Sales are one of the most important facets of your Martial Arts Academy. Without sales, your academy does not grow.

Without growth, your current students start looking for other places to train with more training partners.

Nailing down an amazing sales process is just as important as putting on great classes.

One does not work without the other.

However, the sales process is much more than getting a prospective student to sign on the dotted line.

In fact, if your only focus is the conversation before the membership agreement is signed, you’re missing the boat.

By the time a prospective student starts discussing pricing and agreements with your staff, they should already be committed to signing up if everything else was done well.

We expect to sell around 80% of the people who walk into our academies for the first class.

This is because we curate the first experience in the academy to eliminate discomfort and ensure the new student gets some “wins” on day 1.

Then we seal the deal with a no-risk offer to get them training with us.

So what does our sale process look like? And how does it help us close 80% of the people who walk into our academies?

Greeting

First impressions matter. The first time a potential student walks through the door of your academy they should be greeted immediately.

Most of these folks will come in with a lot of nerves. They want to start this journey, but they’re not sure they are cut out for it.

Even the best martial arts academies are intimidating to newbies. We know it’s not the whole truth, but every person on the mat looks like a trained killer to someone with no experience.

This is why the first thing a prospective student should see is a smiling face greeting them and helping curate their first experience in your academy.

After they’re greeted, the prospective student needs to get their waiver signed, shown around the school, and given any gear (like a Gi) they’ll need for their intro class.

Intro Class

The intro class is one of the key components to our success signing up new students. This class is a short, 30-minute session they take directly before their first class.

The whole point of this session is to familiarize the student with the warm up for their class as well as a few important details (like how and when to tap) that will set them up for a successful class.

Just like with the greeting, the point of this class is to ease the prospect into martial arts. The best thing you can do with a prospect is to make their first day as easy and successful as possible.

They may not learn how to execute a single technique on their first day. So we have to help manufacture successes for them to hold onto. Even if they don’t master the arm bar, they at least understand how to do the warmup.

Hand Off

We like to “hold the hand” of a prospect throughout their first experience at our schools.

We don’t literally hold their hand, but we make sure that there is never a question about where to go or what to do next.

Again, the idea is to eliminate as much discomfort as possible.

We already know there will be plenty of discomfort throughout their journey. But if the prospect gets slammed with it from the start, it’s hard to make a sale.

This brings us to the first handoff.

After the intro class wraps up, the intro instructor needs to walk the prospect to the mat where their first class is set to take place and introduce them to the coach.

Sometimes in smaller schools the intro coach may be the class coach as well. You might even be doing both yourself.

If that’s the case you don’t need to do the handoff. Just make sure the prospect knows where to be and how to line up before class.

Class

After the handoff the prospect’s first class gets underway. If the handoff was handled appropriately, the coach should know who the first day student is and give them a little extra attention and “love” to make their first class truly special.

The warm up should go relatively smoothly for the prospect as they just learned all the movements in their intro class. After that, everything will be new for this student.

The coach should make sure to pair the new student with the most advanced student in class to help give them a great experience.

Also, it’s important to be understanding and as helpful as possible without trying to over coach the new student.

The prospect isn’t going to learn jiu jitsu in one day. Trying to over coach them will only lead to a frustrating experience for the student and will hurt your ability to sign them up.

The 2nd Hand Off

After class ends, the coach should check in with the prospect and see how class went. It’s important to stay positive and assure them that no matter how difficult the techniques seem, they will have them down in no time.

Everyone has been a white belt before. The coach should draw on that experience to relate with the prospect and find common ground. Letting the student know that they too struggled in their first class but stuck with it until they didn’t can give the prospect the confidence to keep going.

The coach should then walk the prospect back to the desk and hand them off to the front desk employee for the sale. If it’s the same person who greeted them, no introductions are necessary.

But if it’s a different staff member, make sure to introduce the prospect and tell the front desk staff that they did great in their first class.

Open Ended Questions

After the 2nd handoff the front desk staff should give the prospect appropriate time to change out of their uniform and shower if they’d like.

The sale should always begin with open-ended questions.

These are questions that encourage the prospect to speak about their experience rather than simply answer “yes” or “no.”

Instead of asking “Did you have a good first class?”, ask “How was your first class?”

Instead of asking “did you learn anything?”, ask “Tell me about the techniques you learned.”

When it’s time to present the prospect with your class schedule, you can use an open ended question to see if your class times work for them: “Can you show me at least two of these class times that work for your schedule?”

In general, if they can’t make it to two classes a week due to their schedule, we’ll let them know that we might not be a good fit for them as two classes tends to be the minimum necessary to improve and learn.

These types of questions elicit conversation and help to build rapport with the prospect. It’s important to learn about their experience and gauge how they’re feeling before jumping into pricing and memberships.

No-Risk Offer

Once a bit of rapport is established through open-ended questions, the front desk staff can present the prospect the membership pricing and offer.

Often times prospects will balk at the cost of a martial arts membership and worry about spending so much money on something they aren’t sure will be for them.

To work around this, we give them a risk free offer to get them started.

Our offer is $99 (over 50% discount on a standard membership) for their first month with the option to cancel at any time and receive a refund.

This means that even if they find they don’t like training or they don’t have the time for it, they don’t risk any financial loss.

It also gives us a month to really sell them on the benefits of training through providing great classes and an amazing in-academy experience.

Once their trial month is up, they are automatically switched over to a full-priced membership that they can still cancel at any time.

Around 80% of the people will extend this offer to accept it and sign up on their first day.

Final Sale

Once the front desk staff has presented the schedule and pricing, and offered them a no-risk trial, it’s time to finalize the sale.

The no-risk trial overcomes pretty much all objections a prospect could have. After all, there is literally no penalty if they decide training is not for them within the first month.

Once they agree, we present them with the contract and collect their signature, billing info, and everything else we need to set them up in our CRM.

As we've discussed, our contracts are not long-term commitments.

They can be cancelled anytime with a 30 day notice (after the trial), but the contract does outline how billing and cancellations work as well as the membership agreement.

The front desk staff should walk the prospect through the contract and highlight these important details, confirming the prospect understands and agrees to each term.

Finally, once the sale is complete, the front desk should present the prospect with options to buy equipment from the school Whether it’s a Gi, gloves and shin guards, or rashies, new students are usually excited to get started and want to have all the right equipment.

This final add-on to the sale can generate quite a bit of revenue for your school, so it’s important to make an offer for the new student to buy your school’s equipment.

Of course, we don’t force them to buy anything from us. But you may be surprised at the amount of people willing to buy a few extra things on day 1, so don’t skip this step.

If you do all of these things right you should see a dramatic increase in your sales (unless you’re already hitting 70-80% close rates).

If you want to know exactly how all of this works and how we train our staff to execute great sales, you can purchase our complete sales course on BJJ fanatics.

Even better, if you're looking to accelerate the growth of your school, you can join our Academy Accelerator Program to get access to the sales course in addition to all of our academy SOPs, staff training programs, martial arts curricula, and much, much more. Your first 7 days are free, so it's no risk to you to sign up and see what we have in our digital library.