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Improve your sales process for more tutor business

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Improve your Tutor Business

Improve your Tutor Business

I want to share with you today a couple of changes I made to my NCLEX Tutor website and how those changes worked.

Here was the visitor flow before.

Step 1 –

A qualified visitor fills out a form detailing their Nursing student history.

Step 2 –

Follow up email from us – letting them know we received the email. Making sure they had the required book in order to take the assessment tests.

Step 3 –

They responded they did have it, we would respond letting them know to take three assessment tests, email them to us and then we would let them know what would happen moving forward.

Step 4 –

They email the results to us / we send them a spreadsheet and a calendar.

Step 5 – hopefully they ordered.

So why the long process. One thing we wanted to do was to filter out a couple of things. Our program requires the student do a certain amount of work. We can tutor them 20 sessions a week, but if they don’t put some effort into studying then it won’t matter. We are providing them with something valuable as a freebie (they get an assessment and a calendar and spreadsheet highlighting what they need to study).

What Changed / Why I changed it

We monitor sales and ad spend very closely. We want to make a profit with our advertising, like you do (I hope). We had a week where we spent a few hundred bucks and hadn’t made a single sale. So we paused the ads and reviewed things – what could we tweak to make things work better.

I decided to work first on the system we used (the steps above).

We decided to smooth things out a bit and showcase what we’re doing for the student.

We decided instead of emailing results in Step 4, we would segment things. We Emailed them the spreadsheet with a note. To better serve you and create a perfect calendar we need to call you so we can ask you some more questions about what your situation is.  We would give them some times to schedule the phone call and then we would call the student. During the conversation, we would learn more about the student, talk to them about creating the tutor program and more importantly speak with them about the different solutions we offered them.

After the call we would email them with the calendar and a discount code – the code included a time limit.

We emailed two customers in our pipeline and telephoned them, sent the calendar and had two new customers. So we have restarted the ad campaign, again we’ll keep you updated.

So how can you implement this?

  1. Try to offer a freebie that allows you to telephone the customer. Doing this lets your prospective student (or their parents) how well you do your job.
  2. Make your freebie something that is useful and will help them even if they don’t decide to tutor with you.
  3. One thing we’ll be working on is shrinking the filter a little – just like anything else you’ll want to fine tune this as you grow your business.

Questions / Comments, we would love to hear from you.

 

Finding the Money Keywords for your Business

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Grow Your Tutor Business

Grow Your Tutor Business

What’s Happening – Hope you have been doing well. We’ve been busy here. The weather cannot decide if it wants to be spring or not but the calendar definitely says that it is spring or will be in a few days. If you’re tutoring subjects that flow with the school year, now is a great time to start planning what you’re going to do when school is out for the summer.

The Lesson –

We talked last week about finding your money keywords using Google Adwords. Now we want to use those findings and tweak our website so that we won’t have to pay for them. Some keywords are more difficult than others, but for each of them you’ll follow the same procedure.

  1. Figure out where you’re ranking now for those keywords.
  2. Review your competitors for the keywords.
  3. Ensure that you have a landing page for each of the keywords (max of two focus keywords for a page).
  4. Tweak the pages – details on how to do that can be found here – http://www.webpageplanner.com/how-to-seo-a-blog-post
  5. Make sure you have internal links to the page.
  6. Ensure that you have external links to the page (at least from all of the social media sites).
  7. Based on your competitors – formulate a plan to overtake their rankings.

We’ll be creating a video that will explain everything – should have that for you by next Thursday so stay tuned to our blog and Facebook.

Marketing Tip –

Spring break is an excellent time to have some extra three or four day long camps for whatever you’re tutoring. Parents may not have any time off, when they’re children or off. It makes a great introduction to how well you can tutor. Just make sure to learn when they break is and do some local advertising to get the word out.

 

Don’t forget –

You have realized by now how hard it is to get a customer. Now that you have the customer it is important to make sure that you’re doing a good job. You can find out from test score improvement as well as general grade improvement, but the best way is to ask the student. Every three or four tutor sessions I like to ask them the following questions.

  1. Are you learning? That should be your goal – while a test score can show improvement, asking them about it can help to reinforce that.
  2. What are we doing that you like? What is working for them? Keep doing it.
  3. What could we improve on?

Every student is different, sometimes it may take a little digging and prodding to find out what works best for them. It is worth all the effort when they recommend you to their friends.

 

Additional Income – Creating a Course for your Tutor Business (part 1)

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A better business.

So I want to change up the focus a little. We had a couple of questions from the past couple of posts / newsletters about how we create the backend for our NCLEX website. Since our blog and this newsletter are all about providing you with information that you want, that’s what we’re going to be talking about for the next few weeks. Today we’re going to talk about should you create a product or not. Creating a product, one that people log into and learn is not an easy process, the good thing is when you have finished it, then it is done and you’ll only need to update it. The NCLEX course – we’ll take a closer look at it next week on our blog, took us about three months of working 5 or 6 hours a day to complete.

We update it every few months, and we do the tutoring for it now. Has it been worth it, we’re still working on it. This summer we should break even, although this week we’ll be starting an ad campaign for one of the aspects of the site, and if it goes well then, we’ll break even before then.

So, it is important first of all to make sure that you actually have content that would make a good course online.  The history of our NCLEX course is a long one. We didn’t start off with the current one, first we created a Math course… and it flopped, then we made a flashcard course… another flop, then we built our NCLEX course and it did well. Through all of these mistakes we learned things and hopefully you’ll learn from our mistakes so you can have a successful project the first time.

Make sure –

  1. You have enough content for 8 to 12 lessons or modules. These modules you’ll want to drip out to the people that purchase your course. This means when they buy the course they’ll get access to week one, a week later the next piece of content will become available and so forth. You do this for a couple of different reasons. We’ll get into those in a bit. Let’s pretend for example that you tutor Math – you think that you could create a course that prepares someone for taking their ACT or SAT. You’ll then write out the modules and think about it.
  2. Now do some research on the internet. Search for what you’ll be selling. Example I would search for ACT Math Course. You want to make sure there are some paid advertising – if someone is paying to advertise, that means that they are making money selling it.
  3. Create a brief outline of your modules and talk with your current students (and parents) – what do they think about it – they can give you some ideas of what to add.

When you create your modules, you’ll only want to create the first few modules, until you have sold a few of them. That was my mistake with the math course. Next week on the blog we’ll talk about some things that you’ll need – we’ll show you behind the scenes at our NCLEX site. Till then work on coming up with 8 to 12 modules. Need some help, please feel free to send us a note at info@cleverapple.com

Getting Students –

Students should have had at least one test since the Christmas break – now is a great time to focus in on that. An example – “Failed your first math test, Ace the next one…” you get the idea.

Business Tip –

Using high school or college students are a great way to get some work you needed done for your business without paying an arm and a leg. Here are some tips – https://www.eremedia.com/tlnt/your-next-hire-should-be-in-high-school/

Reminders –

If your business didn’t do so well last year or you think you’ll be getting a refund from Uncle Sam – now is probably a good time to do your taxes. If you use an accountant now they are less busy, but every day that it gets closer to the tax deadline in April they will begin to get swamped. I know an accountant that gets only a couple of hours of sleep the week before the deadline and then he goes on a two week vacation the day after. Even if you think you owe, now is a good time to get them done, you just don’t need to pay until the day the payment(s) are due.

Enjoy your week!

Getting More Tutor Students – Tutor lists and asking for referrals

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English: Photograph of author Robert Louis Ste...

English: Photograph of author Robert Louis Stevenson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

News –

Today and in the next few newsletters we’re going to be talking about ways for you to get more tutor students. If you don’t like our topic please let us know and we’ll change it. After all, this is your newsletter. We’ll give one promotion tip for those of you starting out and one for you who have a few tutor students. I’ll be using methods that have gotten me the most students first and go from there.

Starting Out – Get on the tutor list

You want to get on the tutor list of schools in your area. Most schools have these, and if they don’t you’ll usually approach the same person in order to get on the list. You’ll want to talk with the guidance counselor.

First Contact –

You should have the schools number, call the school and ask to speak with the guidance counselor. It goes without saying, when you speak with them you want to be courteous and professional. When they get on the phone, remember especially during the beginning of the school year they are swamped with work. Ask them if it’s a good time to speak with them, then ask them how to get on the tutor list. They’ll then give you instructions on how to do it, make sure you write them down and then repeat it back to them. Thank them for their time.

Follow the instructions. They are slightly different in every school district. Most of them will ask a few of the same questions.

What do you tutor – you’ll want to list the subjects you’re interested in tutoring.

Age groups/ grades you want to tutor.

When you can tutor and how much you charge.

No matter what the procedure, the day you call them you want to write them a nice personalized note, thanking them for their time and the opportunity. You’ll want to mail it out at the latest the day after you speak with them. Enclose your business card and a summary of what we listed above.

A few Tutor Students – ask for referrals

If you already have some students you’ll want to ask them for referrals. The students you have are already in a class you’ll be tutoring in. You should create a brochure or a hand out to give them and you want to let them know if they send you a referral then you’ll be happy to give them a free tutor session.

Inspiration – Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Online – http://www.kitzkikz.com/flashcards/

A free flash card maker you can share with your students.

Follow us / more information.

You can find much more information on our blog. Just use the search box and type something in, you may be surprised at what you find.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/

Hope you have a wonderful day.

Hiring employees for your small business / tutor business

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Help wanted sign

Help wanted sign (Photo credit: andjohan)

We’ve been talking some about what to do in your business if you became ill with a short term illness, long term illness or even death. Next we’ll be talking about those things for folks that have a bigger business and / or employees. I thought first though we would talk about how to do decide to get employees for your tutor business. Please note these are only some ideas, for tax purposes especially you will want to make sure you speak with an accountant (which I am not).
You have a tutor business that is doing well, so well in fact that you are forced to turn students away. IMPORTANT: No matter how busy you are, you want to make sure you continue your advertising to get more students. It’s always better to have a list of prospective clients ready, than to find yourself in a bind needing students and not being able to find any.

For our example, let’s say you tutor 5 days a week for 3 hours an evening, on Saturday you tutor for 3 hours as well. Some students you tutor 2 days a week (3), some students you tutor 2 times a week (3), some students you only choose to tutor on Saturday 3.

We’ll say you charge $25 / a session. So you make about $450 / week. We’ll also add you tutor from home. You have a couple of more students you really want to tutor.

Hiring Someone Part time –

A good first step is to hire someone for part time work. We’ll talk some about how to hire good people in a later day – how to train them etc. You will of course want to make sure you have room for them to  tutor in your home. Now would be a good time to think about and plan how many additional tutors you could have at home, before you would need to move elsewhere. You will want to ensure you have a space for them that is quite and away from distractions. Tutoring in the same room probably wouldn’t be the best idea since it would lead to distractions.

With one part time person that could tutor 2 nights a week You could have 3 more students or so. Using the same numbers as we did above they would be bringing in $150. If you paid them $10 / hour they would make $60 leaving you a profit of $90.

I would do something like this –
Hire a part time person.
Make them full time.
Hire another part time person.
Make them full time.
Hire an assistant / part time tutor. By this time you would have moved out of your home. You will need someone to be there when you can’t, answer the phone when you can’t, and also help you with the paperwork, billing, and scheduling.

Taxes –

I strongly urge you to check out this articles (all of them) from the IRS, then make sure you check / talk to a reputable accountant.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98862,00.html

Growing your Tutor Business part 3 – Getting Referrals

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Garden flower

Garden flower (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Growing your Tutor Business part 3

We’re continuing our series on growing and building your tutor business. We’ll work on taking you from the easiest way to do it to the harder / difficult / more expensive ways.

The easiest way to get students is referrals from your current students. This is easier for a number of different reasons. I think the biggest reason is they have already experienced how you’ve helped them in whatever subject you’ve been tutoring them in.

Here’s one of the ways you can get referrals –

You want to create a referral plan.

From the moment you get a new client you’ll want to ask them for referrals. Explain to your students and their parents how your referral plan works.

Offer them a free student session for every new student they bring to you that stays for x number of months. You’ll want to explain this program to them as your signing them up as well as after you’ve signed them up, and continually remind them about it.

Make a packet they can use. You’ll want to make sure this packet includes business cards and brochures that you’ve made. You’ll also want it to have a unique incentive so you’ll be able to track them easily. One we’ve used in the past is buy one tutor lesson and get another one free.

I know some of you’re saying wow you’re giving away a whole lot of free tutor lessons. Let’s take a step back and figure some numbers. Just for the ease of figuring we’ll say you make $20 / session and your average number of sessions per term is 10. So you make $200 per student. You can an additional student so you’ve made $400 – $40= $360. Lets say they bring in another student $560 – $40 = $520. That doesn’t take into account how much you’ll make from them the next term.

You don’t want to continually do this or they’ll get tired of it, but what what you will want to do is make sure you remind them every couple of months. You’ll want to include it in your tutor calendar.

Again try this method and I definitely think it will help to grow your tutor business.