Bringing in new students to your academy costs time and money.

It’s the time you’ve spent building your academy and shaping the culture. The money you’ve invested in ads.

When you get a new lead in your academy, your number one priority is to sign them up.

I don't mean you need to use sleazy sales tactics and lie your way into a sale. This will end up costing you students in the long run.

Instead, focus on crafting the first experience people have when they come to your academy.

It starts with the front desk.

When a new person walks into your academy, they should instantly be greeted with a smiling face on someone who is there to help.

Your front desk employee needs to make sure new leads feel as welcomed and comfortable as possible.

In fact, that’s the key to the whole process.

People will walk into your academy feeling nervous, doubting that they can learn the martial arts, and generally looking for a way out.

After your desk helps to make them feel comfortable it’s time for a coach to do the same on the mats.

This is why we make first timers take an orientation or “intro class.”

The intro class is a one on one (up to two or three students to one coach) with a coach.

Our whole goal in the intro class is to introduce the new student to the fundamentals class warm up.

Remember how daunting shrimping was when you first started? It’s not an intuitive movement.

When a student is lying on the floor flopping around and not getting the technique right, it's not only discouraging but also embarrassing.

Instead of tossing the new student into class and letting them fail again and again, we want to get them comfortable with the warm up.

Jiu Jitsu is already going to be embarrassing at times and is loaded with lots of failure, especially at the beginning.

There’s no way around this.

But if you can get students a few small wins at the beginning of class, it can carry them the rest of the way.

Instead of being 100% focused on all their failures in the first class while your front desk is trying to sell them a membership, they have the success they faced at the very beginning of class to hold on to.

It may seem like a small thing, but adding the intro class to our sales process sent our close rates through the roof.

We know that 80% of people who come into our academies for their first class will sign up afterwards.

Before the intro class, we were struggling to break 40% close rates.

This isn’t a gimmick or sales tactic, it’s not a way to trick people into signing up.

Instead, it’s a straightforward way to introduce new people to Jiu Jitsu, helping them have more fun in their first class while doubling our close rates.