Do you feel alone? Remember the Alamo!

The Alamo - San Antonio, Texas

Many of our good customers are Kids R Kids centers from all over the country. I had the pleasure of attending their annual Owner's Meeting last week in San Antonio. It was encouraging to be around them and hear their perspectives on business and life in child care work in general. I saw how they learn from each other, share ideas for improvement and even share critical financial information with each other in the spirit of genuine help and concern.

If you are a solo operator of a child care center you may feel isolated with no one to share ideas, concerns and challenges. Many times those of us that own businesses can feel overwhelmed. I meet once a month with 6-8 other guys like myself. We act as each other's informal board of directors and help each other navigate this thing called business. It is extremely valuable - so valuable that we each block off an entire day each month and actually pay $400 to go!

How can you get some of the help you need? One idea may be to form an informal board of directors of people you trust. Build an agenda, feed them some food, ask them for ideas and input. Another idea may be to form a small group of other owners (maybe not even all child care owners) to meet and help each other.

Don't do it alone...get some help! The guys at the Alamo had their rally cry - what's yours?

Meet and Greet

As center owners many times we get to the point where we like to enjoy some of the luxury of ownership - reduced hours, not as much closing or opening, delegating of less attractive duties, etc.


But there is one thing you should never abandon - the personal greeting of your customers and their parents! I made it a habit of coming in early or staying late several times each week and just hanging out in the lobby at drop off and pick up times. No other duties - just give high fives, hugs and handshakes. Quick tip - do as much of this at the child level (that means down low) as you can stand. Your customers will love you and their parents will become more loyal!

Great Article from CCIE

I know I said I wasn't going to harp on the economy but everyone needs to read this great article from Child Care Information Exchange magazine. Thriving in these times takes hard work....

http://ccie.com/resources/view_article.php?article_id=5014310&keyword_id=120

Take Control of the Phone

OK - the phone rings and maybe this is how it goes... ring, ring, ring....

Hello - thanks for calling World's Best Child Care - how can I help you?
Yeah - how much do you charge for 2 year olds?
Our two year old rate is $150 per week.
OK - thanks.

End of call. What is wrong with that? What's wrong is you did not get any air time to promote your school, it's benefits, find out what the caller was really interested in, etc. In other words - the caller was in control because they started with the first question.

Let's look at a different answer to the same caller question. Instead of giving the price right away try something like - "I'd be happy to give you all the information you need, how did you hear about us?"

Now you are in control of the conversation and can guide it through a pre-planned presentation that addresses concerns and benefits and closes with an invite for a tour. At the very least you get information on the caller so you can follow up with emails or mailings or thank you notes.

Think about this. We'll talk more next time....

Who's Ansering the Phone?

Let's do a little math... the phone rings with a potential new client that has a 2 year old child. If your tuition is $125 per week, that's $6500 in a year. If you're lucky enough to keep that child for 3 years that's $19,500. So - ask yourself the question. Who's answering that $20,000 phone call? Are they properly trained? Are they gathering prospect information? Are they taking control of the conversation in order to present the awesome benefits of your school? Or are they merely blurting out price information and then allowing the caller to hang up?

If you haven't figured out by now the most important marketing area for your school is proper phone call handling. Unless your phone is simply not ringing. If it is you need to evaluate, develop and train to make sure you're taking every advantage possible to present your school in the most desirable light and make the sale. Great schools do this, marginal ones probably don't. Call your competition and see how they're handling the phones. You could outpace them with serious and consistent attention to this most important area.

In the next post we'll talk some more about specifics....