6 steps

6 Steps to Get The Most Enrollments from Your Leads Jon Malach ChampionsWay Vice President

Overview of the 6 Steps 1) Make sure all roads to your school are well paved 2) Avoiding the common pitfalls of lead management 3) Getting your front desk on board 4) Managing your Short term pipeline 5) Managing your Long term pipeline 6) Using a system and sticking to it... every hour!

Step 1: Making sure all roads are well-paved Vancouver 2010 Olympics: ,[object Object]

New roads were built, a new SkyTrain route was built, and traffic plans were designed to limit the accessibility on some major roads to Olympic Traffic only.

Why? Because the Olympic Committee's biggest fear was having people interested in going to events, but not being able to get to them.

That should be your biggest fear too, having someone interested in trying lessons at your school and not having that interest ever reach you!

Here are some examples: ,[object Object]

Your Phone What hours of the day is it answered? Are those the same hours that people are calling to ask questions? Voicemails deflate interest, they add a step in your sales process (getting a hold of them). I've never seen an answering machine prevent a competitor from booking the intro lesson before you do. Some small businesses have separate lines for student vs. non student calls and route them accordingly.

Your Website Is it easy for me to drop by, confirm you might offer what I'm interested in, then leave it up to you to contact me and help me decide if it is? North Americans are afraid and lazy in general as consumers. Expecting us to call or email you from your contact page isn't intelligent. I either don't have the time or energy to call you or email you right now, or I do but in the past had a bad experience. Yes some people will call or email, but for each one of those there are another 9 that won't. Instead, offer me some information in exchange for my contact info, or, just flat out express to me that you understand that this decision isn't a straight forward one and you'd be happy to help me and you'll even contact me with all the answers to the questions your website seems not to be answering! People won't print coupons and bring them in. Think about it, that works with grocery coupons because you get the coupons from the store you regularly visit. What makes you think a coupon for something I am not convinced about will make me get in the car? It won't, all it will do is tell me that you are ready to undervalue what you offer in order to get me to sign up.

SocialMedia Are there any roads here that lead to your school? How scenic is the drive? Are the roads plastered with billboards about 2 week specials? Or are there interesting things to read and look at that would make me curious to ask someone about you? What would that "someone" say? This is not a social media webinar

Your School signage As I drive by, what will I remember. As I walk by, what will make me stop and take a quick look, or what will make me want to ask someone else if they know anything about you?

Pitfall: Not Rating Your Leads

Not Rating Your Leads You have to rate your leads, in a manner you can easily explain to others. A rating system only you understand is really no good unless you want to manage every lead directly for the rest of your life. Keep it simple, the ratings are meant to gauge their interest level, the logs explain why they are rated that way If you could only keep 5 leads right now, which ones would you keep? A trick for rating leads based on the very first contact? How did they contact you, and what is your success rate in enrolling students in the program they are most likely interested in?

Pitfall: Keeping Fragmented Records of Interactions with leads

Pitfall: Keeping Fragmented Records of Interactions with leads Keep communication history in one place! This is getting harder and harder nowadays, which ironically is why it is more important! In the old days, there were calls, and face to face chats, plus the occasional letter you would send (yes letter, as in paper and envelope). During this time usually the only place we might track any communication would be in a notebook, and at that rate it was only phone calls we might make a note of. What you remember now you will forget in a day30 minutes. All those conversations you say to yourself you will remember or you think to yourself "I will update my program director next time I see them" often get lost. Then came the school email address (this was the beginning of embarrassing situations) Now we have Texting, and all the social media channels where communication can take place.

Pitfall: Keeping Fragmented Records of Interactions with leads Each one of these channels act like a wheel on your vehicle to drive better lead conversion. The vehicle won’t go anywhere if all the wheels are not connected to it.

Pitfall: Guessing When You Don’t Know

Pitfall: Guessing when you don't know. We tend to be some of the best psychic's around when it comes to our marketing Get in the habit of researching when you don't want to, or if that is not possible because you don't have data, then get in the habit of taking actions so you don't have to face this problem of guessing in the future. Most common case of this = guessing on marketing expenses ("It is/isn't working”) Boils down to oversight of the cost per/lead The cost per you are ok to spend should depend on your conversion ratio and your time to close for the related program If you think in terms of cost per/lead, you don't make the mistake of only analyzing the number of leads generated

Pitfall: Acting as if people who don't sign up within 1-4 weeks never will

Pitfall: Acting as if people who don't sign up within 1-4 weeks never will Ever been excited about buying or trying something and then something came up? Why ignore this then, it happens to those we offer lessons to all the time. Examples of actions related to this attitude (avoid these): Not storing their info in a place everyone can EASILY find it, or, not storing it at all. For those of you who use notebooks to store this info, I know how you work! I used to do it. So consider this: What would happen if a big cup of orange juice spilled on your beloved Note-book??? Possibly the most costly mistake you can make is keeping anything important on paper No one but you can access it, and if the paper is lost, you're done. Not communicating with the leads on an ongoing basis Not taking time to analyze why they do eventually sign up and looking for trends based on their age and interest points.

Pitfall: Judging old leads “Oh them, they'll never sign up...” End result, let's not bother trying to get them to come in Usually happens when there are no logs about them. When there are logs, you can look for clues you may have missed to try another approach the next time, and at the least try any approach. People who do this often forget how much effort is required to generate a lead, when you consider this, making that call or reaching out isn't so hard anymore. (Please think like this).

Pitfall: “If they are interested in training, they will call/come in"

Pitfall: “If they are interested in training, they will call/come in" This is a great attitude for going broke. Similar attitude to "I am the most credible martial artist in my area, anyone wanting to learn real martial arts will want to learn from me” Sorry no offense, but we the public don't care! Possibly we will care if we go to a school and have a bad experience with the instruction, we might eventually land on you, but chances are we will end up trying a whole new activity altogether. It is our commitment, burden, job, whatever you want to call it: to do everything possible to reach out to anyone with a heart beat and a mild interest in Martial Arts consistently until they express they aren't interested in Martial Arts. You will enjoy more financial success while you improve more lives around you, so if you think this way, hide those trophies or do whatever you need to reverse the attitude.

One Pitfall I skipped Note: One pitfall I skipped because I will assume that everyone here is recording the individuality of each lead you generate (Age, interests, experience, how they heard of you, when they first made contact, how they first made contact).

Step 3: Getting your front desk on board

Step 3: Getting your front desk on board Typical scenarios: All the important info they could extract in advance is left to the instructor and a crummy guest form when they come in. Why? They don't understand how helpful it would be to know that in advance They are not concerned if leads do or don't show up for booked appointments. Why? It doesn't affect them.

Step 3: Getting your front desk on board One solution solves all: Change how you pay them! (see my pay structure webinar) Make a portion of their pay dependent on having completed info about leads, that HAVE to show up for their appointments. No complete info = no pay No show = no pay They will generate as much info as they can (with or without your script) They will do whatever possible to confirm all appointments and have people show up They will also use the info generated to effectively communicate with the no-show's in order to reschedule.

Step 4: MANAGING THE SHORT TERM PIPELINE LEADS Sales Pipeline = your sales process, the layers that represent the steps you take a lead from first contact to enrollment. Short Term Pipeline Leads: leads that are the go-getter parent or youth that decided that Martial Arts is what they want to get involved with, and they are trying to make a decision in the next few weeks.

Step 4: MANAGING THE SHORT TERM PIPELINE LEADS During first contact: FIRST: Learn as much as you can about them, gear everything around making sure that they know your number 1 priority is understanding them and their needs. Look through your marketing material, all of it, does it ask any questions? Does it communicate in any way you understand what it is like to try and choose lessons and you are there to help them through the process? What about the way your phone calls are being conducted? What about your auto-responder to web leads? THEN: Learn as much as you can about how they landed on you. These are the kinds of leads we want more of, so let's determine how we got this one, it's a clue to getting more of them! Oh you are getting a lot of them already? Great! So which ones cost the most? Which ones cost the least? Figure that out immediately and determine how you can further optimize the generation of these hot leads!

Step 4: MANAGING THE SHORT TERM PIPELINE LEADS NEXT: Try to book appointment(would be a whole other webinar to discuss the strategies around this step) Have email templates ready for both scenarios (booked vs. didn’t book) Send respective template depending on outcome > make it easy and idiot proof so it always happens

Step 4: MANAGING THE SHORT TERM PIPELINE LEADS Quick recommendations for the "did book" template: If you are one man show, the email is from the school, if not, it's from your someone other than the person that will be teaching the lesson Provide a little background on the person that will be taking them through the appointment (create star power) Provide "tips for your first visit", why we bow, parking, address common misconceptions, FAQ, what to wear, what the lesson is like (create comfort, "this school is already taking care of me”) Driving directions, public transport directions Quick note about rescheduling is fine with notice ("we do commonly have wait-lists for peak lesson times, please let us know")

Step 4: MANAGING THE SHORT TERM PIPELINE LEADS Confirm all appointments and don't forget WIIFM After the appointment, Jot down all important details before they get home (You WILL always forget something important if you don't) Before the end of the day of the appointment they have been emailed Have a template ready for both scenarios (show and no show) Always personalize the "did show" template based on the notes you jotted down. If you didn't jot down the notes in the computer the first time, do it now.

Step 4: MANAGING THE SHORT TERM PIPELINE LEADS Depending on how your sales process works for signing them up, repeat the process but tailor the follow up emails to cover the differences between follow up lessons before the next If they don't sign up on the day most do, have template ready summarizing the options discussed Satisfy all rebuttals by hyper-linking to a testimonials page that contains student essays that address how they were first tentative about trying Martial Arts and then how it turned out (with some email programs you can see if they clicked this hyperlink!)

Step 5: Managing Your Long Term Lead Pipeline Long term pipeline leads = the leads that either you didn't enroll during your initial sales process, or they never entered the process to start with (inquired but did not go further than the inquiry). Determine what is your trigger for determining when a lead has become a long term pipeline lead Typically when they are non-responsive to a few attempts to invite them to the school, or when they have visited and elected not to sign up

Step 5: Managing Your Long Term Lead Pipeline Get Your Ongoing Dripping In Place: The drip method: contacting leads at regular intervals until they express interest This used to be just direct mail Email the joined the mix, and now has essentially replaced direct mail To mail hard or soft copy, that is the question?

Managing the Long Term Leads The importance of getting that info as early as possible now is quite evident: The more info you have, the more targeted your outbound drip campaigning can be (as it should)) previous experience (three categories) area and/or program of interest (one series for all) age (make appropriate adjustments)

Managing the Long Term Leads Outbound messages should vary: Interesting articles, videos, or photo series "Changes happening to people in your area" (feature case studies of student most similar to the target list and their success story) Personal styled check-in’s Invites to special events Bi-weekly or monthly depending on how much interesting content you can put together for that target! ** Be sure to respond to any responses you get to these emails ASAP and the reply is logged!

Managing the Long Term Leads Now you also need to add them as FB friends This does not mean you are going to start sending to their FB inbox though, that will just piss them off Marketing on FB is an inbound practice - they see status updates or Photo/Video posts that interest them, and the rest happens like a conversation would They may notice mutual friends interacting with you, leading to a conversation about you between them - Blog, Twitter play different roles, but this is not a social media webinar - Talk to Sensei Nick!

Managing the Long Term Leads Phone calls are not out of the question (you actually should do more of them now to be effective since everyone has gone digital): On birthdays On milestone dates since the first contact - example: "It's been exactly 6 months since we first talked, and just curious what kind of activities you are involved with...." (great for enticing procrastinators) When you have made a major change to the school (new program, renovations) When you notice they have opened several of your emails consecutively Invites to special events that correspond with their interest. ***Log all details of every call made regardless of outcome (voicemails count)

Managing the Long Term Leads Note: these phone calls will rarely happen if: you don't track correspondence from before (we are less likely to call a name we have no memory of) they will never happen if we didn't store the info to start with. Want to delegate? Increase the pay for leads that show up to appointments that are from your long term pipeline and watch what happens! What happens when they book an appointment? Follow your short term lead pipeline process again!

STEP 6: USING A SYSTEM AND STICKING TO IT - HOURLY This is completely impossible without a software system I say "hourly" because you/your staff need to be interacting with it throughout the day or the system becomes a simple rolodex at best To those who say "I don't like using a computer", go find yourself a hot tub time machine, the days of managing a business without optimizing your operation with a computer ended years ago. Make sure the system you use can do everything we just covered! Ready for the shameless product push yet? Here it is in 3 minutes or less.

Making sure all roads are paved

Logs have to be easy to use yet detailed

Cost per/lead made simple Note: Don’t forget your time has a cost too!

Judging Leads: which one would you call? VS.

Getting Front Desk InvolvedAnd Knowing the important facts about the leads you generate.

2 Click Emails after First Contact!

Confirming Appointments + WIIFM

Long term lead Pipeline – Who is warming up?

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