Category: Business Management

There are 3 things you must do every week – and sometimes every day in every class – to make sure your martial arts school thrives. Those 3 things are:

Bring in new students
Retain the students you have
Get more from your students

It is critical to the survival of your school that you block off time every week to focus on these 3 things. This might be 1 hour or 1 day. It might be to create a new class, new marketing program or for education in martial arts management to make sure you are growing as a martial arts school owner.

Marketing
You should be setting aside time every week to work on growing your school. This does not mean you have to create a brand new marketing plan every week. One week each month you can focus on education. Just like learning martial arts – you are constantly learning new things, right?

The same applies to marketing. Pick up a book, read a blog, read the business section of the newspaper. You have to learn the basics and continue to learn and grow in marketing as well.

Student Retention
Student retention is vital to any martial arts school. If you get 3 new students but 4 leave then you have not just gone back by a count of 1 youve actually gone back by 4 because had you retained those students you would now have a total of 7 students.

Each week you should be doing things to ensure your students are going to stay in your program as long as possible. This could be sending out birthday cards, writing a school newsletter, offering special workshops, learning more about the student and their family to build a stronger relationship, the list is almost endless.

Internal Marketing
The last item, internal marketing, is one that is often forgotten. Yet it is critically important.

What most small business owners, and most martial arts school owners, fail to understand is that it takes a whole lot more effort and money to find a new client then it does to sell again to an existing client.

To get a new student you must spend a lot of time and money finding them and convincing them that your school is what they are looking for and need.

It takes much less time and money to sell your current students on a Saturday workshop, or sell them a T-shirt, or get them to take private lessons.

You Are Not Alone
You do not have to take on these tasks all by yourself. There are many places you can get information to cut down your learning curve or save time and money by using existing materials.

You can get books on marketing, you can ask other martial arts school owners what they do, you can join online forums in places like LinkedIn, or fan pages on FaceBook, you can purchase materials from martial arts business or management companies.

International Martial Arts Management Systems, (IMAMS) is one such place. We offer a system that is created of training modules that consistently brings in 4, 5, maybe 10 students every month. We have modules for student retention and many many ways to help you with internal marketing.

Youve come home from the conference with a stack of business cards from people whom you have met. Now what? Dont let them sit on the corner of your desk until next year. Its time to start developing and building relationships with newly added members to your network. A quick “Nice to have met you” or “It was great to see you again” e-mail gets you started in the right direction with developing a relationship with your contact.

The next step involves shifting your focus on giving. What do the people in your network need? Information? Connections? If you give something to somebody, they will generally give you more than what you gave him/her according to the Law of Reciprocity. Giving first positions you as a resource.

What do you have to give? Try the 4 Is : Information, Introductions, Invitations, and Interaction.

Information Share relevant or helpful information to one person in your network each day. You might have read an article or blog post that might be pertinent to that persons work. Sharing useful information is one of the easiest ways to let a colleague know you are thinking of her. This may lead to a deeper conversation about the topic you just sent to her and allows for an opportunity to advance the relationship.

Introductions Introduce two people in your group who dont know each other yet have a common interest (could be a professional interest or personal interest). If you are not comfortable making the introduction, ask each individual if they would like to be introduced. Chances are they would, since many are looking to meet others with common interests and expand their own networks.

Invitations If you are sponsoring an event/webinar or going to an event that you think a colleague would enjoy, invite him or her especially if the event is relevant to their business or industry. Make it a win-win where your colleague can gain new knowledge or contacts through you.

Interactions Recognize birthdays and other special days of members in your network with a card, e-mail or phone call. Social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook make it easy to reach out, and a small gesture of kindness will go a long way to nurture your network.

You say you dont have time to connect? If you are just reaching out to 1 person a day, it should only take 10-15 minutes. And over time, if you invest in your network, you will see your network flourish. You will experience better relationships, and you will stay top of mind to the people who are important to you in achieving your goals.

Only the top 1% of all people take the next step to grow their network and make a connection are you part of that 1%?

Salesforce and Sugarcrm Quickbooks integration are the two popular CRM solutions that are emerging fast as the versatile solutions for any size business. Sugarcrm Quickbooks integration helps the managers in great way by empowering them with a unique set of more than forty integrated tools. Salesforce consulting services pack includes development and integration both. Know more about these CRM programs.

CRM program integration with online business activities is proving its worth from different perspectives. As the people are getting familiar with its benefits, demand and expectations both are increasing. Users are asking the professionals to customize CRM according to new parameters and these parameters change often according to changes in business environment. Salesforce and Sugarcrm Quickbooks integration are the two popular CRM solutions that are emerging fast as the versatile solutions for any size business.

Salesforce consulting services pack includes development and integration both. The hired professionals design a new set of Salesforce program features that makes the functionalities smoother, secured, convenient and accountable. This program is designed with special focus upon the additional support to sales and marketing people. Because of being cloud based technology, reports generation and consolidation of activities becomes a click away exercise. The real time reports can be accessed at multiple points; so, managing the business with multiple locations becomes a handy job.

Sales cloud ensures the users that they ensure action upon every lead. Service cloud is designed to connect the user with different channels including Web community, social networks and call center. Collaboration application is designed to manage real-time collaborations with different agencies. Force.com is used for customizing social, real-time mobile and employee’s apps. Partner management is makes the accountability of profitable partners much handy. As of now, social networking sites and platforms are becoming more and more important; so, Salesforce consulting addresses this issue also.

The other reliable and much in demand business solution that I referred earlier is Sugarcrm Quickbooks integration. It is also a CRM program but it is an open source program. Despite being open source CRM program, it has all the customizable features you can expect in a business support program. Easy set-up, easy administration, sales lead creation, account creation, account management, lead tracking, follow up reports of sales opportunities, customer service track record, advance reporting in multiple modes, corporate calendar, work flow, contract management, quotes & invoices creation and information management are some of those features which a business need.

Sugarcrm Quickbooks integration helps the managers in great way by empowering them with a unique set of more than forty integrated tools. This easy to use web based program does not need any license fee and support charges. Remote development and forecasting capability makes the task of future planning for marketing and sourcing easier and secured. The features can be initiated and customized at user’s end too as per changed requirements. Sugarcrm Quickbooks integration training programs are also available for the big size businesses.

Advanz CRM is an eminent and amateur writer primarily focusing on Salesforce Consulting, Salesforce Migration, Sugarcrm Development, Salesforce.com Consulting, CRM Consulting-Implementation related articles, Currently he is working with one of the reputable IT company Advaanz.com

If you’re struggling to find a solution to decrease the amount of time it takes to get a legally binded signature straightaway using CRM solutions then a CRM mobile signature application is what you need. You always have the tendency to go through one document format to another (for instance as consultant, you’ll need a job sheet approved and signed by clients); getting it signed from a CRM causes a bit of delay having to send it out via email, then print, sign, fax, scan and again integrate into CRM document to reach the client. Nowadays, it’s not anymore a problem because it has now developed a better solution to create faster transactions and that is utilizing Customer Relationship Management with mobile applications. Through this, your clients can sign off job sheets and other relevant documents from their consultants’ mobile device (on a touch screen) via a central access from the client portal. Once they sign a document, it will be automatically saved as their CRM file along with the attached secured signature. Once the signing is done, it already captures their signature directly on the web portal that saves time, eliminates use of numerous papers and errors, and as a result, optimizes time, reduces costs and increases the ROI because of the fast turnarounds.

Gone are the days when clients need to wait a bit longer to be able to receive the documents that are due for signing or even having to meet face-to-face always to make sure everything’s signed securely. Having CRM mobile signature already provides a one-stop solution to get things done as easy as that because from there, their signatures are guaranteed to get into the right place and stored to the right system. Therefore this makes it everything centralized. There’s the access to job details whether on the web or remotely by just logging into the web portal using secure log in, the job sign off and the email confirmation. The way it works is that once the client signed the job sheet, an email will be sent to them confirming all the signed documents within the CRM system. This includes a PDF attachment of the signed-off job sheet containing all the captured details plus the client’s signature. The email confirmation on the other hand contains record of the job sheet approved by the client and further details regarding the job signed-off which completes the communication process.

CRM mobile signature is definitely a portable advantage for both consultants and clients wanting to have smoother transactions when signing documents. With the use of this technology, customer relationship management becomes a stronger business platform as you and your customers can reduce chances of errors, lack of security and compliance. Do business on-the-go without having to go to the office. This is widely compatible with a number of devices e.g. iPhone and iPad, Android phones and Android tablets.

If you live in Texas then you know about TXU and Reliant Energy. You also know TXU Energy and Reliant are constantly battling for your business. It is fair to ask who is better between the two companies but the answer will leave you wanting.

Texas electrical deregulation began in 2001. Both companies have been selling electricity every since. The Texas electricity rate plans offered by these energy companies are comparable and competitive.

What kind of electricity plans do I need?

You can sign up with a month-to-month plan if you are looking to move and not sure how long you will need electricity. The month-to-month or variable plans are cheaper than fixed rate plans and they dont have a contract.

Fixed rate plans lock you into your electricity rate plans for the length of the term. You can find terms as short as 3 months and as long as 36 months. In most cases fixed rate plans save you more money in the long run than month-to-month plans.

So who has better plans, TXU or Reliant?

Reliants prices as of today are lower than TXUs but by only 0.3 cents (this is based on each companys cheapest plan and the zip code I used). TXU does offer a wide range of products for you to buy like the flex plan. TXUs flex plan gives you the ability to save more money by using electricity during off peak times when there is less demand on the grid. You may want to look at the times you use electricity the most to see if the flex plan can save you money.

So what makes Reliant better than TXU or TXU better than Reliant?

Reliant and TXU both have different benefits so the only way to answer this question is with another question. What are you looking for in an energy company. If you are looking for a company which you can trust both companies have a great rating with the BBB. So which company is better? It depends on what you need. The best bet is to contact the providers with as many questions as possible. Keep the answers and compare the answers to see which provider can meet all your needs. I know that my needs are smaller than most households because I live at home and work all day.