Increasing Enrollment in a Competitive Market

Does it sometimes seem like the competition is eating away at your enrollment and your profits?

Fierce competition from other centers, public school programs, and changes in government funding are making it mandatory that you sharpen not only your pencil but your marketing tactics. To capture and keep more enrollments in today’s competitive early care and education marketplace requires a keen awareness of what’s happening in your center’s community, a proactive and positive approach to marketing and enrollment building, and a willingness to take the competitive initiative.

What actions can you take now that will help make you the parents’ preference in a competitive menu of child care choices? Three initiatives that will help you increase enrollment no matter what the competition is doing are to investigate, differentiate, and educate.

Investigate Your Market

Knowledge is power, especially if you use it wisely. Determine who currently are your three stiffest competitors. Then decide who is most likely to be the biggest threat to your enrollment one year from now. Investigate each competitor to determine what they do that is similar and different from the way you do it. Go visit your competitors looking for three things they do as well as you do, three they do better, and three things they do not do as well.

Investigate what is important to your parents. Do they perceive that you will meet their changing needs better than your competitors can?

Also investigate your industry. What are the most significant changes taking place in early care and education? How will they impact your competitors and you?

The sooner you investigate your competition, the better equipped you will be to keep your center full, despite their presence.

Differentiate Your Center from Competitors

The more you learn about your competition in comparison to your own services, the easier it will be to differentiate yourself from them. Promote the benefits of your differences in your marketing efforts with prospects and parents.

Don’t forget enrollment building skills as a competitive differentiation. Telephone skills, in particular, can make a decisive impression on parents who are your enrollment prospects. Be sure to state some differentiating features as benefits during inquiry calls.

Educate Your Target Audiences

Educate your target audiences as to why you are the best early care and education choice. Point out your differentiating benefits in all your marketing communications. Focus on the features you have found to be most important to the parents you want to attract and retain. Highlight the differences in your written marketing materials.  Do this without putting down your competition.

Practice your enrollment building skills, so you can easily discuss differentiating features as benefits of enrolling in your center. Remember, parents may now be more well- educated and informed about child care options, but many people drowning in information are thirsty for wisdom. Be the helpful expert.

Investigate, differentiate, and educate. Make these moves and you will be way out ahead of your competition and well on your way to building and maintaining high enrollment.

Julie Wassom
“The Speaker Whose Message Means Business”
Marketing and Sales Speaker/Consultant/Author
Call me: 303-693-2306
Fax me: 303-617-6422
E-me: julie@juliewassom.com
See me: www.juliewassom.com

Ease into Closing with Agreement Questions

If you’re like many center directors, asking a prospective enrollee to come in for a center visit or to enroll can seem abrupt and uncomfortable. Yet, it is these closing questions that help you reach your goal of securing a center visit or the enrollment. Your asking prospects a closing question helps them to act on all the recommendations you have given them. It actually helps them make an important decision.

If there were a way to make closing questions easier to ask, and parents more ready to be asked them, would you want to know it? Well, there is. I call the technique asking trial closing or agreement questions throughout the inquiry call or center visit.

A trial close is a question that merely asks your prospect if they agree with what you have just told them. It is asked after a benefit explanation, but before you ask a final close that requests their decision to visit or enroll. For instance, you might say, “Emma will have an experienced teacher who has been here for seven years. She loves teaching the three year olds. Is that kind of teacher experience and tenure important to you?” The trial closing question is, “Is that kind of teacher experience and tenure important to you?” Most prospects will reply to that question with, “Yes.” The more they say “Yes” to agreement questions you have asked, the easier it will be for them to say “Yes,” when you ask them a final closing question. And the easier it will be for you to ask that final close.

Trial closing questions should be asked periodically throughout the enrollment conversation. They help reassure the prospect that the decision you are leading them toward is a good one for them and their child. And they help you to know if your prospect actually agrees with what you are explaining or whether you need to take a different direction with the enrollment interview.

Try asking trial closing questions in your next enrollment call or visit. The ease with which they help you get to that final “Yes” will be a welcome way to convert more calls and visits with less effort and greater skill.

Julie Wassom
“The Speaker Whose Message Means Business”
Marketing and Sales Speaker/Consultant/Author
Call me: 303-693-2306
Fax me: 303-617-6422
E-me: julie@juliewassom.com
See me: www.juliewassom.com

Asking for the Center Visit without Feeling like a Used Car Salesman

You know what happens. You take a call from a parent inquiring about enrollment. You ask a few questions and then tell them all about your center. AS the conversation comes to a close, you know you should actually ASK them to come in. But you feel like that is awfully pushy. So you tell them you recommend they see the center, they are welcome to stop by, and that they should call if they have any questions in the meantime. What did you just do? You just let a potential enrollment walk away. When you consider the time and resources it took your company to get that inquiry call to come in at all, it is like tossing money down the drain – and even worse, denying that prospect’s child the opportunity to experience the high quality education and care you provide – if you do not use good closing techniques to actually ASK that prospect to come in for a scheduled center visit.

How can you ask for a center visit without feeling like a used car salesman? Here are three easy ways to make asking for the visit a skill you use regularly with comfort and confidence.

Remember your role. When a parent calls to inquire about enrolling her child, your role is two-fold. One is to help her make a good buying decision. The other is to get her to act on your recommendation. Telling her about the benefits of your center is helping with this important family decision. Merely recommending that she come in for a visit is not enough to incent her to take action. You must ask for the visit in order to get her to act on your recommendation.

Gain prospect agreement with trial closes. In my last Marketing Exchange tip, I suggested asking questions to confirm that your enrollment prospect agrees with the information you tell her as you present center benefits. Questions, such as, “Is this the kind of program you are looking for?” or Security like ours in important for the children’s safety and your peace of mind, wouldn’t you agree?” are trail closes. When your prospect has answered several trial closes with, “Yes,” a final question to ask for a center visit will be much easier for you to ask and for her to answer with yet another, “Yes”.

Ask alternate choice closing questions. For your final closing question to attempt to secure a schedule visit to your center, try using a type of closing question called alternate choice. This style of question gives your prospect a choice, the answer to either means she has just agreed to schedule a center visit. For example, you might say, “Is Thursday morning at 9:30 or Monday afternoon at 4:30 a better time for you and Robby to visit our center?” When offered a choice, most prospects who are truly interested and qualified to enroll will select one of the choices or offer you an alternate choice that still means they are coming in for a visit.

When you conduct a helpful, professional inquiry conversation and include a final closing question, your prospect sees you as just the resource they need to make a good decision. They begin to trust you and rely on your recommendations. When you ask a final closing question, they want to take the action you recommend. And do you know what else? By then, most qualified prospects are already looking forward to visiting your center, are delighted to be asked, and will say, “Yes!” long before they ever would have considered doing so to that guy selling used cars.

Julie Wassom
“The Speaker Whose Message Means Business”
Marketing and Sales Speaker/Consultant/Author
Call me: 303-693-2306
Fax me: 303-617-6422
E-me: julie@juliewassom.com
See me: www.juliewassom.com