by Richard Ashley, President of the Enrollment Managment Innovations

You can have the best trained customer service orientated enrollment management staff but if you can't generate the volume of prospective student appointments that come in for the interview needed, then you are constantly struggling to reach your institutional goals.

When I do enrollment management consulting invariably one of the hottest topics in 2011 is the how to of generating informed prospects, that will appoint and then show up for the interview the first time. This article will briefly focus on my views on direct response media lead generation to generate an informed prospect as well as understanding some of the prospective student's lack of motivation when they are inundated with phone calls by you and other schools. If you noticed more appointments are being set but the actual interview rate for first time shows is less than it should be, or a good portion of those leads are not appointing at all because they are not motivated, or have no idea who you are, what you offer and how you even got their contact information in the first place, then read on, as you are not alone.

I will be making personal observations as we discuss this complex issue of increasing the interview rate at your school and attempting to find and motivate an "informed" prospect." An informed potential student knows you are a career school, college, training facility and knows you may have a career field that might fit their needs; let's call them a "PROSPECTS"; elementary statement, right? Wrong; what about all those other leads you are getting and paying for whom have no idea what you do, how you got their number, why are you contacting them, or just confused and unmotivated, because you are the 5 or 6th school that called. Thirty years ago...we called these individuals."SUSPECTS", because we SUSPECTED they might become a PROSPECT. If you are smiling for a moment it's OK, most people do with I mention that lead category. Another way of looking at it might be to see them as window shoppers outside the store, 1000's walk by, but they have to come in to your store to purchase your product.

Our first goal was to get these suspects to the PROSPECT STATE OF MIND.

If your staff tell you, you are getting a high percentage of "suspects" then you should revisit your marketing, look very carefully at their demographics, do in-school student and graduate profiles and separate those suspects. If that is done, then you, your prospect or suspect, your marketing staff and your admissions department will have a clearer expectation on how to manage that potential student. The old adage "A lead is a lead is a lead" in my opinion should be changed to "ALL LEADS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL!"

That being said some views and opinions on how to generate a prospective student who should be motivated to set an appointment and show for the interview:

1. Continue to use TV, radio, direct mail, inserts etc as they generate an "informed" motivated prospect, which will have a higher conversion rate of lead to appointment to interview to start.

These types of direct response advertising generate product literate students who by the nature of understanding the school and its programs will be motivated to make decisions about their futures. To assess the impact of direct response advertising properly look at your student start cost and not just your lead cost, especially if you seem to be getting a lot of "suspects" from your internet vendors or appointment centers.

2. With all internet leads someone should be dialing the phone within 2-3-4 minutes after that lead comes into your school. The prospect is on the computer or texting that moment and most schools in the area will be calling the same lead at the same time. There are programs I recently worked with, that can send those leads directly to the admissions representative laptop or cell phone. I also believe in a dedicated call center or appointment staff, but they should be from your own admission staff and coordinated by your best appointment setter or DOA. This way your telephone staff know the complete enrollment process the student is going to have to go through. That factor alone will increase your volume of appointments set and show rate to interview. Even small schools with 3or 4 admissions staff can designate 60 hours a week for specific appointment setters and even put them on monthly rotation.

3. If you get a high percentage of the internet leads, who do not come via your website and who have no idea who you are or why you are contacting them, then no matter what the lead cost is, the start cost will be out of line. These suspects can become prospects, but it will take time and different follow-up methods to move them to the "PROSPECT STATE OF MIND". Listen to your admissions or appointment setting staff on this one as their motivation could be affected negatively if they are getting a lot of no-shows. If you take those suspect leads and begin to send direct mail, email and texting then you can expect a percentage of those will convert to prospects. In other words, you will get the window shoppers to come into the store. In addition I have set up call centers and we did profile our suspects/ prospects by various demographics that were good indicators of appointment and interview success rates. We developed 5 categories of prospects and 5 categories of suspects. Once you profile your lead data base you can develop your own system that can define probability of appointment and interview success based on specific parameters. These systems allow you to focus your marketing attention to those media that provide you with more of the top categories which have higher lead to start conversion rates.

4. The telephone, email or text contact should be immediate, but it must also plant the proper program or school motivators in terms of the student's interest now or in future training. This can be done if you think of "Short Term Memory" (STM -24-48-72 hours) and Long Term Memory (LTM- your lifetime). Teachers use this concept when they do pre-test reviews where they cover key aspects of what they taught all year or all semester, two to 3 days before the final exam. It brings to the STM the key information necessary to pass a final; and in the phone conversation it brings to the STM the various reasons why the student needs a career education, how long they have been thinking about getting one, why they need one, who will benefit the most from getting one and it does motivate them to make certain commitments. In the case of the outbound or inbound telephone call you would like the prospect to make a commitment to an appointment and then commit to showing up. Think like an educator and teach them by a quick review of what has happened in the past. I have always said in my telephone training the student commits to showing for the interview after they hang up the phone and not when they make the appointment, which leads us to the last part of this article.

5. I am going to suggest a few phone techniques that allow the prospect to become more motivated and committed to setting an appointment and then showing up for the interview because key information motivators move from the prospects LTM to their STM. The short term memory also sets the stage for the prospect to think "urgency", which is a key emotion necessary for commitment and getting into the school to get some information. I use the psychological terminology short term memory, but to me it is really "SHORT TERM MOTIVATION". That urgency window closes quickly as many of you reading this article have experienced through various stages of the enrollment process.

Due to the length of the article I will not get into great detail of why each question allows the prospect to know they should make the appointment and they should show up for the interview. However, if you analyze the questions and then the prospects answers with your admissions staff, and think about the thought processes of the student during the phone call and then after they hang up, I am pretty sure the logic and common sense of the questions and answers will surface. Remember, just keep thinking you want as much long term memory information about careers, career information, student wants and needs going into that 72 hour short term memory.

A FEW QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT ASK DURING THE FIRST NINTY SECONDS OF YOUR INBOUND OR OUTBOUND CALL THAT WILL MOVE INFORMATION FROM THE PROPSECTS LONG TERM MEMORY TO THEIR SHORT TERM MEMORY:

• How long have you been interested in getting information about?
• What program or career area are you interested in?
• How long have you been interested in the __________field?
• What first got you interested in the ______________field?
• Have you received, seen or heard any of our other advertising?
• When did you first start seeing it?
• What caught you interest?
• How long have you known about XYZ school?
• Do you know any of our present students or graduates?
• When did you talk to them last?

This is the short list, but any question that elicits a response from the student that is beyond 72 hours, then you have tapped into their LTM and it is now in their STM at least for the next 2 to 3 days. If you have been in admissions you already know the answers to these questions because your students have answered them in your interviews. Think of the emotional impact on you and your prospect if you get some of them in the first 2-3 minutes of your initial phone contact.

When they hang up the phone after making the appointment and the student is making the decision if they should go to the interview, they will think about some of the answers to the questions you asked:

When I do phone training sessions we certainly spend a lot more time on understanding the psychological and motivational influence on our prospective inquiry when we tap their LTM and bringing key information and motivators to the STM. I will say this, that if you consider adding some of these ideas into your recruiting philosophy you not only get commitment from the prospective student to set an appointment and show up, you also get much more commitment from your admissions staff. Everyone involved in the enrollment process begins to see how the benefits of completing a career school education will fulfill the needs of the prospective student.

STUDENTS DON'T CARE HOW MUCH YOU KNOW...

UNTIL THEY KNOW HOW MUCH YOU CARE!