I run a company that provides kids dance/English/culture lessons in Tokyo, and I am working on bringing my lessons to different schools (preschools, nurseries, after-school programs, international schools, etc.) in the Greater Kanto area. We have already brought our lessons to a good amount of great schools, but most of these connections were established from either direct connections from me (ex. companies/schools I previously worked for), or a friend/acquaintance introduced us to the person in charge at the school, and then we were able to establish a connection from there.
I’m trying to continue to expand to other schools, but I’m having a hard time getting in contacts with other schools/facilities as I have almost exhausted my past personal connections list. Keeping in mind the business culture here/general culture here, I have been trying to email a potential school as a start, but most of the time I don’t get a response back (I know emails like this only have about a 3% reply rate in any case). When I ask friends/acquaintances to introduce our business to a school/business they are associated with (ex. their child goes to the school, they work for the school, etc.), oftentimes if the acquaintance isn’t that close to me, they either don’t follow up with this request (which makes sense, as there isn’t really anything in it for them), or they do follow up but then the person in charge at the school doesn’t get back to me.
I’m trying to figure out what would be the best way to expand. I have 100% confidence in the program I’ve created, since not only for customers but also other businesses, when I have actually directly introduced our services to a potential client, I have a 90%+ rate of securing the deal. Language also isn’t an issue, as I speak Japanese fluently + have a Japanese business partner, who becomes the “face” of the business if we are trying to deal with a more traditional company.
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What do you think would be the best ways to effectively reach out to businesses I want to bring my lessons to? I had some ideas, including:
1. Going to events of said schools if they have events open to the public and trying to find the person in charge (ex. Activities director, etc.) in an attempt to introduce the business/set up a meeting to discuss the possibility of bringing our lessons to their school.
2. Participating in events/conferences that said people might also be in attendance (though I believe this would only be effective for international schools)
Does anyone have any ideas or advice? I’m completely lost on this, but I feel once I get a better understanding of good techniques, expansion would become so much easier. Responses via DM is also fine! Thank you in advance!
1 comment
I’m currently studying marketing and it says here that I’ve completed about 13% of my course. So take everything with a grain of salt.
Do you have an online presence? Then run ads? As much as you finding others is great, others can find you too. Get a good website up with all the information, prices, photos, testimonials, etc. Also see if you can run some SNS like Instagram.
Using Instagram or a blog section of your site, write about recent lessons with cute pictures. Also, make sure to really work on nice flyer and I’m sure you already have good business cards.
If you say you have a high % of sealing deals, then the problem is that you aren’t finding enough potential deals. Cold calling/emailing is..alright but without all the stuff above, schools/centers can perceive you as just some guy with a wonky program. I’m on JET as an ALT but my school often gets emails from foreigners offering to do lessons/talks/activities but most are shoddily written or have no real information other than a selfie they took on their iphone from 2018 and a flyer made in Microsoft Paint.
tl;dr: get your name out there more, maybe offer referral offers or trials, keep relationships great with current schools as they or teachers there might bring you in when they move to other schools, or recommend you to their peers.