Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
What parents ask before enrolling a child in swimming
Parents ask about the instructor-to-child ratio, who is watching, the depth, the water and what happens if a child panics. Answer those six before the fee.
The GullySales team · Updated 3 Oct 2026 · 8 min read
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Before a parent asks your fee, she asks six things: how many children one instructor takes, who is watching while he teaches, how deep the water is where her child will stand, how the water is cleaned, what happens if her child panics, and how long before she can swim across. Answer those in the first conversation and the fee question becomes easy. Most pools answer them vaguely, which is why a mother rings three academies and books the one that sounded specific.
The six questions, and what is behind each one
| What she asks | What she is really checking | What answers it |
|---|---|---|
| How many children in a batch? | Whether her child gets attention or stands in a queue | Your real number, per instructor, not per batch |
| Who is watching? | Whether anyone is free to react | Who is on the deck while the instructor is teaching |
| How deep is it? | Whether her child can stand up | The depth at the shallow end, in feet, and where beginners work |
| How is the water cleaned? | Rashes, eyes, ear infections | What you test, how it is recorded, and where she can see it |
| What if she panics? | How your staff behave in a bad moment | What the first session is, step by step |
| How long until she can swim? | Whether this is worth the driving | What the level takes and what the next one is |
Read the right-hand column. Every one of those answers is a fact about how you run the pool, not a line of copy. The academy that writes them down once is answering a parent at ten at night, when she is reading your page and you are asleep.
The ratio is the number that decides it
Parents compare pools on this one figure and they ask it first. Give the number you actually run, instructor to child, for each batch. If beginners are one to six and the squad is one to twelve, say both.
Then keep it. A pool that advertises one to four and puts nine children in the water on a Saturday in May has handed its best parents to a rival, because a mother standing at the railing can count. Where your number is higher than you would like, say what else is in place: a second instructor in the water, a float line, a deck assistant who does nothing but watch.
Water, hygiene and the question nobody asks out loud
Nobody wants to be the parent who asks if the water is dirty, so they look instead. They look at the tiles at the waterline, the changing room floor, the hair in the gutter and whether anybody showers before getting in.
Give them something to read: what you test the water for, who does it, where the record is kept, and what the shower and cap rule is. Put the log on a board by the deck. Rules on water testing, lifeguard cover and pool licensing differ from one city and state to the next and they are revised from time to time, so check what applies to your pool with your local authority or your own pool consultant rather than copying what another academy has written.
Adults and ladies-only batches ask a different question
An adult who never learned to swim is not asking about ratios. He is asking who else will be in the water and whether anyone can see the pool from outside. Women ask the same thing more directly, along with who the instructor is and whether the deck is screened during the batch.
So write those pages separately and answer the thing they will not say first. Timing, who is present, who teaches, how the pool is screened and what the changing arrangement is. An adult beginners' batch at seven in the morning, with the gate closed, fills from word of mouth once two people have been through it.
April is an operations month, not a marketing month
Summer does your advertising for you. What summer does not do is answer the phone, and a pool with a fixed number of lanes can sell out of the batch a parent wants by the second week.
For example, take an academy running a twenty-five metre pool at a club in Vijayanagar, Bengaluru, with four instructors and six batches a day. The figures here are made up for the illustration. In April it takes more enquiries than it has seats, says we are full to most of them, and keeps no record. By July the batches are half empty and the same families have gone elsewhere.
Keep a waiting sheet: name, number, child's age, batch wanted, date asked. When a seat opens, that sheet is the first call, and it costs nothing. The wider picture for the trade is on our page for swimming academies.
What to do next
- Write your six answers on one page of the website, in the parent's words, and keep a printed copy at the counter.
- Put the real ratio for each batch beside the batch name.
- Start the waiting sheet before the season, not during it.
- Photograph the pool on a clean morning: the shallow end, the deck, the changing room, the water-test board.
- Give the adult batch and the ladies' batch a page each.
- Ring every family whose child finished a level and never came back for the next one.
Spending on advertising in April is usually the wrong move for a small pool, because you are paying for calls you cannot seat. The money is better spent on whoever answers the phone, and on the pages that answer the six questions before anyone rings.
Pick up your enquiry register from last summer and count how many of those families are still swimming with you. That number is the honest measure of the season. If you would like it worked out properly, the free audit is a 90-minute call and the place to begin.