I’ve been looking at potential secondary schools with my son this week . We’ve turned up at a different school every evening, along with hundreds of other parents keen to get an idea about the school which is going to guide their child through their school years between 11 and 18.
Thankfully, we’ve been ‘doing the rounds’ a year early, because I’ve been doing a bit of future pacing and realised that I didn’t want to have to make such an important decision in just three weeks.
As I joined those stressed parents traipsing round one school after another, I wondered just exactly how do you make these sorts of choices? The visit gives us an opportunity to ‘try before you buy’ and actually talk with the teachers that will be responsible for educating our children.
The open days give us an opportunity to test the waters, albeit in a rather false environment and we do have the school website, prospectus and external Ofsted report as well. This is an important decision for all parents to make and we want to get it right.
For some people, choosing their NLP trainer or coach is just as important. How many opportunities do you give a potential client to ‘try before they buy’?How many chances do they have to get to know you? It’s all part of the rapport building, in just the same way that your online web profile, photograph and webinars are.
So like the schools have been doing this week, it occurs to me that it’s a good idea to capitalise on all the opportunities you have to promote your wares, and enable your potential clients to make the best choice they can with the information they have available.