What Questions Should You Be Asking Your Vendors?

Full Transcript

Shane Kehl: [00:00:00] It's Friday. Energy is high, and we're ready to dive in. I'm Shane Keel, chief Entertainment Officer at Enroll Fi, and every other week, Mickey Baes and I will discuss how institutions can take high level strategies and tactics and implement them into their enrollment marketing strategy in a practical way, grab your coffee, open your notes.

It's time for Fanatical Fridays.

All righty. First episode. By the time this airs of 2023, how are we feeling closing out 2022? Mickey? Well, I, 

Mickey Baines: I've just finished Ting up the year. It's been a very successful year for. We, we hit the bonna range of my range of growth for the year, only because a couple of our. Uh, potentially big projects at the end of the year won't actually sign until early next year, but this was [00:01:00] a, you know, a very substantive year for us.

I think, um, my practice had like 28% year over year growth. We, you know, I had all the other numbers and all those kind of things. I think we put it out on social media at some point, but it was good. This was a, a hectic year. Yeah. I think we're still adjusting, coming out of the pandemic. I don't know that we've returned to what the new normal will be.

Obviously we're not gonna go back to the old normal, right? There's a new normal, but I don't think we're even there yet. Um, you know, and so, uh, I think it's was a little hectic and chaotic in that way and, and just letting people find a new cycle. What is the cycle of work? Depending upon, you know, what you're, what you do, that cycle will be different, but I think we're still finding what that is.

Right? 

Shane Kehl: Yeah. And I think, you know, for, for a. Vendors to, to higher ed. That's kind of where everybody's at because there's so much internal structure, changes in people, you know, leaving, switching roles. There's just a lot that's, you know, even still people figuring out the [00:02:00] online versus hybrid versus in person and what they wanna do, and that has a huge bearing on your team and what you're asking them to do.

And. How big or small your team then needs to be. And so there are things you're control over in your control and there are things you're not in control. And that's just, then I think the vendor conversations kind of are the second ones to happen and so everything kind of gets, we're experiencing something similar where it's just getting kind of prolonged into the next year and constantly, you know, pushed and nudged a little bit further down the road while, while the internal workings get figured out.

Cause that's obviously most important. A vendor's not gonna do you any good if your internal's a. 

Mickey Baines: There are certain things about our, our world in higher education that will shift and stay. And I, you know, I was talking with the A school last year who, I don't know how, but this is through the pandemic.

Like there are only like 35% of their everything went online. Hmm. Which I thought was a little odd, but, and then after it had dropped back down to. 15 or 20%. And, and only because they went back to the old ways and they're trying to force that to continue that new way. Yeah. And how do we, how do we make some [00:03:00] changes so that we can keep, uh, everything, you know, 35, 40%, like that's what it should be for us and how do we make changes to ensure that, that that happens and, and reset expectations for everyone.

And I think because part of it was they came back thinking the expectation was, we're just going back to the way it would be. And that's one of the areas where they struggled. And because they're struggling in that area, they are struggling figuring out. to, I get back to the way I've, I've lost the buy-in because people have options to be back on campus or they're back to the old ways and how do we build that up?

And uh, and that was some, I think, question for them. So, yeah, it's, uh, very interesting. Yeah, 

Shane Kehl: well, going back to, you know, the, the vendor concept and let's say, you know, people are starting to maybe really get more into their stride as we get into 2023. Yeah. And I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that was in the works later this year, you know, throughout most of the course of this year.

But hopefully, you know, they're getting situated tail end of this year and really going into New Year, you know, with your, your new Year's resolutions for your, for your university, and you're feeling good about things. and you wanna bring [00:04:00] in a vendor, um, for a variety of, of different things. It could be implementation, it could be marketing recruitment, it could be high level, you know, just strategy for your institution and, and how you wanna recruit students.

And so as people are getting into that, I think it might be really helpful to think about, you know, at those various stages, what types of questions should institutions be asking? Vendors to make sure that they're getting into a good relationship. The worst thing you can do is jump in thinking you need some support and then just pick the wrong people.

Not that they're bad people, but they just don't do what you thought they were gonna do and they're not doing for you what they thought, you know, you wanted, and, and there's a lot of confusion there. So, Maybe th first thinking about you're looking to implement a crm, for example. Yeah. Who do you start talking to and, and, and what questions are you asking to really determine who's gonna be the best fit for you to make sure that, you know, you can meet your goals, um, and timelines for an implementation project, for example?

Mickey Baines: Well, I think, you know, [00:05:00] When it comes to, to CRM specifically, and, and maybe, maybe I should say this is for technology, you know, when it comes to that, you, you're getting technology for a specific use case or a series of use cases, um, and understanding from the, I call them the functional owner or business owner, the person that leads the team that will be using the tool to do what it needs to do, understanding clearly from them what they need to be doing.

Not what has to be in the tool, what they need to be doing, and then from there determining how does that tool support what they need to do? And having that really clearly documented and communicated insight, especially when we're talking technology, most of the time, new purchases of technology, which then would include.

An implementation of the technology requires some type of formal bidding process. Mm-hmm. , um, especially public institutions, right? They, they have requirements. If it's spinning above a certain threshold, they have to go out to this bidding process. And so [00:06:00] when those, um, uh, Come out, we call 'em RFPs, right?

When those come out to be read, you know, as, as someone who might respond to that, a request for a proposal, I'm, if I'm gonna propose, I'm gonna read it and understand what those requirements are. Gosh, there's so often very vague information in there that isn't clear. And really for me, for our team, when we choose not to respond to one good portion of the time, it's because it's fairly clear that either.

There was no communication with the business owner about what needed to be in the tool or what the tool needed to be able to do, or the business owner was involved and just didn't know. Hmm. Um, and that it's very vague and, and you can't get a good, a proposal in that can really hit. what they want. You don't know what they want and you have to be pretty broad and vague.

Um, and that's really for us, a flag because part of a c CRM to be successfully implemented really means it's successfully adopted and the [00:07:00] folks don't know what they should be doing and can't help guide that. They are not necessarily as bought in on that, on that adoption piece. And that's really, for us, we're successes.

So that's a flag for us. And so I think having that information, and I, and I'll just, you know, we were talking a little bit before we hit record and I'll just share you a good instance of one, like we, it was RFP recently, we, we did respond to it and I, there were five or six responses to it. And, and because it was a public institution, you can do a query and, and ask for, I wanna know who proposed and I wanna know what pricing they proposed.

It's one way that we can evaluate, win or lose. How did we do against others? Mm-hmm. . And so I'll tell you, uh, the five prices that, that I, that I saw back, the lowest bid was $70,000. And this, this was a, a proposal to implement a serum, not to buy this serum, just to implement a specific serum. 70, 70 some odd thousand dollars was the lowest.

Next was 120 something, 150 something, 400 and a few thousand, and then like [00:08:00] four 20 something. That's it. . Yeah. Now, and I asked you why you thought there was such a range, and I don't What did you say? What was your answer? Yeah, I, 

Shane Kehl: I thought it was gonna be the varying level of complexity. Complexity, right.

Uh, 

Mickey Baines: that they were complex and it could be complex enough to be $400,000. Yeah. But for all of those vendors to read the same document, write their proposal based on that mm-hmm. and have such a wide variance, it's because there's a lack of clarity about what really needs to be. And that's what I'm talking about.

So, so yes is what questions you, you should ask, and it's also knowing what you need to know and what information you need to be able to provide so that you, because that is not an RFP where you're comparing apples to apples, right? I mean, you might be comparing apples to beef. at that point, , because that's a wide variance.

Yeah. And what you wanna try to do is at minimum be apples to apples. Yeah. Best case. Macintosh, apple to Macintosh apple. And now you can really understand the difference [00:09:00] in the approach, the difference in the tool, what it can do, what it can't do. Now your real question you asked me about is what questions should you ask?

You know, when it comes to technology, I think it's really important to understand, cuz you're gonna see a. And if you don't have a business owner, if you are a business owner, you really don't know, it's okay. What I would suggest is contact some of those vendors before the rfp. Don't let 'em get you into a sales process.

They're gonna do that, but try to hold that off. But just to see a demo so that you can understand how the tool might work to give you some ideas so that then you can start to put that into. and then you have to look at what are the features you have that you need to have. We need to be able to manage events.

We need to be able to communicate with prospects. We need to be able to understand who our pro prospects are and report on them. Uh, we need to be able to connect to other tools. All these components, you need to be able to do those things, but the questions need to be, how does your tool do these things?

How easy is it to do it? Because sometimes the easiness, [00:10:00] uh, uh, factor may or may not be a big issue for you. Depends on how much tech support you have. If you have an IT team, if you're trying to do this with a half position inside of admissions, you know, it just kind of depends. But you know, you want to understand what is it actually gonna take to manage, make them show you.

how to build a campaign from scratch. Make them show you how to set up the events module so that it'll work for you. Not just how to create an event. Yeah. Because they can set up that demo and they can Three clicks, you got an event, right? There was 77 clicks you had to take before that process started, that you see on the demo, right?

Mm-hmm. . So understanding those pieces and then for the project with the implementation, be aware of how much you know or don't know. And this, you know, the number one statement I. On a week to week basis across any year, especially this year, we don't know what we don't know. Yeah, yeah. It's time to start knowing what it is you don't know so that you can understand from the vendor how they're going to teach you [00:11:00] what you don't know.

Because if they just deliver a tool and they don't teach you, you don't know what you have mm-hmm. , and you don't know how to use it. If you, you need to understand where those gaps are and then start asking 'em how they're going to teach that to you or ask yourself. , this vendor will not teach us. How are we going to learn?

What resources do they have and will we really learn? Cuz everybody's gonna have, we got this, oh, you got a community for this? We got all these training videos. It's awesome. If you've never been into a community before for anything else, what's makes you think you're gonna adopt that model To learn now.

Right, right. Yeah. And so that's, and so then you have to start un asking, you know, okay, aside from that community, what else do you. And really get to them. Answer. And then the other thing I would, the next thing I would say when it comes to implementation, and I'm seeing this more often now and I think it's important how much time in the implementation process this is gonna take me and my team versus the vendor.

Yeah. How much time do you really need from us? To get this to work, [00:12:00] uh, because oh, we just, you know, we'll have a couple meetings a week and you know that that's a flag. Mm-hmm. , because if they don't need you, but for 30 to 60 minutes a week, how are they going to understand your day-to-day world of all the users use the tool and how they're doing their work to ensure that that tool's doing that.

Yeah. , whether they build it for you or then understand it so they can teach you how you can build it for yourself, whichever model they may have. How do they know that? Because that really is, is where the crux of the time comes into play. Yes. You might only have 60 to 90 minutes with them in a given week, but that doesn't mean that back end of that is Well, that means you're doing the build and they're showing you in that 90 minutes and then you need to spend two to five hours.

Mm-hmm. maybe more that week to do the. And if you can't, when you come back next week, you're behind. Yeah. They can't do what they're supposed to do next week. And when they push that behind, what did you just do? You postpone that project for a week, right? Yeah. [00:13:00] And now you still have five more hours for the next week, plus the two that you weren't able to finish.

So now you got seven hours. Do you have seven? And it Cascades and I, we, this might be. Five to 10% of our work is coming in and that those projects, because they, they missed two hours, they missed four hours, they missed eight hours, and now you, next thing you know, they're behind 32 hours of what they're supposed to be doing.

And they need someone that can catch 'em up and get 'em across the finish line because they can't do it. Yeah. And understanding, so understanding time's important. Those so under, you know, so what does the company do? What do they expect you to do? How much time does that take? Yeah, those are questions you need to ask.

Shane Kehl: I think sometimes different companies refer to onboarding differently, and some mean the bare bones onboarding you need just for like, You're a skeleton and you know, you can kind of look the part, but the second you add anything to this, it's gonna, or try anything advanced or what it's gonna fall apart versus the, you are fully equipped to now start operating yes.

In the way that you want to be operating. And we've set you up to be able to do that report on all of that, [00:14:00] you know, the whole works. Um, and I think that that term onboarding. , it's on a, it's a spectrum. Um, and really trying to understand where on the spectrum they fall when they mean onboarding. Because I feel like we've heard with, you know, certain CRMs or I feel like this particular happens with, you know, bigger website projects is just, you know, okay, yeah, we'll get you there.

And then it's, it's a year, two years later and they're still not where they want to be and they thought they were gonna be done in, you know, six to nine months. Yep. Um, which 

Mickey Baines: is a huge challenge. Well, I think it's getting better in our. with the question of how long is this gonna take us before we're live?

Mm-hmm. , there was a period of time maybe three and a half years ago where I started hearing 12 weeks. Yeah. 12 weeks from, from the technology vendors, not necessarily from implementers, from technology vendors. And I don't know of an instance where that really has occurred. Now, I will say we have done that as a firm.

We have hit timelines like that. Mm-hmm. , but a, there's a lot of things going to making 12 weeks work [00:15:00] a, we're doing all the. , we're not depending upon the client to do it. The scale of what we're building is smaller integrations. If you're doing integrations, uh, integration itself is usually at least 12 weeks.

Yeah. And so understanding those things and, and being a break now, you know, I, I don't hear 12 weeks anymore. I do hear four to six months. A lot of. Four months is feasible. But again, it's what is it you're going line with? You're going for an emission serum that covers everything from inquiry to application and a, and a decision that's integrated to an ssis s That's a lot that has to occur, and that also has an impact on your time.

So if, when someone says, if you ask two questions, how long is this going to, uh, take to get done? How much time will we have to spend doing it? , those can be given you best case answers that don't align. So we can get it done in four months, an hour and a half a week, an hour and a half a week is not a four month project.

Yeah, it, it might be three hours a week of meeting time, and then all the other work behind the scenes that you have to do. [00:16:00] And because it's four months, not six months, it's not two to five hours, it's four to eight. But again, you're not asking those questions together. You're asking 'em independently, right?

And they're giving you two different best case answers. that don't lie. And, and that's, and it's those little nuances where you can get caught in that rut and understanding and being able to understand the, the difference between the two. Mm-hmm. , really, really 

Shane Kehl: important. All right. We've, we've gone through kind of like this, you know, more of the vetting process.

You've, you've learned the things that, you know, you feel like you need to learn in order. Make an informed decision and now we're kind of at the point of kickoff call with this vendor. Yep. Um, we're really getting started, you know, what do you think at that point is, is gonna really. Help them. You know, maybe, and not even just questions, but really thinking about the things that your team needs to share with them.

They need to share with you the questions, you know, you need to ask and you kind of expect them to ask. Like I going touching on integrations real quick. There's a big difference between integrating [00:17:00] for a program and you know, a school with a hundred programs that makes integration way longer. Mm-hmm.

And so you know what you 

Mickey Baines: expect. I'll tell you what's more challenging than that for. , um, integrating for admissions versus integrating for student success. Yeah, right. Admissions I might need to integrate. It's more of a migration a lot of times, but I might need to import a lot of applications from mm-hmm.

uh, common App, all these other places. And then I've gotta integrate my decision to things, to an ssis s But when I start talking, talking to student success, I've got an ssis s I've got an lms, I've got, uh, like Handshake, like a career development type tool. We've got, uh, all these other tools and you might have eight different tools you're building connections to that can be a a, a reliving challenge, integration itself.

12 to 18 month process. Um, and so, so what, you know, in a, in, in a discovery period, what you want to start to learn is what artifacts do you need that we can provide that will help us? What artifacts, [00:18:00] um, do we not have any four that we need to create? What are the milestones in a project? When do those milestones occur?

What do we need to have in, in order for that milestone to begin? What happens if we don't have that milestone or have our part in place to start that milestone piece? So let's say communication is the third module that you have and you know you want to, you've got a new tool that's gonna help you do all kinds of really cool stuff with communication and automation that you've not done before, that might mean you having a whole lot of new content you have to have written.

If that's module three, and say module three is seven weeks in, you're likely not gonna have all that content. . Mm-hmm. , what does that mean for that? Can they put something else in his place? Does that change the project timeline? Can it just be picked up and moved to be module seven? How does that work? And so understanding that piece of it and coming to that alignment.

Um, uh, so what do we need to have? What happens if we don't have that ready? Yeah. Um, if we don't have it ready for another week or another month. [00:19:00] I've seen implementation projects where, where someone who's responsible, a third party responsible for it, says, well, I can't just pick that up and trade that, so we're gonna have to pause the entire project.

Mm-hmm. until you get that done. And I'm not sure why they did that. It, it didn't make sense at the, in the moment when I saw it, but I've, I've, I've seen that occur. That was not what the client was expecting. They didn't ask ahead of time. Yeah. And then, you know, once that one, and then. Once we're ready to unpause because, oh, it's a month later, we have it.

Great. I've reassigned my team. I need another three weeks before they're back ready for you again. And so now that seven weeks, you lost. Yeah. Now even if you trade modules, that might still occur. So we can move. We can move this up. We can communication Back to module seven. You're ready to go with module seven?

My team's not done yet with the other project where we put 'em on in the meantime and they need another couple weeks. Yeah. And so now you're on pause just to start modules, you know? So all those things. So understanding those. I think are important. Um, I'll tell you from our [00:20:00] side, and I would love to see clients ask for this, defining the difference between.

the client. If I'm the enrollment director, what does success mean for me, not for the project. What does success mean? Means I've enrolled 10% more students. Mm-hmm. , great. We're gonna have a new piece of technology. How is that technology gonna support us in efforts to grow by 10%? CRMs not gonna get you 10% more, right?

It's what you tell it to do that might help you. Mm-hmm. , but it's not gonna just do it. And so understanding client success and letting that factor into. Project success because it can be easy for your third party vendor to get into the tool itself and start working well, we gotta, these are things we have to do.

You said you wanted these communications to, we gotta get that done on time and, and if you're about to run over, they're gonna be pushing you to keep you on time. What's the difference between finishing on time, just keep the project successful and what the sacrifice you make to do, to keep it on time that impacts the overall success that you need?

Yeah, so I look [00:21:00] at client success project. and my job on a project is to ensure the clients are successful and then our team is ensuring that the project's successful. And my job is to understand, hey, we're gonna keep this project on time. That looks great, but what are we sacrificing? Because, right. I don't know that that communication plan that we are providing for them because they don't have content.

Mm-hmm. and we're just gonna do this little drip that is not gonna help grow enrollment. Yeah, 

Shane Kehl: and I think it's similar to what you said last episode about, you know, it's not just gonna work on its own, or I forget your, your exact quote, but mentioning that like, tools. Only work for you when you put the work in to make them work.

And I think a lot of times when you're, when you're adding a new tool like that, it's an upgrade from what you had before, which means you likely need new things. So you have all these new capabilities. Well, the new capabilities aren't just gonna make what you have correct. 10 times better. They're typically requiring additional thought strategy, content, emails, whatever it is that that your team then needs to create.

And I think that's super [00:22:00] important too, in thinking. what you mentioned with like what's the, what are the compounding elements that if I don't do this thing, none of these other things can move forward? Um, exactly. And that, that's where, as you're saying, there's massive. Delays in hiccups because you don't understand that at the beginning and you're thinking, well, we can, you can, we can wait until then to do the emails.

And it's like, no, you need the emails written and ready to go so that we can then build these workflows and do these other things, um, that are impossible without them. 

Mickey Baines: I I can give you two examples. We'll do a communication example and then I'll do an integration example. Um, and so the, I think the comment you're referring to was, um, you want the CM to work for you?

And I said, well, first cms a piece of technology. It's, it doesn't. Work for somebody. It just works right? And it does exactly what it's told to do. It's not a human, it's not gonna be unreliable. It's gonna be reliable to do exactly what you tell it to do. The more detail you can give it or what to do, the more detail and performance things it can do for you.

Mm-hmm. . And so that's really, really critical. And when it comes to understanding what that means from a communication perspective, so when you get to [00:23:00] that communication piece of, of. , uh, of your implementation, and you've got, you've got this new tool that can do all these cool things. Good example might be dynamic content.

You may not have a tool that lets you do dynamic content at all, or, or well at all. Mm-hmm. . And so you don't have a lot of it. Well, you can't just take those emails and now there are dynamic, you have to write the dynamic compete pieces of it. Yeah. And so those static emails have to be rewritten and that takes time.

And you may have 50 email. Now if your goal is, if your success goal is to be live with the CRM for next fall, versus we need to have a 10% growth enrollment, those are two different goals and, and I can ensure that we're live in the fall might require scoping back, meaning, well, we're gonna start with 10 of these 200 emails being dynamic.

Versus 200 of the 200. Yeah. But if you need the 10%, then we need 200. And [00:24:00] if you want 10% for next fall, then you have to start working now for that. And that's really where understanding at the front of the in discovery, what you need in those artifacts. What do you need? Understanding, what do we need to think about when it comes to dyna dynamic content?

We may not hit communication for another 12 weeks, but you know, you've got 12 weeks of work to do to be ready for it. And so start learning upfront what that is so that when it comes. , you don't need to to pause for 12 weeks. You're ready to go. But finding those pieces, but that is where you're gonna find some delays or gaps in what you have.

You can't go in and you, this is what you were saying, Shane, you can't copy and paste what you have, whether that's communication. Mm-hmm. , automations, whatever. It's, you can't just copy and paste that because the new tool, new tool you have is not designed to function exactly the way you have. Right. And so if you copy and paste, you will hit some limit.

And on top of it, you got a new tool to do great things and you're gonna get the same or less results, right, than you got before. The reason it's gonna be less is because it can't do those things is you're gonna have to make [00:25:00] compromises and cut 'em out. And so it's gonna be doing less than before. Our job as a third party person is to understand what is it you're doing now?

Why are you doing it that way? What, what, and this is a bigger question. What are the outcomes for those things? Mm-hmm. . And then how do we improve those outcomes and do them, and get those outcomes or improved outcomes in the most effective and efficient way in this piece of technology. And then bring that to our client and say, this is how we think you should do it, and here's why.

Yeah. And then you start to see much more dramatic improvements. The other thing I talked about was integration. So integration a big issue with integration. Yes. The tools you have to connect to, but it's also the data, the integr. Piece. The whole purpose of that is to get data in and or out of your technology.

So we had a client once that had a cr. That came already pre-built with all of the standard C codes. And if you don't know what I mean by that, there's a, a, a coding process. Every high school, every college university has a, a, a code that was provided that was created by somebody. I don't [00:26:00] know if this is, I don't even know who created at this point, but it's just known as the C C E E B code.

And their CM had all those pre-built in there. Here's the problem. The client had a student information system that did not use those. They created their own over years for 20 something years. They have. Hmm. Now do we use the standard ones, which means all of our data in the student information system needs to kind of be tweaked?

You either gonna duplicate all the schools in in our system, or we're gonna have to change the codes, or do we. Use our codes and force those into the crm knowing that because your current codes, the way you have them, because you're not using standard, um, I don't know, pick a school. I'll say Redding Area Community College, cuz that's near where I live.

You've got Redding Community College, Redding Area Community College, rac, all these different versions of that one school in this system with different codes. Mm-hmm. because it's, cuz you've done it yourself over time you have d. And it's very difficult to [00:27:00] understand who came from which school and if at which school it might be like.

It's very confusing. So do you claim the data and use the standardized? That was a seven week delay for that institution to make that decision. Now I can't build my integration until I know all the data that I'm moving back and forth, and those data decisions have impact on knowing the data. So the cascading part of that has had to wake seven weeks on that, and then I had to go in and make the change to our data model.

That then goes into the plan for the integration process. So all these cascading pieces. So understanding that in discovery to start thinking through the data model, to give yourself ramp up time to actually start the integration work itself. All of these are like concurrent tracks of your implementation.

They stagger, they don't, they're not sequential and they don't all start and stop at the same time. But knowing that ramp up time is, is important. And so when you think about your vendor, what do we need for the data model? If we start. eight weeks into this project to start talking integration, and we don't have the data model [00:28:00] in place.

What does that do to our implementation timeline? Is it, do we have time to put in place in eight weeks? Yeah. Or no? 

Shane Kehl: Yeah. And I, I think too, I mean, going back to, obviously we're talking about things you should be asking the vendor, but things that you should be expecting from the vendor almost, you know, pre-project start are a lot of these, um, you know, diagnostic questions that are really trying to tease out and getting data from them.

Getting Excel lists of how you name programs, I think is one of the ones, you know, I've come across before that they have, you know, acronyms for them. They have, they spell them out, they use different words, and it's just, they're all over the place. Um, same thing with the school codes. , they need cleaned up.

And you have to know that prior to going in. Otherwise you're gonna hit all these delays cuz you have no idea how things are formatted. And so getting that, those questions from the vendor is a sign that like they're doing their homework and their due diligence so that they can give you the most accurate, um, kind of prediction both from a timeline standpoint and as you're saying, each of those milestones, what those are gonna take up.

You know, one of those [00:29:00] gets bumped and it's, it's a crucial one. You really can't move anything else for it. You can't be referencing program names in dynamic emails or in, you know, the business rules and logic when they're all inconsistent. And so that's kinda the crux of everything else. Um, and so I think that's, you know, another huge thing that everyone should be thinking about.

Well, it, 

Mickey Baines: and it's, it's almost like you read my LinkedIn feed today, and this is gonna give away when we were recording this. So there was an article that came out this week from Inside. because you're talking about data and, and, and labels and mm-hmm. and how it's used. Um, the article is about, um, the community colleges within the state of Oregon and, and their difficulty reporting enrollment data.

Hmm. Be because it's inconsistent. . Yeah. Why is it inconsistent? It's complex. There's not a, there's not an easy answer to it and I've not looked at it, so I can't say for exactly sure, but I can tell you what I see cuz I see reports, um, and, and data from our client as we're implementing. And a lot of times we see, you know, this report, how many perspective students did you have?

And this one says, how many inquiries did you have? And the numbers are different. It's because the [00:30:00] definitions for those terms are not always the same. And so we've had schools that will say, Hey, we use the term prospect. Lead an inquiry interchange. Yeah, which is not necessarily the best thing to do, but because you use them interchangeably, it makes it hard for people to understand, well, what is it?

Is there a difference? I don't know. Mm-hmm. , we have schools that will say, we use all three of those, and they all mean something different. Well, if you have a report that goes to everybody on the cabinet that talks about prospects, and they think it's inquiries and prospects are higher at the funnel, And inquiries are a little further down.

And then you're also doing a report on increase and they don't know the difference why they're two different numbers. Yeah. That happens all the time. So having a data dictionary, It's something we began doing early on. It's like we have to understand these, these terms that we use because different departments understand their language slightly differently.

What is an enrolled student? Mm-hmm. . Is it someone who is full-time, someone who's paid their tuition, someone who's in [00:31:00] class, someone who's registered, what is it? Um, you know, we, we had a client that said, Hey, I want to use my CRM to recruit and engage my. my perspective students until their butts are in the seats in class, you would think, okay, then I just, let's get that field out of the cr, out of your ssis and we'll put it in the serum.

Pretty easy. That field didn't exist. , I had to pull multiple fields from multiple object tables mm-hmm. in there and run a calculation to, to, we had to figure out how to run, run this calculation to determine that this is an advised student or registered or in the class. . But you would think that's not always the case.

Right? That it's that way. And that's, that's not necessarily not school's fault. That's maybe partial to school. Well, cause they're using assets that they built 20 years ago. You didn't need to use those types of things. Right. Right. And so as we've evolved those, those needs change. And so understanding the difference, because I'm talking about schools are in a, in a single [00:32:00] system, when they're talking about enrolled students, they each didn't define it the same.

Yeah. So when you're saying how many roles did you have, it's slightly different. Right. And so their numbers didn't come up and, and that's part of, you gotta have a data dictionary. Yeah. Um, that really clearly defines what does it lead, what is a prospect? What is an inquiry? They're not just prospective students.

Yeah. Um, what is an applicant? Another one an applicant for some schools is they've started their application. Some of them is they've completed the application or awaiting an application. That's now knowing the difference is a, that's a distinction. Yeah. Because I recruit each of those students manager, I recruit each of those pro protective students differently.

What I'm trying to get them to do and what I want, information I wanna provide them is different. And so knowing that information is really important. 

Shane Kehl: Yeah. Especially, I mean, even just for the sake of, of your school. And again, not everybody stays in their job forever. And as there's turnover and people come and go, if you have a, you come from a different school, your definition of [00:33:00] applica, applicant is one thing, and they're using this other thing.

that person leaves. You get brought in and now you're thinking, whoa, you know, we are either way up or we're way down. I'm crushing it, or I'm doing terrible. What's happening? And you're making all these decisions based on that. And the only difference is the way that you guys defined a term and that's it, and you, but you have no sense of where you're at and you're, you're kind of bearings, um, and you feel like, again, you're either crushing it or doing horribly.

Of a simple, I don't understand and didn't, didn't refer to this term the same way that the last person did, or the school always has. 

Mickey Baines: And and that's not just with technology, that's other, you know, in, in your words. Right? 

Shane Kehl: That's everything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's even comes down to thinking about like website traffic and people are thinking about, you know, or organic search terms and on brand and off brand and understanding even the, not even necessarily that there are different definitions for them, but what those things are.

And I think there are a lot, as marketing continues to get, you know, more complex and there's just so many data points at people's fingertips these days, understanding [00:34:00] what each of those things mean so that you can make informed decisions off of them, um, and aren't having. Assume, guess or rely on somebody else to provide them is just, is crucial.

But it's, it's an undertaking for sure. But it's one that, you know, the second it goes wrong, you'll wish you have kind of started that because it's, it's a headache 

Mickey Baines: for everybody. You know, I've had a, I've had a client complain to me once, like, uh, it was really frustrated. They, um, were working with a, a marketing agency and, and the agency was reporting, um, all of their, uh, digital ad conversions that they had.

And, uh, this. Fairly high level, uh, person at the, at the client was, was looking at these like, oh, this is awesome. Look at these conversions you got. Uh, and then got the report on their, uh, enrollment student funnel, and they looked at their prospective student, that inquiry line, and they didn't see all those conversions.

Like, what, what's happening? Those web convert, those were people who clicked on an ad. They didn't fill out a form. That's my, that's not what they Right. And [00:35:00] so defining, you know, what do you. by that conversion. What does that mean? I mean, as a marketer, she, you, you and your folks, you, you're, you have to go out and help generate interest.

Generating interest is a lot of things to a lot of people. Mm-hmm. , it could be getting people on a website. It could be people getting to an ad, seeing an ad, clicking an a, filling out a form after they've clicked on the ad and understanding what that means. What does the client need? They, you, you. Be the best of the world getting impressions, but the client needs bodies in the pipeline and understanding those nuances, that's, that's client success versus project success.

Right? Right. And being aligned on those things. Uh, and so when you think about what to ask, When you show me your case studies, your references, and talk about what you've achieved with them, what does that conversion rate really mean? What did you convert? Right. Um, and being sure you understand that. Um, yeah.

Cause cause you might be in the reverse of that, where you're thinking, okay, the, this, the agency saying, Hey, we've got like [00:36:00] this 15% conversion rate. Mm-hmm. , uh, and you're thinking, well, gosh, that click. should, should be like point something, right? Yeah. Well, they're not, they're not talking about clickthrough issue.

They're talking about inquiry to applicant. All the leads we generated, 15% applied. Yeah, that's a great number. But if you see that and don't know what they're thinking, you're like, oh, they, this is not right. They're, yeah, they're fibbing and so distinguishing is really important. 

Shane Kehl: Yeah, and I think that's one of the struggles, particularly maybe with digital ads is probably the most complex and thinking about, you know, generating leads.

And a lot of these people that, you know, they're using their source tracking, they're using Google Analytics and all these other things, and that's, but that gives you a quantity of. People who visit a certain page, you know, take whatever kind of goal that you've set up. Um, but it doesn't tell you who that person is, so you still don't, at the end of the day, you still don't have any true sense of the quality of those contacts.

And I think that just speaks a little bit more to like, when you are doing these things, you know, don't you want people going through a form so that you on your website, so that you can [00:37:00] understand exactly who they are and where they came from, so that you can judge the effectiveness of these ads and not rely so much on the vendor to give you reports.

We drove this much traffic, we generated, you know, Google Ads is telling us we generated a thousand conversions of people, you know, visiting or clicking a button on that page, whatever. They click the apply. Now Buzz is a classic. They click the Apply Now button, right? . Great. Well, you don't have a thousand or anywhere near that many, you know, applicants.

Mm-hmm. new in the door this year because of those digital ad efforts. Um, but who do you have And, and what, how are you measuring that? And I think those are the, the things that people maybe often don't think about, or they see a small uptick and they think, well, you know, we just did this big digital ad campaign.

It's gotta be that. Well, you also had your, you know, open house that you expanded this year and put way more money and effort into, like, it could have been that, oh, well we also. Billboards this year. Like it can be so many different things. And, and I think that's the huge gap there of not understanding who those people are so that you can follow them all the way through the funnel.

Um, and trying to get a better sense of that and not relying [00:38:00] as heavily on vendors for, not that they're all vanity metrics, um, but they're, they're as helpful as they are. They're, they're kind of, they're passive metrics, I think. And, um, there's nothing, you know, inherently wrong with that. There are just, there are better solutions out there.

1.  

Mickey Baines: And having a plan, just, just being in agreement with, with the vendor. I, I, I don't like the analogy of driving 'em to, to click to apply, but then they didn't fill out the application or they haven't finished it. Um, well, is it, is it that agency's job to get 'em to finish the application or is that your job?

Right. I don't, the answer will vary. I'm not saying there isn't an, a specific answer you have to have for that, but knowing the difference and then ensuring then, is it, then how do you hold the agency accountable? And I'm not saying you can't, but you just have to. Mm-hmm. have an agreed upon way as to how many applicants you get.

Right. Um, and so I think that having that clear distinction and asking. , what do you mean by this? If I want you to do this for me in terms of applicants versus this, what does that change about your [00:39:00] proposal? What would you write in that proposal differently? Yeah. If you're not already on the same page to get that agreement in place, um, so that you understand what you're both 

Shane Kehl: working toward.

Right? Yeah. And I think getting, again, the here are our goals, and then having question. after that of how are you gonna measure these, you know, against these metrics? What do you feel you are and aren't responsible for? How often are we gonna receive reports and updates, and what are those things going to include?

I, I can count, you know, on the hands of. 25 different people. How many times I've heard, like our digital ad vendor doesn't let us see the ads. They don't show us, you know, real reports other than some cost, impression and click metrics. Mm-hmm. , all these things that are just, you know, it's, it's a report, but it's not the report you are expecting.

And I, you know, and I feel bad and I think, you know, the, the companies that do that, it's, that's not the best. But it is kind of on you too. You didn't ask like you need to do your homework and you need to make. You're allowing yourself to be successful [00:40:00] and, and measure against these things. And you know, if you're not asking those questions, a vendor that you know may not be the most confident in their work, um, is gonna give you the bare minimum and hope that you don't ask anything else or tell you that you can't get anything else.

And that's, you know, yep. That is partially on you to, to, to figure 

Mickey Baines: out. And, and I've worked through that. I've seen this, I've seen this in success. Groups working together where they struggle, but, but the expectation that was not made clear mm-hmm. in the contract, um, is we wanted, you know, you can tell us how many people we generate from this.

Yes, we can, but they weren't telling you in a way that allowed you to actually ever go and see it for yourself and your crm. Right. Because the measurement that U utm, whatever mechanism you're putting in place to know, hey, this person converted from this process wasn't coming through the. . Mm-hmm. , um, the school kind of wanted that, but, and the firm, and they thought, well, the firm's gonna tell us because they'll be in the CRM and they'll look at that report.

No. They just have their own tools they're looking at and they don't know how to use your crm. They have no desire to want know how to use your crm, and there's no plan place to get [00:41:00] that information into your crm. Yeah. But realistically, that's what you want. , you wanna be able to go back two years from now and say, Hey, how many people do you get from this campaign?

How many people enrolled? Because by the time the agency's done generating the leads and getting 'em to apply, they're done before you the enrollment thing. But you wanna know the who's enrolled mm-hmm. , uh, and if you don't work with them and have that agreement upon, do you actually get things into my CRM or not, or is that all on me?

Right. Um, you know, and, and I'll say, when I say all on me, this time. Literally, I mean, me and my team, because sometimes we're called in, in that scenario and we have to be in the middle Yeah. To try to work with a marketing agency to figure out what they're doing and what information we need from them.

And sometimes they've never even worked in a CRM themselves. Mm-hmm. . So they don't know Right. What to give us. We have to kind of walk them through it. Yeah. And then we have to work with a client to figure out, okay, here's actual limitations of what we're gonna have and what you're gonna be able to see and not be able to see.

Mm-hmm. . And some of that's based on their sim. Some of that's based on the agency they have. Um, and, and it's, it's, it's a tricky place to be in. You're not, I've seen very frequently, especially in the last couple years maybe. Cause it's just [00:42:00] more important where that connection when it comes to what, how you get information in your cr that that marketing, uh, agency is doing for you, um, is left out of that conversation.

And then we have to come in and help clean that up a bit. . 

Shane Kehl: Yeah. Yeah. So I think maybe to wrap up with some big takeaways, I think we've kind of basically said, and feel free to chime in here. You really need to understand your goals and, and how you're gonna measure your own success. And then you need to go chat with the vendor and say, here's where I'm at.

How do you fit into this model? Whether it's implementation of a, of any technology, whether it's marketing, um, you know, where do you fit in? How are you measuring up against this? And, and what are you responsible for and what are you not? And then at the end of the day, how are we gonna evaluate? you were successful, whether I was successful and whether it was be we were both successful because of this relationship or were we kind of independently successful mm-hmm.

and that really serves as kind of your, you know, project timeline of, of questioning and, and getting what you need, um, throughout the course of a partnership, really to feel like you're [00:43:00] maximizing, you know, every dollar that you're spending, especially when money's tight. Um, and that again, you're, you're leveraging your vendor in their skillset and all the things that they're good at to compliment you 

Mickey Baines: and your.

Yes, we, we talked about that, that variance in those RFP prices earlier. You know, if you are in a scenario where you're getting bids from different firms and you see that a really large variance in that you're gonna have a scoring process in place. Mm-hmm. , some of that scorings gonna be based on price.

Mm-hmm. some. It's gonna be based on experience in whatever the proposals says. If it's a really wide variance, allow yourself to pause and understand why there's such a vari. before you go into scoring, move forward. And if you are in a mandated process that doesn't allow that, cancel it. Yeah, start over.

That's a painful thing. Mm-hmm. . But your best bidder may have read the information wrong. or propose something based on what you said or didn't say. Right? And if they understand it better, then [00:44:00] they could change and be a, a more effective price. And, and maybe they might still be more expensive, but when you recalculate the scorer based on that, then they might actually win that bid and you ha come up with a better vendor because of it.

So don't be afraid to pause and understand and, and if you do have to cancel it, Then be sure that you talked to vendors before you rewrite it. Mm-hmm. . So let's understand. Why was this so expensive when we had some that were a third of your price? Yeah. Why did you Assuming that? And it could be, but it would be rare, I wouldn't believe to, to say, oh, they read it all the same way and they just.

Not, not when is that substantial a difference in price? And so do get, do that homework, get that information, and then let that help inform how you rewrite it or you know, if you don't have to cancel it, interview them, ask them so you understand that variance and then determine your next steps. Some, you know, some processes pretty limited to what you can do in some art, but, but it would be really important to, for me to understand why it was off that much.

Yeah. 

Shane Kehl: Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. If you mess it up from the beginning, it's only going downhill from there, [00:45:00] so Correct. Make sure you get that part right. Is is crucial. Yep. Awesome. Well, awesome. First episode of 2023. Thank you all for listening. Um, please feel free to subscribe if you feel so inclined to stay up to date with everything that Mickey and I are discussing every other Friday, and hopefully we'll see you again in two 

Mickey Baines: weeks.

Happy New Year.

Hey all, Zach from Enrollify here. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Fanatical Fridays with Mickey Baines. If you like this episode, do us a huge favor and hit that follow and subscribe button below. Furthermore, if you've got just two minutes to spare, we would greatly appreciate you leaving a rating and a review of this show on Apple Podcast.

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