Treat Prospects Like Future Students

I’m embarrassed to admit this…

Every week, I would sit down with my team, going through the list of students in our school training, one by one, going over progress they made, places they needed extra attention, who was not as focused as we wanted them to be, who we needed to target for upgrades. Then which students missed class the last week so we could make calls and get them back training.

You see, where you put your attention always improves. And students trained for years and years because we did this weekly team meeting. Our retention was always high.

Now for the embarrassing part, we didn’t treat our prospects with the same energy and attention. And that showed in the low number of new enrollments we got. We knew we could help more students, so we knew we had to start putting the same effort into new leads that came in.

We gave our students love, attention, and patience. Then we treated our leads like a to-do list. That had to stop.

They were a list of calls to make. Names to dial. Action items.

Prospects are just Future Students that have not enrolled yet. They are real people we can help, we just need to show leadership and lead them to take action.

What if we came from the frame of caring about Future Students with the same love, attention, and patience?

We had been calling once or twice, never hearing back, then forgetting they existed.

Or putting them on robo-call automations, setting it and forgetting it. We needed to give them the same patience we gave our members.

We needed to follow up with personal action and attention.

If a member didn’t show for their scheduled class, we would call them, send them a “miss you” postcard, call again.

We knew that students may get sick, go on vacation, get super busy. We had patience, we would do anything it took to get them back on the mat. We knew if we could get them on the mat, we could improve their life through our program.

You know whose life we can also improve? Our Future Students, the ones who were interested in learning more but something came up, they got sick, got busy, or went on vacation.

We realized that if we put the same care and patience on our Future Students, we could get them in.

As a martial arts school owner, I thought “I just need more leads.”

I found out, it really was a respect problem.

We treat leads like a transaction, then wonder why they ghost us.

I got a call from a future student, they told me they needed their child in martial arts, they were having behavior problems in school because they were being bullied non-stop. Kid’s grades were slipping. Hated school. Parents tried everything and their teacher recommended our school specifically.

On the phone I could hear the pain. A parent wanting the best for their child and feeling helpless.

I tried to schedule a time to come in. She said she would call back.

She didn’t.

Three weeks of me calling every day, texting. Nothing back.

It would have been easy to chalk this up as another ghosted appointment, but we didn’t.

We finally got in touch, scheduled a lesson, and changed this family’s entire life.

People stay where they feel VALUED. That doesn’t start on day one of class. It starts on the phone call. The text. The first reply. The patience, the follow up, the persistence.

The Shift in Identity for your Team

The shift is not a script change. It’s an identity change for you and your team.

If your team hears you call leads “the list,” they’ll treat them like a list. If they hear you call them “Future Students,” they’ll treat them that way.

Words shape behavior. Behavior shapes conversion.

The List: How to Actually Treat Prospects Like Future Students

I think best in lists, so here is a list of what we changed.

• Greet them by their name. Every single time. When a Future Student calls in, the first words out of your mouth set the tone for everything that comes after. Smile when you pick up the phone. (Yes, they can hear it.) Get their name in the first ten seconds. Then USE it. Imagine walking into your favorite restaurant and the hostess calls you by name, then the waitress, then the chef comes out and does the same. You feel SEEN. That is the feeling we want every Future Student to have before they ever set foot on our mat.

• Find their WHY before you talk about your what. Nobody calls a martial arts school because they want to learn a roundhouse kick. They call because their kid is getting bullied at school. Because their marriage is rocky and they need an outlet. Because they want to feel strong in their own skin again. So ask the question. “May I ask what benefits you are hoping to gain by training with us?” Then shut up. Listen. Reflect it back. That one move tells them you actually care about what they need, not just what you are selling.

• If it is a kid, get the kid’s name early. Use it a lot. Parents do not enroll their child because of your lineage or your trophies. They enroll because they feel like you already know their kid, already care about their kid, already see their kid. So get the name in the first two minutes. “What is your son’s name?” Then in every reply after: “Ethan is going to love this.” “Kids like Ethan thrive in our program.” “We will take great care of Ethan on Thursday.” A small shift. A HUGE feeling.

• Respond fast. Embarrassingly fast. Speed to lead is just respect with a stopwatch. If a Future Student reaches out and you reply five hours later, you have already told them where they sit on your priority list. Last. The best schools I work with respond inside 5 minutes. Yes, 5 minutes. Hard? YES!!! But necessary. Treat an incoming text like a ringing phone. Because that is exactly what it is.

• Follow up like you would follow up with a Black Belt. If one of your long term students missed two classes in a row, you would not let it slide. You would call. You would text. You would send a “miss you” postcard. So why are you giving up on a Future Student after one unanswered voicemail? Same care. Same patience. Same persistence. Not chase energy. CARE energy. There is a real difference, and prospects can feel it on the other end of the line.

• Run a Monday Future Student meeting. You already sit down with your team every week and walk through every active student. Who needs some love. Who needs an upgrade conversation. Who missed class and needs a call. Do the EXACT same thing for your Future Students. Pull every new lead from the past week. Say their name out loud. Why did they call? What was their WHY? What is the next touch? You see, where you put your attention always improves. So put it there.

• Pre-frame the visit so it feels like coming home. Most schools say “come in for a trial class.” The best schools I work with say “come home for a trial.” There is a world of difference in those two sentences. Tell them where to park. Tell them what to wear. Tell them who is going to greet them at the door. Future pace the whole visit before they ever walk in. When they show up, it already feels familiar. Familiar feels safe. Safe stays.

• Make EVERY team member own this. Your head instructor knows the new student’s name before they walk in. Your front desk knows the parent’s name AND the child’s name. The team member sweeping the lobby is in on it too. (Huge shout out to my friend who runs seven restaurants and built a flashcard app on his phone to memorize the names of all 700 of his employees. Same principle. Same energy.) A world class first impression is not built by one person. It is built by the whole tribe.

• Stop calling them leads. Period. Not in your CRM. Not in your team meetings. Not in your own head. They are Future Students. The way you label people is the way you treat people. Try it for one week. Watch your team’s energy shift. Watch your conversion shift. Words shape behavior. Behavior shapes everything.

You’ve got this!

You already give a damn about your students. The only shift is starting that care earlier, before they pay you a dollar.

The schools that win don’t out-market the competition. They out-care them.

Let’s take action today

• Do today: Pull your last 10 leads. Read each one their name out loud. Send one personalized text or voicemail using that name and asking about their why. Not a pitch. A check-in.
• Engagement question: “What’s one phrase you’ve used about leads in your back office that you’d never say in front of a student?”