3 Effective Strategies to Enhance your Admissions Teams’ Productivity

Imagine what you could do with your student recruitment strategies if you had more time! Would you come up with ways to scale admissions? Or would you explore potential new markets? Would you optimize your current admission strategies? Or maybe you’d just utilize this extra time to give prospective students more personalized attention?

But the reality is that hitting the admissions targets for your team is not exactly a piece of cake. Day-by-day the admission rates are dropping, competition is increasing and with so many new age study options, this tech-savvy generation is not easy to get hold of.

Across all areas of the education sector, time and productivity management is often one of the principal obstacles standing in the way of real growth.

So what challenges are creating a roadblock to a seamless admission process for your admissions team? What can you do to help your admissions team be more productive? So that your team can get more done with less. Keep reading to find out how.

What Productivity Challenges do Admissions Teams Face Everyday?

Dipanjana Saha, Senior Demand Generation Specialist and Deepak Chouhan, AVP – Customer Success had a very successful webinar on this, where over 100+ education industry leaders and experts from all over India had joined the session. They discussed in great detail the top challenges and best practices you can use to make your admission team more productive.

Deepak, having worked with, trained and onboarded over 60 + customers has great expertise in this field. According to him, there are 3 major challenges that all admissions teams face when it comes to their productivity.

Ineffective Data Management

Deepak: “Whenever I conduct any training program or conduct a seminar, I start the session with the question – ‘What are the top challenges you face in your admission process?’ The answer is always Data Management.”

Today, data management is the topmost priority of admissions teams. It is the biggest challenge any admission counsellor faces.

Deepak: “Imagine the day to day life of an admission counsellor. They work on google sheets, manage communications on Gmail, attend to all the queries that come to them, they have to attend to leads that come to the website, they have to take care of inbound calls, they have to make outbound calls.”

“Although their end goal is to increase their admissions. But they have to juggle so many systems. They are bombarded with so many leads from different directions.”

This systematic requirement of multitasking impacts their efficiency of getting things done on time. They are less effective and make more mistakes. In the long run, their productivity is hampered severely!

Inefficient Follow-up Management

Deepak: “The admission counsellors have huge amounts of leads from different sources and at the same time there is an expectation that they should do timely follow-ups and have more conversions. It is not practically possible.”

“Unfortunately, the leads that land on your pages are also applying to your competitors. They are more likely to convert for those who respond to them, attend to them faster!”

Lack of a good system to manage your data, gravely impacts how follow-ups to prospective students are managed.

Manual Process Involved in Creating Reports

Deepak: “Many institutes still use excel sheets and google sheets to manage their data. This leads to the need for the manual effort involved in creating reports and analytics. This is to such an extent that in some organizations they have a designated person who is just supposed to create reports day-in and day-out.”

Manual reporting requires a lot of work and sets back your admissions counsellor in their day-to-day productivity. What’s more, these reports are very susceptible to errors.

So, How do you help your admissions teams be more productive?

How can you ensure that your team is not bogged down with a number of manual tasks? They are able to not only be productive but reach their targets faster?

Short answer: By conquering these challenges effectively

How can you conquer these challenges?

Invest in an Integrated Solution

Deepak: “You need to have an integrated education CRM solution that links with all your communication channels, lead partners, advertising channels….You need to have a single system for your counsellors!”

Managing your admission process on multiple platforms is not feasible in the long run. It creates unnecessary additional manual processes that are time-consuming and hard to keep a track of. Having a straightforward system for your counsellors can do wonders for your admission rates.

Deepak: “Anyone planning on getting a product like an education CRM, ensure that the system is designed to integrate with all your lead channels, communication platforms etc.”

“Yes, there will be a cost involved in getting a system like this. But it will be worth investing your money in this ( At least it was for P P Savani University😉)”

Shift your Focus from Features to Processes

Deepak: “Many get overawed by features. They keep on requesting unique features. ‘ I want this too….I want that too!’ You don’t need a lot of features for an effective admission process!”

While requesting for features, keep in mind your end-users, i.e. your counsellors. In the end, your counsellors are the ones who will have to deal with these features! What is the point of having these features, if the counsellors are not able to make use of these features the right way?

You don’t need 100 + features to get your admissions team to work effectively. You need a good process. Create a blueprint or a guideline for certain counsellor activities that everyone has to follow. This will be far more effective in getting the job done than having additional features.

Do Regular Reporting that Adds Value

Reporting is key to making any kind of data-driven decisions. Effective reporting guarantees heightened productivity of your admissions team. With reports, you understand what processes are working for you, what resources you need to invest more in and what strategies you need to scrap.

Deepak: “Today on our system, we have more than 150+ different types of reports. Every customer uses a different set of reports for their analysis. They have different customizations. But they are not able to derive good insights from them. Why?….because the reports created are micro-management reports over productivity reports.”

When going through the reporting activity, keep in mind that you generate reports that give you actionable insights towards increasing counsellor productivity and your admission rates instead of monitoring every action a counsellor takes.

Conclusion

You know that your institute is the right fit for your students but your students may not be aware at all! By streamlining your admission strategy through these productivity hacks you ensure that you are in your students’ minds all the time. What’s more, with an effective admissions strategy you guarantee ever-increasing enrollments.

Admissions software or Education CRMs are the best tools for making your admissions teams productive and making your admission process more efficient.