When you've established a tutoring business or even if you are just starting up in the business world, poaching is a serious concern on the minds of many.
We all know it happens, whether we know someone who was affected, someone who was poached before, or just heard of it in the general media. Just like anything, we want to know how to protect ourselves to give you the best chances of not having your clients poached.
There are various methods you can use in your tutoring business to avoid client poaching, from maintaining tutor scheduling to adding a non-compete clause to tutor contracts. Let’s dive right into it!
7 Ways to avoid client poaching
No tutoring company is protected from potential client poaching. That said, here are 7 exceptional ways to minimise the risk of losing potential customers.
1. Respect your tutors
Be fair to your tutors by giving them a fair cut and paying them as well as you can. This shows that you respect them and what they do. It's the general rule of thumb here: in a business, you have to make your employees feel valued.
Not only that, it gives you a competitive advantage; tutors are less likely to go to other agencies and are less likely to venture into self-employment with a good, steady income. You make it easy for them; they pretty much keep it easy going for you.
Top tip: Check out this guide of average tutoring rates in the UK if you’re unsure what you should pay your tutors.
2. Offer rewards for loyalty and good performance
Touching on respect, this expands into a few more forms that also should be known. Recognition and acknowledgment are just as important forms of respect.
Show appreciation for the work they do, and maybe offer rewards for loyalty and hitting certain milestones. Most likely, many tutors will have a personal development plan and will want the opportunity to build themselves.
See how you can help them grow. Look into the reasons they have gone into tutoring; majority of the time, it is a passion alongside other interests. Respect that they will have other things they want to pursue outside of tutoring, and allow flexibility for them to have time in their schedule to do that.
3. Let tutors focus on tutoring
Don't overload tutors and existing customers with administrative tasks and planning. You, as an agency, should make all of this easier for them. After all, this is the reason they are using an agency; they don't want to be managing and organising everything themselves. Let them feel your importance and sustain their need for your presence.
This includes matching tutors with the right students for their experience, teaching style, and availability. Additionally, you also need to get enough tutoring clients for each educator.
4. Give your tutors useful tools to supplement their teaching
Make resources available to the tutors, offer training tools, and provide any support you can. TutorCruncher can assist with this, as you can upload documents, tutors can create record reports within the system, and access one of the best online whiteboards to get creative in lessons.
Taking advantage of the many resources TutorCruncher has on offer can help your tutors grow their skills, plus it shows that you are investing in their development.
5. Focus on marketing the learning process, not the tutors
How you market your company is also very important, as a lot of tutoring companies often like to showcase their tutors along with their profiles. This makes it almost like a directory or a marketplace for clients and free advertisement for tutors.
We can see how this could also work for many companies in a certain direction to give an introduction to who clients and students can work with. But ultimately, limiting this information could benefit you better.
Focus on selling learning as a service rather than selling tutors. Showcase the powerful tools, services, guarantees, packages, and services as a whole, and it will make it a harder choice for a client to choose a private tutor over the company. You have to have a better offer to stay competitive.
6. Add a non-compete agreement to the contract
Speaking of packages, as a final legal requirement, you can include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract to refer to as a way to discourage poaching. In TutorCruncher, you can implement an employment contract in the sign-up process, making it electronic and safely stored.
Alternatively, you can take further action by not allowing there to be any direct contact between clients and tutors before it facilitates any conversations that can lead to poaching. You can hide student and client details so they are only viewable by the admin of your tutoring business, keeping you in control.
7. Keep track of tutor performance
While this method may not seem that relevant to client poaching, monitoring and evaluating tutor performance can tell you how invested your tutor is in your tutoring company. Using TutorCruncher, you can assess this with multiple features, such as:
- Tutor reviews – Clients can provide you with feedback of their learning experience.
- Tutor availability – Seeing how often your tutor schedules lessons can show you if they might be cutting you out.
- Income categorisation – This can help you visualise which clients are drifting away and might need some persuasion.
Wrapping up how to prevent client poaching
There are two ways about it, the client can give the tutor a preposition, or the tutor can pitch to the client. You just have to make sure you are giving them both a better deal than they can give each other.
Staying in contact with both your existing customers and tutors allows you to understand their experience with your tutoring company as well as pick up on any issues they may have along the way. You want to avoid being seen as an unnecessary middleman who doesn’t support their needs.
Investing in your employees is pivotal if you want to hire tutors who stay onboard for a long time and do not jump off early. So, make sure you are protected legally by marketing your unique learning experience and tracking your tutors’ performance.
