Inquiries That Come Trickling In
Found in: About Business
Patti P. Hawaii
I have a question on how to best handle those inquiries that come trickling in. I don’t have a lot of open time slots, so I am not advertising other than one ad which recently ran in the homeschool email newsletter. Everything else is referrals.
I just started Simply Music last spring, and most of my students when I started out were continuing students, so it was pretty easy to form compatible groups. I teach mostly shared lessons, small classes of two to four due to space restrictions. I’d love to place these new students in shared lessons, but they are a variety of ages, with no one waiting in the wings to have a class with them. The classes I do have with similar ages are too far ahead to integrate them into those classes right now.
Is the solution to give them one-on-ones but inform them they will be in a shared lesson as soon as they can be merged in? Unless they are exceptionally quick, I don’t see that happening with the classes I currently have, and who knows if anyone else in the same age group will come along. It seems that if I ask them to wait for a class, they might go somewhere else, and there is no predicting when there might be another inquiry.
Also, do you think a five year old and an eight year old could work in a shared setting? It seems
like a big gap, although I haven’t met the eight year old yet as we haven’t had a Free Introductory Session yet.
Hueichen T. Hawaii
I remembered how Neil shared in the FIS training that there is not another program out there which can compete with Simply Music. So if you hold an FIS the result should be great and you should be able to get enough students to put them into groups. If not I would get more people to the next FIS and go from there and ask the people who are interested, to be patient and wait. Since I believe if people understand what Simply Music is they will not want to find something
else.
Concerning age, I have a group of two siblings, brother eight and sister five. They both are learning fine together. The five year old sister is picking up things fast. There is not a problem during the lesson. But it really depends on the child. Some learn very fast some need more time.