Archive for the ‘Behavior’ category

Try this Simple Fix for more Productive Phone Conversations with Prospective Students

August 25th, 2015

I recently asked an admissions counselor this question: “What if every time you picked up the phone to call a prospective student you knew that you were going to have a meaningful and productive conversation?” After thinking about that for a moment, he stunned me with his answer. “That,” he said, “would be life-changing.” This veteran counselor explained that he often found calls to students frustrating and ineffective. “I love interacting with students, yet I find myself dreading those calls because I don’t feel like I really accomplish anything,” he said.

College bound students who have participated in our co-sponsored studies share some of the same frustrations. Clearly, there appears to be a disconnection between students and counselors when talking by phone. There is a fix, though – something that can make the conversation richer and more helpful for both the student and counselor. The key lies in an interruption of the pattern that is commonly practiced by counselors and expected by students.

In a recent co-sponsored study we conducted for participating colleges about communicating with prospective students, we asked students to tell us which methods they find most and least helpful in how colleges communicate with them. That survey question, by the way, was open-ended to elicit the qualitative insight that proves so valuable.

So, what did we find?

We recorded a large number of students who said telephone calls from admissions counselors were among the “most helpful” methods that colleges use to communicate with them. We recorded an equal number who said it was among the “least helpful” methods. What gives? You could speculate that there are simply some students who prefer phone calls and others who don’t. A review of the qualitative data suggests something different.

Here is a sampling of responses from students who say phone calls are among the LEAST helpful methods:

“I can’t remember everything they tell me.”
“It gets overwhelming.”
“I can’t comprehend everything they say about their college.”
“Unless I ask for more information, the call gets really boring.”

Here is a sampling of responses from students who say phone calls are among the MOST helpful methods:

“I like telephone calls because you can ask questions.”
“I can get out what I need and ask questions.”
“Phone calls allow me to ask my own questions and make the experience more personalized.”
“Personal calls because you can ask questions.”

See the difference? During the ineffective calls, the information flow is clearly college-to-student. Many admissions counselors have been conditioned to communicate ALL of the features and benefits of the institution in every phone call. During the effective calls, on the other hand, the flow is clearly student-to-college. Students ask questions. And they ask questions. And they ask more questions. Asking questions means they are intellectually and emotionally involved in the conversation. That level of involvement gives you a great chance of building a bond that will lead to enrollment.

When Longmire and Company visits campuses to conduct Interactive Training Workshops for counselors, we focus on the tools and techniques that counselors must use to put students in a frame of mind to open up and ask questions. This includes proper use of close-end and open-end questioning, as well as asking open-minded questions that spark dialogue from otherwise non-verbal prospects.

I can guarantee one thing. A prospective student will engage, comprehend and remember any conversation that hits them at an emotional level. That’s the goal. Every conversation should be measured on that basis.

Because it’s connected with the topic of this post, you should know that we are launching a new higher education study (the latest is a very popular series) in which we will explore, in detail, how students form a relationship (or not) with the colleges they consider. It’s called, The Relationship Dynamic: How prospective students form a relationship with your college, and why it matters in your ability to grow and control enrollment. You can get insight into how effectively you are building (or not building) relationships that will lead to enrollment.

Continue the conversation on Twitter @LongmireCo. Be sure to Subscribe to Versions of Conversion today so you don’t miss any of this highly-valuable information.

Rick Montgomery is as an Enrollment Strategist at Longmire and Company. With over 20 years in higher education marketing, he brings an innovative approach to helping colleges and universities meet their enrollment goals. Rick can be reached at 913/492.1265 x.708 or via email at rmontgomery@longmire-co.com.

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Posted in Behavior, Closing the Sale, Conversion and Yield, Counselor Training, Research, Uncategorized, Your Value Proposition

Tags: admission counselor training admissions admissions counselors admissions customer service admissions success college college admissions college branding college enrollment college presidents college recruiting college recruitment EMChat enrollment enrollment management higher ed higher ed marketing higher education strategies higher education value longmire and company Longmire and Company study yield enhancement

Admitted Student Fence Sitters? Lift (Don’t Nudge) Them Toward Enrollment

June 9th, 2015

It never fails: As summer approaches we visit with a number of college enrollment managers who are still working frantically to finalize their incoming class. The question they ask us most often is, “How can I coach my staff to nudge prospective students off the fence?”

Our answer: When someone is stuck they need more than a nudge, they need to be lifted over that fence. The bottom line is that when you are working with a non-committed student in the late stage of the cycle, you can be certain that there’s a concern or objection that hasn’t been addressed. And, no matter where you are in the recruiting cycle, it is a GOOD thing when a prospective student or parent communicates a concern or objection about your college. Really.

When a concern or objection is revealed, you can deal with it. If they don’t share their concerns, they’ll never enroll and you’ll never know why. There are several great ways to cope with objections and concerns. But the first thing you have to do is to determine whether they exist.

The easiest way to do this is simply to ask.

Ask the student whether they have any concerns or questions that would prevent them from attending your school. If they acknowledge that concerns exist, you have to isolate each one and respond to it.

Questions, concerns, objections and indifference almost always arise during the college shopping process. And they vary widely. We train admission counselors in a variety of effective methods to manage each type. One of our favorite techniques is called the “Feel, Felt, Found” method of responding to a student’s concern.

Let’s take the student who is “fence sitting” about enrolling for classes that begin in just two months. Your previous conversations have gone well and you have been told that your college is a likely choice but the student has failed to take the final step. It’s time to probe for the core concern and you should be direct.

You ask, “What’s holding you back?”

The student replies, “My high school is pretty small and everybody knows each other. Your campus is SO big. I’m afraid I’ll get lost in all these people.”

With “Feel, Felt, Found” you can reassure them by saying, “I understand how you feel. I’ve talked to a lot of students from small high schools who felt the same way you do …

… In fact, Ashley, who interns in our admissions office, felt that same way before she enrolled here …

… But after coming, she found out how easy it is to meet people and form close friendships with students on our campus who have similar interests. I’m sure that will happen for you, too. Let’s get you signed up to attend our freshman retreat in July where you’ll make friends with students from big and small high schools.”

“Feel, Felt, Found” helps to dissolve a concern or objection by confirming that others had similar concerns that turned out to be unfounded. Often, it’s all you need to lift a student over the fence and onto the exciting next chapter of his or her life.

We teach new and experienced counselors how to work smarter, recruit more effectively and, most importantly, adopt a student-centric approach to everything they do.

Longmire and Company’s on-campus Interactive Training Workshops dramatically improve the performance of counselors and staff in areas such as effective communication with students and parents, applying creative entrepreneurship to their jobs, validating past and planned actions against outcomes, and discovering and leveraging the motivations of students (and themselves).

The net result? Improved service to prospective students and families, measurable increases in yield, increased counselor and staff job satisfaction, enhanced teamwork, and innovations in work process within the department. From my many years in enrollment management, I know that summer is the ideal time to train and motivate your staff. Email or call me if you are interested in how we can help you have a powerhouse admissions team.

Continue the conversation on Twitter @LongmireCo. Be sure to Subscribe to Versions of Conversion today so you don’t miss any of this highly-valuable information.

Karen Full is a highly-respected higher education professional who has held positions in admissions and enrollment management at several institutions in the Midwest and Florida. With her vast experience working with large and small, public and private colleges, Karen brings a valuable perspective to her role as an Enrollment Strategist at Longmire and Company.Call Karen at 913/492.1265 x.711 or email her at kfull@longmire-co.com. Follow Karen on Twitter @KarenAFull.

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Posted in Behavior, Closing the Sale, Conversion and Yield, Counselor Training

Tags: #highered #highereducation #enrollment management admission counselor training admissions admissions customer service admissions success college college admissions college branding college enrollment college presidents college recruiting college recruitment customer service training EMChat enrollment management higher ed higher ed marketing higher education branding higher education marketing higher education strategies longmire longmire and company Longmire and Company study sales training staff training yield enhancement

An Effective Tool to Minimize Melt AND Improve Yield

June 1st, 2015

“The admissions department never sleeps,” an enrollment manager shared with me recently. “On one hand I still have a handful of spaces to fill for the upcoming class plus an anticipated summer melt of around 10%, and on the other, we are full-swing into our recruiting efforts for next year. Summer is no longer a quiet time for us.” Sound familiar?

Wouldn’t it be great it there were one singular, powerful tool that could help you combat the dreaded summer melt AND shore up your ongoing recruiting efforts?

Good news: Improving your pre-enrollment customer service delivery, all the way up to the point of registration, can help you reduce melt and positively impact your ability to truly close the sale with students who have deposited. A recent nationwide study conducted by Longmire and Company of nearly 5,000 prospective college students and parents showed that 53% reported that their decision to enroll in a given school was heavily influenced by the level of service they received during the “college shopping” process. As we all know, for many students the shopping process continues well beyond the point at which they make a promise to enroll.

Our study found that poor service delivery, across any brand touch point on campus, often outweighs other important factors, including strength of academic programs, faculty reputation and even the financial aid offered. Prospective students and parents view the pre-enrollment service they receive as predictive of how the student will be served after enrolling. They will change their mind about a college or avoid it altogether if they receive poor service.

To avoid losing students before classes start, be sure to give them a stellar experience everywhere and at all times. Students and their parents agreed that a single bad experience can be the catalyst for completely derailing the prospective student’s original enrollment plan. The most often cited negatives include unkempt grounds, buildings and restrooms; lack of clear signage; unfriendly staff and faculty; excessive phone hold times; unresponsive staff; and overwhelming paperwork.

Just as importantly, the study concludes that offering great pre-enrollment service will not only “save” enrollments but it is also one of the best possible ways for a college or university to differentiate itself in today’s competitive environment.

Certainly, every communication, every interaction, every brand touch-point with a prospective student and/or parent has the potential to make or break the relationship that you have worked so hard to establish. You may know this, but does every other member of the team? And, by “team,” I mean every person at your college whose actions may influence the student’s decision and ultimate action. Certainly, interactions with faculty, admissions and financial aid are critical, but many schools are surprised to find the impact that campus maintenance, grounds keeping, security and even the switchboard operators can have on creating a lasting impression.

What is the first step?

We suggest you take a walk. Yes, you read that correctly. Sure, fresh air and exercise always does a body and mind good, but the primary impetus for this walk is to experience your campus from the perspective of prospective students and their parents. This walk could very possibly save you enrollments. Every college should have a comprehensive pre-enrollment customer service program in place. Whether you do or not, a self-audit is a must to help you identify and correct any service gaps.

Specifically, here are some of the questions you should be asking yourself during your campus stroll:

Are the grounds, pathways, and buildings pleasing to the eye, clean and well-kept?
Are the restrooms in all the public areas well-stocked and clean?
Is signage easy to read and accurate? Are maps intuitive and understandable?
Are information areas easily identifiable? Are they properly staffed with friendly faces?
Are staff and faculty interacting pleasantly with the students and visitors?

Here are some of the questions you should be asking about your continuing interactions with students:

Are we providing students with the information they need, when they need it?
How are we continuing to make students and parents feel wanted?
Are we continuing to build on the student’s excitement about attending?

When you return to your office, consider making a few phone calls, too. Not as a member of the admissions team, but as a prospective student or parent. You need to know if calls are answered pleasantly, promptly, and quickly routed to the appropriate party; if the hold times are minimal; and if each call is handled to the complete satisfaction of the caller.

Next, review your forms and processes and ask yourself this key question: Are they user-friendly? If not, how can they be simplified?

We suggest asking your entire admissions team and other department representatives to “take a walk,” too. Not only will their involvement offer unique insights but it may also facilitate necessary improvements after they are identified.

We are seeing a growing trend in the industry among colleges large and small, public and private, paying much more attention to their campus-wide customer service delivery. Some people on campus may still believe that students are not customers. And that colleges are exempt, by their nature, from having to measure their service delivery in the same way as other organizations. But the data we collect through the Service Quality Management assessments we conduct for clients clearly show that students and parents have the same expectations of service delivery with regard to colleges as any other enterprise with which they do business.

With so many contributing factors, it can be a challenge knowing where to start on a pre-enrollment customer service improvement initiative. Your audit is a good start and should be followed up with a baseline measurement to determine where you stand now vs. where you need be. One college president at a major Eastern university summed it up like this, “We invest millions of dollars in recruitment and yet we discovered that there were changes that cost very little that greatly impact our efforts.”

We help colleges and universities with their recruiting efforts every day, including offering Service Quality Management (SQM) to help you measure and manage your pre-enrollment service. If we can help you, please let me know.

Continue the conversation on Twitter @LongmireCo. Be sure to Subscribe to Versions of Conversion today so you don’t miss any of this highly-valuable information.

Karen Full is a highly-respected higher education professional who has held positions in admissions and enrollment management at several institutions in the Midwest and Florida. With her vast experience working with large and small, public and private colleges, Karen brings a valuable perspective to her role as an Enrollment Strategist at Longmire and Company. Call Karen at 913/492.1265 x.711 or email her at kfull@longmire-co.com. Follow Karen on Twitter @KarenAFull.

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Posted in Behavior, Closing the Sale, Conversion and Yield, Customer service, Your Value Proposition

Tags: admission counselor training admissions admissions counselors admissions customer service admissions success college college admissions college recruiting higher education branding higher education marketing higher education strategies higher education value longmire longmire and company Longmire and Company study marketing recruiting staff training value proposition yield enhancement

Are You Truly Prepared to Answer This: Why Should I Choose Your College?

May 27th, 2015

For years, our Interactive Counselor Training workshops have included a section in which we pose a question to the counselors: “Why should someone attend your college?” Predictably, we get myriad responses that include features and benefits that could apply to a great many colleges such as, “We are small and you get highly personalized attention here.” Or, “We are large and give you all the benefits of variety and diversity in our programs and people.”

Pick any attribute and benefit that you communicate about your college and in all likelihood there are many other colleges that are saying exactly the same thing. Falling into this trap is essentially the same as stepping up to the plate and calling two strikes on yourself before the first pitch. You can’t differentiate your college in the hearts and minds of prospective students.

To help colleges counteract this tendency, we use a video of Simon Sinek talking about “finding the why.” Sinek is a leadership authority, professor at Columbia University, and author whose philosophy is that people “don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” In one of the most watched TED talks of all time, he suggests that people will buy from you if they sense that you believe what they believe. I highly recommend watching his video. Click here to see it now.

Sinek’s video serves as a springboard for an in-depth discussion of the importance of framing your institution’s value in a way that resonates with what the prospective student believes and finds important in a college. Unfortunately, we have discovered that many colleges don’t truly know what they believe in. They may understand and articulate the attributes of their institution. They can give you many good reasons why they think they are the best college for you. But they have never gone though the process of distilling all of their special qualities into a single belief – an overarching value proposition that the student will immediately find meaningful and compelling.

If this seems a bit abstract, let me share a real-world example from our own experience. Often, a college will ask us, “What do you do?” We say, “At Longmire and Company we believe that the conversations between prospective students and the colleges they are considering can be much richer and more fruitful for both. Everything we do helps colleges better understand and communicate with prospective students.” We usually follow up with specifics, “This includes counselor training workshops, yield enhancement tools to help you get to know students better, and other products and services that enable a college to attract and enroll prospective students.”

Please trust me that I didn’t insert all of this just to plug Longmire and Company. If you don’t know us, and I just tell you WHAT we do, it has no context. And it’s probably boring. But if I first tell you WHY we do what we do, it gives meaning to the products and services we have. And if you believe – like we do – that having richer conversations with your prospective students will lead to greater enrollment, then you’re most likely to trust that we can help you.

The same cognitive and emotional process holds true when prospective students ask you (in direct and indirect ways) why they should attend your school. Instead of citing features and benefits like the inherent advantages of your small or large school, or the beautiful campus, or your famous alumni, football team or other renowned attribute, first tell them what you believe. “At XYZ University,” you might say, “we believe that students should have the opportunity to ….” Or, “At XYZ, we believe that students deserve ….”

Once prospective students know what you believe and why you do what you do, all of the features and benefits that you present will have context and greater meaning. They will carry greater weight. They will be more compelling. And even though your individual attributes may be similar to that of other institutions, the student will perceive them as being different because you have delivered them in a context that makes you unique.

First you have to find your “why.” Then, you must articulate it clearly and concisely. Finally, you must be able to translate it into how you serve students.

We’ve helped many colleges do this while we’re on campuses conducting our Interactive Training Workshops. Since our workshops are completely customized, we often include activities for the sole purpose of defining “WHY.” Recently, we had the opportunity to conduct a workshop that included not only admission counselors and staff but also coaches, faculty, financial aid counselors, and members of the bursar’s office. The workshop included a breakout session of small groups who were challenged to complete the following sentence, “At [the college’s name] we believe….” The rules of this exercise mandated that they discuss it as a group and arrive at a mutually agreeable statement that reflected the underlying belief of the college and how that belief gets translated into serving students in ways that are unique.

The results were nothing short of amazing. This diverse group of individuals, representing nearly every branch of the college, ultimately adopted a singular statement that all thought accurately represented the central belief of the institution. Moreover, they were able to share many examples of how their now-defined “WHY” can provide greater weight and meaning to their features and benefits statements.

Now, instead of simply saying they are a small college that delivers highly personalized service, they are now saying, “At [the college name], we believe that students deserve…and as a small college, we deliver on that belief by….” Their clearer understanding of who they are, and what they fundamentally deliver to students, helps them articulate how they are extraordinary in the sea of choices available to prospective students. That clarity naturally infuses itself in every conversation they now have with prospective students.

We’ve been on many campuses over the years conducting workshops and I can tell you that the vast majority of the colleges we’ve worked with have a deeply-rooted sense of who they are, and how they are different. They just don’t know how to articulate it precisely.

If you fall in this category, do this: Gather some people from your college (from as many departments as you like), mix them up and break them out into groups, and ask them to complete this sentence, “At [your college name], we believe …”

Continue the conversation on Twitter @LongmireCo. For more information about Longmire and Company’s Interactive Counselor Training Program, click here. Be sure to Subscribe to Versions of Conversion today so you don’t miss any of this highly-valuable information.

Bob Longmire is President of Longmire and Company, Inc. He is a recognized expert on the topic of how prospective students and parents form their college selection decisions – and how colleges can use that knowledge to grow and control their enrollment. He can be reached at (913) 492-1265, ext 709 or at blongmire@longmire-co.com. Connect with Bob at Linkedin/in/boblongmire.