Business by Janice

Try as I might I can’t get away from hearing  the word “crisis” at least 5 times a day, even though I deliberately DON’T watch any news. It’s getting to be a more common topic of conversation than the weather ever was!

I must say though, I’m thinking about the sales and budgets forecasts for the second term for company classes and attempting to balance my always overflowing positivity with the “reality” that’s out there.

Yes, it is proving hard to find and get new business (although there’s still lots to be had) so I got to thinking that it’s even more important to look after the clients we already have.  I read an interesting statistic on a marketing web page the other day - apprarently 68% of clients stop buying because businesses don’t communicate with them. This statistic is probably higher in a service industry such as ours.

So what can we do to make sure we retain our customers and even possibly get more business from them?

If you’re a business owner ( or a freelance teacher in fact), here are some ideas you may want to think about:

• Just phone. All of us are guilty of not speaking to our customers enough. Just pick up the phone to ask how everything’s going and thank them for their business, they’ll be very pleasantly surprised as very few people do this.

• Send a postcard. Send a postcard with a compelling offer that ADDS VALUE  to your current service. In times like these it’s VALUE that we have to be promoting, so that customers feel confident that their expenditure is an INVESTMENT.

• Reward referrals. In fact referrals is often something we don’t concentrate enough on. If your current cusotmers are really happy with you, encourage them to refer your name to others and offer clients an incentive to do this.  If you got two referrals from each of your current clients, just think what a difference this would make to your business.

• Send a gift to your best customers. How would you feel if you received an unexpected gift from a supplier? Would that increase your loyalty to them. Just the gesture of a small “detalle” as a thank you for their business goes a long way. (I reckon this is more effective outside of Chrismas time though).

• Offer your expertise. What one piece of information or knowledge about your business could help your customers save money, make their life easier etc?  Write a personal email and share it with them.

• Ask a great question. Phone your clients and ask this one simple but extremely effective question: “What are we currently not offering that you would like us to?” Quite often we concentrate on what we THINK clients want without ever asking them. This very powerful question could set you off in all sorts of interesting directions!

I know I seem to be concentrating on marketing quite a lot lately, I must say it’s a whole new area for me which I’m learning about and in fact is more than relevant in these times of (sorry, here it goes again…) crisis. For those companies who focus mostly on corporate clients, we ARE facing a challenge, but as I mentioned in my post “Let’s say NO to the Recession”,  we must maintain positive, imaginative and pro active to combat this situation.

Again I want to thank Chris Cardell for most of the marketing information contained in this post: http://www.cardellmedia.co.uk

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