You will need to confirm the ‘pass plus course’ (or motorway lesson in the case of a PDI) This should have already been booked during the pupils driving course preferably at the same time as you arranging their driving test and mock test for them. If the pupil is unsuccessful on their test these pass plus lessons should be converted back into a standard lesson.

Finally, a ‘well done on passing your driving test’ cards is a good idea for successful pupils. Passing one of these out to a successful pupil will create a positive impression on the pupil. This will increase the chances of the recommending you to family and friends. Perhaps mention to them that you will offer a special friends and family rate to anyone they recommend.

Visit here for Christmas spirit – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A8KT365wlA

At Christmas time many people feel compelled to get involved with charity work. Unfortunately, for a lot of individuals, work commitments and time constraints mean they aren’t able to fulfil their ambition of helping those less fortunate. However, RED Driving School instructor, Ray Holland, bucks against this trend.

Ray, a driving instructor of three years, volunteers with Brighter Futures in Maidstone, Kent. “We offer companionship to elderly people who don’t have friends or family living nearby. Around Christmas time our service is really important.”

Brighter Futures provide the charities’ recipients with trips and social events to brighten their lives. Ray is heavily involved with the trips, “I drive our minibus which we use to take the elderly on excursions and shopping trips. Every Tuesday and Thursday we take the pensioners to Morrisons so they can complete their weekly shop. We also arrange other special trips throughout the year.”

Christmas is the busiest time of year for Brighter Futures and they provide an essential service to those in need. Ray explains, “At Christmas we take groups out on present shopping trips as well as days out to see plays and pantomimes at the theatre.

“On the 27th we have a big party for all our regulars. Usually we get around 100 people turning up, I drive to pick them up and my wife is the escort. At the party we provide Christmas dinner, a band for entertainment and a Father Christmas who gives everyone a present. At the end of the night I drive everyone home with a smile on their face.”

Having the time to fit in all of this extra work on top of your daily nine to five would be difficult for most people, but Ray’s career as a driving instructor means he has the time to fit everything in. “I can plan my own diary so I’m very fortunate that my work as a driving instructor with RED allows me the flexibility to be able to give back to the community. The work is really satisfying, seeing the smiles on their faces during our trips out makes it very worthwhile.”

Ray’s story shows giving back to the community is not only rewarding but also incredibly beneficial for the people supported. This Christmas those in a position to help individuals and groups that need support will provide a vital source of companionship and hope; significantly brightening up the holiday season for those who need it most.

Keep learning interesting and fun.

Fun and learning go together

Learning to drive is a serious matter. After all we are teaching our pupils how to drive safely for the remainder of their lives and they need to be aware of the consequences of their actions, not only to themselves but also how this will affect others. However, it is important that the whole lesson does not need to be devoted to ‘serious’ learning. Most people are more receptive to learning when they are enjoying themselves, so ensure that you share a joke or two with your pupils and have some fun, whilst learning.

Keep them motivated

It is likely that most Leaner’s will take approximately 6 months to 1 year to learn to drive. During this time, there may be many factors within their personal life that effect their ability or desire to continue learning to drive. Some of these ‘outside’ factors will be beyond your control, however by always being positive and having achievable goals to work towards, will help maintain the focus of your pupil.

Always complete a progress record card at the end of each lesson. This will give the pupil, and anyone they choose to share this information with, the ability to reflect on how things are progressing. You can also record their next appointment on the card, thus avoiding any confusion over time/date of next lesson.

Block book lessons

Agree the target date with your pupil, then agree the course of lessons that are required for preparation – book these into your diary. Remember, however that this is not set in stone and either party can alter/change the time frame if necessary, given sufficient notice.

From a business success view, block booking lessons will help you be able to manage your diary & time more efficiently. You will be able to see what hours/lessons you have planned and where best to ‘fit in’ other lessons or new pupils – this is particularly important if the area within which you teach is quite large. Pupils who have ‘regular’ lesson times are also less likely to forget, and this therefore helps reduce cancellations, and even if one lesson is cancelled there is always another planned.

Look after your pupil base

If you are following the advice from above, you will already be managing your pupil base quite well, although it doesn’t pay to become too complacent and there will always be the occasional pupil that can’t book ahead, and you may not be able to get hold of for a week or two. Try calling them at different times of the day and perhaps send them a text advising “that you are going to be in their area soon and wondered if they would like to book another lesson”.

Keep a basic record of how each pupil is progressing and what their next target is, along with the number of hours each pupil has taken/booked. An excel spreadsheet is a very simple way of doing this and will help you easily identify any pupils that haven’t had recent/regular lessons.

Manage your business

You need to know what your business plan is. At a very basic level this would require you to know what costs (franchise, fuel etc) need to be covered each week and what you require to earn, over and above this, to provide for your personal requirements. Once you know this figure, this can be transferred into the number of lessons that you need each week.

Eg.

Business costs      = £250
Living costs           = £450
Total                      = £700  (divided by hourly rate £25 = 28 hours)

It is always good to have a couple of extra hours booked in; this allows for any non-chargeable cancellations or alternatively if you have a couple of pupils that you know are wanting extra lessons, these could be fitted in at short notice to fill any cancelled lessons. Once you have your required quota of lessons booked, start to forward book any further lessons into the next week and beyond. Don’t be greedy but plan for the future.

Reducing cancellations

Some cancellations are inevitable but the frequency with which these happen and the effect this has on your business can be managed. Don’t be too soft – every cancellation reduces your profit and so you should have a strict (and plain) cancellation policy. Make a point of explaining what is written in the terms & conditions on the pupil progress card during the pupils first lesson and emphasise the reason why you may have to charge.

Block bookings with payment upfront are good way of helping reduce the effect of cancellations. Given that you already hold the pupils money there will not be any problems in receiving payment for the cancelled lesson and often the pupil will suddenly be available when they realise that it is going to cost them.

Building up a credit is a useful way of helping pupils to plan and budget for costs such as Theory / Practical Tests but also provides a way of you ensuring that the cost of any cancellation can be covered. Instead of giving your pupils a pound or two change every lesson, get some coin bags from your local bank, put the pupils name on it and save the change up for them.

Recommendations

If your pupils are happy with the teaching and service that you provide them, it is possible that they will share this with their friends and family. This positive feedback can lead to future bookings and new pupils.

You can encourage referrals by asking existing customers to hand out some business cards. Tell them to put their name on the back and tell their friend to bring the card with them to their 1st lesson – production of the card informs you who has managed to get you a referral and you could offer an incentive, perhaps a 10% reduction for the new customer. However, relying on the goodwill of your pupils to recommend you won’t always produce the results you may hope for. Providing them with an incentive to recommend you will increase the likelihood of this happening. Offering a free lesson or perhaps a £10 cash reward or voucher will increase these chances significantly.

Being a RED instructor is a partnership between you and RED.

Recognise ‘partnership’ with RED

A franchise is a two way opportunity. So it is as much about what we can do for you as it is about what you can do for yourself. You should consider every client that you receive or generate yourself as a business opportunity. What this means is you should recognise that your new client has the potential to generate even more work for you.

Actively market yourself before starting

We recommend you using your free marketing materials that RED will provide (business cards, postcards and posters) to distribute them in local shops, sports centres, staff rooms, coffee shops, hairdressers, takeaways, local garages and workshops, 6th forms and colleges/universities.

Spread the word

Tell all your friends, family, work colleagues and any friends on social networking sites. Add RED Driving Schools Facebook page to your own page. If you have children of school age make sure that ALL the parents know regardless of your child’s age.

Time frame for your business

You need to be realistic as to how long it will take to grow your business as you are coming into an established market place. As with any new business the first year will never be as profitable as the third. As you will learn better ways to sell double lessons, plan your diary and offer less discounts as you will be getting more recommendations where people will want to learn with you. You may also find that you can cover a smaller area as your recommendations will be closer to home.

Promos

Discuss with your business development manager potential promotion opportunities such as shopping centres, train stations, boot fairs, school fetes and summer fairs or you may have some other ideas. These are a fantastic way of kick starting your diary in the early days.

Keep an eye out for Part 2.

Recognise your pupils strengths and weaknesses

A key part of being a successful ADI is to be able to recognise the pupil’s strengths and weaknesses and use the information to help create an effective personal development plan. From this you will be able to choose a suitable training solution.

A key part of being a successful student is to be able to apply the same techniques to your own performance and to be able to recognise your own strengths and weaknesses.

In all training environments it is widely accepted that the use of the training cycle ensures a systematic approach. This approach leads to

• An individual’s training needs being identified
• A training solution being identified or designed
• Action/training taking place
• An evaluation to measure the impact of this action/training

In the learner driver environment you may be more familiar with this in the form of the basic lesson structure of Recap, Objective, Main Points, Practice, and Summary.

Preparing the ground

This cycle starts with identifying your training needs. It is virtually impossible to do this effectively without sufficient information. This is where you will need to work through the information you have been gathering such as action plans, session marking sheets and record of achievement.

 There are a number of personal challenges in undertaking an exercise of self-evaluation.

• It requires you to be honest with yourself
• Self-consciousness can make us very defensive, especially if we fear negative feedback.
• It requires a firm commitment actually to do something with the feedback in order to bring about a positive change.
• Impartiality can also be a problem

Step One

The first step is to obtain feedback from various sources over a period of time. This should include feedback from your customers, your colleagues, fellow students, your test results and the test results of your pupil’s. You should also regularly evaluate your own performance and note your strengths and weaknesses.  Including feedback from these various sources is often referred to as 360° feedback. A simple and effective way of gathering this information is to create a set of questionnaires.

Whoever your questionnaires are designed for, they should ask questions that target the same things but give you a different perspective from your own. You may think you state the fault clearly, but your pupils may not. You may think you praised them, but your pupils may not. You may see yourself as professionally presented, but your colleagues may not.

Once you have a sufficient amount of information you will need to analyse it. Remember, a definition of analysis is to break something down into its component parts in order to investigate how they affect the whole. It is not sufficient to generalise and ask yourself how your core competencies are. You should break this down, for example: If I noticed the driver’s faults, did I inform them? Did I inform them in good time? Did I state the fault clearly? Or did I use positive reinforcement when they did something well?

Step Two

Once you have analysed the feedback and identified aspects of your performance that require improvement, ensure that what has been noted is prioritised and a suitable solution identified and planned.

Not all issues identified within the feedback will require you to take formal training. A correction to a weakness may be made simply because the analysis exercise has raised your awareness. The corrective measure has to give you a good return on your investment – regardless of whether this investment is time, money or effort. Basically don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

So, if for example you have decided that your weakness was caused by not knowing what to do, a solution may be to identify a book or website that could improve your knowledge.

If you didn’t know how or why you should do it, you could contact your trainer, a colleague or even the industry forums for an explanation.

If you know what to do, how to do it and why, and have tried to put this into practice, but you still can’t do it, you may then need more training.

Step Three

This step is simple – carry out the solution, read the book, speak to someone or commit to and attend the necessary training.

Step Four

The final step in the cycle is often the most neglected. You need to determine if the desired outcome has been achieved. It is vital to evaluate the impact of the changes you have made or the training you have had. Are you getting better results? Is the feedback from your pupils more positive? Is the feedback from your colleagues more positive? If not why not?

…And so the cycle continues.

As stated earlier you are more familiar with this process within the basic lesson structure and therefore you already have the basis for this within your existing skills. The key now to becoming that successful student is to put the cycle into practice targeting your own weaknesses. If this is a new concept to you, the process may seem difficult. However, with guidance you will quickly become familiar and the process of creating a personal development plan becomes second nature. The effect of this will be that you, your business and your pupils will be reaping the benefits.

There are many books written on the subject of the Training Cycle. One that I would recommend and have found particularly useful is Penny Hackett’s ‘Training Practice’, which is used support the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) training courses.

You can continue to learn even once you are qualified.

There are numerous further or Advanced Driving Tests available for ADI’s which can help improve your own driving ability and count towards your CPD.  Some of the most popular are listed below. Which of these you choose should depend on how you, your customers and your business will benefit from the test.

Taking a practical driving test may not, on face value, give any benefit to your customers as it does not directly improve your teaching ability. However, the preparation you do will include improving your level of knowledge and understanding, which will indirectly improve your teaching. None of the practical driving qualifications will directly lead you to other revenue streams. If this is what you plan, you should add a qualification such as ORDIT registration or Fleet Trainer registration. Below is more detail regarding the practical driving tests.

DSA Cardington Special Test

The Cardington Special Test is only open to ADI’s. Conducted at the DSA’s Training and Development Headquarters in Cardington, Bedfordshire, it is graded in the same manner as the DIAmond Special Test (see below). Candidates drive for 80 – 90 minutes (including manoeuvres) and must receive no more than 3 driver faults in order to gain a Grade A pass. Certificates are only presented to candidates who score a Grade A. Although not a requirement for ORDIT the Cardington Special Test is recommended for people considering becoming ADI trainers. Gaining this qualification adds confidence in your ability, from a customer and employer’s perspective. It is recommended that you seek professional tuition from an ORDIT registered trainer who has already gained a Grade A before attempting this stringent test.

See www.direct.gov.uk (Search for Cardington Special Test)

The Institute of Advanced Motorists

The IAM test is the most popular advanced driving test as the test is open to all members of the public. Coaching is carried out by volunteer observers who are members of local groups. To receive coaching you must become an associate member of a local group. The easiest way to do this is by purchasing the ‘Skills for Life’ program. But at a cost of £139 this is not the cheapest advanced test/training available. IAM standards are based on the police driving system as outlined in the police training manual ‘Roadcraft’. All IAM examiners are either present or retired officers. An IAM test pass lasts for life once achieved.

See www.iam.org

The DIAmond Advanced Driving Test

Run by the Driving Instructors Association (DIA), the DIAmond Advanced Test is open to members of the public. It is a similar standard to the ADI part 2 test and is the only advanced test that is marked in the same manner as DSA tests, with the same pass/fail criteria. The test lasts for 60 minutes and includes manoeuvres (excluding emergency stop). As with part 2 tests you need to score fewer than 7 driver faults to pass. Due to its similarity to the ADI part 2 test, this is a useful way of independently testing your readiness and providing valuable experience of driving under test conditions.

The DIAmond Special Test

This test is similar to the DSA Cardington Special Test. It is designed for ADIs looking to further improve their driving standard after passing an advanced test. It is good preparation for ADI’s looking to join the Fleet and ORDIT registers. This test is conducted over 90 minutes and you must receive no more than 2 driver faults in order to receive a pass.

See www.driving.org

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents

RoSPA Advanced Tests are also based on the ‘Roadcraft’ system of driving. Unlike the IAM however they must be retaken every 3 years in order to claim you are still an advanced driver. RoSPA tests are graded at Bronze, Silver and Gold Level. It is generally agreed that RoSPA Bronze is a similar standard to IAM pass level. RoSPA Gold is claimed by many to be the highest standard advanced test open to the public. Training for a RoSPA test is also conducted by volunteers of local groups.

See www.roadar.org

Listening to a radio programme the other day they were talking about yet another increase in the number of ‘Silver Surfers’ and it would seem that the ‘baby boomers’ are slowly being weaned off more traditional methods in order to keep up or even catch up with technology. One lady had said that if it wasn’t for grocery shopping online she would have had to have been in a care home 3 years ago. 

If we take a good look at the current ADI qualification process, it clearly assesses your teaching ability using the bear minimum of resources. A good instructor can get the message across effectively without them so there’s no absolute need for gadgets to present briefings or fancy state-of-the-art diagrams. But, has this moved along with the times and is really what your clients want or even expect? 

Firside Jaguars

RED Driving Instructor, Dave Pickford, has found that being proactive has really helped him make a success of his business, and he has kindly shared some of his tips with us to help you do the same.

As Dave was still training and working on a trainee licence, the advice he received from his local Business Development Manager (BDM) was “to go out and make yourself famous.”  Dave really took this on board, and began by getting postcards and leaflets in shop windows, local takeaways, newsagents and coffee shops, as well as posting them door to door.  He also found that the shopping centre promotions helped generate a few leads.

Dave’s advice is “not to sit around and wait for the phone to ring, but to get out there and do what you can to make your phone ring.”

By setting goals of what you would like to earn and knowing how many hours you need to work to reach that target, you can keep yourself motivated and focus on achieving that goal.

By creating your own online presence, you could get your name known.  You could try having your own Facebook page, or using free online directories.  Make sure that you always follow our guidelines on how to do this effectively and get the best results.

You should always stay proactive, looking for any opportunity to promote yourself.  A fantastic example is how Dave Pickford has sponsored his son’s football team, the Firside Jaguars, based in Norwich.  He has provided the team with new shirts and has found that the publicity it has created has been really valuable.  Take a look at the photo of the team on the right.

If you have any other tips you would like to share, post a comment below, or head on over to Facebook and share your ideas.  (Remember, when using the RED brand, you need to get it approved by the marketing team).