Improving Your RTO Business: 8 Ways to Stay Ahead of the Competition

Running an RTO business can be a fun experience if handled right. You get the satisfaction of helping clients with their training and educational needs, as well as making a difference in a range of industries. You will also have the joy of boosting the economy, putting your business into an important place. Businesses are only as good as they are performing against rivals, so here are eight ways you can stay ahead of the competition.

Understanding the Goals of an RTO

One of the first things your RTO business should be doing in the hopes of staying ahead of the competition is understanding what your goals are. This means understanding not only what you want as a business, but what the ASQA expects as an industry standard.

Your goals may be more local, to provide training and education within your city, or you may wish to expand these goals further and attract interest across the nation. Be clear with what you expect, and ensure everyone is on board with the goals, so that you can all work hard to achieve them.

Motivate Your Trainers and Staff

A priority for your RTO business should be ensuring your staff are happy to work with you. If your staff aren’t happy, they are more likely to produce assessments that are below standards and lose clients from a lack of effort in general.

Motivating staff is something that sounds easy but can be difficult to implement. In some cases, businesses assume their staff are motivated purely because they show up for work each day. It’s not enough to have staff coming in and out every day, you will need to work with them to keep them motivated and engaged. This will not only improve your employee’s work ethics but also lead to greater client satisfaction.

Some practices involved with motivating include you taking a personal genuine interest in their lives whilst not being intrusive. Ensure you are asking their opinions on things that relate to the business, and promise you’ll look into it. This will help to make them feel more involved with the business and have a sense of value.

In general, you should appreciate them not just as workers, but as human beings too. You can show this appreciation through gifts or bonuses, or simply performing random acts of kindness. Motivating your staff will make them feel more invested in the success of your business, making it a great thing for everyone involved.

Use the Latest Solutions Within the Industry

The RTO industry is forever changing, which means you will need to find the newest solutions to keep your standards high. The way businesses and schools wish to conduct assessments change constantly, even due to government interference in some cases. Whether your RTO is in the private, enterprise or government industry, you will benefit from updating your systems.

Consider working with a business that incorporates a range of features into a package such as Cloud Assess. They offer packages that support all your assessment needs and provide the tools to allow for user-profiles and account reviews. Your RTO should be incorporating all of these things and looking to support students and workers through online support if needed.

It will be worth your time investigating the industry, to find out what others are currently doing within your industry. Your competitors may have found solutions and products that suit their needs, which take users away from you.

Improve Your Marketing Strategy

It can all come down to your marketing strategy. If people aren’t even aware of your RTO business in the first place, then it’s likely that you’ll struggle to attract interest. If your business focuses on students, then you should be aware of how different the modern student is from those that came before.

Modern students are smart, entitled and loyal to brands. This means if a brand is well known, they are more likely to use them. The information age which we currently find ourselves in has given them access to mass amounts of data. This data allows them to inform their purchasing decisions, comparing courses through reviews and prices.

All of this means you need to be doing more to capture their attention. Identify your competitors to find out how they differ from you in marketing. It’s also worth looking at their overall branding style, as you will want yours to stand out in comparison. This means avoiding the use of the same colours or overall tone of their business.

Have a look at their websites to find out how they structure their course, and how easy they make it to process an enquiry. Your user experience on your website should be better than others like you, so have a play around with it or hire web building specialists. Specialists can be briefed on your business’s objectives, alongside website wishes, to perfectly construct the website you had in mind.

Focus On the Long-Term Where Possible

Whilst you should pay attention to the short-term goals of those you wish to educate and train, it is also worth noting that long-term thinking will bring much more positivity. This means you need to think of a long-term strategy, such as what courses you will offer and how it will be provided.

That’s why your strategy should involve you speaking to those you will help, as it will provide much-needed context to what you should be providing. You may find that they have a lot of good ideas on course structure, as well as course ideas in general.

The benefit of thinking ahead is that you will be prepared for the future. Analyse if your competitors are currently doing that, and find out what they’re trying to do so that you can plan accordingly.

Keep Up With General Innovation

In general, and not just with your RTO strategies, you should be looking to innovate wherever possible. Whether it’s the way you currently pay your staff or clock hours training, there are sure to be better ways than what you’re doing now.

As such, pay attention to innovation within your industry. Attend industry marketing events to find businesses that you could partner up with. These businesses could benefit you in all departments, leading to increased productivity and efficiency levels.

Improve the Service Quality

Of course, you can do everything on this list but it won’t matter unless your service quality is high. Low service quality will put people off working with you, and leave bad reviews to stop others first coming to you before you can even make an impact.

Service quality can come in different forms, so establish a system that provides adequate service, aimed towards what the client wants. It may be that you have to change up what you’re currently doing, emending training strategies as well as assessment ones.

Get Client Feedback

That’s why you should speak to your clients, to find out what exactly it is they expect from you. That way, you will be able to cater courses for what they need, either on a smaller scale or in masses. Speak to former clients to find out how they perceived the course, and survey those who enquire about your services to find out what you can do for them on a more personal scale. Above all, ensure you consider ways to support their learning, as well as the individuals themselves.