give awesome, high energy classes
· Have an achievement patch programme
· Do not let an untrained person answer your phone
· Have a great curriculum
· Students must train 2 classes per week
· Have systems for everything
· Make sure all stu­dents are progressing
· Send “Miss You” cards when students are not in class
· Use your systems
· Have monthly tip / progress checks
· Have monthly student agreements
· Teach all your staff the systems
· Have a “Disney” dojo
· Do great intro classes
· Have an instructor training programme
· Teach “Values and Benefits” after every drills
· Be enthusiastic
· Use stickers to raise the energy in class
· Be punctual
· Care about each and every student
· Use a great lesson plan
· Teach character education and life-skills
· Have regular staff meetings
· Have regular events
· Be punctual
· Have regular staff training

Richard Bailey

If your martial arts school is struggling to get new leads and prospects, you should consider writing a value proposition. You need to write one and then engrave its meaning into your mission statement and put it in all your marketing materials, especially on the web, where you can test its effectiveness and influence on your target audience.

What is a Value Proposition
A “value proposition” (value prop) is simply a statement that informs your potential clients of how they will benefit from using your product or service. It’s your most important marketing message and should be written in a clear, simple writing style to be easily grasped by any reader and placed strategically in every important section of your lead generating web site.

The entire article will be published in a subsequent issue of the Eagle Express.