A sales/marketing conundrum

Business Money
1

I’ve got myself into an intellectual box here. Can someone please help me think outside of it?

I’m a freelance teacher, with classes all over the place. The one thing my clients have in common is that they are all paying me for my time. They buy hours, not content. It’s either 1-1, or in groups organised by the client. When the client is ia school, the students pay for content, to the client, but the client only pays me for time. So my income is constrained by the perceived value of my time rather than by the content I provide.

I would much rather teach groups of people who pay me for the content instead of paying someone else. That way, I can make more money. In theory, anyway.

I’ve kind of fixated on my own definition of the problem, and need alternative ways of looking at it. Either that or someone could magically come up with a solution to the problem as I see it.

Anyway, I have differentiated myself in the market place. I have new and unique products that are solutions to people’s needs. It’s all well-received by the students I teach, and I’m pretty good at selling them on the benefits. The problem as I see it is how do I get the word out to potential students (cheaply) and after getting the word out how do I sell them something other than doing it all by myself face-to-face?

The second part is more vexing. For instance, imagine an ideal world where I have solved the first part, somehow managed to get myself on TV, and people all over the island are watching and saying “wow, that looks great.” What happens next? Potential customers need a way to contact the provider, me. What is the process, or channel that converts that potential customer into an actual paid-up bum-on-seat?

It seems to me that nobody is going to just look at a website and splash out NT$10-20,000 without talking to someone in the flesh. I seriously doubt that you could rely on telemarketers to do a good job either. Most adult buxibans rely heavily on having a trained specialised sales force in-house to bring in the money.

Buying or starting a school is a big risky investment, and hourly classroom hire is not expensive, so I’d rather avoid going that route. It makes more sense initally just to rent classrooms as needed, but that leaves you without a ‘presence’ for sales.

I’ve looked in the past at ways to co-operate with agents and schools, but they always seem to see the relationship as employer to employee rather than service-provider to customer-with-product-to-sell. These people always seem to think they are offering me a job and I should provide the service they think the market wants. I think that people like what I do and that my ‘partner’ should concentrate on opening up new market space instead of trying to do the same shit as everyone else at a lower price.

In other words, I’ve defined the problem as “I can’t do marketing to Taiwanese, and can’t do both sales and provision of service to large numbers of customers all by my lonesome, so I need a partner to bring the punters in while I focus on being a unique and valuable product. But I have so far failed to find a suitable partner.”

My friend Tomas suggested I’m not looking hard enough. I hate to agree with him, especially in public, but he’s probably right. He also pointed out that I’m so focused on my own definition of the problem that I’m not listening to alternative viewpoints, again annoyingly true. So I’m looking for suggestions.

(And yes, I am sure that what I do is unique and valuable. That’s based on the feedback I get from students who have bought a standard product from a school and then been pleasantly surprised by what happened in the classroom, plus those who have agreed to take 1-1 classes with me on the strength of the things I told them in the free consultation. I sell it, I’d like others to sell it for me.)

2

Book the Stadium for 30 days time
Get on the home shopping channel and get your message out
They will book the seats and take their percentage before paying you
Invite the press
At the event let people know how to contact you (email, phone, whatever)

Repeat every 3 months

If you can’t afford to put the deposit down on the stadium then get a promoter involved - if your message is really unique and valuable.

When you are done write a book about it

Good luck

3

[quote=“Loretta”]I’ve got myself into an intellectual box here. Can someone please help me think outside of it?

I’m a freelance teacher, with classes all over the place. The one thing my clients have in common is that they are all paying me for my time. They buy hours, not content. It’s either 1-1, or in groups organised by the client. When the client is ia school, the students pay for content, to the client, but the client only pays me for time. So my income is constrained by the perceived value of my time rather than by the content I provide.

I would much rather teach groups of people who pay me for the content instead of paying someone else. That way, I can make more money. In theory, anyway.

I’ve kind of fixated on my own definition of the problem, and need alternative ways of looking at it. Either that or someone could magically come up with a solution to the problem as I see it.

Anyway, I have differentiated myself in the market place. I have new and unique products that are solutions to people’s needs. It’s all well-received by the students I teach, and I’m pretty good at selling them on the benefits. The problem as I see it is how do I get the word out to potential students (cheaply) and after getting the word out how do I sell them something other than doing it all by myself face-to-face?

The second part is more vexing. For instance, imagine an ideal world where I have solved the first part, somehow managed to get myself on TV, and people all over the island are watching and saying “wow, that looks great.” What happens next? Potential customers need a way to contact the provider, me. What is the process, or channel that converts that potential customer into an actual paid-up bum-on-seat?

It seems to me that nobody is going to just look at a website and splash out NT$10-20,000 without talking to someone in the flesh. I seriously doubt that you could rely on telemarketers to do a good job either. Most adult buxibans rely heavily on having a trained specialised sales force in-house to bring in the money.

Buying or starting a school is a big risky investment, and hourly classroom hire is not expensive, so I’d rather avoid going that route. It makes more sense initally just to rent classrooms as needed, but that leaves you without a ‘presence’ for sales.

I’ve looked in the past at ways to co-operate with agents and schools, but they always seem to see the relationship as employer to employee rather than service-provider to customer-with-product-to-sell. These people always seem to think they are offering me a job and I should provide the service they think the market wants. I think that people like what I do and that my ‘partner’ should concentrate on opening up new market space instead of trying to do the same shit as everyone else at a lower price.

In other words, I’ve defined the problem as “I can’t do marketing to Taiwanese, and can’t do both sales and provision of service to large numbers of customers all by my lonesome, so I need a partner to bring the punters in while I focus on being a unique and valuable product. But I have so far failed to find a suitable partner.”

My friend Tomas suggested I’m not looking hard enough. I hate to agree with him, especially in public, but he’s probably right. He also pointed out that I’m so focused on my own definition of the problem that I’m not listening to alternative viewpoints, again annoyingly true. So I’m looking for suggestions.

(And yes, I am sure that what I do is unique and valuable. That’s based on the feedback I get from students who have bought a standard product from a school and then been pleasantly surprised by what happened in the classroom, plus those who have agreed to take 1-1 classes with me on the strength of the things I told them in the free consultation. I sell it, I’d like others to sell it for me.)[/quote]

I misquoted Byron Katie last time we spoke. Here is the real quote: “You could have anything in life you wanted if you were willing to ask 1000 people for it.”

I’m not willing to trust 100 people, let alone 1,000. What you have to do is go through enough people who are well-meaning but not the right partner for you until finally one of them refers you to the right person. Tell me exactly what you’re looking for, and I’ll help you find it.

4

I can’t really advise about this stuff, because I’m a teminal employee (I hate that about myself, but it’s true…). I don’t understand exactly what it is that you are trying to do. Franchise what you do to other delivery people, or delivery on a wider scale? Or something different?

OK, so I probably can’t offer any constructive help, but if you can clarify to me what you are hoping to do, it may help you clarify it to others?

5

If your product is truly new & unique, why not put a couple of the initial classes + the class material (in downloadable form) on a website… If it has a real perceived value and with the right marketing this could generate traffic and interest in your offerings without too much risk or up front cost.

Visitors could then contact you for additional lessons, or you could schedule courses across TW based on interest levels. Another option would be to collect email address to view the free lessons, giving you an initial contact point.

Additionally, you could look to put various courses online at low or no cost. The low cost ones being pre-recorded would give you the advantage of the 1hr work paying you multiple times over in the future. As part of the fee (or an additional fee) you could include some 1:1 personal time or access to regular video conference calls/classes via skype.

6

Wow Loretta! That’s some post there! I had to read it 3 times and i’m still not sure what your problem is!?

Seems like you want to start your own business without opening a school and charge students for “the course” rather than hourly tuition. However, you dont have the language/marketing skills to do it all by yourself.

Assuming the above is correct;

Firstly, you’re going to need some super language and marketing skills as you’re trying to bring a completely new product into the local market here. People here tend to be very set in their ways and convincing them to change will not be easy! Therefore i would suggest you make a short “before/during/after” video of the results that you’re getting from using your system with students. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words and results DO speak for themselves. This should help you in overcoming a lot of the language/marketing problems.

Secondly, social networks in Taiwan are very extensive so i would imagine that once you get a few groups of students through, word of mouth should ensure that things take off from there. Therefore i would be trying to utilise the guanxi and connections of existing/former students to get some new business.

Hope this helps and above all be patient!

7

I like the preposition, however the problem is the market. Unless you can somehow develop a brand image, the market defines you for all intents and purposes as an hourly worker. They have no way of evaluating you beforehand other than by the colour of your skin and your accent (maybe) so they will only ever be willing to pay an hourly rate. You are in the consulting business and consultants get paid by the hour. The only way to increase that rate is by building brand.

I doubt it would be worthwhile to build your own brand, so many people before you in the same situation have done either A) gone into the content generation business where they CAN sell a product rather than their time or B) “bought” a branding from elsewhere, i.e. working for a big executive business English firm or something that you can stamp on your business card.

[quote=“Tomas”]I misquoted Byron Katie last time we spoke. Here is the real quote: “You could have anything in life you wanted if you were willing to ask 1000 people for it.”

I’m not willing to trust 100 people, let alone 1,000. What you have to do is go through enough people who are well-meaning but not the right partner for you until finally one of them refers you to the right person. Tell me exactly what you’re looking for, and I’ll help you find it.[/quote]

Tomas, you sound like a smart man who’d be great to get to know better.

8

Interesting responses, thank you.

Let me just define some terms in case anyone coming into this late is not clear:
marketing - getting people in through the door
sales - getting them to commit after they have come in through the door

BC, and anyone else, forget (for now) about having other people teach my material. Just do the numbers on 20 students paying 300/hr when you can hire a classroom for 800/hr inclusive. Working for other people is silly, if you can figure out how to use some of the remainder to find those students and get their money.

Yup, there’s a branding problem and yes language/culture is part of it. Especially this:[quote]People here tend to be very set in their ways and convincing them to change will not be easy.[/quote]

This makes the marketing difficult. You can’t go into any detail because the students’ preconceptions will conflict with what you’re telling them. You have to find some way to entice them in, and then make the sale. Specimen stuff online is not helpful until the students understand the context for it. ie you demonstrate activities designed to improve their grammar and they respond that they need to learn vocabulary, and they won’t change their mind until they’ve had their first class and walked out feeling like you’ve really opened their eyes. You have to make a sale before they understand what you are offering.

In a face-to-face situation, 1-1 or 1-many, I can ‘make the sale’. But in order to make the sale you need to get people in through the door. Marketing; and the before/after video is the sort of thing I was thinking of. It makes people excited without going into detail that challenges them too much. I’ve made a lot of progress over the years and am starting to crack this, but still have a basic logistical issue to deal with:

Assuming I find a solution to first part of the problem, and people walk in through the door, I don’t want to be the one sitting there waiting to talk to them. In fact, I don’t even have a door for people to walk through. So even if I come up with some killer marketing campaign that gets people excited, what is the next step the potential student should take?

  • Click here to sign up now, and have your credit card ready!
  • Call this number for more information
  • Come and see us at this location
  • something else…

I can’t see anyone signing up to something online on the strength of hype. And my experiences with telesales people don’t encourage me to believe that I could find any agency capable of closing the deal over the phone. I think students need to meet a real human being in a real location before they feel comfortable committing to anything. I could be wrong. Does anyone know better?

With adult classes there is a fairly high turnover, which means you are constantly recruiting new students. I don’t want to spend my days doing sales, and if I do then the time and effort involved puts a natural limit on the scale of things. You can’t get a hundred, or even fifty, people into a classroom if you’re the only one doing the work. There needs to be some kind of organisation handling the process of getting students signed-up and relieving them of all those dollars that are the root cause of their unhappiness.

The simple way seems to be to just buy or open a school, and train a great sales force in your spare time, in between managing a killer marketing campaign and taking care of all that day-to-day administrative crap I hate so much.

I’m trying to figure out how to outsource this part of the business, when the reality is that the business is sales/marketing and the product is just a commodity. At least, that’s how the sales/marketing people I’ve spoken to always seem to view it. They assume that they know best, and as they’re not students they’re not very receptive to explanations about education that would allow them to redefine the product and create new markets.

I had a couple of suggestions from friends:

  • hold free seminars teaching something that people want, and use the opportunity to sign them up for things they didn’t know they wanted beforehand
  • develop some kind of referral bonus scheme that allows students to earn credits they can use to pay for future classes; some of my students were intrigued by the idea of an MLM program as long as it’s not presented as a way to make money from their friends
9

[i]The simple way seems to be to just buy or open a school, and train a great sales force in your spare time, in between managing a killer marketing campaign and taking care of all that day-to-day administrative crap I hate so much.

I’m trying to figure out how to outsource this part of the business, when the reality is that the business is sales/marketing and the product is just a commodity.[/i]

I am at a loss here to understand what it is you really want Loretta. Opening a small school or opening a small business is the same thing. Whether the people are employed by the school or contracted by the business through some kind of outsourcing arrangement, it’s really six of one or half a dozen of the other.

10

Could you video the classes and then use something like IPTV to deliver them on a fixed loop? That way users could subscribe to the classes they were interested in, or to a whole package. not sure this would work, as I’m guessing your classes are fairly interactive?

11

There’s a lot of interactive software but not all people dig it.
Some people don’t like to study in front of a computer.

For those who do like it making a payable video podcast (targeted to Taiwanese) on the Taiwan iTunes store sounds very interesting. But on Taiwan iTunes (not talking about the US store) there is no video and no audio offered now, only iPhone apps (free podcasts only which don’t belong to the store).

So are already lots of free (crap) podcasts for learning English. If you don’t want to use iTunes or some other platform it would be hard to reach enough customers with it.
So the way would be to make a free podcast (which is inside the index of iTunes) with a reference to your site where one has to pay for this. Happy recording.

12

I don’t know how many people in Taiwan are going to pay for English podcasts when there is so much free content already out there. Do you know of anyone that has had success selling these?

Let me see . . . 300, times 20, minus 800, divided by 2.54 cm per inch . . .

You should be making NT$5200/hour! :slight_smile:

To return to reality, continue reading.

Since the universities got into the adult market in Taiwan, even schools that spend $$$$$$ on ads find it very very very very very very very very very hard* to find 20 adults (that are near the same level) willing to pay NT$300/hour to study anything at the same exact time of day on the same day of the week.

You make it sound like, “Hey! I’ve got a great product; half the work is done! All I need is a little marketing and sales help.”
(Sorry if I’m wrong.)

I say, “Even if you are fantastic (and I’m sure you are), 98 percent of the work is yet to be done.”

I don’t mean to discourage you, Loretta. I hope things work out for you.

*Being voted Taipei’s Sexiest Man is far easier.

13

[quote=“zender”]I don’t know how many people in Taiwan are going to pay for English podcasts when there is so much free content already out there. Do you know of anyone that has had success selling these?
[/quote]
Nobody (as mentioned the iTunes store (if you select Taiwan) only offers Apps), but why stop there? Why not offer a English teaching course on iTunes US specialized for Chinese or Taiwanese people in the US… or Australia, or England…?

14

Your first step will be to stop asking for other teacher’s opinions. If they knew the answer, they’d be doing it differently themselves. It is counterproductive to get this kind of input.

Your second step is to recognize that there is nothing new under the sun, it has been done before, and success leaves clues. The link below might get your juices flowing:

nytimes.com/2009/06/02/busin … 2cram.html

15

I’m not a teacher :laughing: Forumosa isn’t full of them.

16

You follow the course of action you seem most determined to avoid:

  1. Start your own school.
  2. Hire teachers and train them in your methods.
  3. Focus on marketing and quality control, and let your teachers do what they’re trained for.

Neither strategic alliances with existing schools nor freelancing are, in my opinion, sustainable business models for your product. I disagree with the assertion that the market is the problem. It is clear from your many posts on the subject that a certain class of buyers are quick to recognize the superior value of your product. But the vast majority of Taiwanese schools are targeting the broadest market segment, and that means a race to the price bottom. Freelancing, as I’m sure you realize, leaves you woefully unable to meet demand. In other words, there may be significant opportunity cost to limiting the availability of your service.

17

Agreed. And also agreed that even if I’m great, which is debatable, the business is all about bringing the students in. You need a good product, but nobody will buy it if nobody asks them to.

When the students pay their money to the universities, the universities then pay me to do the actual teaching. The students don’t know what they’ve bought. I’ve taught classes at three universities this year alone, have courses ongoing at the moment, and not once has anyone had any input about what goes on in the classroom. I get questions like “are you going to use a book for this course, or do you want me to print out your handouts?” every time. All that the ‘educational institution’ contributes is sales and marketing, for which they take the lions’ share of the money.

One of them, the one that is most aggressive in expanding, asked me a while back to create a 36-hr course which they wanted to market at NT$18,000/student. 500/hr might sound like a lot, but they were confident it would sell. Remember that there is a lot of government funding for adults trying to improve their professional skills. (I’ve had enquiries from individual students about this course just as a result of email newsletters.) And since they’re the marketing experts, that’s what they do, who am I to argue? My job was to design a course to their specifications, even though the feedback from my other students was that some of the required elements were not really appropriate.

There were a lot of meetings, a lot of tailoring and tweaking of the course to meet their requirements, and eventually we had a deal that went off to the lawyers for approval. We needed to get it approved because I had refused to do it for an hourly rate and wanted a profit-share, which they agreed to.

However, their idea of a profit-share was that they collect the money and pay themselves handsomely for doing marketing, admin, and providing a classroom. They wanted to keep a large portion of the remaining money, and expected me to pay myself out of what was left. Fair enough, the real value lies in the sales and marketing, not in the product itself, but on those kind of margins it’s not really worth my while to do. You would need 14 students before it even starts to be affordable, and with 20 the extra profit over and above what I can make just for teaching a class would only be about 40K. That’s not much of a reward for writing the course.

In addition, when the contract came back from the lawyers, six weeks later, they had added a clause that I would get paid up to two months after completing the course. In view of the fact that they never begin a course until they have enough paid-up students, I refused it and there was another round of negotiations.

I was dealing with “the director,” theoretically the decision-maker, but accounting is someone else’s responsibility, as is law. And I never met these people. There were so many non-involved people insisting on having things their way that I eventually gave up. Too much hassle, too little reward. Four months of “we really want to do this soon” and no action.

These people hold all the power, even though they don’t really contribute very much. They don’t know what the students want or need. They’re disorganised, conservative, narrow-minded, and greedy. They can’t make clear decisions or be trusted to keep to an agreement. And they’re absolutely typical of every agent or school I have ever tried to negotiate with in this way. They basically can’t comprehend of anything other than themselves as the bosses and you/me as a mere commodity. (Alternatively, this could just be a reaction to the way I deal with people!)

One good sales person, finding one student per weekday, could make a very good income even if the cost of the course was discounted 20%. Even with a budget to pay for marketing my profit on that would still be double what the university offered, over and above the pay for teaching the class. Even at NT$11-12,000 - which is the sort of money people pay for IELTS prep courses - it’s more attractive to me than what’s on offer.

So - unless someone can redefine the problem in some way that I haven’t thought of - I need to ‘employ’ someone or some someones to do some of the work. They need to be really good at sales but ready to listen and take direction. And they need some space to work out of, a door for students to walk in through. This looks like “open your own school,” which I’d rather not do.

[quote=“Gao Bohan”]You follow the course of action you seem most determined to avoid:

  1. Start your own school.
  2. Hire teachers and train them in your methods.
  3. Focus on marketing and quality control, and let your teachers do what they’re trained for.

Neither strategic alliances with existing schools nor freelancing are, in my opinion, sustainable business models for your product. I disagree with the assertion that the market is the problem. It is clear from your many posts on the subject that a certain class of buyers are quick to recognize the superior value of your product. But the vast majority of Taiwanese schools are targeting the broadest market segment, and that means a race to the price bottom. Freelancing, as I’m sure you realize, leaves you woefully unable to meet demand. In other words, there may be significant opportunity cost to limiting the availability of your service.[/quote]
Right! The people I’m dealing with are not the people I should be dealing with.

There is demand for what I do, and at some point I do want to start replicating it. A school would be the logical way to do that. But starting a school from scratch is just too much risk.Starting a school assumes that a) I can market myself effectively, which is debatable, and b) I can train people to do the sales. I’m pretty sure I can’t do the latter.

For starters, sales in Taiwan is very different from sales in the west. And mine is a complex sale. I honestly don’t think I could train a newbie to sell what I do. And experienced sales people always seem to believe they know more than I do, and consequently they tell me what the market wants. Basically, sales people in Taiwan follow a simple process of negotiating on price with customers who pretty much know what they want because they’ve consulted their friends and family. They don’t educate the customer, which is what I have to do every time I sign someone up.

I freelance, that is I teach large classes. I also find my own students, but not in large numbers. If I can find large numbers of students I can teach them, and I can do so profitably. But first I need some process to convert the potential students I find into bums on seats, in the way that I do now, but on a larger scale without having to do it personally.

I would like to risk some money on marketing, but there’s no point in doing it if I can’t follow through. Partnerships don’t seem to work. Starting a school is excessive. What’s the third way?

18

[quote=“Paniolo”]Your first step will be to stop asking for other teacher’s opinions. If they knew the answer, they’d be doing it differently themselves. It is counterproductive to get this kind of input.

Your second step is to recognize that there is nothing new under the sun, it has been done before, and success leaves clues. The link below might get your juices flowing:

nytimes.com/2009/06/02/busin … 2cram.html[/quote]
Many thanks for the link, which is fascinating. I have seen it before, but couldn’t find it again and I’m glad you obliged.

As for asking teachers’ opinions, or asking anyone’s opinions on anything, it’s perfectly possible to learn something from people who know less than you. I learn from my students, even though they pay me to be the expert. And simply by talking out of my arse here, I might trigger a flash of inspiration in someone who didn’t know that he/she knew more than me, and prompt them to say something helpful.

And, of course, plenty of us know stuff that we don’t act on. Many of us have ideas that are not fully-formed yet and sharing them online is a good way to make progress towards what we need to know. I think it’s counterproductive for me to sit at home obessing on what I know, instead of asking people to tell me things I may not welcome but which may be true. This includes your comments, which I will disagree with today but may be glad about tomorrow.

I disagree that there’s nothing new under the sun. I doubt you would have got far if you had said that to Steve Jobs when he sat down with his team to announce this great new idea he had for portable music players a few years ago. I remember the first personal computers, the first mobile phones, the days when there was no internet for Korean teachers to use as a teaching medium. To suggest that there is nothing new being done is to ignore the reality that the pace of invention is increasing.

19

[quote=“Gao Bohan”] . . . follow the course of action you seem most determined to avoid:

  1. Start your own school.
    2. Hire teachers and train them in your methods.
  2. Focus on marketing and quality control, and let your teachers do what they’re trained for.
    . . .[/quote]

Loretta, are your teaching methods very personality driven? In some ways, it’s easier if you have a method that doesn’t depend on a super dynamic personality (You) to run the course. If you can’t teach people how to market or sell your product, can you at least train college-edjamacated, average Joe’s to implement your teaching techniques?

I always say, “You can’t teach personality.”

You are only one person, but if you could train a small army of teachers to be Little Lorettas, . . .

20

Welcome to public service, academia, and most large corporations the world over. Now add Taiwan into the mix… fun fun. Don’t ever expect them to be proactive even if its to save their own skin

Now you understand why I said that here, the market is the problem*, teachers ARE commodities. Why even attempt to change the market? I also believe you have fairly high expectations; you expect a large share of the revenue from the project but what kind of a track record did this univeristy have with you? What kind of risk are they taking with their reputation by giving you complete control of content?

I think if you’re completely against training teachers/own school, then content generation is the way to go. Take a risk, do this (or similar) project for a univerisity and DON’t worry about the cash for the first one. Write into the contract that you have sole and complete control of the content, hell don’t even give them a copy if you don’t have to. Then you’ll have a fully funded test run to see how well the model works, start word of mouth advertising, have bargaining power through the ability to walk away with it, and they’ll have a case study you can point to when you ask them to pony up big time for the next one. You’ll force them to see you as a source of revenue rather than a commodity.

You can’t avoid all risk and have everything turn out perfectly the first time, you’ll be 80 before you try anything.

*Yes, of course, there is a ridiculously small subset of the market that doesn’t see you as a commodity, but how much of a network or how large an advertising budget would you need to target them specifically in suffcient quantity to get classes out of it?