Many tutors unintentionally write announcement emails as though they're apologising before anyone has objected. In this episode, I explore how anticipating parents' reactions can create doubts that were never there, and how shifting the focus to the genuine value of your offer can lead to clearer, more confident communication.
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👋🏽 Hello! I'm Sumantha McMahon, and I've supported over 100 tutors and education business owners.
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I've been redrafting a lot of emails lately. Not mine, but ones from the one-to-one tutors who I support. And what tends to happen is they send me a draft before it goes out, usually announcing something new. So it could be a price increase, a group they're launching, a change to how they work. And there's this underlying pattern in almost all of them. The email is apologizing for the thing they're announcing. It's never explicit, so no one writes sorry about this. It's more in the tone and the choice of language.
So the long explanation of why the increase is necessary, the line offering to keep the old rate for existing families, which by the way, I don't necessarily disagree with. It's more about how announcements kind of come out, what the tone is. you know, the reassurance that they completely understand if this doesn't work for you. And when I ask them about it, the answer is almost always some version of the same thing. I think.
Sumantha:
You know, they say to me, I think they'll say it's too expensive, or I don't think they'll want a group. So here's what's actually happened, or what's happening here. The tutor has decided what the parent's going to think before the parent has had a chance to think anything at all. And then written into the email is that imaginary objection, which means the parent opens an email and that email hands them a doubt that they hadn't even arrived with.
You've given them the reason to hesitate. And when they hesitate, it feels like confirmation. See, I was right. They didn't want it. Now the emails are the visible bit, but the assumption does more damage earlier than that email does. Because plenty of tutors never actually send the email at all. The price increase doesn't happen because you've already decided it's too much for your families. The group never launches because you've already decided that no, they're going to want a one-to-one.
Sumantha:
Nobody said any of that, or maybe you didn't even try kind of having that conversation in the right way. You made the decision on their behalf or based on the wrong thing, and then you treated your own guests as though that's the final answer. That's the bit I really want you to sit with today. Somebody who might have said yes, but they never really got asked, or got asked in the right way. And the way out of it isn't exactly confidence because you can't talk yourself into feeling confident.
About, let's say, a price increase that frightens you. It's actually simpler than that. You want to sit with the new thing that you're announcing and decide why you are so excited about it. Why did you make that decision? Think about all the reasons why it would be a good thing for the person who is seeing that, or why it's a very reasonable thing that doesn't really need much explanation.
Sumantha:
I recently did this exercise with a client where I said, right, your homework this week is to list all the reasons.
why your group class and the way you specifically teach and all the things that you've included in your designed offer, I want you to list all the reasons why these would actually be really good for your students. And then use that. We're going to use that in the tone of the email that you send them. A parent reading an email from someone who is pleased about what they've made and they're excited responds completely differently to one that's an email that is braced for a no. So before the next announcement goes out,
Read it back and ask yourself one question. Whose objection am I answering here? If nobody has raised that objection, take it out. Let them decide for themselves. They might surprise you. In fact, they usually do.
