Student retention

An old business adage states, "It is seven times easier to keep or retain a client than to find a new one."

This is equally true in martial arts. Back in the 1980s, it was common to see large numbers of new students join, only to leave after a few months or even weeks. There was an incredible amount of membership churn and no effort was made to see why students left. 

Nowadays, it is much easier to contact your students using modern technology to implement a retention strategy. Hopefully, when a new student joins, you also have captured their reasons for joining and immediate training goals.

Students will leave for several reasons, the most common being that life gets in the way (new job, etc.), the initial thrill of starting a martial art wears off, they get bored, they get injured, or there has been an incident at training that has put them off.

Student retention should be a part of your school's DNA. The fewer students you leave, the less effort you need to put into finding new ones. So here is a simple process that I use to follow up on students who start to miss classes:

Keep a class register so you know which students are training or not.

• If a student misses training for a week, send them a simple message or text – "Hey, I haven't seen you at training this week. Is everything OK?"

• If a student does not reply after another week, pick up the phone or text another message.

• It is up to you to keep trying after the second message. Personally, I make three attempts - the last one two weeks after I send out the second one. If they don't reply to the third message, then it is highly unlikely that they will respond to any further attempts. But 90% will respond to one of the three messages.

Usually, you will get a response to either the first or second message. Their absence could be for a simple reason, like being ill or working extra long hours. It could also be something more serious, like losing a job, a relationship breakup, an injury, or an incident at training.

Whatever the reason you have made contact, it's shown that you care and can now start to address the issue responsible for their absence if need be (illness, holiday, etc., are not usually issues, and the student will return to class most of the time once the issue passes).

If a student is getting bored or frustrated with training or prioritising other parts of their lives, you can try to re-engage their interest by revisiting why they joined in the first place and revisiting this and their intermediate goals. As an aside, it is good to regularly check in with each student's goals as these change over time. The best way to do this is on a grading application form.

If a student isn't training because of an injury, and if it is a training injury, it is important to ascertain why this happened, as it could be because of flaws in your training system. You can also do this in an accident register. You can then suggest a light training and rehabilitation program to help their recovery.

The most serious reason a student may leave is harassment or any other inappropriate behaviour they may have received during class. This could be an actual or perceived event. Regardless, it is important to address it - even with an apology - because another old business adage states that a negative review cancels out ten good reviews.

You can either take charge of this process yourself or delegate it to one of your leadership team. Doing it yourself has more impact if it is from the head instructor.

Whether one person is responsible or several people are, this type of retention strategy does work, not all the time but often enough to make implementing it in your own school worthwhile.