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Is your program director a planner or steamroller?By Darren A. Gaitan I have the privilege of visiting the schools of many of my colleagues. In many cases they give me the high honor of being a guest instructor. I love this because you never know where you fall in the grand scheme of things until you visit other schools. Visiting schools also gives me the opportunity to observe program directors in action. I’ve seen good program directors and I’ve also seen great program directors. A lot of the great program directors I’ve seen are not always signing up 40 students a month. They are not also the biggest money producers, but they are the most consistent across the board. One of the most important characteristics of a great program director is consistency. There are some program directors that produce big numbers when they first begin, but they can’t always keep up the pace. Sometime after their first year you see them slip off and their numbers go down. It’s just like a marathon race, very rarely does the runner who leads the race in the first couple of miles, win the race. It’s always the runner who runs the most consistent time for each mile that will end up as the person who wins. Now, which program director would you rather have? I’ll take the one who makes a steady stream of money over a couple of years over the one who will make big numbers in one year. In the end, I’ll make more money. Just recently I was a guest instructor at a school and during a break I was able to observe their program director enrolling a new student. I heard that this person was enrolling about 25 students a month over the last three months. (This is pretty average for this time of year). The mother of the child she was enrolling was very soft spoken and timid. I proceeded to listen in on the conference and I have never seen a mother’s character shrink so quickly in my life. The program director started filling out the agreement and got off topic about 10 times. About half way through the agreement she begin to push the parent into signing up and proceeded to keep pushing after the mother stated that she would think about it. Translation: I’m not interested at this time. At this point she should have backed off and approached her about enrolling in a week or two. She then started to pressure her into signing her husband up who was not present. She failed to notice that this mom was not wearing a wedding ring. As a former program director this would tell me not to make a comment such as this because it could erupt in my face. After listening to her reaction and reading her face I could tell that this parent was not married to the father and that it was an uncomfortable topic for her. The PD ignored all of this and continued to pressure her. I watched as the mom was shrinking in front of my eyes and had a look on her face that said, “I would just like to sign up my child and be on my way” . So as the PD continued on she had yet to have the parent sign on the final line and was opening up plenty of opportunities for the parent to walk. After about 15 minutes the agreement was signed and the parent seemed to be a little turned off. This is not the feeling you want a new customer to leave with. Do you really think this parent will go out of their way to refer students to your school on their first day? I continued to watch the same thing occur two more times during that night. This program director was a “Steamroller”. This type of program director can be the most dangerous type for your business because from day one they’re creating the wrong impression with parents. Their quick money in the beginning will cost you much more when it comes time to upgrade students. I would bet my car that, by what I saw, that PD has a very difficult time upgrading students. You don’t want to make that bet with me because I have inside information on this. Now if this PD was a planner she would have been able to read the parent and she would have taken a softer approach. By taking this route she would be setting herself up for success later down the road. Her steamrolling tactics were not wisely used and very obvious. I used to steamroll people but I always did it at the right time and in a very sophisticated way. I was always a planner because I knew that everything I did on the first day would pre-frame the results I would get later on. This is something that this PD must learn to become great. No one likes to be put in a corner anymore or to be routinely solicited for business. Do you like to be pressured to buy a car on the lot? Do you listen to telemarketer calls? Do you like pushy salesmen when you go to the electronic store? I have a friend who works at a high position at Best Buy and one day we were having a conversation about sales. He told me that Best Buy had a huge customer satisfaction rating and was ahead of competitors for one simple reason. Their associates were not paid based on commission; they were paid an hourly wage. This way the customer was getting the best product for them and not the salesmen. He said that no one wants to be steamrolled into buying something and people were turned off by pushy salesmen. He also told me that since this approach was implemented they have pretty much buried the competition. I started to think and realized that this was the major mentality of the everyday consumer and the only way to be successful was to accommodate this. That is why it is important to be a planner and not a steamroller. I’ve given you the problem and now let’s talk about ways to fix it. First, all good program directors, like poker players, need to know when to put the pressure on and when not to. This all comes from reading the person’s face and body language. I guarantee that no good car salesmen ever sell the same car the same way twice. His approach is always different even when he is selling the same model car to two different people. In fact, he doesn’t know his sales strategy until he interacts with the customer a little. If he thinks they can’t afford it he talks about all the reasons they should buy it. If they are unsure about their decision he re-assures them that they are making the right one. It all comes down to how he reads the person and how he wants to sell them. You need to teach your PD to take the same approach. Next, you need to get away from using a script for every customer. Scripts are a great teaching tool but have very little relevance in the practical world. Using a script was the reason why the PD I mentioned earlier was a steamroller. The script was created to be hard selling and it was used on every sale. You can already see the problems that can arise from this. A script was causing the PD to take the same approach with every prospect and hurting her chances for long term success. This is the hidden danger of relying solely on scripts to enroll new students. Your PD needs to start selling each prospect differently and then they will be a great PD. Everything starts with a strong foundation and then the true building can begin to take shape. Let your scripts be that foundation and then build on top of them. If it’s not broke then don’t fix it, make it run
better! It’s very important to check in on your PD even
when they are producing good numbers. I was once told by
my mentor that I will never be troubled by one big
thing, my troubles will come in the form of a lot of
little things. He said that success can blind you to the
little things that are plaguing your abilities and it
will eventually grow into a disease unless you perform
routine check ups. So take a look at your PD and see if
there are any little things that could develop into a
major problem. Make sure you have a planner and not a
steamroller. I am always available to assist you
whenever you need it. Help is only an email away darren@championsway.com |
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