People always want what they cannot have and will pay a premium for it. Whoever does your tours needs to learn some basic sales skills to increase enrollement, and scarcity is one of the skills that is vital to increased tour conversions.
It all starts with the phone call, which sets up the initial scarcity in the customer’s mind. Let’s pretend the director Jennifer receives a phone call.
Ring, ring. (Jennifer pulls out her phone script.) “Hello, this is ABC Preschool, this is Jennifer how may I help you?”
“Do you have openings for a two-year-old?”
When asked this question there are normally two answers, yes or no. If you know there are currently five openings in that classroom, do you tell the mom that. NO!
To increase enrollment, create scarcity and here is your answer: “There is currently only one spot available for your son, and I am getting calls every day, would you like to come on for a tour tomorrow?
Did she lie to the parent? Absolutely not. There is only one spot available, for her son.
By creating scarcity, the mom will want to tour sooner and it will help push her to a more immediate decision because of F.O.M.O. (Fear Of Missing Out)
You can also use scarcity to close a tour. When you get to the end of the tour and you ask for the enrollment, you may get an answer like this: “I have to talk to my husband.” “I am looking at three other schools in the area.” Blah, blah, blah.
The goal is to have this mom decide to enroll at your school quickly, so we tempt her with scarcity and F.O.M.O.
You pull a last-minute promotion out of your pocket and tell the parent that you have an expiring special offer you would like to tell her about.
Whatever you decide to give here is irrelevant, free registration, fourth week free, etc. It does not matter. What matters is the timing to increase enrollment. Whatever offer you are enticing her with expires tomorrow at close of business. Let her know that she needs to come in and pay (based on your policy) and have paperwork done by close of business tomorrow for the promotion to be valid. This makes the parent act much quicker, and if you do not hear back from her it helps you to know how serious she was so you don’t waste much time chasing her.
So be sure to train the person who answers the phone and also the one who does the tour on the concept of scarcity. You will start seeing an increase enrollment and more tour conversions for sure.
Tips on How Scarcity Increase Enrollment
The above is an excerpt from my book, Child Care Millionaire. This is Nugget #44 Create Scarcity. When I sat down to write Child Care Millionaire on 2018, I had no idea that it would become an Amazon New Release Best Seller and go on to change the lives of thousands of child care center owners around the world. I am humbled by the book’s success, and even more humbled that my mentor Kris Murray encouraged me to write it.
Child Care Millionaire consists of 101 Nuggets within seven chapters. A Nugget is gold! It is a tip, tactic or strategy you can use to grow or improve your child care program. The book also has 18 client profiles of child care center owners Kris Murray and I have coached within the Child Care Success Academy (when I worked for the Child Care Success Company) that have annual revenues of over $1 million dollars.
