How to use Strategy Charts to promote your coaching institutes
So, you've launched your coaching center, and you see yourself on the road to success. You imagine swarms of students entering through those doors, all ready to be enlightened and taught with the best resources you've acquired with a lot of hard work. You think it would be a fantastic turn of events if you outsmarted your competitors by being better in everything they do. You'll up the scales on your methods of teaching by providing more competitive content for students to prepare from. You'll raise the standards of teachers that wish to teach at your institute, and you'll build your institute like its come out of a dream. Seems doable, right?
You can't look at competition and say you're going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you're going to do it differently. - Steve Jobs
You're in the toughest competition related to the education sector. To try to stand out in a business that's pumping out $35 billion is something that does require a lot of thought. You have the same elements as your competitors: teachers, teaching methods, pricing, facilities, location of your institute and more. How are you going to use these features to your benefit, when the same features are being used in the competition you are in?
That's the question I'll be answering in this article. So go grab yourself a paper and a pen (a scale is optional if you want to make what you write look pretty), sit back, and read on. Here's a smart idea that will get your coaching institute recognized and popular.
So, what's a Strategy Canvas?
The year 2005 saw the release of a must-read business book, that sold over a million copies. Authored by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy has helped create strategies for people who want to make the most out of their business. The idea behind the book was to help readers create an undisputed and uncontested market space for them to grow their business and reach their goals. The book is based on a study of 150 strategic moves that covers more than a 100 years and 30 industries. One such technique spelled out for the reader is the Strategy Canvas.
The strategy canvas is a line graph that plots factors in a specific industry, against the importance of each factor for an organization and its competitors, and then overlaps competitors or industry benchmarks. What the technique helps an individual or a strategy team find is new market spaces. It cannot help you find them by itself, but it can offer you a visualization that would turn on the switch in your brain. If you'd like to try your hand at this, click here to build your own strategy chart.
How do you use such a chart?
Here's an example of what I envision the coaching industry to look like. On the horizontal axis lies the factors, on which runs the entire industry. There may be many such factors that are important, but I've reduced it to five for simpler understanding. On the vertical axis lies the range 0 to 40, 0 being the lowest, and 40 being the highest. Each point on the graph denotes the "rating" awarded to each factor in the industry in general.
Let's word out what we all see: number of teachers in the industry are generally fantastic, their teaching methodologies are good enough, the pricing of said coaching institutes are high, with average facilities being offered in a location that houses a growing student population. What would be considered normal would be for you to plot the graph of your own institute, use the above example as your benchmark, and try to "better" your institute to meet the benchmark. Or get somewhere around there. I bet you would've started to plot your graph with the same idea. Put that pen down before you commit the biggest possible mistake in the history of all mistakes.
What's wrong with setting the above example as a benchmark?
Everything. What you get after using the industry's record for you to achieve your goal, is nothing. You're walking down the same path, keeping your eyes glued to the ground, as you try to meet benchmarks and halfway through the journey, you start to wonder whether this is worth it or no. There's nothing different you're trying here; it'll seem like you're walking in circles. You will be achieving the same results, not something better.
The strategy canvas can help us communicate a wholly differentiated strategy. As another example, I've overlaid a coaching institute on top of the above example to give me this result:
The gray line is the example coaching institute. We see here that the coaching institute ABC has made a differentiated strategy, where they cut out on pricing and facilities to offer not too teachers with fantastic teaching methodologies. By cutting out major factors that are important in the industry, ABC has created a market space of their own. Reducing the facilities provided by the coaching institute has greatly reduced the price a customer has to pay to enroll their child for their classes.
If you try to overlay another graph with regard to the same industry, say schools, you would find these schools offering parents a multitude of teachers, with the best facilities, all at a high cost. If you compare the three graphs, you might find more areas you could exploit to gain the best possible results.
Capitalizing on where you can create an opportunity for yourself in a booming industry such as education, is where success lies. Think outside the box. It helps.
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