In this episode I explore how the things tutors repeatedly explain to potential and existing clients can reveal valuable gaps in what their market understands. Sumantha encourages tutors to pay attention to these recurring questions and recognise that their everyday expertise could become a useful resource, lead magnet, or even a new offer. By keeping track of what they explain repeatedly, tutors can uncover ideas they may have been overlooking because they have simply become part of the routine.
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👋🏽 Hello! I'm Sumantha McMahon, and I've supported over 100 tutors and education business owners.
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Here's a question. What do you find yourself explaining loads almost every time you, let's say, speak to a potential client or an existing one? Not the thing that you explain sometimes, the thing that you've said so often you could do it in your sleep. The bit of every inquiry call where you hear yourself starting the same sentence again. Most tutors think that that's just part of our jobs. You explain how the exams have changed, for example, you explain what the school isn't quite covering, that
Sumantha:
You can cover. You explain why the practice papers everyone's using, they're not the ones that matter. And you do it patiently every time because the parent in front of you, you know, doesn't know it's the first time that they're hearing it, even if you've repeated it to many people. I'd like to offer a slightly different reading of this situation. That thing that you keep repeating is potentially the market telling you what it wants. It's just telling you in the most inconvenient possible format, one person at a time for free.
Sumantha:
Because think about what it actually means. It means there is a gap in what people understand, and it's consistent enough that you meet it in nearly every conversation and you already have the answer. You've refined it through repetition, you've watched which bits land and which bits confuse people, and you've adjusted accordingly. So that's not really a conversation you're having. That's an offer, potentially, that you haven't built yet. Sometimes it's a small thing, like a guide, a short video, something you send before a call so the conversation can start somewhere useful.
Sumantha:
Sometimes it's much bigger than that. I've seen tutors realize that the thing they explain in every inquiry is an actual product. And the tutoring was more the delivery method that happened afterwards. And here's why it hides so well. It doesn't feel like expertise when you're doing it. It feels like admin, it feels like something you do in your sleep. Like the bit you have to get through before the real service starts. Things that feel routine to us are very hard to see as valuable because we've stopped noticing, because we just we just know it. We just do it.
Sumantha:
Now, I'm not saying that every single thing needs to be monetized, not at all. but I'm not talking about an offer that is necessarily monetized. It could be something that you send people before, if you know if they're not sure about working with you and it gives them confidence to work with you. And it's based on a pattern of a question that keeps getting asked. So you know there's a need for it. So in the next few weeks, why don't you start keeping a note?
Sumantha:
Not a formal one, just however you want, after every inquiry, or maybe even a reflection of past inquiries, and write down some things that you find yourself explaining over and over again. Do this for a few weeks and you'll have a list. And I'd be very surprised if there isn't something in there that needs building. It could be in the form of a lead magnet. Maybe it generates a lead magnet idea, maybe even an offer, or maybe just a resource.
