The fortune is in the follow-up.
-Eric Siu | CEO, Single Grain LLC
– – Episode Highlights – –
Music schools are often reluctant to follow up multiple times with a lead. Perhaps someone fills out your online form and you attempt a few times to contact them but there’s no reply.
If somebody calls, emails, or texts you, they’re expressing a certain level of interest in signing up for music lessons. Sure, you can call or email them back. After a couple of tries with no response might mean they’re simply busy. Maybe they really intend on getting back to you, but they’ve got more pressing issues or matters going on in their life.
They might want to get their kid enrolled in music lessons. Maybe they’re just thinking about doing some window shopping. Perhaps they called you and your competitor down the road. What if your competitors are more persistent with their follow-up? Who’s going to get the business? Who going to get the new student?
If you genuinely believe that your music lessons can help kids grow as a person and that it can help children discover their potential; you have a moral obligation to let people know about your music school. You have a moral obligation to keep following up with leads until they tell you yes or no.
1. Map Out a Follow-Up Plan
What I encourage you to do is to sort of map out a follow-up plan for yourself. Ideally, when someone initially contacts your music school, you want to be able to get back to them within ideally an hour. You know, that’s not always possible, but a full 24 hours is certainly too long.
2. Expand Your Time Frame
What I would recommend is when you get that initial inquiry, you call them back. If you get a voicemail, leave a message. Follow up with an email. Give it another day. The same thing. Then, you could start spacing it out a bit. Go for 48 hours and follow up with a text or an email. You could then go and do the other 72 hours. Follow up with a phone call. Maybe space it out for a week. A week later, there’s an attempt to connect with them again.
3. Use the Nine-Word Email
Perhaps a month later, you could use the Dean Jackson nine-word email. The subject could read the parent’s first name with a question mark, or simply the word “Interested?”.
The email could read: Are you still interested in music lessons for [child’s name]?
Dean Jackson’s nine-word email isn’t designed to ask for the sale but to initiate a conversation.
Hopefully, these multiple attempts will at some point elicit some sort of response, even if it’s a “No, I’m not interested.” That’s great. That’s helpful information and you can back off.
Now, the prospect has gone cold, but that doesn’t mean your attempts to sell to them should end. Maybe 4 or 6 months later, you knock on their door again.
Don’t worry about being a {…} nuisance with multiple follow-up attempts. People admire persistence. Continued follow-up is also a statement of confidence.
4. Persistence Pays Off
Dean Graziosi says that if you have a product that can help people, you have a moral obligation to let people know about it. If you genuinely believe that your music lessons can help kids discover their potential, then you have a moral obligation to let people know about your music school. You have a moral obligation to keep following up with leads. When parents contact you, they’re letting you know that they need help. They want their child to benefit from music.
I don’t have to tell you the power and the impact that music has on a person’s life. You’re living proof of that. Don’t worry about being a nudge or being a nag or being a nuisance with multiple efforts to follow up. People admire persistence. Continued follow-ups are also a statement or declaration of confidence.
That confident music school owner will be persistent. They will have their staff following up on a regular basis with leads. I can’t tell you how many parents contacted my school and said, “Well, we contacted originally this other school, but we never heard back from them.” Let’s hope that you don’t fall into that category.
5. Stay Top of Mind
All those phone numbers and emails you got from inquiries didn’t really go anywhere. There might be two or three cold leads that you could warm up today by simply reaching back out to them or by trying to get a dialogue. Go not only to cold leads but to inactive students, too. Those are also opportunities worth pursuing.
Perhaps you had a student drop out of your music school a year ago. Well, they might have a sibling that might be interested in music lessons, but you’re not top of mind for inactive students, or with inactive students, and might not occur to them that there are other children who might be open or interested in music lessons.
The expression “Top of mind. Tip of tongue” means people are thinking about you. They’re likely to talk about you. If you’re top of mind even to an inactive student, parents would likely talk about your music. They’re more likely to talk about your music school to their friends. Perhaps one of their friends is turning to them for a referral for music lessons. Sure, maybe they had a great experience at your music school, but if you’re actively trying to remain top of mind, they’re most likely going to refer you or refer their friend to you.
6. Engage in a Conversation
One thing that I did in my music school is I would look at students who had dropped out from the data I had in my CRM. As I would check their profiles, I’d email their parents and maybe say something like this:
“How’s Connor doing? Is he in seventh grade? Now, we certainly miss him around the music school filling the halls with music.”
With this kind of email, I don’t only attempt to remain top of mind for the parent, but I’m trying to engage the parent in a conversation as well. There’s a good chance that it’s more likely to lead to a conversation about music lessons. There’s an opportunity to tell mom about this new program that you have that his son might be interested in, or you could simply say, “Hey, now that Connor is a little older, he might be more receptive to music lessons. How do you feel about re-enrolling him? We will give you a 30-day money-back guarantee if he’s not loving his lessons.”
Your inactive customers and your cold leads are full of opportunities. Whenever you need a little boost in enrollment, that’s probably the first place you should look.
