{"id":137,"date":"2010-10-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karateteaching.uploadmysite.com\/?p=137"},"modified":"2010-10-28T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-28T16:00:00","slug":"word-of-mouth-with-a-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/word-of-mouth-with-a-twist\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of mouth&#8230; with a twist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday afternoon just before class began, I had a mother and son walk in to the dojo.<\/p>\n<p>They were very nice people and expressed interest in our program.<\/p>\n<p>Perfect.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing I like more than nice families and eager students wanting to learn.<\/p>\n<p>So they decided that the son would try class right there and then. While his mother was filling out the paperwork, I asked her how she heard about our school. She told me we were highly recommended by someone at the place where she works.<\/p>\n<p>Awesome! I&#8217;m always glad to hear that we&#8217;ve been highly recommended.<\/p>\n<p>Reputation is important and we&#8217;ve recruited loads of students through referrals.<\/p>\n<p>When she passed me back the clipboard and I asked who it was that recommended us. She mentioned a name I didn&#8217;t know. As I pondered who this mystery person might be, I thought it definitely wasn&#8217;t an existing student&#8217;s name, nor a parent&#8217;s name I was familiar with. Perhaps it was another family member&#8217;s?<\/p>\n<p>I desperately tried to think who it might be&#8230; and then she added something about a presentation last week.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I was still drawing a blank. There were no bells ringing in my head.<\/p>\n<p>Anyhow, while his mother watched the son tried class and had a blast. His father arrived shortly after to watch the remainder of the class too. They&#8217;re a really nice family and all were delighted with our program. We spoke for a few minutes after, got to know them a little better, and they&#8217;re scheduled to come back again next week.<\/p>\n<p>However, for the life of me I still couldn&#8217;t figure out who the mystery referral person might be. Then it occurred to me &#8211; the bell rang loud and clear in my mind. This wasn&#8217;t a name I knew and we didn&#8217;t have a &#8220;presentation&#8221; last week (whatever that might be). I was beginning to think that this referral wasn&#8217;t meant for us at all!<\/p>\n<p>It was probably meant for one of the TKD schools across the road. (Heh, heh, heh!)<\/p>\n<p>But as fate would have it, they walked into our dojo instead. Now the son is excited learning karate with us, the parents are happy and I&#8217;m certainly glad to have them part of our club and not our competition&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever way people find your dojo doesn&#8217;t really matter. The important lesson is that you take full advantage of each opportunity and give them the best of your ability in terms of instruction and service.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately it is up to them to make the choice of where they&#8217;ll hang their gi&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Until next time&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Jason<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday afternoon just before class began, I had a mother and son walk in to the dojo. They were very nice people and expressed interest in our program. Perfect. Nothing I like more than nice families and eager students wanting to learn. So they decided that the son would try class right there and then. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karateteaching.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}