Your Admissions Team Is Your Salesforce. Are You Training Them Like One?

Would you let someone sell a $50,000 car without training them how to sell? Probably not.

Yet colleges and universities routinely ask admissions professionals to help prospective students and families make decisions that can cost $50,000 or considerably more.

Higher education doesn't like to call admissions “sales.” I get it.

Choosing a college isn't the same as buying a car. It's far more consequential. Students are choosing an education, a career pathway, a community and, in many cases, making one of the largest investments of their lives.

That's precisely why the people helping them make that decision need more than institutional knowledge. They need to understand how people make complex decisions.

Knowing the college isn't the same as knowing how to sell it.

Admissions professionals often bring something extremely valuable to recruitment: firsthand knowledge of the institution.

Some begin as student ambassadors, campus tour guides or student workers before moving into professional admissions roles. They know the campus. They can talk authentically about the student experience. They understand the institution's programs, traditions and culture.

That's valuable. But knowing the product isn't the same as knowing how to sell it.

In most industries involving complex, high-value purchases, sales professionals receive deliberate training in understanding buyer motivations, asking effective questions, communicating value, addressing concerns, differentiating their product and helping buyers move confidently through their decisions.

What if we brought more of that thinking into student recruitment?

Not high-pressure sales tactics. Not scripts designed to persuade students to enroll somewhere that isn't right for them.

Something more sophisticated: giving recruiters the skills to understand what matters to prospective students and families, communicate value in personally meaningful ways and help them make better-informed decisions.

Few institutions appear to be approaching recruiter development this way.

In reviewing current admissions positions and training practices, I found relatively few examples of colleges and universities explicitly incorporating sales training into recruiter development.

But there are exceptions.

At least one university has gone so far as to designate a leader specifically responsible for admissions sales training and ongoing coaching. The position is charged with developing selling skills and explicitly includes training admissions counselors and recruiters in sales methods.

That institution has also experienced sustained enrollment growth and, in fall 2026, reported the largest total enrollment in its history. That doesn't establish cause and effect. Enrollment performance reflects many factors.

But the relative scarcity of formal sales training raises an important question:

What if institutions invested as intentionally in the people having enrollment conversations as they do in the marketing that generates them?

That question matters even more in a tougher enrollment market.

The demographic environment makes that question increasingly important.

The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education projects that the number of U.S. high school graduates peaked in 2025 and will decline by 13% nationally through 2041. The state of Michigan is projected to experience a 20% decline. Ouch.

Institutions can't control how many high school graduates live in their markets. They can control how effectively they compete for the students who remain. And effective recruiting is paramount in today's market.

Marketing gets the student to raise their hand. What happens next?

Colleges spend substantial resources generating prospective student interest: digital advertising. Search. Social media. Videos. Viewbooks. College fairs. Program pages. Email campaigns. Campus events. CRM systems.

Marketing teams work constantly to improve targeting, messaging and the prospective student experience.

Eventually, though, many of those prospective students interact with a person.

What happens at that moment?

If an institution invests heavily in generating inquiries, applications and visits but invests comparatively little in developing the people responsible for those next conversations, it may be overlooking one of its most important enrollment opportunities.

A CRM can tell a recruiter that a prospective student visited campus, opened three emails and returned to a program page. It can't have the conversation.

And before spending more money trying to generate additional interest, there may be value in asking whether the institution is making the most of the interest it already has.

A major decision deserves a well-trained team

Higher education is facing demographic pressure. Students and families are scrutinizing cost and value. Institutions are investing heavily in marketing, technology and recruitment.

But ultimately, enrollment decisions are still made by people. And people making consequential decisions don't necessarily need someone who can simply tell them more facts.

They need someone who can understand what matters to them, communicate meaningful value, help them see possibilities they may not have considered and guide them confidently through a complex decision, even if that decision results in a student choosing another school.

For a decision this important, we should train admission teams accordingly.