ADI The Facts!

A Career as an ADI - The Facts!

Search the internet and it doesn’t take long to find all kinds of stories and conflicting information about what life is really like as a driving instructor. Here at Key Instructor Training our policy is to be transparent and honest with our clients. As a reputable independent market leader in the training of driving instructors we want to ensure that anyone thinking of embarking on a career as a driving instructor is aware of all of the facts and well prepared to succeed.

Here we cover some controversial subjects around working as an ADI and try to provide you with the honest pro’s and con’s to help you make informed choices. Subjects covered include:-

What is a Realistic Earning Potential?

Choosing a Driving School

What should a Driving School Provide for Me?

What is a Realistic Earning Potential as a Driving Instructor?

£30k-£40k per year….is this achievable?
The simple answer is that it is absolutely achievable with the right backing. But like anything in life the more you put in, the more you take out. To achieve £30k - £40k a year you will need a good supply of leads. Initially these will need to be generated by advertising, but over time if you work hard your students will recommend you and your number of referred new clients will grow. You will also need to work hard – you won’t earn £30-£40k if you want to work part time hours as a driving instructor. Finally you will need to ensure that someone answers the phone to new students when they phone – difficult to do if you are out working all the time, but you won’t have a full diary if you don’t talk to anyone.

So it’s not easy but with hard work and dedication it is achievable. And if this is your ambition, a franchise with the right driving school should help you with the generation of new pupils and with answering the phones and keeping you diary full. (See earnings table for more info).

How soon will I earn a good wage?

This depends on a number of things. You won’t have a full diary on day one. It will take a few weeks (or in some cases slightly longer) to build your diary.
When you start out you need a diary full of brand new pupils and these pupils need to be found. Generally, if you do a good job you will keep most of these pupils for some time and only need new ones as a “trickle supply” for example when existing learners pass their test etc. As you become more experienced and your diary is full you will find that some of your pupils recommend you to their friends and family members. Add this to other pupils that come onboard and it is a recipe for a constantly busy diary. There will always be unforeseen circumstances such as cancelations when a pupil is ill etc, but with the right training you can learn to manage your pupils and your diary to accommodate this. For example, most good instructors, once busy, find that many of their pupils are begging for extra lessons because they want to pass their test quickly. If someone cancels it is often possible to fill that space by making a couple of quick telephone calls to other pupils and offering them an extra lesson.

Choosing a Driving School to Work For

Ensuring that you choose the correct driving school is the single most important factor in ensuring a busy diary. There are four main options…

Multi-national “big brand” driving schools:
These certainly have a huge market share and the big brands attract a lot of pupils. Some people say however that because of their size they often have a huge number of instructors which can mean that there are not enough pupils to go round.

These schools tend to charge higher weekly franchise fees than some smaller schools, which can eat into your income. Some even charge an introduction fee in addition to their franchise fee for each pupil that they provide.

In order to make their franchise more affordable the big schools often charge a higher hourly rate for learners. This may sound attractive to the instructor, but remember that in these uncertain times high priced driving lessons are beyond the affordability of many people which can limit the numbers of pupils that you will attract.

Go it Alone:
Many driving instructors operate successful “one man band” schools and earn a reasonably good income from doing so.

Many of these instructors are well established and get most of their work through word of mouth and recommendations following on from many years of being in the profession.

If you want to generate new pupils as a newly qualified driving instructor (who is not yet established) the costs for advertising can be extremely high and far outweigh the cost of a franchise with no guarantees that the phone will ever ring.

Also remember that if you are teaching it is almost impossible to spend time on the phone “selling” yourself. Therefore if potential customers call and leave a message it is not unusual for them to have already booked with another school by the time you call them back.

Joining a Local Instructor:
These days many local one man band instructors are becoming quite busy and therefore they sometimes take on one or two other instructors to help out with the workload.

This can be a great way to get work as a driving instructor but do bear in mind that the lead instructor usually takes all of the calls and therefore by right will have the pick of the work.

We do get people coming to us who have been in this situation and found themselves picking up the leftover jobs that the other instructors didn’t want to do and often (especially with the credit crunch) the main instructor fills their diary and there isn’t enough work to ensure everyone else is busy.

Mid sized driving schools (such as Key Driving School)
We like to think that with us you get the best of both worlds.

We are large enough to ensure that we spend enough money on marketing to obtain plenty of work for our instructors.

We remain small enough to know all our instructors and offer a real personal service.

We cannot afford to lose an instructor and we go to the ends of the earth to ensure that we keep our instructors busy.

We offer a competitively priced franchise and also price our driving lessons competitively.

We are not the cheapest (we don’t need to be) but we certainly are not the most expensive. This means that our cost coupled with our excellent reputation lead to a substantial amount of new learner enquiries coming in every day to build a new instructors’ diary in a timely manner, and keep it full.

What should a Driving School provide for me?

Once you have joined a driving school and started to pay them money, it is too late to realise you are not really getting value for money. To help you we have tried to provide below a resume of what we do to look after our instructors, if you are considering joining a driving school, we suggest that you check with them to see that they provide all of this:-

Once you are qualified (or in the cases of our trainee instructors, once a start date is agreed)

We will ensure that the car of your choice is ordered.
We will use the services of our marketing expert to create an individual marketing plan for your locality.
This will include researching your competitors and local media available and strategically building a plan to have maximum impact in your area .We commonly advertise in newspapers, magazines, by leaflets, colleges, university halls, the internet, and in some cases even Radio!
In the weeks leading up to your start we will closely monitor the performance of your marketing and make changes where necessary. This usually means that by the time you start work the phone is ringing. Indeed in many cases our new starters have plenty of work before they even pick their car up! Once you have your car though people will see it and this will reinforce the adverts and everything will really kick into action.
Once you start you will speak with one of our Directors on a regular basis (note that you speak to someone at board level and not just a staff member in a call centre). We will work closely with you and our marketing expert to ensure that the diary continues to build as fast as possible. We monitor your diary and “tweak” our advertising campaigns as necessary to ensure that once your diary is full it remains that way.

Get more honest opinions about training and working as a driving instructor by visiting our Driving Instructor Training Blog

How can we help?

If you are considering training for a new career as a driving instructor please give us a ring, we would be delighted to offer any help and advice you need. 0800 567 7669.

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