Training Institution Operation Rules
Time:2026-03-03
Source:Artstep
Establishing an operational framework and a set of effective management tools is crucial for operators and the only way to improve efficiency.
01. Clarity of Business Model:
Your business model is only based on tuition income, so you need to find ways to reduce operating costs and improve unit efficiency. If you are based on students and extend other charging models, then the accumulation of student base should be the top priority. Any business model without student traffic is nonsense.
1.1 Operational Model:
The survival of pure offline training products ultimately depends on in store traffic and conversion rates; The fundamental to strengthening institutions and products is customer retention and customer stickiness.
The operation mode of traditional offline educational institutions has a complete sales funnel, and the first step is to quantify market resources. Even the best sales are difficult to cook without rice, and sales cannot be expected to stare at the market to achieve performance.
After obtaining market resources, we can further optimize the conversion rate, visit rate, and surface conversion rate to improve sales performance.
The fragrance of flowers comes from bees and butterflies, and customers fill the counter when the goods are good. Nowadays, it is no longer the era where good wine is not afraid of deep alleys. Even good goods need to be advertised and sold. For the launch of a new project, it is recommended to increase popularity and quickly accumulate initial customers in the early stage.
The window period for any institution is only about six months. If the current income and expenditure are not balanced within six months, with the support of capital, the survival pressure faced in the later stage will be even greater.
In addition, at this time, it is easy to experience team instability, with low market and sales base salaries, no commission, insufficient teaching team leadership, and inability to increase salaries, which weakens the overall stability of the team. If investors sway back and forth at this time and fail to come up with effective promotion plans to expand the market, the team will experience a wave of resignations, and frequent team changes will directly lead to the failure of the project.
1.2 Financial Modeling:
In terms of financial modeling, what are the basic fixed costs, labor costs, housing and water costs, operating costs, marketing costs, etc.? How many new recruits can achieve an annual balance between income and expenditure? How many recruits can achieve a balance between carryover and expenditure? What is the break even point? I can't even run financially, so I think this model is probably going to be stuck.
02. Deep exploration of market research
Before undertaking a project or campus, market research to some extent determines the operation of the project or campus. Resident population within 3-5 kilometers around the campus, community situation, average housing price, number and distribution of schools, number of students, number and distribution of competing institutions, unit price per customer of competing institutions, unit price per class of competing institutions
Firstly, clarify the segmented market you want to select, conduct in-depth analysis, financial analysis, market capacity analysis, competitor analysis, operational analysis, and so on. When choosing a market in the early stages, one must never be too big and too comprehensive. A large and comprehensive product architecture and marketing system means that you need to compete with numerous brands in the industry. If you don't have enough resources and funds in the early stage, it is recommended not to go to such extremes.
Select a segmented market in the industry, conduct in-depth research, explore potential customer demands, product characteristics of peer institutions, and product opportunities in the industry. Based on this, determine the externalization characteristics of our products, match teaching and research, focus on highlighting our differentiated positioning in operation, gradually form differentiated positioning advantages, and establish a single point brand advantage.
More than 95% of institutions on the market offer closed classes, and parents are not allowed to enter or suspend classes during regular teaching. This is mainly based on two considerations:
1. Parents attending classes can affect students' attention and be detrimental to teaching;
2. Parents attending classes can create significant classroom pressure on teachers.
If the teacher is not very experienced, it is easy to cause parents to complain about the teaching teacher's dissatisfaction, leading to refunds. So when positioning our brand, if we are confident enough in our teaching team, we can open up teaching for entry-level classes. On the premise of meeting our requirements (parents must sit in the back row of the classroom, turn off their phones, and not affect the teacher's teaching throughout the entire process, cannot interfere with the classroom, otherwise the teacher has the right to ask parents to leave the classroom), parents can enter the class and listen to the class throughout the entire process. The positioning of open teaching has a positive significance in addressing parents' trust in the institution's teaching in the early stages.
03. Overall positioning of the project
3.1 Customer positioning:
Before starting a project, it is important to identify the sales target audience that the project aims to reach and position your core customers. Only in this way can you implement promotional actions specifically and accurately, otherwise what you do will be largely useless.
At the beginning of the establishment of an educational institution, the first thing to consider is the target audience and customers that the institution is targeting? Is it a youth, a teenager, or a child? After the target customer is identified, our product design and services, as well as the decoration of our office space, should all revolve around the target customer. The managers of educational institutions need to clarify who the target customers are and where their demands lie. Based on this, we determine what promotion methods or media to choose to convey our product information or services to the target customers.
3.2 Brand positioning:
Every successful brand, or brand that parents can immediately think of when making a choice decision, is a brand with unique selling points. Taking children's English as an example, EF's positioning is: all foreign teachers; Ruisi's disciplinary positioning: disciplinary English; So the positioning of international private schools can be further divided into four small classes with all foreign teachers and customized 1v1; while other children's English brands can be differentiated into real-life classrooms, drama classrooms, situational reading classrooms, etc. Only differentiated positioning can occupy the minds of parents and lead the pricing power of products.
3.3 Image positioning:
Let's take education and training institutions as an example. Through market positioning, training institutions need to establish a unique image, find an ideal market position that suits their actual situation, so that target customers can correctly identify our training institution and competitors, and root the key interests of our products and services and the differences between competitors in the hearts of customers, so that our training institution occupies an important position in the minds of target customers. In the practical operation of education and training, many training institutions are also conducting market segmentation, selecting one or several target customer groups as their service targets, and providing corresponding education and training products and projects.
04. Both hard and soft equipment are deployed together
The first thing to consider when installing hardware is to divide it into functional areas based on the characteristics of the course: lobby, parent rest area, student reading area, drinking water area, teaching area, negotiation room, teaching office, marketing and sales office, bathroom, etc. A certain website previously conducted an analysis of parents' purchasing decisions, in which the hardware environment of the school accounted for about 20% of the impact on decision-making, so appropriate hardware decoration is necessary. But I still want to emphasize here that education is not a competition of hardware. Hardware is one of the factors that affect parents' decisions, but parents will never pay for hardware.
There are many pitfalls in schools that need to be avoided. If you have not done school decoration before, it is recommended to compare the plans of several decoration companies and choose a company that has worked as an educational institution to undertake the project. The position of the blackboard, the position of the door, the height of the electronic whiteboard from the ground, and whether to reserve a door opening all need to be planned in advance.
Soft decoration is the most effective way to reflect and highlight the characteristics of institutions, so it is recommended that all institutional operators pay attention to the creation of a soft decoration environment on campus. The elements included in the soft decoration display may include: course system guide map, teacher style wall, celebrity student and monthly star display wall, parent thank-you letter, banner display area, famous quotes and phrases, various subject mind maps, and so on. The purpose of soft decoration is to provide students and parents with a sense of immersion in the campus, allowing parents to experience the unique and thoughtful operation of the campus!
05. Construction of Product System
As an operator, one must have a product mindset. We cannot simply regard education as a sentiment, otherwise the market will make you realize the ruthlessness and cruelty of the economy. When building the product system for a project, design around one principle: low-priced drainage products + conventional core products + differentiated premium products. This product design concept is suitable for most newly opened projects and institutions.
Low price drainage products (entrance classes) are often set up by many institutions at specific enrollment points in order to compete for incoming students. New projects and institutions should have sufficient characteristics and resources for sales invitations when conducting entrance classes. Otherwise, the setting of entrance classes is more about form than content.
06. Core selling points of the course{{BLOG_SUBTITLE:04. Both hard and soft equipment are deployed together
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If it is a franchise project, the course manual of the project will be provided in the franchise package. If it is a self built project, it is necessary to extract the core selling points of the product. The conventional approach is for the teaching team to first extract the teaching characteristics from a differentiated perspective by comparing the products of peer institutions. It is recommended to extract 5-10 core selling points in the early stage. After extracting the selling points, the sales team forms sales language, which is then transformed into sales language. As an operator, in this process, it is also necessary to form one's own slogan by extracting unique selling points, which facilitates marketing communication and parental memory.
The selling points of the product are also the basis for making a course (sales) manual. Only when the selling points of the product are extracted, can the formulation of the course (sales) manual have rules and evidence to follow! There is also a complete sales mainline! If the operation team is unable to extract the core selling points, it is recommended to compare the sales selling points of the top three institutions in their own segmented industry, find differentiation at the teaching level, and then do differentiated positioning and selling point extraction, as well as formulate brand slogans!
07. Building the Core Team
The core team must choose the best industry practitioners, which is one of the most effective ways to reduce operating costs. Team building is the foundation of institutional operation, and a strong execution team is the prerequisite for successful project operation. It is recommended that our investors choose individuals with successful operational experience to lead the operation of projects when establishing institutions. Success has a way, it can avoid taking detours, and make every effort to revitalize the entire plate during the window of operation.
Regarding option incentives: Personally, I suggest that investors set up option pools. The more outstanding a person is, the more they should be a business partner for investors, not just a professional manager. Professional managers always focus on short-term benefits, while business partners are the driving force for the long-term development of projects!
Regarding option incentives, the education and training operation consultant has also had a separate tweet before. Everyone can climb the stairs to follow and learn!
08. Development of Teaching and Research
08. Development of Teaching and Research
Teaching and research are always the most core parts of the operation of teaching institutions. As long as teaching and research work is solid, the continuation rate of classes in the institution can be guaranteed, and reputation and referrals can only be achieved. All institutions claim to value teaching the most, but in reality, it is the part that most institutions overlook the most, which is directly related to many operation managers not having a teaching background. What I want to emphasize to all institution operators here is that even if the operation manager does not have a teaching background, they should still do a good job in supervising teaching and research in real time. Your attention is the driving force of the entire teaching team.
The operator should also establish a teaching research and teacher training system together with the teaching supervisor or teaching director, and follow up on its implementation. The establishment of teaching and research, teacher training system, and promotion system is the fundamental foundation of institutional operation. Although it is difficult, it is indeed one of the extremely important tasks!