Counsel, don't close
Why the hard sell loses families in education — and how honest, consultative admissions beats pressure on every metric that matters.
Read →11 years leading school admissions — turning enquiries into enrolments without ever making a parent feel sold to. I run the funnel like a science and the counselling conversation like an art: honest campus tours, fast follow-up, a CRM that never drops a lead, and the judgement to know when a family is right for the school and when they're not.
I started in hospitality sales and moved into education because the 'product' finally mattered — I wasn't selling a room-night, I was helping a family find the place their child would grow up. That shift changed how I sell: slower, more honest, more useful. Eleven years later, referrals are my biggest source of enrolments, which tells me the approach works.
I've built admissions functions from a single desk to full CRM-driven teams, lifted enquiry-to-enrolment conversion into the low thirties, grown year-on-year intake by double digits through two new-campus launches, and trained counsellors who now lead their own admissions teams. I obsess over response times, tour quality and follow-up discipline, because that's where families are won or lost.
If your school or group needs an admissions and sales lead who hits ambitious targets without resorting to pressure — who builds the funnel, trains the team, runs the CRM, and treats every parent like the decision matters — my numbers and references are ready. Give me your leaky funnel; plugging it is the fun part.
Enquiry to enrolment, campus tours to CRM, counselling to retention — the whole admissions engine.
Admissions gets mistaken for a numbers game, and the schools that treat it that way churn families and burn reputation. The real work is trust: a parent choosing a school is making one of the biggest decisions of their child's life, and they can smell a hard close from the car park. My job is to counsel honestly, match the right family to the right school, and make the whole journey feel like care rather than sales — the targets follow, and so do the referrals.
Lead admissions and sales for a multi-campus K-12 group. Rebuilt the funnel on Salesforce, lifted enquiry-to-enrolment conversion from 22% to 32%, grew intake 18% year-on-year, and launched two new campuses to full first cohorts within a single admissions cycle.
Handled the full admissions journey and then managed a team of four counsellors; introduced the follow-up cadence and tour script that raised conversion across the desk.
Consultative B2C sales — where I learned that listening beats pitching, a lesson I brought straight into education.
Why the hard sell loses families in education — and how honest, consultative admissions beats pressure on every metric that matters.
Read →Most schools lose enrolments in the silence after an enquiry. The response-time discipline that wins families before competitors reply.
Read →How to design a campus visit that builds trust instead of overselling — and why the honest tour converts better anyway.
Read →Divya never once pushed us. She understood what our son needed and told us honestly where her school fit and where it didn't. We enrolled because of that.
ParentCLASS 6 ADMISSIONShe took our conversion from low-twenties to thirty-two percent and launched two campuses to full cohorts. Numbers and integrity both.
Group DirectorPRESIDIUM GROUPI trained under Divya and now lead my own admissions team. She taught me that trust, not pressure, is what actually sells a school.
Former counsellorNOW ADMISSIONS HEAD