Business by Janice

I’ve just returned from Seville. No frilly flemenco dresses in sight though as I was there to attend 2 conferences related to our sector. The first was the FECEI conference on Friday (Federación Española de Centros de Enseñanza de Idiomas) aimed at academy owners and the second on Saturday, the ACEIA conference (Asociación de Centros de Enseñanza de Idiomas de Andalucia) aimed at everyone related to the sector. What a buzz to see  the place full of over 350  teachers willing to give up their saturday to learn something new, seeking inspiration and motivation via the speakers at the workshops.

But you know, there’s only around 80 schools in Andalucia. In Madrid we have over 300! Where’s the buzz in Madrid? Just think what could be generated in our capital city? So what’s going on in Andalucia?

The energy in Andalucia is coming from the President of FECEI, Richard Johson and a small team of incredibly ENTHUSIASTIC academy owners who belong to ACEIA who have realised how much more productive (and fun) it is to collaborate. They have discovered that collaboration leads to creativity, learning and improvements in the way we do things, which ultimately leads to IMPROVEMENTS IN OUR SECTOR, a subject which for those of you who regularly read my blog know I’m passionate about.

Richard told me some time ago the story of ACEIA, how there used to be loads of cowboy schools in Andalucia and how gradually standards have improved leading to better contracts and conditions for teachers, more professionality in the managing of the schools and a better service to the customer.

Collaboration is also a passion of mine, and attending these conferences made me realise exactly how much power there is in relationships. Apart from what I learnt from the talks about running an “exemplary” school, tips  for recruiting and retaining teachers, how to manage our offcial funds for training and what’s happening in the EFL market at the global level, I came away with ideas for marketing and positioning a section of our company, concrete contacts to introduce different products and lots of other things.

In fact I was invited to talk about the advantages of collaboration, and there are two sentences that stand out for me from my talk. The first is that “no industry has ever developed or prospered by its businesses operating in isolation”. Apart from myself, there was only one other school from Madrid represented at the FECEI conference, that was Hyland.

What the hell is going on in Madrid?

The answer to that is easy - nothing. We’ve probably got the most acute issues of the whole country (don’t need to list them as they’re all to found on the other posts on this blog), and nothing is happening to try and address them. I’ve held a couple of informal meetings over the last year  with a group of around 10 school owners to try and get something off the ground, (it’s still early days), and do you know how many emails I actually sent out with not even a response? 80!

It’s great to see lots of blogs by teachers but where are the academy owners? Are you that apathetic? Don’t you care?  There’s so much we could do if we just started building a relationship  with each other. When an industry is having problems it’s very difficult for an individual business to soldier on alone.

The second sentence from my talk which is always on my mind is, “the greatest resource is a relationship because it opens the door to every other resouce you may need”. I owe this to the author James Ray, from the Book “Harmonic Weath”, (recommended reading).  As a  school owner, when you’re not sure if your gestoria’s doing the contracts properly, when you need help improving the format of your level test, when you’re not sure what to include in a company client’s contract, if you’ve built a nework in your sector of people you like and trust, you can always find the answer to what you’re looking for.

Power really is in relationships. It was great to see that exemplified this weekend in Seville and I encourage anyone reading this post to reflect on that. In fact it’s motivated me to organise a third networking meeting here in Madrid, (just in case it ocurred to anyone to comment saying, that’s alright Janice but what are YOU going to do about what you’re writing about!)

Hey, talking about relationships, you can start (or consolidate) a relationship just by commenting on this post. I would love to get more feedback from other language school owners. What do you think? Have I got a point or am I being unrealistically utopian?

In order for Spain to prosper in international markets it’s imperative that employees improve their level of English. But this is not happening fast enough or efficiently enough. At some stage, if it’s not already happened in some cases, this will directly impact on the bottom line of a company.

But are companies prepared to do what it takes to rectify this?

LEARNING A LANGUAGE TAKES TIME AND COMMITTMENT

And committment is NOT demonstrated by the following behaviours from companies:

• Insisting that students with several levels are put into the same group due simply to budgetary constraints. If companies have a limited  budget they should select those employees who need English the most. Otherwise they  are throwing your money away.  As reputable schools we  should challenge clients who try to mix too many levels in a group

• Providing English classes to employees simply as a perk. They will not possess the necessary motivation to make any reasonable progress.

• Allowing cancellations of classes. If students can cancel a class they will, as they bow to the pressure of their work. Too many cancellations means progress is slowed down and objectives are not met. Teachers are often not paid when a class is cancelled, if too many classes are cancelled teachers will drop the class as they begin to suffer economically.

• Insisting that a class is covered immediately even when the school is saying that they can’t find a suitable teacher. Companies run the risk of receiving a sub standard teacher .

• Choosing a provider on price alone. Schools who employ bad teachers pay them badly which allows them to give their classes at a cheap price. You get what you pay for and again, companies are throwing your money away.

• Not being flexible on the times of classes. Clients will get the BEST teachers if the class timetable is arranged in blocks of more than 2 hours and  classes are allowed at off-peak times.

Now, more than any time, is the time to be seriously looking at return on investment. Those companies who are wise enough not to completely eradicate language training from their budgets when their future performance depends on how well an employee can negotiate in English, should be doing all they can to ensure that they make it easy for us to give them a quality service.

If any HR manager is reading this (hopefully there’ll be quite a few one day!), I would suggest that you take the time to really examine the service you are receiving. Be demanding with your provider so that you ultimately get the results you’re looking for. However, you must play your part fairly and treat your provider as a partner and as a professional. Professional schools will bring up most of the points listed above and they will bring them up for one reason - to ensure your employees learn and achieve their learning objectives which will ultimately benefit the company bottom line.

In addition to the balls we have to juggle as small business owners, (see post “Do Academy owners ever get any sympathy from teachers?”) , we’ve got yet another one, and it’s a biggie - the negativity that surrounds us regarding this recession.

Yes, of course the economy is experiencing a downturn, that’s what the economy does, it goes up and down, in varying degrees. But perhaps the biggest danger is not the recession itself , but the FEAR that seems to creep up on people largely fuelled by the media who are having a field day with all the news of doom and gloom.

What is fear?  Basically it is a lack of faith about our ability to influence the future. And what does fear generally do? It paralyses us, it stops us from taking action. If we don’t take action of course we are not going to have faith in the future because we are putting our destiny in the hands of others, and we never know what others are going to do!

I think the first action one should take is to limit one’s consumption of the media. Surround yourself with positive messages from other sources  instead, don’t be sucked down into so much negativity. Yes, businesses are folding and people are losing their houses, that’s very sad, but at the same time other businesses are doing well and many  people haven’t reduced their spending.

Once you really get into the MINDSET that your business can indeed prosper despite the recession, you’ll be inspired to take action that will then enable it to do so.  Those of us who understand how the LAW OF ATTRACTION works know that EVERYTHING begins with a thought. If you think that it’s not worth doing any marketing because nobody’s buying, you’re not going to take any sort of marketing action  and hey presto, all of a sudden, your business is spriralling downwards. Who do you blame that on?  Yourself or the recession?

The most important thing to do in any recession is to increase your marketing, but make sure it’s marketing that WORKS. How do you know if the marketing is working? - You test it, you experiment with different types of marketing and you test. We used a telemarketer last year for the first time over a period of 3 months last spring/summer. With salary and commissions the guy cost us just over 2000€. He got us a contract worth 2000€/month whch runs for 9 months. He paid for himself. That’s simple testing.

And marketing doesn’t have to cost anything. Getting on the phone to clients or sending emails doesn’t cost anything (except your time) but it’s still marketing. However, the attitude with which you do this is paramount. If you’re making calls with the expectation that it’s a fruitless task because “we’re in a recession and nobody is buying”, your task will indeed bear little fruit. Just think, if most other business owners aren’t bothering to contact prospects because they think there’s no business to be had, then you have a higher probability of making contact with those who ARE still buying. No prospecting work is ever wasted, and if you are motivated to do it in the hard times and get some results, just think how easy it will be when the economy starts to move upwards.

To be very simplistic, things happen. That’s a fact. Whether they’re good or bad depends totally on how we view and judge them, so anything can be viewed as good if we choose to think that way.

For those business owners with the right mindset, an economic recession provides the challenge to:

• become more creative with their marketing which then pays off even more when the economy recovers
• analyse their current cost and revenue structure and thus develop in the area of financial budgeting
• learn and grow generally - there’s nothing like a problem to test and stretch you.  Often we don’t realise the resources we have inside us until we are put to the test
• think how we can utilise networking both inside and outside our sector to ceate synergies which may lead to increased business

By advocating saying NO to the recession I’m not denying that it exists, what I’m saying is let’s not succumb to negativity which creates fear and leads to inaction.  This FEELS so bad, and why would we choose to feel bad?  Isn’t it always better to feel good and positive? THAT is the feeling that will be responsible for getting you through this recession because it will inspire you to take the action needed.

Despite the generalisations of the press, there are lots of individuals and companies doing very well, (but of course positve news for the media is not what sells so it’s not of interest to them).  So let’s focus on these companies and individuals for our inspiration, focus on what action we ourselves need to take, and intelligently steer our way through these challenging times to come out the other end even stronger.

Note:  the material for this post was inspired by an amazing marketing and business development coach, Chris Cardell.  Check him out at: http.//www.cardellmedia.co.uk

In a word, there would be chaos.

One of the most frustrating parts of running a business is when there exists an obstacle which hinders you from satisfying a demand and therefore from selling.  I often ask myself, why can’t American teachers get work visas when the demand for English is so huge?

It doesn’t make sense.

I haven’t done a great deal of research into this, I presume the Spanish government believes that there are enough qualified Spanish teachers of English to satisfy demand and that’s why they won’t give any quota on this immigration category.  What the government don’t appear to understand however is our market works; how many times have you heard clients say they want a native? Ok, they might accept a Romanian or Polish teacher (who are usually excellent with grammar by the way),  but a Spanish teacher of English is largely frowned upon.

We would love to employ American teachers, I love their work ethic, they’re generally enthusiastic and hard working but  the risk is immense, it’s one thing to have an inspection and to be found to have some errors in the contracts of European teachers and quite another to be found to be “employing” illegals. The fine can close your business. Is it worth the risk?

Apparently, for lots of schools in Madrid, yes, they feel that it’s still worth taking the risk, although I believe more and more are becoming cautious and  saying no. I’m amazed however by how many American teachers come here to do TEFL and then believe they can get a job when they know they will be illegal.

The ideal situation would be for qualifed non EU teachers to receive work visas of one to two years. Everyone would be happy, schools would have a wider choice of teachers and could therefore pay more attention to finding the right teacher for  a certain profile of class, the non EU teachers would at last be able to work for the reputable schools, clients would get their classes covered more quickly and those Spanish teachers of English whose strong accent gets in the way of giving effective classes wouldn’t be affected as they rarely got assigned classes in the first place!

Does anyone out there reading this know if there’s anything happening about this situation? Does anyone or group of people even have the energy never mind the time to lobby for action in this area?

I know we don’t live in a perfect world, and in fact, the TEFL world is much less than perfect in many respects, but when we have such an imbalance between the demand for English and the supply of teachers who can teach it, surely SOMETHING  can be done.

Firstly, my apologies for leaving it so long between posts, I had a problem with accessing the page coupled with the usual hectic period of September/October setting up courses, recruiting etc.

It’s come to my attention that many prospective new clients are really putting pressure on getting price down which I suppose is quite understandable given the current economic conditions.

Will schools concede on this and will quality be affected?

Margins are really low in this industry to start with and if competition gets any fiercer, we may well see the standard of service decline in terms of communication with the client, mix ups with class organisation etc. It’s very unlikely (if other academy owners have any common sense) that teacher rates will be reduced to rebalance the margin on classes, as we’re still experiencing a shortage of teachers especially here in Madrid. Teachers can choose where to work and they’re certainly not going to, and shouldn’t, work for peanuts.

Time and time again we try to point out to clients that it’s not the PRICE that is important, it’s the COST of classes. A company can contract the cheapest language school in the city, but if that school is employing non qualiified and inexperienced teachers, the cost to that company is HUGE as the students won’t make the desired progress. The company might as well flush their money down the drain.  If budgets ARE tight, It’s a much more sensible to contract fewer classes with a school that guarantees quality, thereby ensuring  a return on investment on those students receiving quality teaching.

In any crisis it’s inevitable that there is some reshuffling of position in the market to maintain  a certain level of business.  Some  schools however, stressed out by fighting fires all day, may decide that it’s not worth it  any more. If you no longer enjoy your workas you have less and less resources with which to run your business and provide a decent service, what’s the point?

Quite frankly I refuse to be pulled into this doom and gloom. I’m not saying that these aren’t challenging times but if we fan the fire with pessimism we just get pulled futher down into “problems”.

I love the saying, “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”. If an economic crisis means you have to be more creative in looking for clients (who’ll pay your rates), so be it - at least you hone your sales and marketing skills. If it means you have to monitor your budgets more carefully, fine, again this experience adds to your business skills.

There is always a positive side to every negative situation and those who ARE positive stand out, they attact good things to them. (For those of you who know anything about the Law of Attraction, you’ll know where I’m coming from, more about that in later posts).

So, will quality in our sector be sacrificed in the “Crisis”?  - Only if you want it to be.

I’m sure many teachers have often wondered what it would be like to run a school themselves.

Would it work out?

Would they be able to earn more money?

Would they get more job satisfaction?

Quite frankly, until you try it you’ll never know. Let’s look at what might be involved.

From a risk point of view we’re in a very fortunate industry. We don’t have to invest in expensive machinery or buy in stock that may never sell. As we get a class, we teach it ourselves or we find a teacher to teach it for us. When the class finishes, the teacher finishes. as simple as that.

Everyone’s story of how they got into running a language school is different. In my case, I was teaching at a school that was already established, the owners wanted to sell and asked if I was interested in buying it. Here the risk was low, as it was already a going concern, students were guaranteed, all that was needed was to work to increase student numbers and company clients.

Many teachers begin by becoming autonomo to be able to take on corporate clients themselves, and then as they become well known and are asked to do more and more classes, they subcontract out these classes to other teachers. Eventually their base grows to such an extent that they open an office and begin to set up administration and pedagogic systems, contract a gestoria etc. The successful teacher is now on their way to becoming a successful business owner and they begin to juggle those balls I referred to in an earlier post. If you’ve got previous management experience and have been trained in such things as time management, leadership, sales skills, interviewing techniques and basic financial management skills you’ll be way ahead of the competition. Let’s face it, to combine general management experience with an expert knowledge of your product (TEFL) has to be a winning combination.

So what happens now?

I believe that the biggest factors influencing the success of a school are focus and vision.

Now you’re running a business instead of just teaching, what do you want from this business? This is the most important question any business owner can ask themselves and the question we always start with when we are coaching such people.

The questions you may want to ask yourself are:

• How big do I want this business to grow?
• Am I prepared to put in the hours the business needs to get established?
• What niche of the market do I want to concentrate on?
• Am I prepared to take a financial risk if necessary?
• Who do I know who can help me?
• What lifestyle do I want?
• What are my strengths?
• What are my weaknesses?

It’s by asking yourself questions such as these that you can formulate your vision and from your vision you formulate your business plan and set your goals.  People and businesses often become confused and lost because they don’t know where they’re going. It’s also often the case  that you see other schools doing different things and you say to yourself, “should I be doing that?” If you’ve spent some time initially deciding what sort of business and lifestyle you want, you will immediately know the answer instead of wasting time debating whether to follow or not.

We’re lucky; we’re in a market where the demand for our service is huge. The downside is that the competition is extremely fierce. If you are offering a good service at a reasonable price, keeping an eye on the financials, know what you want to achieve and by when, you shouldn’t have too many problems. Beware of your weaknesses however.

As your business grows it’s important to recognise the weak areas and find the necessary resources to fill the gaps.

If want to own a large school, one of the most important tips I could pass on would be to keep your head up and look at your business as a whole, don’t get too hands on, don’t get too involved with the teaching and ignore the business development. If you do, you will continue to be a great teacher but you will be lucky to achieve your goal of having a great school.

If there are any teachers/language school owners out there who would like to raise any questions about business development, I’d be happy to answer them and this would give concrete examples to teachers who are thinking of starting up on their own. I don’t profess to be an expert, that’s the great thing about running your own business, you’re always learning. However, we have been running our school now for 9 years and my recent training in small business coaching is contributing tremendously to our progress.

… a very pertinent question, and if we get down to the nitty gritty we could ask, would I employ a teacher who didn’t have TEFL? (Teaching English as a Foreign Language)

When I interview I’m looking for a teacher who satisfies certain basic criteria:

• they are aware of the importance of setting learning objectives
• they confidently tell me what they think about when planning a class
• they have a reasonable handle on grammar, at least knowing the difference between certain tenses
• they talk about error correction techniques and how they recycle previously taught language
• they take needs analysis for granted
• they are aware of what type of activities motivate different student groups

I’m also looking for people who have excellent communication skills and an assertive personality.

Could a teacher satisfy the listed criteria without having done a TEFL course? It’s quite possible.

However, unless the teacher has an exceptional CV with many years teaching and other professional experience, and their covering letter has really caught my eye, it would be difficult to move to the stage of being invited to interview with our school. Like any skills based qualification, TEFL acts as a sceening device and does indicate to us that the teacher at least knows the basic teaching techniques.

I remember when I first started teaching I did some private classes before doing my CELTA. The before and after was amazing and quite frankly I felt gulity that I had actually charged people for my classes pre CELTA, I knew NOTHING! That’s another reason why I’m sceptical about all the week end and on line courses that have suddenly appeared on the market. How much can you really learn in a week end? And it can’t possibly compare to a full 4 week course. In my interviews I always ask the teacher for their opinon of the course and nine times out of ten I get a strong reaction saying that they found the course extremely challenging.

There’s also the personal development angle. If you’re serious about doing something, shouldn’t you try to do it to the best of your ability?  So if you want to teach and be taken seriously you need to do a TEFL course. Some people may say that the cost is prohibitive, but as mentioned above, there’s a TEFL course to fit every pocket and SOMETHING is better than nothing. At least it demonstrates some commitment.

Here in Madrid as I’ve mentioned in another post, the demand for English is HUGE, which means that there is work for every type of teacher, TEFL or no TEFL. And I think that is a big shame as it’s lowering standards and consequently damaging the reputation of our industry.

So please, if you are thinking of going into teaching, take yourself and our sector seriously and get TEFLed.

It’s the beginning of September so we’re all busy trying to fit ourselves into this giant jigsaw puzzle of timetables.

If you’re a teacher and new to the city or looking to change schools you’ll be sending your CV to lots of places.

I thought that this week would be good time to give those teachers who read my blog some tips and hints on how to make sure your application for a teaching post stands out.

Nowadays most teachers send an email with their CV attached and I have to say I do prefer to receive Cvs this way instead of a phone call, I think it’s more professional.

So here are my tips for getting noticed and getting that interview:

• Include a solid email heading that SAYS something. For example, “TEFL qualified teacher looking for full time work” or Teacher with 6 years experience seeking work“. In both these examples the words “TEFL qualified” and “6 years experience” grab my attention and I would open this mail before any others.

• Make sure you include a brief covering mail to introduce your CV which includes the most important and relevant points. A sentence here  about your personality is fine but please, just keep it to one or I will lose interest and I’ll  find out about your personality at the interview anyway.

• If you’re not already in Madrid, include in the mail the date you will be arriving and available for interview, this helps us to prioritise our responses to all the applications we get.

• Mentioning your teaching strengths is ideal so we immediately get an idea of your profile, whether you’re suitable for Young Learners or companies for example.

• It’s very helpful to tell us in your mail where you found the school so we have an idea of how our publicity is working

• Try and keep your CV to two pages maximum

• There is no need to include educational qualifications below A level

• Be specific about your TEFL qualification, what type it is and it’s duration, especially if it’s the full 4 week course, these are the ones we prefer. There are many short courses now on the market and if you’ve invested all that money in a 4 week one, make sure it’s clear.

• Make sure you include dates so we can clearly see from your CV how much teaching and work experience you’ve actually had.

• Be clear about your nationality and if you aren’t from the E.U. please let us know if you have working papers for Spain or not. This saves me time getting back to you to ask you.

• Keep details about hobbies very brief

• Any information which demonstrates assertiveness and initiative is very welcome

• Tell us if you have a car.  We’re desperate for teachers with cars as many companies now operate from out of town business parks.

Remember, we are most interested in your TEFL qualification, teaching experience, your legality to work and your availabilty.  If you express this information clearly and politely and you tell us exactly what type of classes and timetable you’re looking for you’ll get lots of interviews arranged very quickly.

Good luck!

Our market is super competitive to say the least.

I’ve often thought how difficult it must be for those people in companies who have the responsibility of choosing a language provider. In fact I was speaking to someone the other day - the personal assistant of the MD of a property company, (in two minds whether to chase that prospect given the current economic climate at the moment and the horror stories we’re hearing about anything remotely connected to construction), and she admitted how nervous she felt about the whole issue. Basically, if the language school she chooses messes up she gets the blame!

So how do clients choose a school when we all “hire native, qualified teachers, have an effective methodology, have a perfect level system with it’s corresponding testing, do regular student evaluations and feedbacks bla, bla, bla?

Ignoring those companies who choose a language provider based on the cheapest price (now there’s food for another post), the more serious ones should be asking about the following:

• the history and experience of the school - what infrastructure does the school have? what other clients does it have? can references be obtained? How has the school developed in recent years?
• the teacher profile - What selection criteria does the school use?
• teaching methodology - what EXACTLY is the method used? how is it effective? how are results obtained and measured?
• administration - does the school have the resources to deal with the client’s demands in this area?

But the most important (and telling) question the client should be asking is: How is your school different to others? And if you can answer this with confidence and integrity then the contract is as good as yours.

Because that’s exactly what clients are looking for - a provider with integrity who will deliver what they say they’re going to deliver, and on the occasions that they don’t, (and we’ve all had teachers who’ve “disappeared” on us), are professional and honest enough to deal with it and provide a solution to the problem.

Yes, we do all “say the same thing” to prospective clients so we have to work on them trusting us. Given that we provide a very similar service, at the end of the day it’s down to whether they like you and TRUST you.

The following link provides more detailed information for companies on how to select a language provider:

http://www.microsoft.com/spain/empresas/formacion/formacion_ingles.mspx

I was out with a group friends the other night and we got to talking about people’s experience of English classes. One of the girls who has worked many years as a management consultant commented that her major complaint of many of the classes she’s received is that there is no obvious method. By method she meant a disciplined structure to every class that would take her securely to the end result she was looking for.

There are of course some schools who have their own method such as Vaughn Systems and Berlitz but the majority of schools leave the details of how the class is going to be imparted up to the individual teacher. The majority of these teachers have been trained in teaching techniques, handling classroom dynamics, planning a class etc via their TEFL course but when they get into class they decide exactly how they are going to teach to achieve the results required. Now that is a BIG responsibility.

And the course books the teachers are issued with have so much material that the teacher is often overwhelmed, either trying to fit it all in in class and not covering anything properly, or throwing in the towel and going in with photocopies from internet.

Now there are some excellent teachers out there, but there are many that, even armed with TEFL, seem to need a good dose of discipline to give structured classes. Can we depend on our teachers to give disciplined classes, to stick to their class plans and so lead the student forward to achieve their objectives? And if we can’t depend on our teachers to do this, how much extra training and feedback do we need to do to ensure it does happen, and does this fit into our cost/revenue structure?

Throughly TEFL trained teachers can add a diversity and richness to classes via the use of imaginative activities not found in those that use a specific methodology. And these teachers can adapt their approach to the different learning styles and interests of the students, to get right into the individual’s motivation for learning. But how many teachers do this as effectively as we would wish? The more freedom we give to the teacher, the more risk we take that the class is not as effective as we would want.

So, which is the best way? A strict methodology to ensure specific results or a more open approach to try and satisfy the different learning styles and interests of the student?

Whether you are a teacher, student or language school director I’d be very interested to hear which approach you favour and why.