If you were to look at my LinkedIn profile you would see that I work at MindMax.  MindMax partners with different schools in different ways – but ultimately, we exist to help our partner schools tackle their most pressing enrollment challenges and opportunities.

If you’re a school who already partners with us, or are considering partnering with us, I wanted to offer you some insight into the culture and approach of MindMax’s Enrollment Management Center team from my role as an enrollment advisor.

In that capacity, I interact with students as if I were employed by the university.  I make calls on behalf of highly competitive nationally recognized universities, elite Ivy League schools, and some of the competitive public institutions in the country, and for each school I fully represent their mission and brand.

This is not a responsibility that I or the other members of MindMax’s Enrollment Management Center team take lightly.  It is imperative that we always represent the schools we partner with in a professional and authentic manner.

Depending on the partnership, the Enrollment Management Center team duties may include outgoing and incoming phone calls, live chat, emailing students and providing customer service.   We may be tasked with a targeted engagement to drive immediate enrollments for a summer high school program, for example, or a long-term engagement such as being a school’s whole enrollment arm.  Each engagement is different depending on what function the school has requested our assistance with and we adapt to and honor that.

To be the best part we can be, here are our Enrollment Management Center team’s guiding attributes:

• Honesty – Lee Maxey, our CEO and the founder of MindMax, has always told us that above all else it is our most important responsibility to always be honest.
• Knowledge – We need to be experts on the courses.   We need to know the basics as to duration, format and costs but also details about the industry or field of study. It is important that we understand how courses will benefit the students.  Is it a good fit? Are they qualified?  We need also need to know the persona of the students.  By knowing the type of student that would benefit from the course we are better at converting them. It is also important that we understand the how courses will benefit the students.  Is it a good fit? Are they qualified?
• Professionalism – We speak in the voice of the school brand with professionalism.  This is especially important in the customer service role.   We speak in the voice of “higher” education.
• Rapport Building – Our calls or chats may be brief but in that time we need to be listening and establishing a rapport with the student.
• Results orientation – alongside guiding, advising, and serving, we also know we are responsible for “selling” the courses and helping our partners achieve their enrollment goals is important.  However, we never have and never will resort to pressure tactics or misleading students to get them to enroll.  It must be a genuine good fit for both the school and the prospective student.
• Communicate effectively – it’s important that we’re able to communicate with all types of students.  For example, we interact with many students from all over the world and often there is a language barrier that we need to overcome with courtesy and patience.  Since we often don’t have a lot of time on the call or chat, it is also important that we are able to answer questions and provide course information succinctly.
• Listening and deciphering – As with any student-facing role, the most effective communicator listens more than they talk!  We take care to ask questions and find out about the student so that way we can ensure that they are enrolled in the proper course.

While these attributes may seem obvious, they are found less and less in the student and customer-facing world.  I believe the reason MindMax has been so successful in the enrollment management arena is because our partner universities can be completely confident we will represent them in the marketplace as they themselves would.  We’ve been doing this since 2009 and are proud of the school’s we represent and to be considered a tried-and-true trusted partner by many world renown universities.