The 3 Stages That Turn Schools From “Maybe” Into Long-Term Partnerships

If you're an established children's activity or wellbeing provider and you're tired of:

• Sending emails schools and nurseries ignore
• Piecing together bookings term by term
• Relying only on public classes for income

Then the Get Fully Booked In Schools Masterclass will show you a better way.

Inside this training, Cerys breaks down the Position → Approach → Secure method used by hundreds of providers in her programmes to build consistent school partnerships and long-term contracts.

👉 Book your free place here

With thanks to our sponsors at LoveAdmin

If you run a children’s activity business, you’ll know this already.  The hard part isn’t the sessions.

It’s everything that sits around them.  The bookings, the payments, the messages, the registers, the forms… all the moving parts that come with trying to run something properly.  That’s where our partner LoveAdmin comes in.  It’s not about being the simplest system on the market.

It’s about having the right things in place.  The kind of functionality that actually reflects how children’s activity businesses are run, and gives you the visibility and control you need as you grow.

So instead of patching things together or outgrowing your setup every year, you’ve got one system that supports you to run more efficiently and build something sustainable.  If admin is starting to feel like a blocker rather than a support, it’s worth a look…

Go to LoveAdmin.com today to get started!

Access your free ThriveHub course, exclusive to Approaching Schools Podcast listeners at https://loveadmin.com/cerys-thrivehub/

Transcript

hello and welcome to the approaching schools Podcast. I'm Cerys Keneally, and I help children's activity providers to build key business relationships with schools and nurseries without having to use cold calling or stalking. I want to help you earn a more reliable and consistent income while building your social impact and enriching children's lives with ease. So join me as I take you on a journey, and let's make a positive

difference together.

If you run a children's activity business, you'll know this already. The hard part isn't the sessions. It hits everything that sits around them, the bookings, the payments, the messages, the registers, the forms, all the moving parts that come with trying to run something properly. That's where our partner love admin comes in. It's not about being the simplest system on the market. Is about having the right things in place, the kind of functionality that actually reflects how children's activity businesses are run, and gives you the visibility and control you need as you grow. So instead of patching things together or outgrowing your setup every year, you've got one system that supports you to run more efficiently and build something sustainable. If admin is starting to feel like a blocker rather than a support, it's worth a look. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the approaching schools podcast. Now today, I want to talk to you about something that almost every children's activity or well being provider experiences at some point in their business, you start reaching out to schools or nurseries. You know what you offer is brilliant. You know children benefit from it. You know teachers often love it when they see it in action. But when you actually try to get into schools and nurseries, the response is often silence, or maybe you do get the occasional booking, like a workshop day or a short block of sessions, maybe even a one off enrichment week, but it never quite turns into that stable, long term partnership that you imagined when you first had the idea to work in schools or nurseries. And I want to say something really important here, because in most cases, this is not happening because your offer isn't good enough. It's happening because schools and nurseries operate in a completely different decision making environment, but most businesses understand, because, as I've mentioned before on this podcast, schools and nurseries are not consumers. They are institutions, and they are balancing curriculum targets, budgets, safeguarding timetables, staff capacity, and pupils need all of this at once, so the providers who end up fully booked in schools aren't necessarily the most talented ones, but they're the ones who understand how decision makers in schools and nurseries actually make those decisions. And over the years, both from my time as a teacher and from helping 1000s of activity providers build school and nursery partnerships sustainably, I've noticed something very consistent. The providers who succeed follow a very clear process. I call it position approach, secure. And when these three things are in place, schools and nurseries start seeing you very differently. Instead of someone who is asking for opportunities, you become someone who school and nursery decision makers actively want to work with. So in this episode, I'm going to walk you through each stage. So let's start with position, because this is the foundation of everything, and this is where most children's activity and wellbeing providers accidentally undermine themselves without even realizing it. Most providers approach schools and nurseries positioning themselves as a service provider, and they say things like, I run dance classes. I provide sports coaching, I offer mindfulness sessions. I teach music. Now, these things might all be true, of course, but from a school or nursery's perspective, that positioning places you in the category of optional extras, nice to have, but not essential. And schools and nurseries are very, very careful, aren't they? A with what they bring into their environment. I talked about this on my previous episode, because every external provider introduces questions like, Is this safe? Is it aligned with our curriculum? Does it create extra admin? Is it worth the time? So if your positioning doesn't clearly show how you support the school or nursery's priorities, you end up sounding just like any other external activity provider, and schools and nurseries get approached by these all the time. So Now contrast that with a different way of positioning yourself and your services. So instead of positioning around what you do, you position around the outcomes that you can support inside the school or nursery. So for example, a dance provider isn't just delivering dance classes. They're supporting physical activity outcomes, confidence and self expression, engagement for pupils who struggle in traditional sports and a yoga provider isn't just teaching yoga, they're helping schools support emotional regulation, well being and calm transitions in the school day. And similarly, a sports provider isn't just running football or multi sports. They're supporting active lifestyles and teamwork and P curriculum enrichment. So when you position your work like that, something important happens. You stop sounding like a visitor selling a service, and you start sounding like a partner who actually understands education. And that shift is incredibly powerful, because schools are constantly looking for ways to enrich the experiences they offer pupils, but they really want to work with people who understand their environment, people who are going to understand safeguarding, people who understand the curriculum and people who understand the pressures that teachers are under. And this is why I often talk about enrichment providers becoming part of what I like to call the third workforce in education, we have teachers, we have support staff, and then we have the enrichment specialists who bring experiences into schools that teachers often don't have the time or expertise to deliver themselves, and When you start positioning yourself as part of that ecosystem, that's when schools and nurseries start to see you differently. Now let's just take a quick pause, because this is something that often makes more of a difference than people realize. How families actually see your organization before a parent ever books a place. They're picking up little signals, the way you communicate, the tone of your messages and the things they see online or hear from other parents, all of that shapes their impression of you inside. Love. Admins Thrive hub, there's a course called Building visibility and trust. It's about communicating in a way that feels clear, consistent and reflective of what your organization is about, from writing messages that sound like you to sharing stories that show the real difference your sessions make, if you'd like ideas for strengthening how families see and remember your organization, you can follow the link in the show notes to access the course that love admin are offering as a freebie for my listeners this month. So once you are your positioning is really clear. The next stage is approach, because even with brilliant positioning, the way you approach schools and nursery still matters enormously. And here's something that surprises many people, because schools are not ignoring your email. It doesn't mean that they're not interested. If you feel ignored and a bit ghosted. It usually means the timing, context or communication didn't quite land, because remember what a school environment is actually like. Teachers are teaching all day, aren't they? Senior leaders are managing staff, parents, safeguarding budgets and inspections, and many of them are still teaching as well. Admin teams are juggling hundreds of tasks, so an email arriving at the wrong moment can very easily get buried, and if you send one email and never follow up, it's very unlikely anything's actually going to happen. But the providers who build strong school and nursery partnerships, they're treating outreach very differently. They treat it like the beginning of a professional conversation, not a one off request, and that means they approach schools in quite structured cycles, just like we do in the approaching schools Academy. So instead of sending an email and hoping for a reply, they do something quite a bit more strategic than that. They reach out with. Relevance, they follow up with purpose, and they continue the conversation over time, because when school and nursery decision makers see your name more than once in a professional, helpful way, something important happens, because that's when you become familiar, and familiarity builds trust. Now this is exactly how many long term school and nursery partnerships actually begin, not with one email, but with a series of professional touch points. So for example, an introduction email, a follow up, sharing

something relevant to the school or nursery, a check in around enrichment opportunities, a conversation about upcoming term priorities, and each contact really deepens the relationship, and eventually the school or nursery begins to see you as someone who is genuinely interested in supporting them. And that's when those conversations actually start opening up and the final stage is secure. Now this is where you move from interest to actual long term agreements, because school and nursery decision makers might be interested in what you do, but if your offer isn't structured in a way that fits their environment, it's quite difficult actually for them to say yes. And this is where packaging becomes incredibly important. Many activity and wellbeing providers are only offering like hourly sessions, one off workshops, ad hoc bookings, terminally clubs. And when your offer looks like that, schools start treating it as something temporary. But when you package your work into clear programs schools can immediately see how it fits into their timetable. So for example, a six week wellbeing program, or a term long enrichment block, or an annual school confidence program, or a yearly curriculum linked activity series, because packaging helps schools and nurseries understand the structure and support of what you deliver, and then we have pricing, because if pricing is unclear or inconsistent, that is when school and nursery decision makers hesitate, but when pricing reflects clear value and outcomes, it becomes much easier for them to justify the investment that way. And finally, there is the payment structure, because sustainable school partnerships rely on clear agreements, not chasing invoices every few weeks, but setting up systems where both sides understand the expectations and when packaging, pricing and payment structure work together, you start moving from occasional bookings to predictable partnerships. Now, I have seen this transformation happen over and over again with my approaching schools, Academy members, providers who once relied entirely on public classes now have school and nursery partnerships providing consistent income. I have worked with providers who have gone from one school to working with 10. I've had some go from 10 to working with over 50. I've had people who have added 30,000 pounds or more on annual school partnerships within a year. I've had providers who have replaced their teaching salary with annual school contracts, and have also had providers who have built businesses where schools are the stable foundation, getting all their expenses covered and then profiting on top. And again, the key shift with them wasn't that they suddenly became better instructors or better activity providers, but it was that they followed a clear structure, position, approach, secure. And the timing for this is actually really important, because schools are constantly reviewing budgets, enrichment opportunities and curriculum support, but particularly around the new financial year, which means the providers who are positioned well right now are the ones who end up securing those long term partnerships. So if this episode made you think I need a clearer structure Cerys , then I would love to invite you to my get to fully booked in schools masterclass. Now this is happening on Thursday evening, at 8pm inside this masterclass, I'm going to show you how to position your offer to schools and nurseries so they see you as a partner, the outreach structure that gets schools and nurseries actually replying, and how to package your work so it leads to long term contracts instead of one off bookings. So if you run a children's activity or wellbeing business, whether that's dance, sports, yoga, music, drama, stem or anything similar, and you want schools to book and become a stable part of your business, come and join us. You can grab your place using the link in the show notes today. Okay, and remember this, schools and nurseries, they don't actually need more activities, but what they're really crying out for right now is the right partners. And when you position yourself properly, approach them strategically and secure agreements confidently, you can become exactly that. So thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Thank you for listening to the approaching schools podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, do come and let me know in my free group for children's activity providers approaching schools, so that I can make more content like this that you'll love. You can find me on my socials at carers kenealy And my inbox is always open. I would love for you to leave a review on iTunes and hit subscribe on your favorite platform so you can be the first to know when a new episode is ready. Until then, chat soon you Thank you