If you’ve ever worked in Sales…
then you’ll immediately understand the idea of what’s called the “sales pipeline”. Basically, the concept is that you have on the front end of your revenue-generating end of the business, a so called “funnel”. The goal of this funnel is to take in potential new customers along a journey from initiation to hopefully a final sales “closing”.
Why am i talking about a Sales Funnel? Bear with me as I introduce yet another concept, after which I promise to bring the two together in what will hopefully be a coherent idea.
In a typical “dojo” or martial arts academy, it’s not uncommon to see the progression of oneself go from a beginner white belt to hopefully and eventually a black belt. It’s safe to say most people understand how this works.
“The title of this article “Evolutionary Progression Life Cycle” is a model that i have been formulating and researching extensively over the course of my progression in a martial art for nearly a decade”
One of the key things I noticed was this rather traditional, in fact, ancient way of leading a pupil along a long journey of trials and tribulations – with exalting moments of extreme satisfaction that quite honestly is too amazing and out of the scope of this discussion. This path cannot be criticized as it’s a time-honored ritual that has been practised for thousands of years in some countries. They can only be truly understood if one goes through it personally. My point is, from a sales/cycle of progression perspective, typically a student of course pays a membership fee along the way.
Now here’s where i bring the two worlds together. In the former, we saw how there was a definitive beginning and end to an eventual moment of sale. In the latter, it was a slow progression potentially as long as a decade (typical black belts take ten years to attain).
While the latter may have less focus on the financial aspect of the matter, the feeling for me was that in a journey that can be long and potentially painful (broken bones, noses, ribs, backs, fingers… are all too common and comes with the territory), I felt that a very small.. (very very small) opportunity of “enhancement” could be introduced into the system that could actually help everyone from student to instructor to even the owner. Everyone can win.
This “Evolutionary Progression Life Cycle” model that eventually came to be is designed to do exactly that. To help augment the experience of the student along his/her journey where typically (unlike the sales funnel that has a salesperson continually massaging the client along the sales cycle) there is a small amount of engagement with the student (often a result of class size and logistic impossibility to do in a time-boxed class setting). This isn’t a slight to industries, practices, occupations, arts, schools or coaches. It’s simply a fact of life.
“There are of course opportunities for greater engagement”.
There are 1:1 sessions. In some industries there are sometimes events where all students are evaluated either through Kata’s and/or observation. Individuals are designated whether they qualify to move up rank and/or progress forward.
Unfortunately, sometimes (to a very small minority) to the dismay of a few unfortunate individuals that ‘don’t make the cut’. It happens. Sometimes you just have to deal with it.
Sadly for those few who feel demoralized or unfairly evaluated/treated, there is no bad intentions or malevolent feelings behind the matter. It’s just the way things are and how your coach has evaluated you.
Reviewing our previous article, the actual value of existing clients vs the true cost to new client acquisition, we are reminded the value of each and every one of our students.
By implementing the V3DA Hub simple model of “Evolutionary Progression Life Cycle”, the student quickly gains the accountability of his instructor. Perhaps a small tiny practically unnoticeable after fact footnote – but then again perhaps a significant one. The student gains insight to his progression at a more granular level, at least to a “structured” level. He has available to him, new “dimensions” of specialty/concepts to unlock when the time is right, or even the availability to purchase should he want to expedite his repertoire of dimensions to explore at an accelerated rate.
At the end of the day isn’t that what most people want? Visibility, accountability, the potentiality of speed, availability to share/upload and download, decentralized vs centralized, open vs closed. All the values of the “New Power Model“.