Any good movie that you’ve ever seen has had one key element. And, its something that you need to add in to all of your recruiting messages.
I’m going to teach you how to do it today.
I’m talking about inciting your prospects when they’re reading one of your letters or emails. If you’ve ever seen a really good movie, one that keeps your attention from start to finish, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
The Indiana Jones movie series is a great example of "inciting" moviegoers. If you’ve seen the start to any of them, you know it’s action and an important event that kicks off the story. Whether he’s being chased by a giant ball down a cave, stealing an ancient artifact, or hiding in a refrigerator to survive a nuclear explosion, you’ve been hooked to watch the rest of the movie.
Some of the best movie writers use this technique to write blockbuster stories that we just can’t resist: The ask the question, "What is the big event, or the big moment, that really gets this story rolling?"
That usually comes at the beginning of a film (a good one, anyway), and it keeps you glued to the screen from that point forward.
So, how does all this apply to your recruiting message? What techniques can you use from this tried-and-true screenwriting trick to construct better recruiting letters and emails?
Glad you asked…
First things first: Take a look at the text of one of your recruiting letters.
Now, divide it into thirds.
Next, eliminate your first third of the letter. Why? Because if the typical recruiting letter were a movie script, you would unnessarily delay the main plot line – and the event that would "incite" your viewer – with needless text. It’s extra fluff that doesn’t hook your reader, and that’s bad.
Coaches write wonderfully worded messages most of the time, but it’s mostly dull background stuff that our research shows isn’t important to this generation of recruits. By chopping off that first third of your initial draft, you’ll be cutting straight to the point and giving yourself a better chance of capturing your reader’s attention.
How else can you make sure you incite your prospects from the start? Here are my suggestions:
- Make each message about one big idea. Stick with one main theme in each of your messages, and you’ll have a much better chance of keeping the attention of your recruit. For more ideas on what themes work best, and more detail on how to construct those messages, consult our two best-selling advanced recruiting guides for college coaches. It’s better to split up one letter into six separate letters if you look at it and see too many themes or ideas that you’re trying to get across to your prospect.
- Paint a picture for your prospect. Once you have that message down, its time to do more than just tell your recruit the facts and figures. Your challenge: To paint and emotionally compelling picture of what awaits your recruit if he or she chooses your program. You have to do that through words, and the more you focus on the feeling of your school and your program, the better your message will connect with your prospect.
- Who’s got your back? Will you use one of your athlete’s stories about why they chose your program? Will you tell them about an event in your coaching career that drives how your message? It’s helpful if you can punctuate your recruiting points with real-life examples that will help your prospect feel connected to your program. Plus, its one of the best ways to "incite" your recruit to keep moving forward with you as you continue to recruit them.
- Insert some danger. Or trials, or trouble. It’s O.K. to bring up some of the things you’ve had to overcome as a coach, or things that your program has had to deal with during a season. In fact, danger attracts attention. Danger or suspense in a movie almost guarantees that you won’t run out to get more popcorn during those scenes, and that’s the kind of attention you want to maintain with your recruits.
- After you’re all done, trim it some more. Take your final work and cross out at least three more sentences. You can never edit too much, and you can never make it shorter than it needs to be. Why make it shorter? Because time after time, as a part of our process of researching data with current college athletes when we’re doing our On-Campus Workshops around the country, your athletes tell us that they want more "to-the-point" messages that cut through the fluff and get straight to the good stuff.
When you do each of those five things, and throw in creative email subject lines and catchy headlines in the body of your recruiting letters, and you’ll see an increased liklihood that you’ll keep your recruit around for the whole entire recruiting cycle.
So, Coach…what can you do today to incite your prospects?
The strategies we’ve outlined above are just a few of the components we use to build winning recruiting plans and messages for our Total Recruiting Solution clients. If you like what you’ve read, but want a team of experts to come alongside you and help your program create more effective recruiting campaigns, email Dan at dan@sellingforcoaches.com. Or, visit www.sellingforcoaches.com for all the details about the TRS plan.
