Dan Tudor

I make the point in each On-Campus Workshop that we lead for athletic departments that the entire goal of all of the letters and e-mails a coach writes to a prospect is to get them in front of you for a personal visit.

Whether it’s on your campus, or in their home, a personal visit is number one on your prospect’s list for determining if your program is the right one for them.  Our national study rates the face-to-face communication you have with a prospect will determine what kind of chances you have at signing them to play at your school.

So, once you get in front of them, what’s next?

What do you need to do to prepare for the visit, and make sure that its successful in leading to the athlete committing to your school?

Here’s a list of seven things you need to make sure you have as you head to your face-to-face meeting with the prospect you really want to sign:

1. Print out their personal and athletic information that you can impact. Type their name into a Google search and see what comes up (you might be surprised!).  Get all of his or her information in one place – what you’ve printed from the web, the questionnaire that they filled-out, his transcript…everything.  Go in prepared with everything you can find on them.  These are the pages that frame your ideas for how your your program are best for your prospect.  Use this info to create an individual approach for each prospect. 

2. Be prepared to find out, and talk to, the real decision makers. Just because you’re talking to the prospect doesn’t mean you are talking to the primary decision maker.  Are you a Division III coach?  I can guarantee you that in most cases, the parents are heavily involved in making the final decision (after all, they are paying for it!).  Are you a Division I coach?  Guess what: The parents are heavily involved in that decision, too.  It might be their dream to have all those travel teams and club practices pay off with a big D1 scholarship.  My point is this: Make sure you get a personal meeting with EVERY decision maker involved.

3. Come up with at least five questions that you don’t understand about your prospect.  Be curious, and show them that you’re really interested in digging in to what makes them tick.  For example, you might ask "What kind of schedule do you have to keep focused on to earn a 4.2 grade point average?"  Or, "How in the world did you shave five seconds off of your time in just a few months?"  Be amazed in front of them, and make it all about them. This will give you an opportunity to create meaningful dialog with the prospect. This will give you conversation ideas and questions that relate directly to the prospect.

4. Have three killer questions you are CERTAIN your competition is not asking. This will create "buyer engagement" and respect.  Good questions are key to connecting with your prospect and setting you a part of every other coach that is recruiting them. 

5. Have two ideas that the prospect will benefit from. Something that they’ll get that’s meaningful for them by signing with your program.  If you bring an idea to your meeting, it shows you’ve prepared, and it shows you have genuine interest in helping them.

6. Bring your laptop computer with wireless Internet capability. This gives you the ability to access any information you need in seconds.  Sounds basic, I know, but a laptop computer should be part of your aresenal for any visit.  "But my school doesn’t provide me with a free laptop, Dan."  Then plan on purchasing your own.  This is your coaching and recruiting career, and it’s your responsibility to give yourself the tools you need to be successful.  If you don’t have one already, get a laptop and start using it to help you be a dominant recruiter.

7. Have written or video testimonials to support EVERY claim you make about your program.  Keep those testimonials handy on your laptop, and on a separate DVD if possible. This will enable you to show and PROVE, not just show and tell. And it will enable you to leave a copy of your testimonials with your prospect.  Having other people back-up your claims in their own words.  It’s powerful, Coach.

Can I wrap-up this list by telling you what your overall goal should be for a personal visit with your prospect?  Here it is, Coach:  Show them the value in your program, not the sales pitch. Be prepared to show the recruit how they gain and succeed from signing with your school.

For our Premium Members, I’m going to expand on this list later in the week.  But for right now, focus on the goal of the visit: Connecting with your prospect, showing them the value in what your program has to offer, and demonstrating how you will help them achieve their goals at the college level as their coach.

You’ve written great letters.  You’ve crafted amazing e-mails.  And the phone calls have been long and fruitful.

The only that’s left is the campus visit.  A mere formality, right?  After all, they’ve basically been sold on your school through all of the stuff that you’ve sent them, right?

Think again, Coach.

In the vast majority of cases, the decision on whether to attend a school or not comes down to the campus visit.  We go into that in detail in our special report, "Inside the Mind of Your College Prospect", which details the decision making process of today’s student-athlete that you are recruiting.

The topic was discussed in detail by Mandy Brettingen, a longtime college soccer coach and the resident sports psychology here at Selling for Coaches.  She helped us put together a list of eight key ingredients to planning and executing a successful campus visit at this past weekend’s SFC Recruiting Kick-Off Conference.

1. The Atmosphere: Are You Thriving or Surviving?  In other words, when your prospect gets on to campus, are they going to see a program that is hanging on by a thread in terms of the team interpersonal relationships?  Or, is it a healthy, thriving team that has great team chemistry.  If the answer is anything other than "thriving", you need to begin building team relationships and doing things internally that will improve the atmosphere.
2. Get the Team’s Insights.  Many coaches use their team for hosting and interacting with a recruit, but then don’t use the team to help assess how well the recruit will mesh with the existing team.  Listening to your team in this way can help you avoid a bad mix of personalities that can damage team chemistry.  Remember…your team’s opinion counts when it comes to adding the right new members to the team.
3. Going on the Campus Tour.  How long will the tour be?  Who will host it?  What’s the schedule going to look like?  Coach, you need to plan out a campus visit in excrutiating detail.  Leave nothing to chance.  Since it all comes down to a great visit, you need to do whatever you can to ensure that they have a great experience.  And it all starts with a master plan that helps manage the experience your prospect has on campus.
4. Be Careful About the Class They Attend.  Part of a campus visit usually includes having your prospect attend a class at your college.  Here’s an important tip: Make sure they go to a class that is discussion based, rather than lecture based.  Why?  Because discussion based classes are usually full of lively talk and opinion, which is something that they don’t usually see in their high school.  Most come away with a positive impression with that kind of class, instead of sitting in something that looks and feels just like high school.
5. Let Other Athletes Know You Have a Visitor!  One thing that we discuss in our recruiting guides for coaches is how important it is to have your team, and the other athletes in the department, treat your prospect well.  That’s the number one way they determine whether they get a good "feel" about the college.  Here’s a suggestion: E-mail your athletes, and others in the department, that you will have a recruit on campus and if they see them with you or their host, that they should come up and say hello.  Sounds simple, i know, but the schools that do it report a really great response from their on-campus visits.
6. Make Sure There’s Time to Just Hang Out.  When we interview student-athletes as a part of our On-Campus Workshops, they tell us that sometimes they feel really over-scheduled during trips to visit a campus.  Meeting after meeting, activity after activity…sometimes recruits report that they feel exhausted by the end, and still haven’t had a chance to get a "feel" for the campus they are visiting.  What should you do?  Focus more time on just relaxing.  Let them hang out in your host’s room.  Let them play games, watch movies, and just be a kid.  That’s what they want.

There are actually three or four more tips for hosting incredible campus visits, but we’ll save those for a future discussion (and if you’re on the list of upcoming On-Campus Workshops we have, we’ll go over them in detail with you).

Campus visits are vitally important to a great recruiting plan, and it takes planning and precise execution to pull off a really great experience for the prospects.  If you need help with planning your on-campus visit, just let us know.