The way people search for information in the moment of considering a purchase makes the companies to look for better ways to address their needs and meet them halfway. For flight schools this is more latent and previous ways used to qualify the prospect students are not enough anymore, which requires from them new approaches to achieve their goals.

A process used before was called BANT (an acronym for Budget, Authority, Needs, and Timeline, which were the aspects to evaluate from the prospects) and worked flawlessly in a time when the prospects knew nothing about the flight school at the moment they showed up with the admissions team. But now, they know a lot about the flight school before even thinking about meeting the admissions team in person and this process is not enough on its own to work.

That’s why we’ll describe new aspects to keep in mind when qualifying students and process that nowadays work better to do it..

1. GPCT

This is an acronym for Goals, Plans, Challenges, Time. These are key indicators to evaluate if a prospect is a qualified on for your school and these are the processes behind each one of them:

  1.  Goal: You’ll need to determine quantifiable goals that your prospect is pursuing so you can use this knowledge to reach them appropriately and positioning your company as a truthful advisor that can help them to achieve them.

  2. Plan: Knowing the prospect goals, you can proceed to identify what are the prospect plans. In this step you will find out the plans the prospect may have tried already or the ones he plans still to do to achieve the goal. This can give you further guidance in order to help on any of the plans they have or suggest new ones.

  3. Challenge:  The challenge for the flight school in this step is determine how it can help the prospect to overcome their own challenges that are in the way of achieving the goals. Establishing these ones can be done by asking them questions in regards of expertise to be able to overcome them, if they feel like they need help to do it and if they have thought ways to overcome them. In that way the admissions team can better clarify the fact that the prospect indeed needs our help. 

  4. Time: In this step you’ll assess the timeframe that the prospect has in mind to achieve the goal, to implement the plan and to overcome the challenge. This is critical because depending on the availability of time to invest on all these aspects, it may or may not be wise to invest more time in the prospect, which is the whole reason for the qualification process.

Related Article: How to Set a SMART Goal for Your Flight School Marketing Plan

2. BA

After assessing the prospect’s intentions and purpose and determining that indeed your flight school can help with the achievement of the goal pursued in the time required, following the plan and overcoming the challenge established is necessary to determine as well the way to make the decision come true and the funding for all that.

  1. Budget: Knowing exactly how much will be spent and avoiding ugly surprises once the plan has started its implementation is extremely necessary for the prospect and the flight school. In this aspect, the flight school has to be honest and straightforward, laying out all the facts that will help to determine if the prospect is able to invest in the solution provided by your school or not.

  2. Authority: This last step refers to the decision maker who, in this case, is the actual prospect. Is necessary to ensure that all the previous steps results have been explained clearly and discussed enough to ensure the best decision from their end as well as from the side of the flight school. Asking questions as a confirmation for the previous steps as well as to make sure the prospect is involved with all of them is the way to proceed in this stage.

Learn: How Important Admission Training is For Flight School Business


New ways of interacting and evaluating qualified students are already here for flight schools to use and it is necessary to move forward with them to ensure your school is not left behind, with a decrease in the amount of students enrolled, or worse, investing in non qualified prospects.

These new qualification process are here to help your school to grow and continue providing the best service possible to the students.

How to Improve Your Recruitment Process to Attract Qualified Student Pilots  
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