Speed to lead is a plain idea. The faster you respond to someone who asks about your school, the more likely they are to end up on your mat.
Every owner agrees with that. Very few have a system for it. Most schools I talk to follow up when the owner gets a free minute between classes, which means a lead might hear back in ten minutes or in two days.
This guide gives you the system. It is two text messages. I will give you both, word for word, and then show you how to set them up in whatever software you already use.
What happens to a lead in the first hour
Picture a mom on her couch at 8:30 at night. Her son has been glued to a screen all week. She sees your kids Jiu-Jitsu ad, taps it, and fills out the form.
Right then, she is as interested as she will ever be. She is picturing her kid in a gi. She has her phone in her hand.
Then life comes back. The dishwasher. A work email. Bedtime. Within the hour she has stopped thinking about your school. By tomorrow afternoon, when you finally call from a number she does not recognize, she lets it ring.
Nothing went wrong with the lead. She was a real person with real interest. What went wrong is that the interest had a short shelf life and nobody answered while it was fresh.
You cannot be on your phone at 8:30 at night. You are teaching, or you are finally home with your own family. So the first response cannot depend on you. It has to go out by itself.
This week: look at when your last twenty form fills came in. I would bet a good share arrived while you were on the mat or after you had gone home.
The first text, word for word
The first text goes out five minutes after someone fills out your form, and only if they have not picked a class time yet. Here it is:
Hey Sam, noticed you filled out the form to try a free class but didn’t get a chance to book yet. Here’s the link to our calendar so you can get scheduled.
Swap in the person’s first name, and put your booking link right after it. That is the whole message.
A few things about why it is written this way.
It sounds like a person. No school name in capital letters, no “Thank you for your inquiry.” It reads like something a coach would thumb out between classes.
It assumes the best. “Didn’t get a chance to book yet” gives them an easy reason. Maybe the kid started yelling. Maybe the page was slow. You are not accusing them of anything.
It asks for one thing. Tap the link, pick a time. There is no second question to think about.
Five minutes, not five seconds. If your form lets people choose a class time right away, plenty of them will. The five-minute gap gives them room to do that. The text is for the ones who got pulled away.
If she books, the texts stop. She gets a confirmation instead, then a reminder 24 hours before class and another 2 hours before with your address in it. Follow-up after booking is its own job, and I covered it in how to get more students without buying more junk leads.
The 24-hour text
If a full day goes by and she still has not booked, the second text goes out:
Hey Sam, just wanted to follow up to see if you had any questions about our Jiu-Jitsu program. Would love to have you come in and try a free class.
Change “Jiu-Jitsu” to whatever program they asked about.
Notice what is different. There is no link. The first text was written to get a booking. This one is written to start a conversation.
By now, if someone has not booked, there is usually a reason. They have a question they did not want to ask on a form. Is my kid too young? Do I need to be in shape first? How much is it after the free class? Will I be the only beginner?
This text gives them a door to ask it. And when they reply, that is your moment. A real answer from a real coach does more than any automated sequence can. Answer the question, then offer two class times.
This week: write down the five questions new people ask you most often and your honest two-sentence answer to each. Keep them in your notes app. When a reply comes in during a busy night, you or your front desk can respond in under a minute.
What not to send
The texts work because they are short and human. Most of the ways to ruin them involve adding things.
- Do not send your price list. Price without context is a reason to say no. Answer price honestly when they ask, in a conversation.
- Do not send a paragraph. If it takes more than one thumb-scroll to read, it reads like marketing.
- Do not send your whole schedule. A link to the calendar, or two specific times, is easier to say yes to than fourteen options.
- Do not ask two things at once. “What program are you interested in, and what days work, and how old is your child?” gets no answer. One ask per text.
- Do not guilt them. “Are you still interested?” and “I guess you’ve changed your mind” push people away. They are busy, not rude.
- Do not pretend a discount is about to expire. Fake deadlines cost you trust before they have even met you.
- Do not keep going forever. Owners ask me, “Doesn’t all this texting annoy people?” Two helpful texts in response to a form they filled out do not, in my experience. A text every day for two weeks would.
- Do not text people who did not ask. These messages go to someone who just gave you their number and asked about a class. Make sure your form says you will text them, and stop the moment anyone asks you to.
One more: do not send them to your homepage. If you include a link, it should open the calendar and nothing else.
How to set it up in the software you already have
You very likely already pay for something that can do this. Most gym management software, and most of the lead or CRM tools owners use, have a feature called automations, workflows or sequences. The names differ. The recipe is the same.
- Trigger: a new lead comes in from your website form.
- Wait: five minutes.
- Check: has this person booked a trial? If yes, stop.
- Send: the first text, with their first name and your booking link.
- Wait: 24 hours.
- Check again: booked? If yes, stop.
- Send: the second text.
- Notify: when anyone replies, alert you or your front desk, and stop the automation so a person takes over.
Step 3 is the one people skip. Without it, someone who booked a class four minutes ago gets a text saying they have not booked. That is worse than sending nothing.
If you cannot find the feature, ask your software’s support team one question: “Can I send an automatic text five minutes after a form fill, only if the person has not booked?” They get asked that a lot.
If your software truly cannot do it, do it by hand for a month. Turn on phone notifications for new form fills. Save both texts as keyboard shortcuts. Give the job to whoever is at the front desk during class. It will not be perfect, but it will beat tomorrow afternoon.
Then test it. Fill out your own form with your own number, do not book, and watch what arrives and when.
If you would rather have it built and watched for you, that is part of what we do with lead follow-up for martial arts schools. I also talk through follow-up and other pieces like it on my YouTube show, Jiu-Jitsu Marketing Secrets.
What to do this week
- Fill out your own form after hours and time how long the first response takes.
- Copy the two texts above into your software, or into your phone’s text shortcuts.
- Set the timing: 5 minutes, then 24 hours, and stop both if the person books.
- Check that your form tells people you will text them.
- Write your answers to the five questions new people ask most.
Two texts will not fix a school by themselves. They are one handoff in a longer path, from the ad to the landing page to the booking to the first class. But it is the handoff where I see the most students lost for the least reason. If you want to see where it sits in the whole system, I walk through it in the free training.