Stephen Perez: Yoga Teachers, Here’s How to Fill Up Your Workshops

Don’t miss YJ’s first-ever Business of Yoga online course, launching in 2015. Sign up here now to receive powerful teachings from our experts and free videos each week to take your yoga career to the next level.

What are the best steps to promote my workshops? I specifically want to know about workshops, not retreats or other events. — Renseema

Justin + Karen’s advice:

To sell out workshops as a yoga teacher, you will need to master sales techniques that work mentions of your upcoming offerings into your classes and hone your skills in creating promotional marketing materials. We cover the exact steps for each of these in this week’s video.

2 Workshop Sales Mistakes to Avoid

1. In the classroom, one of the biggest mistakes you want to avoid is combining the workshop offering with other offerings. Remember to always stick to one sales offer per class.

2. Another mistake you want to avoid is waiting until the end of the class, after your students have come up from Savasana and are rolling their mats, running out the door, to mention your program.

Better Approach to Selling Workshops

The key is to ensure that there is a fluidity to the sales, so that the theme of the workshop can be easily incorporated within the theme of the classroom teaching. This way, you are more free to mention the workshop along the way, from the beginning of the class, to the end. The final offer, at the end of the class, becomes then a short and sweet (not invasive) call to action.

Selling this way will be seamless. But, it does take practice. It will require you thinking about the sales along with the actual sequence you are building for that particular class. We get into the specifics in the video below.

How to Write Better Promotional Materials

In terms of promo material, remember to emphasize the outcome. Most of us are looking to gain a particular set of results from whatever programs we buy we are not looking to buy the program, but the outcome. Your marketing material must be specific about the users’ ultimate benefit and results from participating. In sum, when creating your promo, you must have a clear answer to this simple and most important question: WHY should anyone sign up? What’s in it for them? If sales scare you, then it is time to practice
shifting your mind around this. You are selling YOGA, the healing benefits of an ancient practice. Remember that yoga has changed your life, and it will change the lives of others.

Watch the Video for More Tips

ABOUT OUR EXPERTS
Justin Michael Williams is a vibrant public speaker, musician, and successful yoga instructor who travels the globe training the conscious community to thrive in marketing, media, and business. He has spearheaded the marketing development and social media of over 150 brands, both large and small, including, Sianna Sherman, Ashley Turner, Noah Mazé, and more. He is also the Co-Founder of the Business of Yoga, LLC and hosts Yoga Business Retreats around the world, helping yoga teachers flourish in business. By using his expertise to coach individuals and nonprofits, Justin works to spread positivity and inspire change throughout the social web. See more at justinmichaelwilliams.com

Karen Mozes is a successful entrepreneur, executive and life coach, and leadership expert. She brings to the world of transformational coaching, writing and public speaking her many years of dedicated studies and application in the fields of science, eastern philosophy, teaching and yoga. With several years of work experience in the corporate world and then as a principal at a sustainability consulting firm, Karen is uniquely suited to coach in business management, communication techniques and team leadership. Karen has created and successfully applied her own coaching programs, the Cinco Method (for entrepreneurs) and Team Climate Change (for design teams) across a wide range of sectors and company sizes. Karen is also the co-founder of the Business of Yoga LLC and its popular program, the Yoga Business Retreat. For more, visit cincoconsultingsolutions.com