Dan Tudor

We’re putting together our new workshop for college recruiters that we’re hosting here in California entitled "Building a Winning Recruiting Message". 

One of the coaches who reserved a seat asked a question that I’m making sure is a part of the discussion: How do you make more out of your recruiting phone calls?

We’re going to cover that in detail in a few weeks at the live workshop, but there’s one tip I want to pass along to you today because I know that this is the time of year when phone calls going out to recruits is hitting its peak.  So here it is…

When you make your phone call, make sure you set up the next communication with your prospect before you end that call.  Your phone call should set-up your next e-mail.  And that should set-up the letter you’ll be sending as a follow-up.  And that letter should ask some questions that you’ll want to talk about in your next phone call.

In other words, you need to create a recruiting plan that builds a recruiting relationship through cohesive individual messaging: Letters, e-mails, phone calls…they all need to work together so that you take your prospect through a logical step-by-step process that ends with the only possible answer they could give you.  "Yes, Coach, I’ll sign with you."

Phone calls are an important component of recruiting, but they can lose their effectiveness if they don’t relate to all of the other messagees that you’re trying to get your prospect to pay attention to.  You have to tie it all together, and the best way to start doing that is to use your phone conversation with your prospect to set-up your next e-mail or letter.  Try it…you’ll see how well your recruiting conversations start to flow, and how much better your recruits begin to respond to what you’re trying to tell them.

For more information on our upcoming workshop, "Building a Winning Recruiting Message" on December 14th & 15th, click here.  Space is limited.

Ask Gretchen Hunt about recruiting, and her answer today would probably be a lot different than it was six months ago.

That was before Coach Hunt, in her seventh year as head volleyball coach at Bethel University, got a call from a salesman.  Some guy named Brad from a company called Front Rush.

"I was ready to hang up," recalls Hunt.

Brad was telling Coach Hunt about a new recruiting contact management system from Front Rush, and the more she heard, the more she liked what it would offer their Division III program.

"Most recruiting products similar to Front Rush were pretty expensive, so I had backed away from seriously considering that kind of technology in the past," says Hunt.  "But I have a 2-year old at home, I’m on the road a lot, and my assistants aren’t full time.  So the fact that there was a solution out there where everyone could log in and use the system and have it benefit everyone was really interesting to me."

"The affordable pricing was a huge factor."

Once the Bethel staff started using Front Rush to keep track of their prospects and communicate with them, Coach Hunt was pleasantly surprised at what the system offered her program.

"The e-mail template they produced for our program was really high quality," says Coach Hunt.  "It was much better than I was picturing it would be."

Hunt pointed out that it also helps their staff keep track of their conversations with recruits, and getting updates on the latest conversations with recruits that she and her assistants have.  She and her staff have also been surprised at how fast the web based system runs.

In the end, the Front Rush system is just another tool that Coach Hunt and her staff use to connect with their recruits.  "It’s all about relationships," says Hunt.  "It’s not some magic wand that we wave around, but its a great part of how we’ve been able to deepen relationships with all of our recruits."

"Plus", adds Hunt, "at the end of the day I don’t feel as stressed about where everything stands with our recruiting."

Greg, one of our favorite SFC Premium Members, e-mailed me a short story from Sports Illustrated about Rutgers women’s basketball coach Vivian Stringer, who was recruiting standout prep star, Essence Carson. 

On the surface, its just another off the wall recruiting story that’ll be fun to talk about at the next coach’s convention.  But if you dig a little deeper, there are a lot of good principles at work here.

First, the story from SI, talking about a little "deal" that Coach Stringer made with her big recruit:

"I hear you play the piano," said Stringer. "So do I. When you come for your official visit next year, I’ll play the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for you. If I miss one note, you don’t have to consider coming to Rutgers. But if I play it perfectly, will you promise to be a Scarlet Knight?"

Carson remembers chuckling; Stringer remembers hearing a yes. When Carson arrived on campus for her official visit, Stringer played the piece for her. She didn’t miss a note. Carson acted nonchalant at the time, but she now admits she was stunned. "I couldn’t believe this busy, important woman wanted me that badly."

OK, Coaches.  Here are the lessons you should take away from this story:

The coach knew her prospect.  Not just the athletic side, but the personal side as well.  And not only did she know it, she found a way to apply it to the way she personally recruited her prospect.  Knowing the personal details about your recruits is the first step.  Using it in the way you recruit athletes is the next step.  Do you do it?

The coach used a "trial close".  What is a "trial close"?  It’s something good salespeople do regularly.  It’s when you assume a sale, and get your prospect to buy into that assumed sale.  What was the "trial close" here?  When Coach Stringer assumed out loud that Carson was going to make Rutgers one of her official visits.  Now the prospect could have been planning that all along, but Coach Stringer was smart in the way that she cemented that commitment with that trial close.

The coach got her prospect’s attention.  How?  She was unique.  Original.  Surprising.  She threw out something unexpected to set herself apart from the other coaches recruiting Carson.  Because Stringer knew the personal details about her recruit, she threw out a little piano challenge.  Was it an attention-getting move?  You bet!  More coaches should try original approaches…they’d be surprised at how it would change their recruiting results.  (Can I throw in a plug for our exciting workshop that will teach you how to put together a great recruiting message in an original, attention getting way?  We have a few seats left…you need to be there).

The coach backed up her promise.  I often tell coaches that when your athletes come for a campus visit, they’re looking for reasons not to come there more often than not.  They’re looking for broken promises, dirty laundry and hidden problems.  When Coach Stringer backed up her words with actions, it no doubt showed her recruit that she was the real deal.

She showed her personal side.  In our new in-depth study on how your college prospect makes their final decision, one of the biggest factors in their decision making is what they see on their visit to a campus, and what the coach tells them or shows them in person.  Coach Stringer opened up, put herself on the line, and in the process showed her recruit that she was genuine.  And, if you listen to Essence Carson, she showed this teenage prospect that she was an important recruit who deserved personal attention.  How often do you do that, Coach?

Recruiting successfully is no secret.  Its actually simple if you do the right things, some of which we’ve outlined today. 

Simple usually involves taking risks, ironically.  Opening yourself up to a recruit, learning new recruiting techniques, doing things differently to reach a new generation of teenage prospect.  All of it sounds risky, but as Coach Stringer showed us, you tend to get the big recruiting wins when you get creative and take some risks.

Recruiting over the phone is probably the most challenging recruiting task that a college coach faces. 

What do I talk about?  Why can’t I get my prospect to talk back?  What do I say when I’m leaving a message? 

Those are just some of the questions we get from coaches on a regular basis.  And, they are important questions.  Because if you can’t communicate on the phone, all of the letters and beautiful brochures that you’ve been sending to your recruit these past many months just went down the tubes.

Tying together all of your recruiting communication so that it makes sense to your prospect and builds a logical case for why they should choose your program is essential to successful recruiting.  That’s why we’re hosting a special workshop for coaches in December entitled "Building a Winning Recruiting Message".  And one of the topics we’ll be covering is how to talk to prospects over the phone, and (more importantly) how to make those phone calls play off of the letters you’ve been sending out.

If you’re facing some important recruiting phone calls this week, and need some quick tips to make sure they’re successful, here’s a few to take with you:

1. Keep it under ten minutes.  If you make it longer than that, you risk losing the attention of your prospect.  Studies show that we start to let our mind wander after listening to someone else for more than ten minutes.  Don’t let that heppen on your next recruiting call.  The exception to this rule?  If your prospect is the one doing the talking.  Never cut short an engaged conversation with your prospect if they are the one’s that are directing the discussion.
2. Try not to sell.  Oooo, it’s so tempting though, isn’t it?  Just one more great thing about your school…one more bullet point they may have missed from the college brochure that you sent them.  You know the drill.  The problem is, the more you’re selling, the less you’re listening.  And now you’re like every other coach that your prospect is talking to about a scholarship.  Sell less, listen more.
3. Have questions ready to ask.  Don’t wing it.  Write down questions that you want to make sure to ask, and then make sure that you ask them.  Try to ask the type of questions that we describe in our recruiting guides for coaches…open ended questions that make your prospects stop and think. 
4. Give them an insider’s view of your world.  Wanna get your prospect’s attention in a phone conversation?  Tell them about your last game, or about a tough decision you had to make, or about a problem that you had to help a player with.  Show your human side, and give them a peek inside your world.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised how your prospect will view you when you share that with them. 
5. Ask them what they would do.  It’s a great conversation starter, Coach.  Give them a game situation, and ask them what they would do.  They’ll love it that you are interested in their opinion, and you’ll gain insight on how they would approach a situation that they might face as an athlete in your program.
6. Tie-in the "before and after".  Here’s what I mean: Talk about the last letter you sent as a way to start the phone call, and then let them know what they’ll be hearing from you next after you hang up.  A letter?  An e-mail?  Another phone call?  Make sure you’re setting up the next communication you’ll be sending them at some point in your phone call.
7. 7.  Ask for "the sale".  You need to do it almost every time you talk to your prospect.  Your prospect needs to be given the opportunity to commit to your program every time they talk to you.  It’s a must, Coach.  The worst thing that heppens?  They politely tell you "not yet", but go away knowing that you want them.  The best that can happen?  They give you their commitment.  The phone is a great time to ask that question, because it’s just personal enough to make them feel like they could give you their commitment, but "safe" enough to tell you "not yet" if they aren’t ready.  But you have to ask them, Coach.

The magic ingredient to successful phone calls is when your call matches-up with the message that you’ve been talking about in your letters and e-mails.  After studying what makes athletic prospects say "yes" to a coach, I’m convinced it’s when they feel like everything makes sense and the message sounds genuine. 

That’s a tough balance to achieve, and few coaches get it exactly right.  But when it happens, it’s magic.  And that coach will get most of the prospect they want.

By the way, if you’d like to get more information on the special live workshop that we’re hosting for coaches like you coming up in December, click here.  Seating is limited, but we still have room as of today.

You’ve asked for it, so here it is.

We’ve developed a special two day in-depth workshop specially designed for college coaches, "Building a Winning Recruiting Message".  We’ll help you develop a personalized recruiting theme and overhaul your current recruiting letters and e-mails.

Plus, we’ll teach you how to tie-in everything together for one logical stream of information for your prospects.  That includes your website message, the phone calls you make to recruits, and more.

The cost for this two day hands-on workshop lead by author and recruiting expert, Dan Tudor?  Only $249.

So what’s the catch?  We will limit this workshop to just 20 coaches.  Why that few?  Like we said earlier, we want to help you develop a personalized message and go over unique situations that you and your program face in your daily recruiting battles.  We’re keeping this workshop small so that we’re able to give you more one-on-one attention and make this a valuable, productive weekend workshop experience (and if you’ve been a part of one of our On-Campus Workshops before, you know it won’t be boring!).  

In an exciting, in-depth, information-packed weekend, coaches will learn:

• How to write interesting recruiting letters that get a response.
• The five things you NEVER want in your recruiting letter. 
• Why some recruiting e-mails get responses, and other don’t.
• How to get prospects talking when you talk to them on the phone.
• Developing a winning recruiting strategy for your program.
• Crafting the right message to send out to your prospects.
• The difference in recruiting a Junior vs. a Senior.

If you’re interested in being a part of it, and want to totally overhaul and revitalize your recruiting campaign from start to finish, then join us.  Here are the details:

• When:   December 14 & 15, 2007
• Where:  Bakersfield, California (airport code: BFL)
• Cost:     $249
• Who:     The first twenty (20) coaches who register for the weekend workshop
• Details:  Cost includes registration for the workshop and all workshop materials.  Travel and accomodation cost not included.

If your interested, send me an e-mail at dan@sellingforcoaches.com with the subject line, "I want more workshop info!" and we’ll get back to you right away so that we can answer your questions and reserve your spot at this exciting workshop.  You can also call us at 661.746.4554.

11/20/07 UPDATE:  There are six seats left for next month’s workshop.  We have coaches coming in from all parts of the country and from every division level, which will make this event really interesting.  And, we can now confirm that we won’t be holding our two-day event in your run-of-the-mill boring hotel meeting room (more on that later).  Get info on this event today by e-mailing us today.

We’ll see you in December at the "Building a Winning Recruiting Message" workshop!