Texas Barber College – Importance of Research

You can’t manage what you can’t measure

“When we first came aboard with Enrollment Resources there was a big gap on where we were and where we wanted to be as a company. Through their market research and Mystery Shopping, we were able to identify some key priorities that we needed to address in order to reach our goal…Professionalizing [our] process in a very short period time resulted in significant improvements.” – Esti Merlo, Director of Admissions, Texas Barber College

Texas Barber Colleges is a long-established school with multiple campuses throughout Texas. Director of Admissions Esti Merlo asked Enrollment Resources to assist in an interesting challenge, “While we had, in my opinion, a successful organization, my sense was we could be more effective in how our admissions team used their time. The objectivity and interest in best practices that Enrollment Resources brought to the table was of interest to me,” said Merlo.

A Simple Five Step Process

Enrollment Resources took Texas Barber and Beauty through a simple 5-step process over three months:

1. Evaluate Texas Barber Colleges compared to best practices in North America
2. Quantify how seemingly small oversights translate into specific financial implications to learn how many hundreds of thousands of dollars were being left on the table
3. Create an opportunity set of low cost/high return activities that would stack the odds of improving results
4. Analyze each possible opportunity for appropriate risk. Eliminate activities that might be too risky to actually undertake
5. With risk analyzed and mitigated, aggressively turn opportunities into results. ‘Nag’ all those involved in turn those ideas into results, in a timely manner

Outcomes

Through the Enrollment Resources evaluation and research process, Texas Barber Colleges identified specific insights that would offer clues toward gaining some rapid success. While they scored exceptionally well through the rigorous process, opportunities for improvement were quickly identified:

• The need to create a consistent sales process across campuses
• Close a couple of small sales process leaks, causing leads and prospects to be lost in the enrollment process. This included optimal capturing and tracking of lead information and tracking sources
• Opportunities to follow up with and re-market to ‘seemingly’ stale leads
• Creating a structured predictable internet advertising strategy

Through the evaluation process, Texas Barber Colleges was also able to identify several untapped resources and areas of potential revenue improvements.

The Drive to Create Tangible Results

Before partnering with Enrollment Resources, they were not able to measure lead volumes or sources. This made comparative improvement measures difficult to assess. Solutions were put in place to capture this information:

• Creation of an in-house Call Center was implemented. The Call Center also collected lead source information
• Enrollment increased 17% after going through the Enrollment Resources Performance Improvement program
• There was an 81% increase in Internet lead flow, largely without incurring additional advertising costs
• Conversion rates improved by 3% due to the higher quality of the leads and further improvements in their systems and processes

Intangible Benefits:

The most notable intangible benefit Texas Barber Colleges experienced was the satisfaction of knowing that the changes implemented made the enrollment team’s job easier. The admissions team now have key performance indicators available to them in real time if needed.

This key process improvement in turn allows Admissions reps to isolate on specific areas of the sales funnel. Individual reps can then test and improve their respective sales process. This leads to conversion and revenue increases.

The staff also appreciates knowing that when a call was missed or the office was closed, the school was still able to capture lead information for future follow up.

• The culture of testing allowed management and reps to focus on improving processes not personalities
• These intangibles resulted in improving the productivity and environment within the admissions team
• The measurement of processes have also allowed staff to share and document new ideas

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