I’ve looked at hundreds thousands of martial arts school websites. The main thing I’ve found in common with all of them is that, in general, they suck. This is bad because your website can be the best advertising medium you will ever spend money on! The reason they suck is easy to pinpoint:

They don’t convert visitors into customers easily.

That’s it.

This means it’s not easy for a visitor to give you their information or to contact you with their questions. Looking good and having good content is secondary.

• On the bottom of every one of your webpages, you should have all of your school’s contact information. This does two things: it allows people to see how to contact you quickly, and it allows the search engines to see where you live. That increases the probability that your school will rank well in local searches which will increase the amount of leads you get.
• In a sidebar of every one of your pages, you should have two things. Your school’s contact information with a link to the directions to the school is first and foremost. Having your real address on every page twice helps with search engine optimization and helps with people looking for a way to contact you. People shouldn’t have to look far to find a way to contact you.
• The second thing that should be in your sidebar is a good contact form to get people to give you their information. In exchange for their information, you should have a special web only offer for them. You at least want their name, their email, and if they are looking for adult information or kids information. If you have a lot of hits on your website, experiment with requiring them to put in a phone number as well. I’ve had more luck with requiring just an email. Look in my sidebar to see an example.

Do just these things to your website and change nothing else, and I guarantee you will get more leads than you did before. You’ll get more leads because you’ll be easily contactable. Some people prefer email, some people prefer phone, and some prefer filling out a form. Give them the option of a way to contact you and you’ll have more leads!

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I have another secret for you. This secret is so important that it will increase your sales, guaranteed. Want to know what it is?

The secret is:

Always forward your office/school phone to your cell phone when you’re not in the office.

When leads call you in the early morning or on the weekend, they expect to get a machine. They expect to leave a message. Show them your awesome customer service skills by surprising them early…and answer the phone when they don’t expect it.

Two nights ago, I got a call from a lead while I was in the grocery store. I went to a quiet corner, took down their information, and talked to them about their child’s math issues like I normally do. Then the person said something I didn’t expect: “If you hadn’t answered, I would have called the next business on my list.” I told him that was how we do things at our business. He signed up for twelve months the next day.

I was surprised he said that because I know that people do that, but they just never tell me that they do that. I was surprised because he was honest.

Remember that I am the owner of a math tutoring business for kids. There’s not a lot of competition. I’ve worked with so many martial arts businesses and martial arts schools that I know this situation happens all the time.

It’s so hard to differentiate yourself as a martial arts business when everyone thinks of karate and tae kwon do as being the same. The one way to differentiate yourself right away is to be available. If you miss a call, return it right away. Especially the ones that don’t go to voice mail.

In my experience, very few people will leave a message unless they’re specifically looking for YOU. Since most aren’t, they’ll go on to the next name in their list.

Don’t forget to carry a notepad and pen with you so you can get their information when they call!

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If you’re in the United States, happy 4th of July! I always read the Declaration of Independence this time of year. It’s important to know where America comes from.

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If you’ve been in business a while, you’ve heard some of the same questions over and over again. That’s a good thing, because it means you can easily come up with “canned” responses.

When I say “canned”, I don’t mean boring answers. I mean ready-to-use answers.

Here’s my secret system to increase your sales skills:

1. Write down every question you can think of that leads ask.
2. Take every question and write an answer. Any answer at all. Even if you repeat yourself.
3. Wait at least 24 hours or more, then re-read all your answers. They were crappy weren’t they?
4. Re-write your answers, this time, saying every answer out loud.
5. Wait 24 more hours, then re-read your answers again. Fix any more problems and tighten up your answers. Be concise but informative.
6. Now that the answers are done, work at memorizing them. Make sure you can recite them in your sleep.
7. Over time, refine your answers and always look back at what you wrote to fix or update any problems.

This “secret” plan will work, but it’s hard work. You have to constantly be on improving your sales techniques as you’re in business. What you say today should not be the same thing you say next year…or even next month. You can always be better!

It’s worth it. The best martial arts school marketing in the world won’t save you if you can’t convert them into paying customers!

By the way, one blog that helps with sales skills is the Selling Sherpa. He’s awesome!

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I was talking to a few parents the other day, and they were talking about how they and their kids recently quit their martial arts school. Naturally, I asked why and they said something that I didn’t expect.

They didn’t like that the school owner didn’t teach that many classes. I was confused because I knew the school that they were talking about, and I knew his instructors were great.

So I did some research by looking at their website. I immediately saw the problem.

The school’s marketing is completely devoted to how great a teacher and martial artist the head instructor is. The problem is that it said nothing about how great he had trained his instructors, if he had a training program for them, or anything else about instructors.

The website sells customers on the fact that this guy is the best, then they take it away from the customers when they sign up! That’s a pure bait-and-switch, even if he doesn’t mean it.

He has multiple locations, so he can’t be at all of them all the time so parents should figure that out, right? Wrong! Customers have to know what they’re getting. If they think they’ll be getting one thing and then they get another, the school is setting itself up for having lots of lost students after 5 to 6 months (which is the problem that this school has been having).

The moral of the story is to make sure your marketing matches up exactly with what you offer. This isn’t that hard!

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I read a lot of blogs and a lot of books. Keeping current and learning new things to help my business (and yours) is important to me.

When I read this blog post, I knew it would be interesting to some of my readers.

The article quotes Matt Cutts, SEO expert for Google. If he says something about websites, you better listen!

He says that in order to increase SEO rankings of individual schools you own, make sure each school has its own web page on your website that lists its hours, location, and other important location-based information.

In addition to helping your rankings in Google search, it also helps your site’s usability. Admit it, how often have you gone to a business web site thinking you were getting information about one location, then you get the corporate website? That’s annoying when you’re looking for information on one location.

Take a look at your website with an eye towards giving information on individual locations. If you have a web page that lists all the locations with hours and info on one page, does it make sense to change it? Try even googling yourself to see what comes up!

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One of the most important things that a business owner can do is to have a business plan. We’re always told that when we enter business, but somehow, most of the martial arts business owners I’ve talked to don’t have one.

It’s always something that they’ll do later. The excuse I always get is that they’re growing without one, so why bother? Or they don’t know how. Or they made one, but then lost the napkin that it was on!

This post shows proof why that’s a bad thing.

Palo Alto Software makes Business Plan Pro (and a couple of other software suites for business owners), and I don’t personally use their software (nor do I get paid if you buy it from them). My business plans have always been way more informal than what they handle, but I bought into a franchise so they helped me with my business plan.

They asked thousands of their users a few questions about if they have planned and if they have put the plan into practice. Almost 3000 of the people that had, at one time, planned to make a plan, responded.

Basically, those who actually finished their plans were almost two times as likely to grow their business and receive funding for their business!

This is important because if you plan your business, every aspect of your business, then you will be two times likelier to grow it.

If you have been in business for a while and don’t have a plan but you’re doing well, great! Could you do better if you knew where you were headed?

If you haven’t started your martial arts business yet, you need to have a plan before you ever think about leasing a location. There are a lot of things to think about.

And yes, I have made a business plan for this website and my business advising services!

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I was talking to a martial arts school owner the other day, and he was talking about leads and prospects and referrals. I was confused with the way he was talking about them though, because he wasn’t using the words correctly.

So I decided to make a post about it.

A prospect is any potential person that hasn’t talked to you about your program yet. Usually, I classify a prospect as any potential person that would be interested in your program.

When you buy a direct mail list to send out postcards, if you create the list correctly, then those are all prospects. A prospect is generally not people across down that live two hours away.

A lead is any potential person that has contacted you through your website, phone, or in person that could possibly sign up. Generally, if somebody is looking for a hardcore mma program, and your school is a kids-based tae kwon do school, that person is not a lead. I wouldn’t count any people that are never going to sign up.

A referral is any person who signs up that a current customer has brought to you somehow. Generally, if you have a great program and a great school, you’ll get a few referrals automatically. There are ways to create opportunities for improving the amount of referrals.

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A few weeks ago, we started seeing a lot of gnats around our sink. To get rid of them, we put out a bowl with vinegar in it. This is what the all-knowing internet told us to do!

It worked great! The gnats all flocked to the bowl of vinegar. They flew around it and they loved it. The problem is that they didn’t die, they just hung out. We didn’t know what to do with them once they were all there.

What does this have to do with your business?

If you have the greatest marketing in the world and you have a tremendous amount of students contacting you, you need to have a plan for what to do with those leads. Most business owners are not good at sales, but you have to get good at sales.

If you think your program “sells itself”, it doesn’t. You have to become a salesperson for your program. Leads will not be just contacting one martial arts place. Generally, the first person that talks to them is the first person that has a chance.

All this means is that you have to be able to talk about your program quickly, and you should have responses ready to go for all the general questions that people ask when they call.

One tip, don’t talk about price until you have told them about your program. Price is meaningless if they don’t know what they’re getting. You don’t want them shopping by price, because if you win, you’ll be the Wal-Mart of martial arts places. Make sure that leads know exactly what they’re getting!

Of course, there’s much more to sales than that, so get a book on Amazon and study it!

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If you want referrals, you have to tell people you want referrals. Then you have to reward people for referring other students to you.

There are a lot of issues I will eventually talk about regarding referrals, but for now, I want to mention something that I’ve not seen very many martial arts businesses do.

If an adult student refers another adult student, paying them is the same as paying your customers.

What about child students? For every referral, most of us pay the parents as a thank you. The kids are probably the ones that did all the selling to the new students, so how are you rewarding them?

We give candy! What would you give?

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