Tutoring Service Business Plan

Strategy and Implementation Summary

Bryan's Tutoring will leverage its competitive edge to gain market share. These advantages offer students significant value including: individualized and group tutoring, specialized handout material, tutoring specific to courses and professors, the ability for the service to explain difficult concepts using easy-to-understand ideas and examples. The last advantage, the Systematic Analysis Framework provides students with a problem solving approach that is useful to the current question as well as being applicable to all of the student's other courses.

The marketing strategy will seek to work closely with the different professors. This will help Bryan's Tutoring get a steady stream of referrals from the professors. The marketing strategy will also rely on print advertising, taking the form of student newspaper advertisements as well as targeted flyers submitted to students and posted in student areas.

The sales strategy will be the process of converting students into customers. One facet of this strategy is the offering of periodic free sessions. The free session are designed to be an introduction of Bryan's Tutoring to new students who are unsure if they will benefit from tutoring. Bryan's Tutoring expects to have a high conversion rate into customers from these free sessions.

5.1 Competitive Edge

There are no other companies providing the specialized and targeted services to the target market. This gives the company an edge that will help it to survive for some time to come. The experience with and knowledge about each of the professors and their courses gives the company an ability to provide specialized services that no one else can compete with on anywhere near the same level. Moreover, the service is further differentiated by the following items:

1. Individualized service, based on personalized evaluation of each client and his or her specific needs and strengths. This takes into account the recognition that students learn in various ways, some students learn visually, others orally. Bryan's Tutoring first evaluates each student and their best way of learning and tailors the tutoring to most effective serve each student.
   
2. The option of one-on-one tutoring or review sessions offered to small groups (enough students so they can learn from each other, but not so many that it becomes confusing and distracting in the session).
   
3. Specialized handouts prepared over several years of tutoring.
   
4. Experience explaining difficult concepts and knowledge of what works best with certain types of students. Sessions can be focussed to better meet the needs of individual students.
   
5. Systematic Analysis Framework (SAF) will be applied to all tutoring. SAF is a system where each student is taught to properly approach any type of problem with a systematic method that provides them with the tools of handling problems with a formal problem solving technique, empowering the student to be able to learn more on their own. This is in contrast with most other tutors who assist the student with specific problems or questions. This is short sighted as it only addresses the difficulty at hand, it does not assist the student with problem solving techniques that provide students with tools to assist them in the future with unforseen problems.

5.2 Marketing Strategy

The real key to this business is staying ahead of the changing student roster. It is important to get out and get seen by all of the incoming students. Testimonials by prior clients are very helpful. A barbecue or party at the beginning of the year would give students a chance to meet and mingle with tutors and get to know who to turn to for help when they feel they need that extra little edge.

The marketing strategy will also incorporate a networking focus where the Bryan's Tutoring is in close contact with the professors. This allows the company to be quite familiar with the material the various professors are teaching. It also provides the professors with an opportunity to offer referrals to Bryan's Tutoring for students that need additional assistance that the school cannot provide.

While Bryan's Tutoring primarily serves Willamette University's graduate programs, it will also serve the undergraduate departments and other local colleges. Bryan's Tutoring will place advertisements in the different student newspapers. These advertisements will be effective due to their low cost and targeted readership. Students are the almost exclusive readers of the newspapers so Bryan's Tutoring receives considerable visibility.

Lastly, upon permission from the various schools, Bryan's Tutoring will disperse flyers into students mailboxes, communicating to the students the various services Bryan's Tutoring offers and why it stands out in terms of effectiveness relative to the competition. These flyers will also be posted on various bulletin boards within the student areas.

5.3 Sales Strategy

The bulk of sales come from word of mouth. When new students come into the school, the upperclassmen tell them about the resources available. So past clients provide most of the advertising for the company. Getting seen and getting the word out to new students is always important. One important message to convey is that the tutoring services are not just for slow students who are having a hard time keeping up, but for anyone who wants an edge and to get the most out of their learning experience.

Bryan's Tutoring will develop and maintain testimonials of past student clients for a sales pitch indicating just how helpful Bryan's Tutoring has been to the students. Bryan's Tutoring will periodically offer a free session, typically in the beginning of the school term. The goal of this session is to provide qualified leads with an opportunity to experience Bryan's Tutoring and view for themselves how effective the service can be. This sales event will be able to convert many possible customers into paying customers, people that possibly would not have even considered a tutoring service, not previously recognizing their own need for such a service. After the free session many "doubters" will be converted into customers.

The sales strategy will also emphasize the ability for students to create private groups for tutoring. By forming a group, the students pay less per person, Bryan's Tutoring makes more per hour, and it promotes group work, a fundamental educational and real world tool.

5.3.1 Sales Forecast

The sales forecast has been developed to predict future sales in a conservative manner. It is expected that sales will gradually increase as more students are served and the company receives more testimonials. At some point, since Bryan's Tutoring is a part time company, capacity will be reached in terms of the number of hours worked per week. From this point forward there will be an emphasis of serving groups which provide more revenue per hour. Please review the following table and chart which details monthly and yearly sales broken down by the various target customers.

5.4 Milestones

Several milestones will be set for Bryan's Tutoring as a way of monitoring progress of the organization in the pursuit of achieving realistic, lofty goals with the aim of building this business model into a part time, profitable source of revenue. The following table details the specific milestones and offers a timeline for completion.