The Standard Training Protocol

Nobody ever asks me how to answer the phone. They ask how to handle the price objection. That instinct is backwards, and it is why the staff member you trained six months ago still freezes on a live call.

You would never teach a beginner to block by punching him in the face. Yet when you train staff we train them backwards... it’s like punching them in the face.

Have you asked yourself:

“why am I not enrolling more people?”
“why can’t my staff get this right?”
“why aren’t they renewing?”
“why aren’t the classes being taught the way I want?”
“why are the students undisciplined?”
“why do the leads I pay for never show up?”
“why can’t anybody close an enrollment except me?”
“why does the whole school fall apart the week I’m out of town?”
“why am I still doing the schedule myself every month?”
“why do we lose so many students after they become a Black Belt?”
“why does my newest instructor teach nothing like my best one? Or like me?”
“why does nobody follow up on a no-show?”
“why do my instructors freeze the second a parent complains?”
“why is the front desk a disaster every night I don’t close?”
“why do I keep hiring and re-hiring the same position?”

In most cases it comes down to process (systems) and training. I constantly see really great martial artists get frustrated by how their staff performs.

Why does most staff training fail?

Let’s use a simple example of getting them to answer the phone correctly. Now we know that the best leads are ones that reach out to us. If they bother to pick up the phone to call us, we should be getting them in the school pretty much 100% of the time, right? Maybe not...

First issue: No process

They don’t have a system (phone script in this case). At best they may verbally tell the staff member what to do, or at worst assume they would “understand how to answer the phone — after all how hard could that be?”

No script, no checklist, no class planner, and a new person told to “use their own words.” That sounds respectful. It’s actually abandonment. Nobody can be themselves at a task they can’t do yet.

Second issue: Training

This comes down to 2 parts as well: A) Training Backwards and/or B) Not enough training. Let’s start with doing it backwards.

What do I mean? Well, in our phone script example, I never get asked how to answer the phone. I almost always get asked “how do I answer if they ask about price?” “How do I answer if they ask about our class schedule?” “How do I answer if they say XXXXX.” In other words I get asked about objections rather than the whole phone process.

Why? It’s understandable because these are the areas that trip you up if you do it wrong. It gives us anxiety about how to answer so we over-focus on this. Then, when you train your staff on phone script you think you have to help them with objections and the rest is ignored.

This is just like punching them in the face (objection) before they learned basic technique (the phone script process).

The part that gives you anxiety is the part you train first. That instinct is exactly backwards.

Then there’s B) not enough training. The script exists. It’s printed. It’s laminated. It got read aloud once in a staff meeting where four people checked their phones. Owning a process and training a process are two different projects, and most schools finish the first and skip the second. That’s its own entry in advice that keeps owners broke.

So what’s the right process? Standard Training Protocol (STP)

Using the phone example (but it applies to everything including on the mat) the steps are:

1. Train on the system without objections or conflict. Do this until the system becomes natural and you have it memorized. Do not move forward till this is completed.
2. Train ONLY on objections or conflict. Do not move forward till this is completed.
3. Train on both the system and objections/conflict.
4. Repeat steps 1–3 regularly.

So how does this look in practice:

The key is you have to complete each stage and have mastered it before you move on. It is simple when I use the martial arts example but it breaks down when it’s other systems in your business. Let’s look at the details:

Step 1: system only, no conflict

Run the material clean. No resistance, no interruptions, no surprises. Out loud, to a mirror, then with a partner playing the easiest possible version of the other person.

The exit condition is not “he did it once.” The exit condition is that you don’t need the paper. Not mostly without looking. Without. You’re not done till all this is done.

This is the step everyone wants to rush. It feels remedial and a little embarrassing. It’s also the step that decides whether the other two work at all. You can’t handle a curveball while you’re still trying to remember what comes next. Step 1 is where you build the foundation for the rest.

Step 2: conflict only

Nothing but the hard part, back to back, with the easy material stripped out. For a phone script that means price and non-committal objections with no polite calls in between. For the enrollment conversation, it’s the four objections you actually get, on repeat.

The exit condition is that he handles them without looking at the script. You’re not done till this is done.

Isolating the hard part isn’t a clever training idea. It’s how every physical skill has ever been taught. You don’t get better at your spinning back kick by sparring more rounds. You drill the kick, alone, a hundred times, then put it back in. Objections are the technique. Drill the technique.

Note the order. Owners jump straight here because objections are what worry them, and that’s the backwards version. Step 2 works because Step 1 came first.

Step 3: mixed and dynamic

Random objections in random order. Mixed conditions. The distracted caller. The one who’s rude. The one who only wants to watch a class. Two objections stacked back to back. Rapid-fire drills. Games.

Step 3 is where confidence gets built, because by the time he gets here nothing that happens threatens his ability to keep going. He already owns the material and he already owns the hard part. All that’s left is arrangement.

Run Step 3 first and it doesn’t build confidence. It destroys it.

Step 4: repeat, regularly

The protocol isn’t a one-time “certification.” Skills decay, staff drift, and the version of the script being run in month nine is rarely the version you trained in month one. It’s like a big “telephone game” in your business.

Put steps 1 through 3 back on the schedule at a set interval. On the mat you would never teach a block once and assume it holds for a career.

Why the martial arts comparison?

Nobody teaches a jump spinning hook kick by starting with a sparring match, and no instructor would defend doing it. We understand in the physical world that adding complexity too early doesn’t speed up learning. It prevents it.

We understand it perfectly on the mat and forget it entirely at the front desk. Why? Because business skills feel like they should be easier. It’s just talking. He’s a good talker. He’ll pick it up.

He won’t pick it up. And that belief is close cousin to pure logic doesn’t run a school, where we assume a person under pressure will just reason their way to the right words.

Where does each step go wrong?

• Reading it in your head. Silent reading isn’t Step 1. The mouth has to make the shapes. There’s a physical difference between knowing what a sentence says and being able to say it. In martial arts that’s “talking about” the drill, not doing it.
• “We went over it.” Going over something isn’t repetition. If you can’t say how many times he ran it, he didn’t run it enough.
• Skipping Step 2. The most common failure in the protocol.
• A partner who’s too nice. This step runs on resistance. A partner who caves on the first response teaches the wrong lesson. A partner who plays an impossible prospect teaches nothing either. Tough, not theatrical.
• Starting at Step 3. The default at most schools, and the backwards training I described above.
• Only ever practicing with the same person. Your own team goes easy on you because they like you and they know the answers.
• Discussing instead of doing. Two people talk about the script for eleven minutes and run it twice. Stay in character.
• Never running Step 4. Certifying once and assuming it holds.

How do you know when someone is done?

The standard we use for the phone script staff onboarding (the first time they have done it):

• Write it out by hand.
• Pass a 171-point written test at 95% or better (163 points).
• Nine role plays with an instructor from his own school.
• Two role plays with an instructor from a different school.
• One role play with me.
• All of it logged, dated, and initialed.

The written test matters because it separates “I recognize this” from “I can produce this,” and those two feel identical from the inside. The logged role plays matter because they turn training from an intention into a count. Nine is a number. “Enough” isn’t.

A training standard nobody can fail is a training standard nobody passed.

What does training look like after onboarding?

Weekly: the rotation

After onboarding we train each week on a different part of the operation. Every week we train on instruction, systems, marketing and it rotates so over an 8 week time period they touch all of it.

Remedial: when the numbers say so

Lastly, remedial. If the numbers in an area are poor we train on that area. For example if enrollment rate is below 80% (from someone first in the door to enrollment), the staff or the individual with the poor numbers will train more.

Note: Isn’t that again the same as martial arts? If I wanted to compete, wouldn’t I first train for my first tournament really hard? Then keep training consistently and finally, if I performed poorly, wouldn’t I come back and train on the areas I needed to?

What else does this apply to?

Right now every one of those is being learned by somebody on your staff through improvisation and public failure. That’s the slowest and most expensive training method available.

The hard part is different in each one. For lobby talk it’s the parent who won’t stop talking. For collections it’s the apology spiral. But the structure never changes.

What to do this week

1. Pick one skill. Start with the phone script, because everything else in the business is downstream of it.
2. Write down the exit condition for each step. What has to be true before this person moves from 1 to 2, and 2 to 3? If you can’t write it, you don’t have a standard.
3. Put role plays on the schedule as a standing block. Not “when things slow down.” Things don’t slow down.
4. Run one Step 1 session. Twenty minutes, out loud, no objections, until they don’t need the paper.
5. Add one outside partner to your standard: someone from another school, or another manager, who has no reason to be kind.
6. Build your 8-week rotation (instruction, systems, marketing) and put Step 4 on the calendar now.
7. Pull your enrollment rate. If it’s under 80% from first visit to enrollment, that’s this month’s remedial training, and you already know who needs it.

Your staff will perform under pressure exactly the way they’ve trained under pressure, and not one degree better. If they’ve never trained under pressure, you’ll find out what they default to at the worst possible moment, in front of a parent who was ready to enroll.

Start them on the pad. That’s what the pad is for.