Time to reflect

If ever there were a time when our driving instructor associations could really start showing their value, you would think it might be now?  I've just had posted through my door issue 3 of the 'driver trainer' magazine.  We have one of the biggest shake-ups to our industry and the countries economy that we have all witnessed in our lifetime; that magazine is a poor product to its customers. 

I notice the big national franchisors are not slow in creating full-page advertisements in the above magazine in this time of uncertainty.  Capitalising on peoples fears is not an attractive look.  It is a symptom of what continues to anchor down our industry in the gutter.  Big national franchise companies are attempting to get ADI's in this time of uncertainty to sign up to contracts with financial commitments of £150-£250 per week.  Utterly appalling.  No-one seems to care.  Our associations far from acting as some kind of protection to these underhanded techniques are one of the mechanisms in which these big nationals market to us.  When I attend a driving instructor conference, the mixture of industry award giving and presence of the DVSA tends to go to the organisers heads.  These instructor associations tend to join in with the tiresome message from the DVSA of instructor policing.  Standards check testing appears to be the be all and end all.  Rather than acting on behalf of 40,000 instructors across the country, the conference appears to be centred around the fear of poor instruction, and training courses.    

But this has always been the way.  When are instructors properly treated as customers?  It is rare.  I've noted previously on this blog that courses and conferences that I attend do not get completed with Customer Surveys; if we were genuinely being treated like customers, then our feedback should be both desired and acted upon.  The culture within the industry is top-down in compliance.  The DVSA are quite rightly not slow in making it clear that driving instructors should provide value to their customers, but when does the voice of ADI's get listened to and acted upon?  Have you ever known a driving instructor association actually survey instructors about how they can help?  You would think that an organisation that represents 11,000 odd instructors might actually be keen to deliver enhancements to them.  This doesn't happen, because they don't actually ask instructors how they can help.  Perhaps they are frightened of being held to account?    

For those of you who deliberately do not monitor social media, ADI's have a voice, and many are shouting loud and clear.  Fear and frustration abound.  A phenomenal number of instructors now recognise the downside of having weekly/monthly financial commitments with franchisors.  With BIG TOM there is no franchise fee; if the franchisee does not work, the franchisee does not pay.  I like to keep things simple, you see.

HMG has decided to keep running driving tests for critical workers.  So, in theory, DVSA examiners are breaching the 2-metre distance rule for these workers.  In theory, there may be driving instructors providing driving training for customers who are critical workers so that they can then take a driving test.  I struggle to justify this breach of the national directives given; it seems to me to go against the grain somewhat.  I was due to give a course of driving training to a prison officer at a prison in Peterborough starting the day of the lockdown instigation.  Between the two of us, we had come to the conclusion that it was unwise and this was before the PM had even made the 5 pm announcement.  As we have all witnessed though, in times of national crisis, common sense is often lacking in human behaviour.



 

ADI Part 2/3 Pass Rates Dec 2019

The very latest test pass rates that have just been released by the DVSA (DRT0101) show that the Part 2 is 60% pass and Part 3 is 35% pass.

There are lots of reasons why they remain stubbornly low and would be a very good subject for a live video cam.  No sales from BIG TOM, no marketing, pure and simple free chat.  If you find yourself self-isolating or quarantined but able to participate in a shared video session now is the ideal time to get in touch!  

Email direct on info@bigtom.org.uk with your preferred day/time availability (please be flexible), once we have confirmation we will get back in touch.

Premiere division franchise

The advantage of the BIG TOM Driving School Franchise is that there are no franchise fees!  If a franchisee needs to take a break from working for ANY reason at all *cough cough* then no problem.  

When you turn the green light back on again with BIG TOM Admin, the courses start coming your way along with the advanced payments.  

There is a good reason why our strapline is "Less risk, more control".

How to source a driving school car

A very common question I get asked relates to sourcing the driving school car.  Many people who come into the industry have this impression that you need to have the very latest, incredibly expensive, snazzy driving school car possible.  You can do this, of course, if you like; there are plenty of dealerships out there who will offer very tempting contract purchase/lease deals.  You can reasonably expect to pay something in the region of £200-£250 per month for those kinds of deals.  

Interestingly, compare that kind of outlay with a franchise arrangement with one of the big national driving schools, where they provide a car, and you will see the costs spiralling upwards, up to four times as much.

Alternatively, there is always the second-hand market.  An instructor with BIG TOM took this option, where the initial outlay was a few thousand pounds, and that cost was very quickly replenished once he started providing BIG TOM intensive driving courses.  Not everyone has the ability to put their hands on a few thousand, but if you do, this is certainly an option to consider.  

It is worth giving this some thought.  I know of many newly qualified instructors who tie in to a fixed contract with a big national school and commit to paying large fees per week, just because a car is being provided.  It can be soul-destroying to see all your hard work simply lining the pockets of the franchisor.

Should you now be considering electric?  A tricky one to call.  I think there are still some questions to be asked about range, re-charging point availability and re-charge times.  There are still plenty of customers wanting manual tuition, however, there is a clear market for automatics.  Personally, I would welcome both to my franchise.

Happy hunting!

Experience vs grades

Any driving instructors who would like to consider joining the BIG TOM franchise but are worried about their Standards Check grade need worry no more.  Due to the assessment process that the DVSA use, I know that grade A does not necessarily equate to top class driving instruction.  It was W B Cameron who said: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

In a learning environment treating driving instructors and pupils like machines dumbs down the art of learning.  

Standards are everything, absolutely.  I'm not making any excuses here for shoddy workmanship.  I want BIG TOM customers to feel valued, to receive first-class driving tuition, and to be treated with respect.  This driving school's number one priority is safety.  

The only point I'm making is that to achieve these objectives does not rely upon a grade A DVSA standards check.... far from it.

I would say this, because it's true

If someone is considering changing a career to become a driving instructor, they will have several questions buzzing around their head.  Questions of a technical nature: am I supposed to tell them not to cross their hands when steering?  Some questions of self-doubt: I just don't know if I can teach someone how to do a parallel park.  But perhaps the biggest question relates to our most basic instinct: will I survive?

Perfectly natural questions.

I had all these questions, and more, ten years ago.  I considered myself a brave soul to give up a dependable, salaried income, but the actual benefits outweigh these initial fears.  It is a natural human behaviour to fear change; no-one should feel ashamed of it.  Being aware of our feelings is such a good skill to tell our pupils about when they learn to drive.  Emotions and feelings affect driving behaviours.
  
If you haven't already, browse around the BIG TOM website.  I would say this wouldn't I but what you see in action is a well-oiled, smoothly running business.  There will possibly be certain aspects running in the background which might not be immediately visible to the untrained eye, but they are there.  And that characteristic is what we would like to develop in you as a BIG TOM driving instructor.  It's not always necessary that our customers know about how we are assisting them to become safe drivers, but we are, and we do it with every single one of them.  It looks effortless, but as we all know, that doesn't mean it's easy.
  
Get in touch, let me buy you a coffee, tell me how you feel about this.  Let's help you to become part of this smoothly running business. 

The tale of the dozy driving instructors

Joining the BIG TOM Driving School Franchise has a variety of benefits - hopefully, you've already made yourself aware of them, which is why you are reading this blog.  But is there a catch?  How can you be paid £700 3 weeks in advance for working 4 hours per day, Monday to Friday?  How is it that you could do that twice in the same week and get paid £1400 3 weeks in advance?  

If you are new to the industry, then you may well be scratching your head at this point.  

In your local area, how many driving schools are specialising in intensive driving courses?  They do nothing else but intensive driving courses?  It won't be many.  

The fact is that it suits the majority of driving instructors very well to plod along with weekly driving lessons for their pupils.  It happens when it happens, no stress, cancellations galore by both parties, and everyone sleepwalk into driving tests as and when.  And then you get your customers who aren't happy with the prospect of taking, on average, 7 months to learn to drive.  These people are determined, have strict timescales to work to and frankly, are not sodding about.  They will pay good money to bypass the dozy driving instructors.  I cannot tell you how often I hear from customers who come to my intensive driving courses that they can't believe how much quicker the learning pace is with me.  They absolutely love the steeper learning curve.  Now that suits them, but what you have to remember is that it may not suit all driving instructors.  In fact, it probably doesn't suit the majority of driving instructors.  

When you offer the opportunity for a pupil to turn things around quickly without cutting corners on standards, you better make sure you can deliver.  Because if you can't provide "an accelerated learning programme" you're soon going to be exposed as a fake.  This is why the majority of driving instructors prefer to plod along.  To accelerate a learning process safely, without compromising on safety, customer experience or driving standards, it takes a combination of robust systems (the BIG TOM Driving Success Programme ©), and quality of the instructor.  No, I'm not referring to grades.  I'm talking about a whole raft of skills that are required to deliver quality instruction, within timescales, that gets results.  Your average, plod along driving instructor would not stand a chance of delivering this level of customer service. 
  

So next time, when you see/hear driving instructors discrediting 'intensive driving courses' just remember, the message they are projecting is an indication of their weaknesses.  There's an excellent reason why customers will pay you £700, 3 weeks in advance; it's because you belong to a business that has proven its worth for several years.