Driving School getting more learners

Getting more learner drivers for your driving school is a 2 stage process, and as an instructor, you need to work on both stages in order to generate the work that will give you an income to live on.

Your driving school marketing efforts needs to:

1. Get people to know you offer the services that they require.
This can be done via various forms of advertising, my most effective method is via my online driving school website which brings in enquiries on a weekly basis to keep me busy with enough learner drivers.

Other ways of getting the word out there will be adverts in local shop windows, newspaper classifieds, word of mouth (friends, family, church, gym, etc), yellow pages, google adwords. What ever method you use, only continue if you find it effective, as sales executives will give you many reasons for renewing ads, but at the end of the day you can not afford throwing money down the drain if these marketing efforts are not being rewarded with genuine enquiries from new clients. Don't forget to get business cards made as well, I've lost count of the number of times I've handed these out during driving lessons to people looking at the car.

2. Convincing or converting enquiries to a sale. This is the most difficult of the 2 stage process, especially in the driver training industry, as most learner drivers are just looking for cheap driving lessons and if your prices are above what they expect to pay, then they will probably move on to the next instructor on their shortlist. So what can you do to increase the lighlyhood of someone learning to drive with you?

Again your driving school website has an important role to play since it would be the first point of call that you would have directed them to via stage one above. The good thing about your online presence is that the potential client can visit without feeling that they would be pressurised into a sale by a smart executive on the other end of the phone, so use your website to sell all your unique points.

Don't just tell the visitor the areas you cover, the driving school car you use and the prices you charge, market yourself, tell them what you have achieved with other learner drivers. If you have a degree or special diploma that helps you deal with nervous students let them know.
Female drivers might what to learn with a woman instructor, as a man re-assure them why you can do a good job with them, use statistics to quantify the ratio of male to female learners and how YOU always treat them as individuals in a professional manner.

Give them as many reasons why though you might not be the cheapest in the local area, but you are the best. Not everyone can afford or appreciate the quality of a Mercedes benz car, but those that do, will not prefer a Skoda instead.
There is nothing you can do to convince someone looking for lessons at £10 an a hour to go with you that charges £20, but you can easily make someone with a £18 budget go with you if they think you will be honest, have a track record of high quality tuition and find your website very informative and helpful, especially if they where searching for driving school Hampstead and you are on the first page of the results returned by the search engine.

Once you get a call, always get some details from the caller even if the first question they ask is 'how much do you charge for driving lessons'.

Found out if it is the caller that wants to drive.
How did they get your number (very important and you always must ask this so you can know which marketing methods to focus on).
What area they are based in.
Do they have a test coming up soon.

The more information, the better you might be in getting them to join you if they are within your price range as mentioned above. If they got your number from the website, they already know how much you charge, and even though they might want to bargain, you are half way through.

After the call if they did not go with you, make a note of their number, and try and make contact a month later to see if they passed their test or started, things might have changed.

Getting more learner drivers is not easy work, so continue to put in all the effort to market and sell yourself effectively.