by Mark Sklarow, Executive Director, IECA

I admit to being a person who is rarely satisfied with the way things are. I believe in the need to change and that includes both personal change and actions to ensure that the Independent Educational Consultants Association continues to move forward, developing new approaches, new programs and new initiatives so that we are always meeting member needs. Allow me to illustrate using just one example. Following an IECA Summer Training Institute in Claremont, California, I sat down with Sue DePra and Steve Antonoff to review the participant evaluations. They were off the charts with virtually every attendee giving the Summer Institute nearly perfect scores, and comments from most attendees that it was among the best training sessions they had ever attended. The three of us then spent the next two hours re-writing the curriculum, developing new interactive elements, implementing ‘labs’ and strengthening the program further. The result was taking a great training program and making it remarkable.

Now as I reflect back on 2009, I feel great about the excellent work of staff, Board and committee leadership, and volunteer members who combined to make it a great year. We advanced dramatically in our efforts to use social networking to promote IECA and the profession, and to improve communications. We initiated new program in learning disabilities and adopted our new Standards of Excellence. We implemented significant changes during our conference: from Speed Meetings to Conference Central and from point/counterpoint sessions to master classes. Participation among colleges has never been higher, and despite the economic downturn our membership is up, conference participation is up, and our training workshops were larger than ever.

But as I look ahead, I know what I want to achieve in the coming year for IECA and for my own work as Executive Director: to take IECA from a great organization to a remarkable one. Looking at the success of America’s most lauded associations, I hope we use their example to become an exceptional force for our members. To become ‘remarkable,’ I think Board, staff and volunteers need to meet these expectations:

• Member Service—we exist as an association for one reason: to meet the needs of our membership. That commitment to member service should always be the top priority.

• Align all services, conferences, and activities with IECA’s mission. That mission, unchanged in 30 years, is to help professional consultants to serve the interests of students and families in their educational decision-making.

• Seek feedback and input from members and our related constituencies. In the next several weeks, members will be asked to complete a strategic planning survey and a survey from the Education & Training Committee. These will set our priorities over the next several years. We have now begun to involve schools, colleges, and programs in conference planning and regularly seek their advice on programming.

• Be willing to fail. As we look to be innovative, creative, and dynamic, we must be willing to accept that success require risk-taking and that means we will fail from time to time. Such failure is inevitable and will lead to new successes.

• A nimble, flexible, national office that is able to meet changes in the marketplace and ensure that such changes are quickly and capably brought to our members to help them succeed in their own work.

• Building alliances with not-for-profit and for-profit companies, institutions, and organizations that will help us further our mission and better serve clients and students.

I look forward to hearing ideas from our members, colleagues, and families on how we can best serve each to make 2010 and IECA remarkable in the year ahead. Join us in this effort: volunteer, get involved in committees, affinity groups, or other efforts, and above all, offer your ideas on what IECA should be doing.

By Brian Fisher, AdmissionsQuest

Everyone on campus or in your office conveys messages and sells the school or your services. We all think we practice pretty good customer service. Do we?

Beth Black, Cherokee Creek Boys School, made the case for service in her presentation, “Everything I learned About Marketing, I Learned from a Mouse.”

In schools we assume our customer service is pretty good. But, in my school experiences, we never sat down and worked through constituent/customer service from beginning to end. What does it mean and what do we need to do make sure that we respond as well as possible in every situation?

Bluntly, we never had customer service philosophy or plan. We just assumed that everyone had good sense of customer service- responding to families in the best, most effective way.

Black took participants through the eye opening exercise of customer service from the customer’s perspective and the ways in which organizations can define and build systems and philosophies that keep the customer at the fore of every employee’s action.

The bottom line, “Quality service lives in the hearts and minds of the staff.”

Schools tend to become wrapped in their routines and daily events. Consultants with solo practices or small shops sometimes forget about a clean parking lot or warm entryway. We let our external connections slip.

Customer service basics weigh heavily in the equation; returning phone calls and returning e-mail matter more than ever.

The best anecdote of the meeting- the school maintenance man who greeted campus visitors and was equipped to provide an introduction to campus. The family- purposefully visiting this campus unannounced- appreciated the warm greeting. Their student enrolled.

Why customer service here and now? It’s a topic/concept that we often let slip in education. Education sells itself right? Not necessarily.

By Brian Fisher, AdmissionsQuest

The first official morning just concluded. Formats and offerings have changed and that’s good.

I talked with Mark Sklarow from the periphery of the Speed Meeting sessions to get his take on the conference and the new approaches.

In a word, there’s more meat. The conference has tightened its focus on professional experiences and information. There’s still networking to be sure, but serious education and professional development are in the fore here in Charlotte. As Mark said, the conference priorities have shifted from “a little education with a lot of networking to a lot of education with a little networking.”

Mark found that schools and consultants were looking for more content- more return on their conference experience.

The pre and post conference workshops now book-end the conference with intense detailed presentations covering serious topics and current research.

Check back soon to see video conversation recorded at the Speed Meetings. We’ll work hard to post them as soon as we can (we recorded 17 so it may take a bit, but be patient).

In a recent survey of more than 250 IECA member educational consultants, over half indicated little impact on their client base as a result of the current economic recession. In fact 23% of respondents indicated that their consulting practice has increased as compared to a year ago, with half of these saying the increase in their practice exceeded gains of 25%.

About a third of all respondents said there was little change from last year to this year while 25% have experienced a small decline. There remained a sizable number of consultants who have been more seriously impacted by the current recession, including 4% who saw over half their work disappear. These consultants are largely located in those areas where the economy has been most severely impacted, including portions of the Midwest and California.

The survey was conducted among members of the Independent Educational Consultants Association in early July 2009, with nearly 250 members responding.

The complete results:

11% Practice is up by 25% or more

12% Practice is up, but by less than 25%

29% Practice is about the same as a year ago

25% Practice is down, by less than 25%

19% Practice is down by 26-50%

4% Practice is down by over 50%

Of course these figures don’t tell the whole story and it’s clear to me that the economic crisis has altered the trajectory of the growth in educational consulting, but has not derailed it. Until the economy took its nosedive, use of IECA member educational consultants was increasing at 10 – 15% annually. As I look at the results of the past year, as seen in the numbers above, I’m confident that had the economy remained good—not even great—most of those showing only a slight loss and certainly those demonstrating flat growth would have seen growth of over 10% from last year to this.

I believe that once the economy is back on track we’ll again see this growth, and good, ethical, consultants—those belonging to the Independent Educational Consultants Association—will again see year-to-year growth in the 15% range.

Posted by Mark Sklarow, IECA Executive Director 

Those who have heard me speak about the marketing of consulting practices know that the most critical number that I look to each month has nothing to do with employment rates, GDP or housing foreclosures. The key number is CONSUMER CONFIDENCE.

Evidence shows that when people are anxious about their economic situation they are unlikely to withdraw funds from savings to pay for optional services. This is true even if they remain employed with their salary unchanged. It is a pervasive feeling: when times FEEL tough, hold onto your money.

This week new numbers saw a drop in consumer confidence for the first time in several months. I suspect that those who had hoped to see a bounce in new clients—back to pre-recession levels—may be disappointed, as it now appears the current slump may extend through the summer. I remain quite hopeful that we will see a significant rise in the fall. Based on my previous blogs, it will not come as a surprise that these changes are not consistent from place to place.

I previously offered a number of suggestions to consultants for overcoming this anxiety. Among these are the offering of smaller, more limited work packages; dividing payments so that fees can be paid from checkbooks rather than withdrawals from savings accounts; and make use of no-cost marketing through the Internet and social media outlets. Read my previous blogs and post a comment if you have had success with other approaches.

Posted by Mark Sklarow, IECA Executive Director

A new report by the Brookings Institution may offer a solid explanation for a phenomenon that I’ve written about in recent blogs and noted by many IECA members: the dramatically varying impact of the recession on consultants’ practices, with some reporting “best year ever” and others reporting declines of 40% and more.

The new study surveys the 100 largest metropolitan areas and ranks the cities from strongest to weakest economic performance based on six key indicators, including unemployment rate, housing prices, foreclosure rates and wages.

Focusing on areas where IECA membership is strong, several come out near the top, suggesting a strong economy even during the recession. Among these metro areas are:

San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas, TX
Baton Rouge, LA
Washington DC/MD/VA/WV
Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, PA
New Haven, CT
Rochester, NY

Of course, some areas where IECA consultants are found are fairing very poorly with a sinking economy. In these areas, consultants may be experiencing a particularly difficult year. These include:

Riverside, Oxnard, Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, Modesto, and Los Angeles, CA
Detroit and Grand Rapids, MI
Palm Bay, Miami, Cape Coral, Jacksonville, Lakeland and Tampa, FL
Las Vegas, NV
Youngstown, OH/PA
Providence, RI/MA

Looking at the figures for a few other cities:

Philadelphia, Boston and Hartford, CT are fairing better than average
Baltimore, Seattle, Charlotte, St. Louis and Chicago about average
Cleveland, Cincinnati/Louisville, Portland, OR and San Francisco are all below average

While such an economic report card can’t explain everything consultants are seeing, it may help to explain some of the regional differences we see and seem certain to suggest a more sluggish recovery in the more deeply impacted communities.

Link to the study: http://www.brookings.edu/metro/MetroMonitor/overall_performance.aspx

Posted by Mark Sklarow, Executive Director, IECA

Earlier I commented on what I was hearing from IECA Members about how they were doing in the current economic climate. Now new national figures are out which detail how the self-employed are fairing and while the news is not devastating, it is worthy of concern.

Over the last decade the number of self-employed has steadily risen to over 9 million. There is significant evidence that during down economies, those who are laid off from white collar jobs look at self-employment as a way to maintain their economic stability. We certainly see signs of that in the IECA office when we hear from admission counselors and guidance staff that are laid off and are exploring the field of consulting. The government, in tracking the entry of the newly self-employed into the workforce, examined how this–and the recession–was impacting the ability to make a living.

As reported in the New York Times this weekend, the number of self-employed who say they are working part-time because they can’t find enough work has doubled in the last year from 622,000 to 1.1 million, or roughly one out of every nine workers.

The bigger question is what will happen when the economy improves. Will full-employment return? The Times quotes MIT economist David Autor as suggesting that once the economy bounces back, many of these newly self-employed are likely to return to the nine to five workplaces they left behind, leaving the field to those who really WANT to be self-employed.

As I look at the IECA landscape, most of those exploring entry into consulting do not seem to be taking this path out of economic necessity, but rather were gently guided in a direction they were examining anyway. Let’s remember that the field of educational consulting has been in a steady growth pattern for nearly ten years. Evidence suggests that the public is becoming more aware of the field and more understanding of the value in working with a professional in their school or college selection. With this comes the opportunity to support growth in the field, as the public returns to hiring consultants in those communities where we’ve seen a decline, as the economy begins to strengthen.

IECA should and will provide whatever support it can, both to experienced members who are under-employed at present as well as those entering the field hoping to make a professional living, while serving students and families.

Posted by Mark Sklarow, Executive Director, IECA

Given the state of the economy, it’s no surprise that I am getting two or three calls each day from members wondering “what I’m hearing” from colleagues around the country. Everyone’s wondering if what they are seeing in changes to client needs, number of students seen in their offices, calls for colleges, schools, and programs is typical.

The short answer is ‘there is no typical.’ I’m hearing widely varied reports. Many college consultants are indicating that they continue to work with a similar number of students as compared to past years. There are several, however, who noted that the number of rising seniors is down, but they are are seeing INCREASED demand from rising sophomores and juniors. Of course the news is not as positive in some part of the country, most notably the Midwest.

Also mixed is what I’ve been hearing from school consultants. It seems that news of budget cutbacks in school districts around the country has led to a mini-surge (in some communities) of parents feeling the need to explore educational alternatives as their concern grows that cutbacks will begin to negatively impact their child’s education. This surge in interest includes all options: local independent schools, charter schools, home schooling, and boarding.

Perhaps the area where I have heard the greatest impact relates to services for students with behavioral or emotional issues. As home values sink and investment funds evaporate, families feel unprepared to meet the high cost of specialized programs. It is not reported universally that this decline has taken hold, but it seems to be a more serious impact than in other areas of consulting.

I find great value in hearing these reports from members,  but even better are those who share creative ideas for how they are adjusting to these changes. I’ll share some of those ideas soon, and invite you to let me know what you are doing or seeing in your part of the country.

Posted by Mark Sklarow, IECA Executive Director

I’m attending  a conference in Florida this week, and despite all the talk of economic gloom & doom, I have a number of reasons for optimism, which bodes well both for consultants and tuition-paying families:

- The stock market is up for the year

- Consumer confidence was up in April & May

- Consumer spending was up 2.2% in the first quarter

- New unemployment filings were down the last several weeks

While the news is clearly not all positive, and remains bleak in certain communities, overall it seems we are slowly turning a corner.

Those who attended my breakouts in San Francisco or Baltimore know that I believe hiring consultants is most closely linked to consumer confidence. In this regard things appear to be heading in the right direction.

The next 12 months may not be great, but we may be at or near the bottom. What are others seeing in their communities?

Posted by Mark Sklarow, IECA Executive Director

The three pre-conference workshops (changing nature of college counseling in the recession; school sustainability in the economic crisis; and survivability of therapeutic programs) are attracting tremendous interest.  Together, well over 400 people have signed on to these free programs—about four times the usual pre-conference participation.  I’m thrilled that IECA is taking the lead in confronting the impact of the current economic mess and we have great partners in these workshops.