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Trial Lessons? (All Teachers)
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If your policy is to offer free trials this is fine, If this isn’t what you do normally don’t bother. You can say I don’t offer free trial because my regular clients subside it no free lunch etc. put more sensitively. With enquires I find that clients have usually made the decision before hand to commit to paying and may have a couple of questions. If you’re ping ponging emails or having 30 minute phone calls its not a good sign. What sort of client will they be ? Finally You can always offer money back if the lesson is unacceptable. I have on occasion found I couldn’t help a client with their chosen area and waived the fee Its honest and is good pr
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Hi Rosie
I charge for all my first lessons and in my experience if people aren’t willing to pay for 1st lessons then they are probably going to be tight with money going forward or not go forward at all.
I agree with the phone call approach but again don’t let them drag the phone call on for too long, as they can still get an hour out of you on the phone.
I know that this all sounds negative and they might be fine and extremely serious about singing and doing lessons, but if they are not it will soon show.
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I used to offer a 30 minute free trial lesson – I did this because I was starting out teaching and needed to get as many students as possible! However the turn out was extremely low and people were literally just using me as a ‘one-off’ free lesson. So I made the decision to charge in advance from the first lesson via an online payment and that has completely stopped people from wasting my time. I completely agree with what everyone else has said:)
You can always give them a call to make it more personal to them, and so they can ask you any questions but no more than that! I’ve had some people want to sing down the phone to me before, so I just have to say I can’t make a true judgement of their voice over the phone
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Funny you should bring this up Beckie, as Facebook alerted me to “on this day” and it turns out that 3 years ago today I was posting my Gumtree ad to Facebook with my 30 min free taster lessons when I started out! It went very well actually, but obviously you have to prepare to be “used” I suppose..!
Meanwhile, one time I had an enquiry from Matthew which was someone asking me if they could send a recording of themselves for me to judge. I just said I don’t do that – it’s far better to judge in person, which by the way, costs!!!
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I don’t do trial lessons at all.If the student wants to speak on the phone or through e-mail thats no problem at all but in my opinion a lesson is a lesson and has to be paid because is your time what your are giving to the student,and the student has to understand that the teacher’s time is what he/she is paying for. You can explain that to the student so she/he can understand why there is no trial lessons.
Cheers,
Gael
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