001 What NOT to do when approaching schools and nurseries (if you want a response!)

Welcome to the very first episode of the Approaching Schools podcast! 

My name's Cerys Keneally and in this episode I walk you through how my A.C.E background in Activities, Coaching & Education informs the methods I now teach to  thousands of children's activity providers who want to get their business into schools and nurseries.

You will discover:

- The key mistakes I come across with children's activity providers who have tried and failed to get a response
- What to do differently to get a response from YOUR communications with schools and nurseries
- How I can help you start to implement the theory from this episode into your own business for free

The Approaching Schools Challenge will be back in January 2024, in the meantime, do come and share your 'aha' moments from this episode in my free group for children's activity providers approaching schools at www.facebook.com/groups/primaryactivityproviderbusinessclub

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to this episode of approaching schools. Now before I get into all of the juicy tips around boosting your chances of getting a response from your dream schools and nurseries in your local area, I want to tell you about an opportunity to join me for five days of focus tasks, and q&a. All around the steps you need to take to start getting your business into schools and nurseries. So if you want to join me, you need to go to Cerys keneally.co.uk, and register for the Next get your business into schools and nurseries free challenge. So this is a question I get asked a lot, how can I boost my chances of getting a response? I find that there is a common issue among children's activity providers all the time where they experience either not getting the desired level of response, feeling like their email or their letter is being ignored, not understanding what to say in their initial communications to schools, wondering if it's all worth the effort, heard, they've got a cold call, but really don't want to and don't have time for that anyway. And it's very, very often the same mistakes that children's activity providers are making that are actually a really, really simple tweak, to start boosting your chances of getting response. Now before we delve into that, I want to tell you the story of why and how I ended up helping 1000s of children's activity providers to get into schools and nurseries, so they can grow their business, earn additional income, and have a bigger impact on children's lives. Well, lots of you will know I was a former primary school teacher, I worked in primary schools, both in the UK and abroad. And it was teaching and specialising in dance at an international school in Bangkok. That became the catalyst to me starting my dance business when I returned back to the UK. And having had a successful dance business. My mentor at the time saw something in me decided to train me up to become one of her business coaches. And that gave me my first taste of coaching online. Then, looking to build an online business when I moved away here to Wales, I looked at how I could combine my ace experience in activities, coaching and education, and actually set up a group for children's activity providers and ask them what they wanted to learn. And they kept saying the same thing. They kept asking me, I just want to know how you got your business into schools and nurseries. And I said, I can't really make a business out of that. I just emailed them, why don't you try it? And they said, no, no, no, Cerys, there must be more to it. I've tried emailing schools and nurseries in the past, and I got no response. I think the head teachers are too busy. I think my email got deleted by the receptionist, I couldn't get to the person I needed to speak to. And I didn't have time or I didn't have the inclination to start cold calling. What can I do instead? So I said, okay, then show me what you've been sending to schools. And I'll have a look at some of my most successful campaigns. And we can compare the difference. And it turned out there were a few common mistakes that all of those children's activity providers were currently making. So if you've been struggling to get a response from your local schools and nurseries, it's possible that you could get some help from listening to these insights to first of all, number one, they were spending a long time at the very, very beginning of that email or letter talking about themselves. It's very, very tempting, as highly qualified professionals to want to talk about all of our experience, all of our qualifications, all of our awards, maybe even that time we were on TV, whatever it might be, we want to get across how fantastic we are and how we are the right people, for them to hire into their schools or nurseries to help their children with the problems that we solve. However, that first paragraph in your email or letter is a vital piece of real estate. It's there purely to grab a busy key decision makers attention so they actually read your email for long enough to see the fantastic offer. You are making them. What we do unfortunately, when we spend all that time talking about ourselves, is we are a stranger right now on the internet. Who this head teacher or nursery manager that doesn't know yet doesn't like yet doesn't trust yet. And they are busy people We have about eight seconds to grab their attention. And before we know it, they've got distracted either by all the other emails in their busy inbox, or by Little Jimmy falling over on the playground, or maybe even a cat video. So we do need to make sure that we are structuring our communication in a way that is going to grab attention for long enough for these busy people to actually be able to see what we're offering, who we're offering it to, and who it's going to benefit. So that was the first mistake I was seeing all the time. The second mistake I was seeing all the time was trying to sell. Trying to sell your services in your initial communication with schools or nurseries, is a surefire way to get your email deleted, or get your letter put in the bin. And we know that schools and nurseries are far less likely to welcome sales calls these days. So what do we do, we need to present them with a high value offer, we need to make sure that that offer is something that will allow us to demonstrate the value of what we do, how we are different to other people that might do something similar to us that have already been in contact with our local schools and nurseries, how the children react to us is very important to the head teachers and the nursery managers as well. And how we conduct ourselves and how we link our learning with the national curriculum, or the Early Years Foundation Stage framework. All of these things need to be taken into consideration before a school or nursery is going to be willing to buy in to your services, they need to see the value on offer. And we need to be able to communicate how we would demonstrate that to them. So what might this look like instead, it might be for example, a free assembly. It might be for example, a free mini workshop, a taster of what we do. I'm not asking you to give your services for free. But I am asking you to demonstrate what it might look like if they were to buy in to your services. The next thing they were doing or not doing should I say was including any social proof, including any relevant reviews, maybe from schools or nurseries, they worked in the past, if they hadn't worked in schools or nurseries in the past, maybe from a parent of a child they'd helped in the past. Or perhaps they included a link to their website. And let's face it, head teachers, nursery managers and school staff do not like clicking links. And if you send them to your website, they're just gonna get lost, it's just another rabbit hole to go down. Too many links in your email is also likely to land you in spam. So that's another mistake that they were potentially making. No Call to Action expecting that the head teacher or nursery manager would know exactly what to do to contact you to claim your offer. And to long, so long that they're never even going to get to the bottom of it, to actually find out how to claim your amazing offer. And the biggest mistake of all that I see time and time again, the number one reason why children's activity providers are not getting the response they desire from their local schools or nurseries is not following up, or not following up well enough, or in a timely manner. So what can you do instead, I've mentioned not selling and having free tasters or free assemblies, not spending lots of time at the beginning of your communication, talking about yourself, use that vital real estate to solve a problem. Instead, grab their head teachers attention by addressing a real world issue that we can be willing to bet there are a proportion of children struggling with at their school. This is going to grab their attention for long enough that they read through and see why you are a fantastic solution to that problem. providing relevant views telling a school or nursery exactly what they should be doing to claim your offer. Do they need to reply to you? When do they need to reply to you by as we know we're dealing with busy people. Unfortunately, the longer they take to get back to you, the less likely they will so let's make it easy for them to do that. And then don't go to all this trouble of listening to this podcast episode. Crafting out your initial emails of schools and nurseries and not following up because you can boost your chances of getting a response by up to 80% by following your communication app.

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So if you'd like to learn more about this And you love some of the tips I've shared with you today. Do make sure you join us for our get your business into schools and nurseries free challenge on the 23rd of January 2023 to receive some short tasks that will help you implement the theory that you've listened to today. Until next time, I'll chat to you soon.