Archive for November, 2009
Seasons greetings from the driving instructor in London, UK.
For those of you who will continue learning to drive over this holiday period, take care during your driving lessons, because the roads might not be busy with a lot of traffic but there could be other dangers that you should be aware of, in particular make sure you look out for black ice.
If you are an ADI taking a break during this not so busy time of the year for driving schools, I wish you all the best, continue to work on your driving instructor marketing efforts, so you can pick up on all those New Year resolutions from learner pupils who will be looking to pass thier test and get a full UK licence.
More Christmas and New Year Driving Advice
Artic weather driving tips
Driving instructor marketing ideas.
http://www.ukadi.co.uk
I got an enquiry to my Driving School mobile phone recently, and the conversation goes something like this:
Me: Hello, how can I help you?
Caller: Do you have a Female Driving Instructor working for you?
The person making the enquiries was a lady.
Me: No, I’m an independent school, and currently work alone, are the lessons for you, and do you live around Mill Hill, NW7?
Caller: Yes, and I want to take driving lessons with a female Instructor.
Me: Sorry, but you can still have tuition with me….
Caller: Click, the phone was dead.
I know there are some women who for religious reasons have to take lessons with a female driving instructor, but apart from that, personally I don’t think that a lady taking tuition with an ADI of the same sex guarantees a better service or learning experience.
If you as a woman just prefers to deal with a same sex ADI as a personal option, that is fine, but as I said in my AA Driving Lessons post, the quality of service you get depends totally on the individual teaching you to drive, and you can have a bad experience with a female driving instructor just as you could with a male counterpart no matter what organisation there are with!
DSA code of conduct
All instructors must abide by a code of conduct that has been agreed between the Driving Standards Agency and ADI representative bodies and part of it states:
“Personal Conduct.
The instructor will at all times behave in a professional manner towards clients. Clients will be treated with respect and consideration. The instructor will try to avoid physical contact with the client except in an emergency or in the normal course of greeting. Whilst reserving the right to decide against giving tuition, the instructor will not act in any way which contravenes legislation on discrimination.”
As a learner driver you must be treated professional by your ADI, and note the bit about physical contact, your driving instructor should not be touching you unnecessarily, whether they are male or female, so don’t tolerate this, tuition can be given with demonstrations or detailed explanations/talk through to enable you to learn any difficult skills.
You don’t need to go with a female driving instructor to avoid sexual harassment (which could be a crimminal offence anyway), change to someone else, this also applies if you are not getting value for money tuition or a good service. You shouldn’t be afraid to change instructors if you are not happy with you present one, loyality should be not come into it, because it is your money, neither should the fear of change, you might find it actually does wonders to your learning experience.
If you are looking for Driving Lessons in London around Mill Hill, Hendon, Kingsbury, Colindale and Burnt Oak and looking for quality, honest and reliable service conducted in a professional manner, then I would like to welcome you onboard as a pupil, but I’m not a female driving instructor despite my name, but I can give you the advice and help you need to pass the driving test, and get a full UK licence whatever gender you are.
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More Reading
Becoming a red driving school instructor.
How many driving lessons to pass the practical test?
Driving instructor salary
Driving Lessons Marketing for instructors
Pay as you Go Cheap ADI Training.
http://www.ukadi.co.uk
With the credit crunch hitting the economy hard only someone living in a dream land would believe that driving instructors are not affected as the red driving school instructor training programme sales people seems to be telling potential ADIs.
So how does one cope as a driving instructor during times of economic downturns?
Well you’ve got to put your business cap on, because being an ADI is not a job, but a business venture.
Personally for me, it has been a two fold effect, I’ve been getting a lot of calls from people looking for £15 driving lessons, which has meant fewer conversions from initial learner driver enquiries, while on the other hand I’ve had more people coming to me for tuition after deciding that it was too expensive learning to drive with national organisations like AA driving school, BSM, RED, etc and look for cheaper lessons from local independent instructors.
Keeping driving school afloat
Just like any other business, the first thing you do as an owner is see if you can reduce any costs, which with a driving school is not easy since most costs are either essential, or contracted, so immediate action is not possible.
You could however think about downsizing your driving school car, a little inconvinience from driving a less powerful car would see a smaller leasing fee, as well as less money being spent on petrol, especialy with the cost of fuel rising.
Other costs that could be reduced are mobile phone bills. Do you really need a contract phone with a monthly fixed cost, would a pay as you go option work, especially if you use alternative means to make calls and text messaging in the evening (landline calls could be free from home, and you could send text messages from the computer). These are business decisions that need to be made when you are suffering an economic downturn such as the current credit crunch.
Driving School Marketing
Every driving instructor must have a way of marketing their services to potential clients, and now more than ever, you need to work even harder to make sure that as many potential learner drivers as possible are aware of your driving school, the prices you charge, and why they should come to you as opposed to the instructor down the road!
Advertising is something that you should consider doing, Coca Cola the most successful drinks manufacturer continues to advertise despite it’s huge success and established brand name, so you need to use this means of marketing.
You should however closely monitor all your advertising efforts and find out which one works for you. I always make sure I ask each enquirer where they got my number from. Don’t just continue to advertise in the local paper, Yellow pages unless they are bearing dividends and a return on your investments.
You should also get a driving school website, and include well written marketing pages that will persuade potential clients to use your services.
Driving lesson prices
I don’t think it is a good idea to offer cheap driving lessons just to get more clients. You are running a business and trying to make a living, and you need to make a profit, so your prices must be set with that in mind.
As a business owner/driving instructor there are a few things you can do to survive the credit crunch, so don’t just only hope that things will change soon, be a part, by making changes.
More Reading
Red Driving School debate.
Driving School Marketing ideas for instructors
Pay as you Go Cheap ADI Training.
Cheap driving lessons london
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http://www.ukadi.co.uk
I have an ADI check test in Mill Hill on Wednesday 16th September 2009 around 12pm and I’m offering a 2hour free driving lesson to anyone available.
Please note that because this is a DSA quality assurance spot check, I can not use this time to carry out a mock driving test, it has to cover a normal lesson tuition session.
Talking about driving instructor check tests read this story about how an ADI ended up being removed from the DSA register after failing to show up for one, continued to offer cheap driving lessons to students, even taking one for a test, was caught by the DSA and got a criminal record for fraud after being successfully being prosecuted and convicted in a court of law.
If you are interested or know of anyone who could make use of this free driving lesson in this current credit crunch climate, then get in touch.
More Reading
Cheap Instructor Lessons
Driving Lessons Marketing for instructors
Pay as you Go Cheap ADI Training.
Subscribe to Driving Test Tips so you don’t miss any future articles or get updates direct to your inbox by Email.
http://www.ukadi.co.uk
The Daily Mail newspaper is reporting that the government is making a u-turn on an earlier decision to force driving instructors sitting in on tests as from October 2010.
I can’t find anything about this on the dsa website, and the twitter channel has nothing either, so an official announcement is probably in the pipeline.
The Daily Mail is also suggesting that this removal of compulsary observers could also mean a speedup in the introduction of independent driving during the test. we will have to wait for the DSA to make it all official.
In the meantime, the advice I would give learner drivers is to continue working hard on those driving lessons, put in as much private practice as you can, and get the practical assessment out of the way before these changes are made to an already tough driving test.
More Reading
Driving Instructor Marketing
Pay as you Go ADI Check Test Training.
Subscribe to Driving Test Tips so you don’t miss any future articles or get updates direct to your inbox by Email.
http://www.ukadi.co.uk
Winter is upon us driving instructors, and for many it is the most dreaded time of the year because business slows down as many learner drivers either take breaks to travel visiting family or divert money usually spent on driving lessons to the festive christmas gifts and this year will be no exception, but with the current credit crunch some might feel the effect more or even earlier than normally. Well this is time you can use to step up your driving school marketing efforts not only to get more learner drivers during the less busy christmas period, but more importantly for that new year rush when people renew their resolutions of getting that highly desired full British licence.
Even national organisations like AA, BSM, LDC and Red driving school recognise this trend and normally offer their franchise holders either a week or two of fee free benefits to boost earnings and help lighten the financial burden at this time of the year.
Now if you don’t hold a franchise that has these benefits, or are an independent operation that still has to pay for the driving school car lease and other running costs what marketing efforts can one do to make good use of the extra time we might have on our hands while hopefully finding a few more clients that might want our services. I’ll share a few tips that might help.
Marketing is one of the most ignored aspects of a business for many instructors, we spend time on administration (you keep records for the tax man I hope), accounts, checking with current pupils on lessons for the days or week ahead, clean the tuition vehicle, but not enough on advertising our services to generate more learner driver clients.
Being a good instructor is good, and will get you recommendations (some of which you have to turn away due to distance, I live and operate from Mill Hill and while I’d be willing to give driving lessons in hampstead which is slightly out of my normal coverage area, I can not give tuition to someone in Hackney E5 even if an ex-pupil recommended me), but you need to consistently market yourself to generate regular enquiries.
You need to learn from Red driving school and how they are agressively advertising to take advantage of the current economic climate, while I don’t condone their business model, if you ask anyone in the UK about becoming a driving instructor, RED is probably the name they will mention, because their presence is everywhere, TV, newspapers, online. You don’t have the budget of LGV, but there are still things you can do to make people aware of your services and increase your visibility to potential learner driver clients. I will list a few below:
1. Get a driving school website, or work actively at promoting the one you already have or see if there are any improvements that need to be done on it.
A website can be one of the most effective driving school marketing tools available to the instructor to promote his/her business and if setup and promoted properly could be the only means of pupil generation required to keep those enquiries coming in and one’s diary booked with adequate work, and contrary to what you might believe, setting up and maintaining an online presence need not cost a fortune. You can have an effective driving school marketing website for as little as £10 a year.
2. Make use of your present pupils as advertising and marketing resources. Most instructors might mention on a new learner driver’s first lesson that they can be rewarded for introducing a friend, and that is the last time you mention it to them. While you don’t want to hound them every week, think of times when it is worth mentioning to them again. If you have any special offers going for new learners, let them know to inform their friends, also remember that it might be for things like mock tests (you can sell the fact that doing it with a different instructor will more closely simulate the dsa test, as the friend will be assessed by a stranger thus more realistically let them know how prepared they are).
If your learner has had a particularly good lesson or session, that would be an appropriate time to remind them to blog about it (if they have a blog and include a link to your website), or post a comment on their facebook profile, they might be more willing to do it, and this could be a re-occuring referal for you.
3. Follow up on previous enquiries. If someone has given you a call in the past about learning to drive, call them up and find out if they are still interested in getting their full British licence (note I said ‘getting their full licence’) they might have rejected your services in the past because they wanted cheap driving lessons, but having gone down that route of £15 an hour (yep people expect me to offer them tuition at that rate in London) and failed due to improper instruction, or found out that a lot of information had been held back from them, they might wise up and consider paying for high quality services from honest fully qualified instructors like you. I prefer to call rather than text, as it is more effective in converting enquiries to sales.
4. Be of help to learner drivers on online forums. If you show yourself to be knowledgeable and consistently helpful to provisional licence holders who are either being taught by another instructor or family and friends, then you might start seeing people wanting to use you either to pass the test after a failed attempt or transfer to you from family in order to increase their chances of passing. Make sure you include a link to your website in your profile and signature that is appended to every post you make if allowed (see why you need a school website?). If you need more learners to take driving lessons with you, then you have the time to do this, and while the results might not be immediate, it will come if you persist and are consistent in being helpful to others.
5. Check up on lost pupils. Some of your old learner drivers might be thinking of returning to driving, and a call from you might be all they require to kick them into gear.
6. 6th form career advice. If you have a college near you, then you might try and see if you can give a talk on topics such as ‘Being self employed and running a your own business’. This might generate some enquiries in addition to the opportunity of giving out cards to 17 and 18 year olds.
7. Put graphics on your driving school car. While having a roof sign is good, it doesn’t advertise your services when you are not giving a lesson and don’t have it on your vehicle. If you lease your car, then you could opt for magnetic marketing signs which can easily be peeled off.
There are many other ways of marketing your instructor services, be creative and hopefully you will start to see the rewards. Remember which ever advertising methods work for you, should be continued, the most successfull brands keep advertising to keep their number one position (you will probably be seeing a Coke advert on the TV shortly this christmas season!).
More Reading
Driving Lessons Mill Mill
Why I became an Instructor
Subscribe to Driving Test Tips so you don’t miss any future articles or get updates direct to your inbox by Email.
http://www.ukadi.co.uk
With the current rising petrol prices, and the cost of running a car set to increase on January first 2010 with Value Added Tax (VAT) returning to 17.5%, Volvo is trying to woo driving instructors and other heavy users of petrol with its C30 range which claims to be able to cover up to 828 miles on one tank of petrol.
While many urban driving instructors like me might not be able to achieve those figures in cities like London, Birmingham, etc it is still worth considering if you are serious about cutting running costs. To promote this car, Volvo has launched a challenge on facebook entitled around the world in 80 days. For more details see the video below.
For those of you currently taking driving lessons, you might think this doesn’t apply to you, but the truth is that we all need to be more aware of our energy use once we pass the driving test, and not become lazy drivers who can’t walk anymore to the local newsagents or fish & chips shop but have to go in our vehicles, would not share the local school run with parents nearby because you don’t want their children messing up your new luxury car, or like racing at traffic lights with your sporty convertible.
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More Reading
Red Driving school con?
http://www.ukadi.co.uk
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Car insurance costs increase again
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While you are on the UK driving test, it is important that what ever you do, first of all you make sure that it is safe. You must not proceed just because the car in front of you does so, don’t play driving test games of follow the leader.
I’ve been on driving tests where candidates have used Bus Lanes just because the car in front went into it, others have gone into roadabouts because the car besides them entered even though it was not safe, turned right at a traffic light with oncoming vehicles following the car in front.
As a potential full UK licence owner, you must convince the DSA examiner that you are a safe driver according to their standards. It doesn’t matter what motorists generally do, you must abide by the road traffic act and the highway code if you want to pass the driving test.
More reading
Driving test in one hour.
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http://www.ukadi.co.uk
If you are learning to drive a car, then you ultimately want to book a driving test, pass and get your full UK driving licence.
With the current credit crunch biting hard, I’m not surprised that many learner drivers are looking for ways of getting a guaranteed driving test pass.
The only place you will be offered a guaranteed driving test pass is on some intensive driving courses, and usually what you do get offered is a free re-test and not your money back if you don’t pass your DSA driving assessment.
The reason some of these crash driving courses offer these driving test guarantees is not because they are very good schools, but that the very nature of a 5 day or 1 week residential intensive driving course you will cover a lot of material in a very short period, and most people will be able to get to test standard given the number of driving lessons you will have over the days you will be there. These cram driving sessions will be exhausting, repetitive (which is good in the short term for the driving test) and have been designed for one purpose only, getting a pass and not necessarilly being a good driver! In fact if you don’t drive for a long time after getting a driving licence through this means, it is possible for you to totally forget what you learnt during the week.
Don’t expect to be offered a driving test guarantee by a normal local ADI for the usual weekly lessons as passing the test is up to the individual on the day, and no matter how well your instructor has prepared you, at the end of the day it is what you do during those 40 minutes while the DSA examiner is in the car that counts, and from experience there can be some very strange behaviours exibited, with some learner drivers acting totally out of character either due to driving test nerves, some wrong advice by friends or family or even a decision by the candidate themselves to do something they haven’t be taught!
You as a learner driver can offer yourself a driving test pass guarantee by doing a few things:
1. Dont book a driving test until your instructor says so and you have covered the DSA syllabus and you know that you are truely independent at performing all tasks that will be required of you by the DSA examiner.
2. Get enough driving practise before presenting yourself at the DSA test centre.
3. Familiarise yourself with the requirements of the Driving Standards Agency. The DSA Website has all the information you need to know about the driving test to guarantee a pass. The DL 25 report form for example tells you how the DSA examiner assesses your driving. The DSA Book Driving – the Essential Skills: Safe Driving for Life
4. Build good driving habits. 40 minutes is a long time for a learner driver test candidate, and sooner than later all those bad habits will exhibit themselves, mirror checks, using the handbrake when necessary, moving off in the wrong gear, approaching junctions to fast, going over the speed limit! Don’t do anything that will fail you on the test during a driving lesson, your excuse that ‘I won’t do it on the test’ is you being a lazy learner driver!
Your Driving test pass guarantee is yourself, and the sooner you start putting in the necessary work, the more nearer you are to your goal of getting that coveted full UK license.
Dont forget you can’t book another driving test with the DSA after failing for another 10 days, so no matter the course you are on, you might have to take another trip down for the second or third attempt. Tuition and test fees might be included in the guarantee, but lodging, travel, meals and time off work are certainly not. Read the small print and don’t be sucked in by the sales pitch. These courses are not cheap after all.
More reading
Bad driving lessons.
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http://www.ukadi.co.uk
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