Enhance your business using technology

Note: Our guest blogger today is Jo-Ann Beserra.  She is an independent consultant in Boulder, Colorado. Operating an office is no easy task. Jo-Ann gives you tips on managing your office.

As an educational consultant, the technology options available to enhance my business are numerous. To simplify, I look at my business from two perspectives and keep one key center stone product as home base for each view.

My first perspective is my front office, or the customer view.  The center stone for my front office is my website. A website can be much more than an online brochure. I use my website for marketing campaigns, announcements, blogs or newsletters, and I track who is reading them. I maintain contact with prospective and current clients through my website. I share resources and provide information. My website also links in other tools that I select to use, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

My second perspective is my back office, and the tool I use to run my business, is Mycca, which offers such a large breadth of functions that play nicely with other pieces of technology. Here are the top 7 ways that Mycca integrates other tools:

1.      Scheduled student meetings are added to my personal iCal calendar so I have both my work and personal calendars in one view.

2.      Emails sent to students are stored on the student’s record and can be recorded as a session for payment.

3.      Branded reports are created instantly for print, storage or email. The professional look of these reports is very impressive.

4.      Students can view videos of colleges, which is often their preferred method of research.

5.      Links to other outside college resources such as test registration, reviews, college websites and tools are readily available in the right place.

6.      Special tools for organizing essays and scholarships can be accessed from within Mycca, without separate accounts.

7.      And my very favorite is that MyCCA is accessed from my website, so clients pass through my website and prospects see that I have special tool.  This links my back office to my front office.

 Comment:  See information about different features of mycca.net Jo-Ann mentions on the mycca website under Features.  You can also check in the HELP section for details about these and other features of mycca.

Marketing- IEC Style

Last week, first semester report cards came out.  When report cards come out, our phone starts ringing.  Why?  I am not sure, but I think parents are jerked back to reality and realize they may need educational assistance with their child. As I closed the door after meeting with one of those 9^th grade students and parents, I wondered, “How could I have planned for this increase in interest, and made it better?”  I should have timed communication with families with the end of the semester to connect with more parents at an opportune time. I should have used this as a marketing opportunity.

Whether you are a new or experienced IEC, your key to accomplishing many of your goals for the next year lie in your marketing goals. Often it is the simple things that bring the greatest return for you in marketing.

Here are marketing goals for you to consider.  Each of these marketing goals can be supported through mycca.net; either in the counselor portal or within the student portal.

Four Key Marketing Goals for IEC’s for 2012:

1. Increase Communication- Make your communication to current and potential clients ongoing and consistent.  Send out broadcast emails through mycca.net on a regular basis, targeted to each group of students in your practice. Include prospects in broadcast emails. We send regular emails out to seniors, juniors, underclassman (9^th-10^th graders) and all students on mycca.net.  For example, before the holidays we send out an email announcing our holiday schedule. This went to every active and inactive student and their parents on our mycca.net account.  After it went out, we received emails immediately from 3 past clients, requesting appointments with younger siblings.  Communication reminds people (in a good way) that you are a valuable resource.  Sending out a newsletter, links to articles, college news and tips, and financial and scholarship information, are all good ways to communicate with past and potential clients.  Using the prospect tool on mycca.net allows you to send emails out to prospects in addition to current and past clients, and record it as a session note.
   
2. Tell your story.  Let potential clients know what you have to offer. Explain what your services are on your website. Putting the student portal link on your website is key to telling your story.  It intrigues people. One consultant reports how people see the “client login” she has on her website.  They want to know what they are missing.  She tells them, “become my client and you will find out”.  The student portal link on your website is an enticing marketing tool. Use Amy Awesome as your “sample student”.  Demonstrating what is in the student portal, the CSQ gauges and the multiple other benefits of the student portal can be a powerful marketing tool for you.  Click here for directions on linking your student portal to your website.
   
3.  Make it happen.  Have a schedule of what, when , where and why. Create a marketing schedule with a calendar and your own “action” list. Then stick to it.  You won’t be caught unprepared like I was this January.  One of the new features mycca.net is working on is the ability to schedule emails for sending the future. This feature will make it easier to meet this important goal.
   
4. Build visibility.  Build your brand, your identity in your community and professionally as well.  Adding your logo to your account is an important first step. This will display your logo on the student portal as well. Click here for directions to uploading or changing your logo in mycca.net.  Having your logo displayed on the student portal account and having it appear on every document you send out is key to building your brand. (In mycca any report you generate will include your logo.)  Any handout, document you create or article you write should have your brand included. You can download your logo into your mycca.net account.     One of our affiliates, Wendie Lubic, offers IEC forms that can be branded with your name and logo, making it easier to build your visibility.

Stating Goals for 2012

Now it is time to state my New Year’s Resolutions for my consulting firm, McDonald & Associates.   By sharing them with you I am implementing #4 tip from last weeks blog. This week I am sharing the goals we have for the operations side of the practice.  Next week I will write about goals focusing on marketing.

Operations goals:

1. Empower Students more.
2. Move our office toward being paperless.
3. Incorporate college affordability into our practice more.

All of these goals can be accomplished easily using mycca.net.

1. We can empower students by using assignments better.  A IEC recently told me she uses the assignments feature in mycca.net to make action lists with her students as they are meeting.  I tried it recently with great success. I entered the action plan into the counselor Assignment section for the student record as we met. At the end of our session, together we set a due date for the assignment.  Click, click, click, and the assignment was saved, reminder emails were set for both student and parent, and I receive an email with the assignment to add to my calendar.  So much time saved and the student was a part of the process!
2. By uploading all of our company documents into mycca.net we can move toward being paperless.  We have a large number of documents to provide to parents and students in the college planning process.  The new document sharing feature on mycca.net, allows you to upload then assign documents to students as needed.  Our goal is to upload our student binder, making it an electronic binder. 
3. Using the Academic Scholarship Reports in the college planning process early on will help incorporate college affordability early.  Academic Scholarship reports gives you an idea of how many merit scholarships are available at colleges that are being considered, and the maximum level of scholarship for that school.  This can assist me as a consultant as I shape a list of colleges for students and parents to consider, and ultimately as they select the colleges for “My Colleges” list to apply to.  This will maximize the options a student or parent has as they enter this process.

Keeping the Promise of the New Year

Making resolutions is a tradition we all share as a New Year rolls around. Some people hate making resolutions. I embrace them. To me it is acting on the promise the New Year holds. I want to seize the opportunity of a new beginning and make it my own. It gives me a chance to stop, take stock of my past year, and make goals for the next year.  Although this is important to do in my personal life, it is crucial to do in my business life.  As a consultant, I want to work smarter, not harder. I want to be a better educational consultant as well as a better business person. The easy part is always making the goal.  The hard part is making the goal happen.  Here are some tips I have found beneficial in keeping goals.  Use these to guide you as well as you make your new year’s resolutions:

1. Bring Focus to your goals.  Don’t shoot for the moon, trying to set goals for everything you want to do.  Create a focus for your goals for the next year by selecting your top 5 goals or less.
2. Define your goals.  Compare the difference between a goal to “make more money” to “increase my income 10%”.  The first is hard to measure.  The second gives you definition and helps you concentrate your efforts.
3. Make a plan.  There is a saying that a goal is a wish unless it is written down.  Not only write down your goal, but create a plan to make it happen.  Otherwise it will stay a wish for the next year.  A plan helps you to track progress toward your goal.  This is much more motivating to you to achieve the goal.
4. Share your plan.  By sharing your goal with your office, your spouse or someone else, you bring that goal to a level of accountability and support.  Knowing someone else knows and shares your goals will help you maintain your momentum.
5. Celebrate along the way.  As you reach milestones in your plans, celebrate.  Rejoice in the progress. If there are setbacks in the progress, that is ok.  You can celebrate getting back on track too.

Using these tools will help me to make the most of the promise of 2012.  I hope they will help you too!