The following is an excerpt from our new book, “Freaking Awesome Campus Recruiting Visits“. It’s the ultimate guide for college coaches when it comes to developing campus recruiting visits that amaze and delight your prospects who visit your campus, and it’s full of unique ideas and new research that will give you lots of ways to make your campus visits different from your competition.
Have you given them a reason to come to campus? Other than you being interested in them, and having a campus for them to come spend the day at, of course. Because with this generation of prospects, there had better be more of a reason for them to commit to the visit.
We’re finding that they need to understand their role in the program, why you want them, and more…essentially, they want to be able to justify why they should spend their time and money on your campus instead of one close, less expensive, or that’s offering to pay for travel expenses.
The truth I want college coaches to understand is that today’s prospect is looking for justification as to why they should make you one of their precious visits. Most of your recruits won’t decide to come visit your campus just because you’ve invited them.
Have you laid the groundwork for the visit? From the scenarios we’ve tracked involving clients we are helping to deal with this situation, asking for a visit to soon in the process is something that isn’t recommended. It seems unnatural to the process: You saw them at a game or found them online, got in touch with them, and ask them to visit in that same first conversation. In any other life circumstance, a stranger contacting you out of the blue and asking you to do that would probably be grounds for contacting the police. Be patient, let the recruiting relationship build over time, and then ask – usually, after solid repeated phone conversations and consistent messaging through letters, emails and direct messaging.
Here are the reasons they’ll seriously consider visiting your campus at their expense: You’ve outlined a specific plan for them if they were to compete for your program, you’ve made it clear why you like them and what role they’ll play once they join your team, or you’ve laid out a promise that something significant will be happening or will be discussed while they are on campus. Are you building out a story for your recruit behind each one of those key reasons? If not, you should.
How do you define a “story” when you are recruiting your prospect? It’s an ongoing conversation centering around answering the question of “why should they commit to you, your program and your college”? Most coaches don’t follow-through with that kind of ongoing story, and it leaves them open to random and inconsistent recruiting results. Plus, it will make it much, much harder to secure a campus visit from the recruits you really want.
So, for you and your program, there are three central questions that you need to answer as you begin to redevelop your campus recruiting visit:
- Have you clearly and consistently stated why your recruit should visit campus?
- Have you taken the steps that this generation of recruits has clearly signaled is vitally important to them before they will likely feel ready to visit your school?
- What specific plan have you outlined for them prior to asking them to visit campus?
If you’re finding it hard to get consistent campus visits from your top prospects, not developing well thought-out answers to these three important questions could be the reason why.
Order your copy of “Freaking Awesome Campus Recruiting Visits” here.