Selling your classes – no it’s not dirty or wrong to know about sales for pole and aerial

Thank you for not abandoning me and my rambles as I tackle dry business lingo and try and make it relevant to us and what we do as pole and aerial studio owners and instructors.

Today, join me for the apex:

SALES!

Yup, cringe, and no offence to anyone who works in sales. This is a me problem, the cringing. Because I am still learning what sales means and that it actually is far from a dirty word.

It’s not sleazy, pushy or awkward, unless of course you want it to be.

It can be ethical, helpful, intuitive, supportive of your students past, present and future. And most importantly, it can be in line with you and your business ethos.

Sorry if you’ve lost me there, I got carried away before we even went into a definition lol.

Ok so, what is the noun sales?

The term “sales” refers to all activities involved in selling a product or service to a consumer or business.

Ok cool, so we are talking about all things money transactions from customer to biz.

But how is the “sales” actually done? What is the process of selling and how do we do it?

I would argue, for us as providers of pole and aerial classes, selling is this:

– chatting to new students about what they are after, helping them find the right class, the right course or the right membership

– listening to questions and concerns and finding solutions

– asking for feedback and acting on it

– helping new students through the booking and sign up process and ensuring they have all the info they need to not just book but also come as prepared as possible, find the studio, know what to wear

– chatting to existing students and helping them find the right class, lesson pack, membership or course if they are struggling

– checking in with peeps who got in touch to say they are keen to book but haven’t yet to ensure it’s not something where I have fallen short so I can sort any issues our end

– checking in with new starters to ensure they are happy with the classes/courses they booked

Really it is a 1-2-1 conversation between me and another individual, whether they are new to the studio and fancy joining, they currently train on my classes but fancy more/less/something different, or have trained with me and I wanna find out why they stopped or chat to them about returning.

The way I look at sales to ensure I can cope with it emotionally is by not making it pushy, or sleazy, or ramming my classes down someone’s throat. I look at it as ensuring students, past, present and future know their options and can make decisions accordingly.

To me, it means ensuring I make the booking process, or the changing of memberships, or the re-joining after a break as:

– easy
– straightforward
– enjoyable
– informative
– reassuring
– flexible

as possible.

To me, after some digging into sales and why it is important for businesses and services like ours, sales means me being as helpful as possible.

It’s not forcing, it’s helping.

And that’s how I sell my classes and memberships. Through the lens of being helpful, transparent and reassuring, not pushy, annoying, unethical, loud and forceful.

You might ask now, but Anna, if you had to contort the concept of sales to this degree to make it bearable for you, why bother at all? Surely it’s not crucial to a studio and classes?

And this is where I went wrong FOR YEARS.

I thought I do not need to know anything about selling my classes because, well, people who want to come just book, right? Right?

Nope.

People who want to come are prevented from booking by a myriad of reasons, although the main ones are not being able to find the actual booking link, or it not being clear if it’s a class or a course or it just being impossible to find what to wear, or it just taking so damn long that they just don’t have 20 minutes to get booked and sorted because time is at a premium.

I can have the best studio with the best classes and the best teachers but if I do not know how to sell the classes and courses I offer, then no money comes in and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. So actually, yes we do need to have a little bit of an understanding of the sales process in order to ensure our studios and classes can exist, grow and thrive.

And that means being able to help people book and make choices that reflect what they need from my business and classes.

If this email has achieved nothing more than perhaps nudging you into thinking that sales is less pushy dude in a suit trying to get you to buy a new vacuum and more you as a business owner helping people get set up with your classes, then I have definitely achieved me goal.

Need help with this kinda shit?

Listen to my free podcast on Spotify to help you build a landing page for your beginner classes/courses – the key to selling your classes! 

Take me to the episode