Top Ten Tips for finding more students to tutor

Welcome to our 10 Keys to Connecting and Developing New Client relationships.

Finding and Keeping Great Tutoring Clients

Your prospective tutoring client has called and/or emailed you. You have had a successful initial chat with them and they are now ready to meet you. This meeting could be called a discovery meeting, or other names based on your vision for your tutoring business. This meeting is key for building rapport with your prospective family and showing parents why working with you is the best option for their child. These five discovery meeting keys provide you with a solid path for evolving your prospective family to an excited new client.

Top Five Developing New Client Relationships for tutors

1. A customized assessment for your amazing new student. What does this look like? How is this assessment customized to this latest tutoring client?

2. A small gift to provide your student after the assessment. As a guide, what are your student’s interest(s) (e.g. baseball, creation of slime)? You would learn these during your initial call and/or online conversation. Provide a gift for the student and/or family based on interest is a great bridge and makes this discovery meeting more personable. Personability builds rapport and begins to establish trust.

3. New questions. Continue to ask questions to your student and their parents/guardians. Inquire more about their needs and how you can help them. Ask and learn more about your potential new tutoring client. This is also an opportunity to see how well you and your potential tutoring client connect.

Prepare your tutor assessments in advance

4. Have assessment & program procedures and protocols ready. Provide your latent family with an outline of your programs and prices. Be transparent and share the value of your amazing service and how it will help your prospects’ child. Be open to questions and remember, objections or hesitations are often a great thing. Your potential client is interested and wants to learn more. Continue to inquire, listen, and keep building trust. At the end, your understanding and listening will be factors in helping this possible customer become your happy new tutoring client.

5. Amazing gratitude to match your awesome attitude. Thank your latest client for taking the opportunity to work as a team with you. Provide two business cards, one for your client and one for them to share with a hypothetical new referral. An effective and powerful way to build business is through word of mouth. To keep top of mind and continue to impress, mark and email over your new client’s assessment results the next business day. Include a bonus resource too. Show you are invested in your tutoring client’s success right from the start.

CONGRATULATIONS! You have an enthusiastic family that has enrolled with you! This is the first step to building your successful relationship with your client. The next step is setting up the ultimate, five-star first session for this novel client.

Linking Tutor Resources

For this five-star experience, the following five pieces will guide you there:

1. Link Resources to Your New Student’s Needs and Interests. Interest based learning shows a personable side to your tutoring and this personal addition expedites building positive rapport with your new student and can be a key factor in early motivation toward learning.

2. Send a Friendly Reminder Email the Day Before. A short and simple message reminding your new client about their upcoming session will place a smile on their face. Adding in a tidbit about what will be taught during the session and a fun activity that will be done creates eager anticipation.

3. Be Early to Your Session. Arrive (online) 5-10 minutes early for your session. It is very professional to be punctual and creates the message to your tutoring client that you value your time with them. Do not be late, set the bar high.

4. Be Engaging and Insightful

Customize your first session around getting to further know your pupil and continue to build interest in learning. Provide your learner with an outline of the session and have a dialogue about what they would like to review first, second, third etc. By doing this, you are including them in the learning process further and building a collaborative rather than directive setting. Add specific feedback at the end of your first session and stay (online) a few minutes after to answer questions your tutoring family has.

5. Next Day Follow Up. Check in the next day and provide your tutoring client with a bonus such as a downloadable resource. Parents/guardians often appreciate this gesture. You are laying the groundwork for a wonderful connexion, a little extra goes a long way.

Remember, connections foster relationships and relationships spark growth for your business.

The next part of Finding and Keeping Great Clients will explore how to further build a client’s positive tutoring experience and strategies to navigate when a client reveals they are having a negative tutoring experience.

Developing New Client Relationships

About the Author:

Michael Gibben is a certified teacher and has his Masteries Practitioner Designation in coaching. He began his education journey as a private tutor and classroom teacher. With time, he felt he could better guide students in a one-on-one or small group setting. In 2011, he founded his mentor-tutoring company (I.M. Success Tutoring). After 8 years with I.M. Success Tutoring, he decided to transition from being the owner of a tutoring company to being a full time business coach. He established Coach for Tutors for private tutors or tutor company owners eager to learn strategies to grow their tutoring businesses. Michael is also the author of two tutoring business e-books for those looking to launch and/or scale their tutoring practices.

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