Two years ago, I was in an airport awaiting a flight when I received an urgent message from an executive recruiter. She had a job opportunity for me to lead undergraduate admissions at a highly selective university. Among the main duties listed in the position profile were reviewing student applications for the decision committee and visiting elite high schools across the country. After reading the profile, something occurred to me. I don’t do admissions. And if you’re an admissions professional at one of the 4,100 accredited colleges in this country, you probably don’t either.

Admissions professionals at non-elite schools spend most of their time selling their schools, not admitting students. So why not learn how to sell better?

I told this story at a conference for chief enrollment officers in San Diego recently. At one point, I showed them a slide with a scene from the movie Risky Business where Tom Cruise’s character was sitting with a college admissions dean who informed him that he wasn’t Ivy League material. (If you’ve seen the movie, you know what happens next.) I told them that this slide had a double meaning. First, most admissions professionals don’t do admissions. They don’t spend their time determining whether prospective students can enter their colleges. Second, if they think they are doing admissions, they’re involved in risky business.

As this data visualization shows, the average acceptance rate at most colleges is well north of 65 percent. In the state of Nebraska, for example, the average acceptance rate is 91 percent. Compare this to Stanford’s 5 percent acceptance rate and you can see why most colleges in Nebraska are not doing admissions. So what are they doing?

If you’re an admissions professional at a non-elite school, you already know the answer. You are busy selling your school in order to make your enrollments. Yes, I am referring to that taboo word in higher ed, “sales.”

Some may resist the idea of sales in a college setting because they think of it in negative terms. Sales can often be associated with manipulation and pressure tactics, which go against the student’s best interest. However, there is “good sales” and “bad sales.” Good sales is a professional endeavor that helps people make good distinctions so they can make better choices. This is the kind of sales that I’m referring to here.

So what does it mean to “do sales” in college admissions? Well, first, it means shifting your mindset. The typical mindset of an admissions professional is that of a counselor. This is someone who sees their role as giving advice or guidance to students. The sales mindset is different. It recognizes the prospective student and his or her family as buyers. College sales teams understand the difference between a buying cycle and an enrollment cycle. The buying cycle looks at things from a buyer’s perspective. Buyers basically go through four stages: attention, interest, desire and action. The enrollment cycle tends to focus on the college’s processes: inquiry, application, admit, deposit, enroll. The difference between the two cycles can be understood in terms of “what we need to do for them” versus “what they need to do for us.”

These two cycles also produce two dramatically different conversion funnels. Not surprisingly, the typical admissions funnel is based on the enrollment cycle and it looks at things from an admissions perspective, which is focused on the institution, i.e. how many inquiries, applications, admits and deposits the college has.

In contrast, the college sales funnel looks at things from a seller’s perspective, which is focused on the buyer. In a college sales funnel, you have prospects, prospect qualification, school representation, value summarization and the close. The seller’s perspective not only changes what the admissions funnel looks like, it changes the activities and behavior of the admissions team. For example, one of the critical activities of a college sales team is prospect qualification. This means contacting your prospects (inquiries) and ranking their interest levels before you begin your recruiting efforts. Unfortunately, many admissions departments see this as a “nice-if-you-have-time” activity. But college sales teams understand the vital importance of prospect qualification and make it a priority. At our institution, we try to qualify at least 70 percent of all our inquiries by the end of the summer. This in turn helps us determine our travel strategy and which students we are going to focus our energy on in the coming year.

Prospect qualification is a sales skill. And one of the main differences between traditional admissions teams and college sales teams is that college sales teams are trained to do sales. This includes developing and honing skills like how to build rapport with students and parents, how to talk to families about finances, and how to respond to objections. These are all things campus leaders assume admissions counselors are proficient at. Yet when I recently asked a ballroom full of chief enrollment officers to raise their hands if they had ever listened in on a counselor phone call, almost no one raised their hands. The reality is, at most institutions admissions counselors are not trained on how to do their jobs.

Sales training is not a “one-and-done” event. Rather it’s an ongoing effort that invests in the individuals you are counting on to make your institution’s budget. There are many aspects of the recruiting process (inquiry qualification, visit events, financial aid calls, etc.) and each part requires different training methods and refreshers. You can’t expect a counselor to remember how to do a financial aid call if they learned about it over the summer. Instead, training needs to be ongoing. Unfortunately, sales training is usually not even part of the on-boarding process of an admissions counselor. There is some irony to the fact that many colleges spend nearly $1 million each year (and sometimes much more) to try and get prospective students in front of their admissions counselors but spend zero dollars training them on what to do once the students get to them.

Training is often seen as a “nice to have” rather than a necessary investment. This perspective emerged during a time I refer to as “the golden age of admissions.” From 1995 to 2010, America had the largest number of incoming college-bound students in its history as millennials flooded into colleges. For nearly two decades student demand was rising and enrollments were booming. Many admissions offices began to shift their focus from recruiting students to generating and processing inquiries and applications. Seasoned admissions professionals were eventually replaced by recent college graduates. As the admissions office became younger, institutional budgets grew and less attention was given to sales. Stand alone marketing departments also emerged during this time creating a further divide between sales and admissions. But even though the golden days are over, the “nice to have” sentiment toward sales training still lives on.

The focus on inquiry and application generation that developed during the admissions golden era tended to give more weight to the top of the admissions funnel. This led to the idea that the more you put into the top of the admissions funnel, in the form of inquiries and applications, the more students you would get out of the bottom. By the early 2000s, a new industry had emerged which focused on helping colleges with inquiry and application generation. Schools began to hire companies to get them more applications with the idea that more students would arrive on campus as a result. Even though we know this idea is no longer true, it continues to linger on many campuses to this very day. Today, companies tout hundreds of colleges who use their student search and application services. But many of these colleges are not making their enrollments despite their increases in inquiries and applications. Back in 2012, we were one of these colleges.

In the fall of 2012, after a three-year low in enrollment, we fired the student search company we were with and started investing in sales training. The result was a 42 percent increase in freshman enrollment and we have continued to grow ever since despite being in a down market that had experienced an 8 percent decline in high school graduates since 2010. Over a five year period, we had gone from recruiting 79 students per counselor to 127. Our discount rate decreased and so did our marketing spend. We have also steadily decreased our inquiries over the years with the understanding that more inquiries simply clutters our system with low-probability prospects. That’s the sales mentality. We instead focus on high-probability students. We want our counselors to be prepared and in front of students who have a serious interest in our college so that we can make the most of their time. Sales training makes that possible.

Much more could be said about the technical and beneficial aspects of sales training. I have tried to do this in webinars and conference presentations with our sales training consultant. To date, we have shared the gospel of college sales training with more than 200 colleges and so far only a few have decided to make the shift. But after seeing our results, more colleges are asking about it. If you are at a loss as to why your college isn’t making its enrollments, my advice is to stop investing so much in the top of your admissions funnel and start investing more in the people you are counting on to meet your revenue goals. The leading cause of burnout for an admissions counselor is feeling like they are unsuccessful at their jobs. And counselor ineffectiveness and turnover is one of the leading causes of declining enrollments. When you invest in sales training, you are giving your counselors the tools they need to be successful. Not investing in sales training is risky business.