Locking a Steel Cage Around Your Student Body…the Keys to Ironclad Student Retention, Part 1

It’s an unfortunate reality in our martial arts school business that, despite our best intentions, karate students do quit from time to time, for good or bad reasons.

It is an even more unfortunate reality that many martial arts schools do very little to prevent student attrition.

I remember buying a car once. At that time, I did not have a very sophisticated understanding of the sales process. Needless to say, I probably overpaid for the car by at least 10%.

In retrospect, I learned a valuable lesson from that experience. I didn’t do enough research to define clearly the exact worth of my car, the current loan payoff, and the current wholesale value of the car that I wanted to buy. In addition, the floor salesperson made a statement that stuck with me.

He said, “I can do a lot of things to make the deal happen, but I can’t change the laws of math.”

In many karate schools, very much the same situation exists. You cannot change the economics of martial arts school marketing.
Without explaining all of the dry details, the following statement is almost always true: As a martial arts school becomes more successful, profitable and sophisticated, the more that martial arts school owner is willing to spend to acquire each new student.

Some NAPMA member schools are willing to pay $500 to $700 per new martial arts student acquisition. This indicates a very sophisticated understanding of the concept of return-on-investment.

Even if your cost-per-new-student acquisition is considerably less than $500 to $700, then it’s easy to understand that it is much more cost effective to keep an existing martial arts student than to go out and find a new one. You should certainly focus just as much effort on increasing martial arts student retention as your martial arts marketing activity.

Do the “math.”

Divide all of your martial arts marketing expenses for last year by the number of karate students that you enrolled, and the answer is your cost-per-student acquisition. Once you calculate this average, it’s VERY easy to understand that it’s MUCH less expensive to do whatever you can to keep as many of your current martial arts students as possible.

The Emotional “Bank Account”

The balance in your “Emotional Bank Account” is the level of “relationship” you have with your customers. This is very difficult to measure, but it’s VERY easy to “see” in a client and your school. Are your customers annoyed when they come to your martial arts school, knowing that something will go wrong, or are they excited to see you, and enthusiastic to “help” in any way they can?

Now, of course, there will always be those 10% of your students who will NOT be happy, no matter WHAT you do, and the 10% who would live in the school if you let them; and frankly, there isn’t much you can do about either group. What does your “average” martial arts student relationship “feel” like?

The key is always to make many, many more deposits into your “Emotional Bank Account” than withdrawals.

When your client “bought” your services and enrolled in your school, you made him or her a “Promise”. You said that in exchange for X (tuition), you would provide Y (classes). The VERY MINIMUM you absolutely MUST do is to fulfill Y. Every time you fail to fulfill Y as perceived by the client you damage the relationship. (Keep in mind that your client may not share your perception of adequate service.)

EVERY time you end a class 15 minutes late, little Johnny is overlooked in karate class, you ask your karate students for money, or, in some way, violate your clients’ trust in you, you make a small withdrawal from that account. (Now, I’m not suggesting that you can never ask your clients for money, but you must always be delivering MUCH more value than they are “paying;” no one likes to be “nickeled” and “dimed” to death.)

Next month, we’ll tackle making deposits in the account and more!

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Toby Milroy - COO National Association of Professional Martial Artists

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NAPMA (The National Association of Professional Martial Artists) helps honest, ethical martial arts school owners, karate club managers, instructors or any who want to open or operate a dojo of any style (kung fu, karate, taekwondo, judo, ju-jitsu, tang soo do, or ANY other) build a successful business and a substantial career by teaching more exciting martial arts classes, developing and training top quality PROFESSIONAL martial arts instructors, mastering martial arts marketing, and serving karate students better.

Visit: http://www.napmafreeoffer.com 
to Collect $2310.12 in FREE Gifts!
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