There is nothing worse than misunderstandings in a workplace or relationship. The tension of intention and expectation and the error of distance between the two. All too often we hear complaints on how one team or department is doing too much and another not enough. These complaints rarely have action to intentionally follow-up and plague the relationship in colleges between the marketing and admissions departments! The craziest part is the majority of the time it is a miscommunication or lack of communication entirely.
One of the most important things to remember when you are working in different departments of a company, organization or college is that you are on the same team! You are just in different rooms under the same roof.
Let’s get to the heart of the matter. The marketing and admissions teams are both working to enroll students into a college program. Whoa, same goal between two separate departments, can this really be true? Yes down the hall, to the right, up some stairs, passed two water fountains and the Christmas party flyer from last year a different department is working to achieve the same success story: lots of students enrolling to their college!
So how do you get passed the passive (or very) aggressive “you aren’t getting me enough leads or getting us too many that are not converting.”? Well I’m glad you asked! You bridge the gap. Don’t let the fact that you carry out the enrollment process differently get in the way of your common objective. This could be as simple as both departments coming together once a month to talk through what is happening. Here at Smart College Marketing we suggest as often as possible, but if only once a month works for your schedules then take advantage of that!
Some practical topics to talk through in these meetings can look like the following:
- Marketing team, ask for feedback! You can’t know what leads are converting if you don’t ask!
- Admissions team, give demographics, share what programs have too much traffic and which have too few so the marketing team can refine the audience and change their funnel to reach the right people!
- Share Insights! Both through data and brainstorming. No one can fix a problem they do not know is there.Talk about your processes and explain why you are doing what you are doing so you can collaborate!
Here at Smart College Marketing, we strongly believe in, practice and encourage partnerships over peons. Don’t get caught up in what you owe each other and surface level interactions, get to the bottom of what is and is not working…together! We have team members working on all kinds of projects, but we make the time to come together, share the wins, problem solve together and give/get feedback from each other. We can pretty much guarantee that working as a team increases your productivity and efficiency. Try it out and share your success story with us below! If your departments already rock at this, share your experience below and encourage other colleges to bridge the gap!
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