Today’s episode of Jackrabbit’s BizTips relates to one very important question: what are you teaching your teachers about retention?
Retention is the heart of our studio and in many ways it is the security of our studio.
If we don’t have our students coming back month after month, we are in a very precarious position. But the challenge is, as studio owners, we’re not on the frontline with the students, maintaining the relationships and the connections with the students. Your teachers are!
How can we, as studio owners, try and improve retention in the studio, when we are often the ones that can’t control it?
I’m sure you’ve got some teachers in your studio who are phenomenal at retaining students. They’ve got very high retention percentages and you probably have other teachers who, maybe, do not.
Maybe they’re newer teachers, maybe they’re not quite as adept at developing the relationships. But how can we as a studio owner really empower and motivate and even, I guess, educate our teachers how to improve retention?
We can go to our teachers and say that we need to improve retention, however often they don’t really know what that means or how specifically to go about doing that.
So what we need to do is give our teachers very specific little strategies that they can roll out every day in their classes. They’re going to help boost the connection. They’re going to help boost the ‘WOW!’ factor, the variety in their classes. And also to really help show the students how they’re progressing.
After all, the 3 pillars of retention are: variety, connection, and progression.
If you can get your teacher aware of those three pinnacles, truly you will see their retention go out-of-sight!
The first pillar of retention is VARIETY.
Variety is all about making it interesting. If our class is the same month after month, year after year, the kids are going to get stale. They’re going to go “well I don’t really want to come back. I’ve done this before! I’ve seen how this works!” We need to keep things fresh and alive! Have conversations with your teachers about how to mix things up in the classes.
The second pillar of retention is CONNECTION.
This is all about relationships. How can we get your teachers creating more of a bond with their students? Maybe it’s as simple as when you’re doing your timetabling, allowing a 5 to 10 minute buffer on each side of the class to allow time for the teachers to go and greet the families and say ‘hello’ and meet with them and chat to see how they are. Then at the end they can also have that time to say ‘farewell’ and connect with the families and give some positive praise and feedback before the next class arrives. It’s those little things that are going to make the difference in bringing more of that family atmosphere in the studio and that is really important for retention!
The third pillar of retention is PROGRESSION.
This is all about helping your teachers communicate to your students and their families how well they are growing and achieving in your classes. This really comes back to the core concept of value for money. If we can really highlight to the families that when you came through the door you were able to do this and now you’ve been able to achieve and you can do this. They’re going to say “Wow! That’s fantastic!” You can see where the money’s gone. That is a really important thing to be considering is how we communicate excellent achievement but also value for money with our families.
As the ultimate solution for improving your retention I’ve put together a list of 52 retention tips you can share with your teachers.
This is jam-packed full of strategies you can share with your teachers every single week of the year to help motivate them and remind them about what they can do very practically, very simply to improve retention.
Click here to download 52 Weekly Retention Tips for Your Teachers >>
Download the PDF now and begin inspiring your teachers with bite-sized ideas that will help them bring more variety, connection and progression into their classroom.
So my question for you to share your answer in the comments below, is which of the 3 pillars of retention do you feel your team needs to work on the most?
Do you need to bring out more variety or ‘wow’ factor to your studio? Do you need to work on the connection and building relationships with your students? Or do you need to get better at communicating the progression, the achievements of your students?
Which of those three do you want to focus on? Write your answers below.
Retention is the heart and soul of your studio and at the end of the day it’s also the best indicator of how well we are performing as studio owners. So it’s really worth investing some time and thought and energy working to improve retention in your studio.
By Chantelle Bruinsma Duffield, Studio Strategist at StudioExpansion.com
If you’d like more ways to grow your studio, click here to sign up for “30 Enrollments in 30 days” – a FREE video training course for studio owners!
