Bold Vision, Bold Behavior: A Success Formula for Selling Martial Arts Memberships

You offer your students a bold vision of possibilities in both physical empowerment and inner strength. You teach students to boldly try new best practices. On the mat, you subscribe to the formula: bold vision through bold behavior.

Do you bring the same approach to your business development—identifying prospective students and enrolling them in your program? Or do you switch to “social selling,” which means observing social niceties versus building your business?

One way to know: Look at the results. Are you having any of these problems?

a) Not enough leads

b) Not enough leads converting to intros

c) Student attrition

Let’s discuss how you can solve these problems through bold vision and bold behavior.

Consider the student attrition problem. Could students be leaving because parent’s expectations are met or exceeded? For example, let’s discuss a case history in student retention:

The problem: A child is isolated at the bus stop and won’t interact with other kids. Your martial arts school builds confidence. In 3 to 4 months, the parent withdraws the child. Mission accomplished. But is it?

If parents see the mission is accomplished, there is no sense of urgency to continue.

What is urgency? For parents, it’s a compelling reason to act now, to keep the child in your classes. What bold vision do you offer parents?

Do you teach parents there are “levels of martial arts consciousness,” which can include:

a) The Martial Arts Mindset

b) Empowerment

c) Leadership

d) Personal Responsibility

e) Inner Strength

f) Technique vs. Power

Do you tell them (in advance) about the journey? If they leave, whose responsibility is this?

Perhaps this is an approach you can use to increase student retention; you might create a brochure to help parents visualize the journey.

Let’s consider lead generating next. Do you have enough leads? What bold vision are you using to generate leads for your Martial Arts school?

Here’s a thought: You may just use a brochure created for student retention (mentioned above) to generate leads. Mail them out and drop them off at places where parents can take one. More importantly: Your best lead source is happy parents. They are a prime selling asset. Are you maximizing this asset through getting:

1) Testimonial letters from satisfied parents?

2) Having them recommend you through social media, e.g. post a message on Facebook about your martial arts school?

Let’s say you have set an objective of 4 intros per month. It’s the second week of the month and you have one intro. Should you be concerned? After all, there are almost two-and-a-half weeks left to the month.

On a do-or-die basis, you want to stay on target of one intro a week. This calls for bold behavior―enrolling satisfied parents to be our advocates, to extend our good reputation. If the month is over, and we only have one intro, it’s too late to affect the results. We need to act now, on a “do-or-die” basis to hit our results.

Finally, let’s consider the conversion of phone call inquiries to intros.

Let’s spend a moment on examining the incoming phone call:

Social Seller

Customer: Hi, could I get some literature.

Martial Arts School: Sure, why don’t you come down for a demo.

Customer: First, let me see the literature, then maybe I’ll come down.

Martial Arts School: Sure, look forward to hearing from you.

Business Seller

Customer: Hi, could I get some literature?

Martial Arts School: Sure, glad to. Tell me, why are you calling us today?

Customer: I’m thinking of having my child take martial arts lessons.

Martial Arts School: Great! Any particular skill or character quality you want your child to develop?

Customer: He’s kinda shy at the bus stop.

In the second case, we used some boldness to learn the urgent need, and move from social selling to business selling. By focusing on the urgent need, we can increase our conversion to intros. Once they visit, we can give parents the brochure we designed with student retention in mind.

By bringing the bold vision and bold behavior that you employ on the mat to your business development, you can ensure a growing, profitable martial arts business.

About the author: membersolutions has taught selling skills for 17 years. He started three businesses and has made approximately 4,000 sales calls, selling both B2B and B2C. He invented a selling process, Urgency Based Selling^®, with which he can typically help companies double their closing or conversion ratio.