The value of quarterly planning in your tutoring business
Updated: Sep 1
What is quarterly planning?
It’s simply a structured way of prioritizing how you plan to develop and improve your tutoring business over the next 90 days.
90 days is optimal because a month is too short to make any real, noticeable changes. And 6 months or a year is too long - too much can happen or change in that period of time.
Why does it work?
It allows you to set priorities and keep track of what you are doing. That's the really important value of quarterly business planning in your tutoring business.
It's valuable to plan in a structured way and not just “do stuff” because then it all gets a bit vague or a bit overwhelming and you can easily lose the thread.
You need to clearly see the progression and the results so you can measure if you are doing better or worse.
Just keeping it real here - it’s not the most riveting part of the work you do in your tutoring business, but it’s an essential one.
How do you do quarterly planning?
1. We review the previous quarter’s planning and discuss what worked and what didn’t work.
2. We move on to a SWOT analysis to get our heads around the upcoming quarter. It’s a great fast overview to orientate ourselves for the more detailed 90-day planning.
3. We align our business goals with our marketing goals.
What’s important is that goals aren’t only there to be achieved. They are there to teach us what we are doing right, or not. It’s tweaking the process and the learning from that which is so valuable, too.
As one member in a planning meeting said:
I get that I'm never going to do anything wrong - I'm just trying things out to find what really works.
4. After that we identify our core marketing channels.
A channel is just any way you can get in front of your ideal clients. It can be anything from social media, to networking, to guesting on podcasts … whatever you choose.
The important thing is not to overload yourself!
It’s better to be on 3 channels effectively and consistently than 10 channels poorly and inconsistently. Less is definitely more.
5. Next, we consider how we can generate leads.
It’s important to consider the least costly actions first, and that often means starting with what you have.
6. Then we consider how we will nurture leads.
If your ideal client is not ready to book you, or you are new on their radar, how do you position yourself as the go-to when they do need you?
The secret weapon here is understanding the client journey. And yes, we do ALL of that inside the membership :) It’s basically about adding value over the duration, and as educators, we have it easier than a lot of other small business owners - because we know what the school year looks like. We know what challenges our ideal cient will be facing, and when.
7. Now we consider how we will convert leads.
How do you add value so when your ideal client needs you, they are ready to book you? How do you signpost them to book you?
The first is having a process - so if you are gatekeeping access to your services via a call, you have a structured process for that call. (Yup, you guessed right - we have all the scaffolding inside the membership :)
Or it’s having an automatic booking process that is easy - both for you and your clients. If ideal clients have to work hard to book you via various clicks or unclear processes, you are going to lose them.
If you are a phonics and literacy teacher and you want to tutor, our signature Tutor Like a Pro! membership is in 3 main parts:
Market with ease and integrity - all the business and marketing support you need to get out effectively to start bringing in clients quickly
The Jigsaw Phonics Programme - 90 ready-to-tutor structured, cumulative phonics lessons plus a whole heap of of extras, including vocab preteach games to optimise your tutoring for non-native speakers
Phonics CPD - 12 hours of detailed phonics and literacy refreshment so you can brush up your knowledge to expert level - from qualified dyslexia specialists
You can join by booking a call with me - this is an invitation-only membership because we need to know we are right for each other.
Prices aren't a surprise, so check here before you book, then book the call here
I'm looking forward to meeting you!