MANAGEMENT
MASTER PLAN
Confirming Appointments
Confirming appointments that are going to come to the school in the next day or two may sound like a low-priority task, but it’s anything but that. If you set 80% of your inquiries as appointments but some no show then you won’t have as many enrollment opportunities nor the amount of school growth you’d like.
If your appointments don’t show up then it will be irrelevant that you set 80% of your inquiries.
In this lesson, we’ll cover an easy-to-use system for confirming appointments.
A simple strategy that you can use to set solid appointments is to recap the date and time of the appointment while still on the phone with the potential student. You are in a sense confirming the appointment you just set moments ago.
As the inquiry call is finishing simply say: “ Okay, we have this Wednesday at 6:00 PM reserved for you. If anything changes, please give us a courtesy call so we can invite someone else to visit during that time.”
Everyone likes to be courteous, so by using the semantics from above, you’ll create a sense of responsibility for them to show up or to contact you to let you know they can’t make it.
Confirm the Appointment
You can confirm the appointment with the potential new student by:
A. Sending a postcard (send a martial arts greeting card) B. Sending an email
C. Calling the day before
D. Sending a text message
You’ll confirm the appointment using just one of these methods in most cases.
However, if the appointment is set more than three days in advance, you may use more than one method of confirmation.
For example, if Mary called on Monday and couldn’t make it in until Friday, I’d send Mary a postcard on Monday or Tuesday (at the latest) in the mail. It’s likely that she’d get it by Wednesday and have her reminder.
Then on Thursday, the day before the appointment, we’d also call or email her (text message confirmations are gaining in popularity too) to still make sure she’s planning on attending.
It’s a good strategy to tell Mary that you’ll be confirming the appointment and to let her know if that’s coming to her via a call or email. If you or someone on your staff will be calling, then ask her what number is best to reach her.
A call is preferred because it gives you the opportunity to be personable and recap where you’re located, etc; If you get voice mail, you can still leave a nice message and again, mention that if anything changes to give you a courtesy call or email so that you can free up the spot and contact her to reschedule.
Action Steps: What to do now
1. Add the appointment recap to your current phone script and make sure that your staff members begin recapping all set appointments with prospective students.
2. Set or review and make updates to your current appointment confirmation procedure and be sure to keep record of each person whose appointment was confirmed in your statistics.