Organization | Dan Tudor

Why Defining a Vision Helps Coaches Save Time in the OfficeMonday, March 5th, 2012

by Mandy Green, University of South Dakota

So you are probably thinking, how the heck can the vision that I have for my career and for my program help me save time in the office?

As you already know, your vision identifies where you want to go (as a program, as a team, with your career, and with your recruiting) in the next 1, 3, or even 5 years from now.

A problem I have found with the coaches that I work with is that a lot of them cannot clearly articulate what their vision is. Because they are not clear on where there program, recruiting and career ultimately will go in the next 1-5 years, they waste A LOT of time being indecisive and inconsistent because they have no foundation to go off of to guide their decisions.

Ultimately, your vision is the filter through which you sift every decision, from how to train your team to whom you recruit to how you spend your time in the office. Once your vision is solid enough, it will dictate every action you make, ensuring that everything you do takes you closer to your goals.

For example, let’s say your vision is to be considered a top coach in your conference, sign all of your top recruits, and be so organized that you get your work done during office hours so you have more time to spend with your family. If that is your vision, then how do you think that will dictate your actions? Will you get into the office late, spend the first two hours in pointless conversations, and then stay late to finish all of the work you have to do? Of course not!

So how do you create your vision?

First, decide on your time frame. Do you want to focus on 1 year, 3 years, or 5 years from now?
Second, write out where you want your program, team, career, and recruiting to be in the next 1, 3, or 5 years from now. Be specific and know where do you want to go?
What does my program look like 1, 3, or 5 years from now?
Where am I with my career 1, 3, or 5 years from now?
What kind of recruits am I going after 1, 3, or 5 years from now?
What is your ideal day in the office 1, 3, or 5 years from now?

Being clear on what your future looks like will help you make more productive choices and sound decisions in your present. Next week, we’ll talk about how all of this applies to your life as a recruiter.

If you are looking for more help in this area, keep an eye out for my new Coaching Productivity Planner Workbook coming out soon. I’ve taken all of the best time-management systems and tips out there on the market and synthesized them all into one Time Management System for College Coaches. Look for it shortly here on dantudor.com!

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Scheduling Your High Priority Activities as a College CoachMonday, February 13th, 2012

by Mandy Green, University of South Dakota

How long do you and your staff spend each day on unimportant things? Things that don’t really contribute to the success of your program.

Do you know how much time you’ve spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, getting interrupted by somebody walking into your office, or getting phone calls everyday? And how often have you thought, “I could achieve so much more if I just had another half hour each day.”

In working closely with the team at Tudor Collegiate Strategies, I know we continually hear from coaches who struggle with their day. They lament how often time seems to get away from them. Even when they plan their upcoming calendar as a coaching staff, it seems to never quite unfold the way coaches hope.

First thing I want you to do: Identify the high-payoff activities within your program.

High-payoff activities are the things you do that bring the greatest value to your program, team, or staff. They are the three to five activities that lie in your “sweet spot.” You do them with excellence. These activities could be building relationships with recruits, making phone calls to parents, sending emails to recruits, managing your current team, etc. They are your unique discipline or distinctive skills and abilities that distinguish you from other staff members.

Knowing what your high-payoff activities are and actually doing them, however, are two very different things. Many surveys that I have read over the past several years have shown that the average American worker spends only 50-60 percent of the workday on activities specified in her or her job description. That means that workers waste 40-50 percent of their time on low-payoff activities, tackling things that others with less skill or training should be doing.

Are you in this category coach?

The more time you spend doing the high-payoff activities, the more value you will bring to your team, program, and staff. By disciplining yourself to clearly identify your high-payoff activities, and then by filling your calendar with those things and appropriately delegating, delaying, or dropping the low-payoff activities, you can and will get more high-payoff activities done everyday, reduce your stress, and increase your happiness.

Homework-Time tracking in an Activity Log

Activity logs help you to analyze how you actually spend your time, and when you perform at your best. The first time you use an activity log the results may shock you! I know that I was shocked the first time I did one.

Do this activity for a week. Write down everything you do, from the time you start working until the time you go home. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to, note down the things you do as you do them. I created a sample template below. You will need to cut and paste and make the template the size you need it to be depending on the amount of things you do everyday.

Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the change.
As well as recording activities, note how you feel, whether alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. Do this periodically throughout the day.

At the end of every time-tracked day, tally the total hours you spent in high- vs low-payoff activities. Although this may seem like a hassle, it’s vitally important for you to become very clear on how you actually spend your time over the course of the week. You may be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low value jobs!

Activity logs are useful tools for auditing the way that you use your time. They can also help you to track changes in your energy, alertness and effectiveness throughout the day.

By analyzing your activity log you will be able to identify and eliminate time-wasting or low-value jobs. You will also know the times of day at which you are most effective, so that you can carry out your most important tasks during these times.

Soon you’ll gain a clear picture of how you’re actually spending your time and whether you have room to fill your calendar with the activities that will truly add the most value to you and your program.

Mandy Green, a frequent contributor to College Recruiting Weekly, is a Division I head soccer coach and the author of an upcoming time-management guide for college coaches, as well as a corresponding calendar organizer. In addition, she will be a featured speaker at the upcoming National Collegiate Recruiting Conference this Summer.

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Achieving Your Coaching and Recruiting Goals in the New YearMonday, January 23rd, 2012

by Mandy Green, University of South Dakota

The idea is a good one:

Set personal goals for the New Year, and then carry them out. That’s a great idea for coaches, as well.

The problem I find is that coaches are so busy, going in so many directions, and pressed by “more important” matters that they don’t get around to serious goal setting. But it’s important, and it can result in better performance for you as a college coach and recruiter.

Go back and take a look at the New Year’s Resolutions that you set just a few weeks ago for 2012. Are you still working on them? Or have you already gone back to your old ways of doing things and decided that you will try again next year?

Hopefully you are still working on accomplishing your goals for this year. If not, I hate to say it but you are not the only coach out there who failed to keepyour resolutions.

A big reason so many New Year’s Resolutions fail within the first week is that the focus is on the “what” instead of the “why” and the “how.”

The first question to ask yourself when making New Year’s Resolutions is “why” am I making these goals in the first place? The second question to ask yourself is “how” am I going to make this resolution a reality?

For example, if your resolution is to “mange my time better in the office so I can spend more time with my family,” maybe you should look to the root cause of the problem:

• I get into the office late
• I spend too much time emailing
• I get distracted easily
• I spend too much time gossiping with fellow coaches
• I’m not organized
• I have too many things to get done
• I get interrupted a lot during the day

Once you have identified the “why” for each resolution, create specific personal resolves for behavior change from there.
Here are a few specific resolves:

• I will get into the office 1 hour before the rest of the staff arrives
• I will only check my email twice a day
• I will create a personal, team, and recruiting plan
• I will make to-do lists to make sure the important things are getting done

Here’s a helpful exercise if you’re serious about achieving your goals for 2012:

1. For each goal you created for this upcoming season or year, make a list of the “why’s.” What is the real reason you want to achieve this goal?

2. Come up with specific behavioral changes you are willing to make in order to make each resolution a reality.

3. Commit an hour a day to spend on working on your goal and get to work.

When it comes to the goals you are trying to accomplish this year, I recommend keeping it simple. Make sure your goals are attainable. And, most of all, write them down. Goals that are written down and placed where you can see them on a regular basis will get achieved.

Goal setting is the easy part. Committing to spending time each day working on your goals is tough for coaches because there are so many things to get done.

Goals are important for your personal and professional development. Take them seriously as we head into the new year.

Mandy Green is the author of a soon to be released organizational book and calendar specifically designed for college recruiters. She will also be speaking at the National Collegiate Recruiting Conference this Summer. Click here for more information on being a part of this informative weekend of cutting-edge recruiting techniques!

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Three Ways to Make Sure You’re a More Organized CoachMonday, December 19th, 2011

Coach, I’m sure you understand the frustration that comes with leaving the office and not feeling like you got the right things done.

Getting done all of the things we have to do as a coach is tough enough. I know, because I am a D1 college soccer coach. Now that I am married and have children, all the extra time I had to hang out in the office getting work done, make phone calls, talking with fellow coaches, recruit on the weekends from morning to night, is now not an option like it was when I was single.

For me, especially once my son was born, I realized that I needed to get the same amount of work done in half the time so I could spend more time at home. I needed a plan.

I did some research and found three time management tools and techniques that I have put to use in an effort to increase my productivity, get more organized, and to regain my sanity. I found that each of them takes a little time to learn and master, but trust me, it will pay you back in greater efficiency and effectiveness!

1. Use a time planner. I think most coaches use a planner already. But if you are anything like me, I had a notebook for my practices, my daily calendar where I put my to-do lists, a separate notebook with my goals, and then scattered on the 3 different computers and all of my zip discs were all of my recruiting plans and notes. I needed to create a time planning system that would enable me to plan for the year, the month, the week, and for each day all in one that contained everything I needed to organize my coaching responsibilities and personal life. Since no planner exist that had everything that I needed, I created one. This planner allows me to set and keep track of my goals, organize my recruiting, keep track of what I am doing with my team, etc. Whatever time planner you use, make sure you are able to capture every task, goal, or required action as it comes up.

2. Always work from a list. Working from a list has been one of the most powerful tools for me in becoming more productive with my time. When you create your daily list, you begin by writing down every single task that you intend to complete over the course of the day. I figured out that what I needed to do in a typical day fell into one of four categories: team, recruiting, administrative, and personal. I organize and prioritize each task based on what category it falls in and then that list becomes a map that guides me from morning to evening in a very effective and efficient way. At the end of the day, I take 10 minutes before I leave the office to make my to-do list for the next day and then review it again before I go to bed. It is amazing how much more focused I am and how much more I get done when I have a plan of attack already set before I get into the office.

3. Time block your day. Once you have your to-do list and have organized them based on importance or priority, block off a section of your day where you focus on only one thing at a time. For example, I have the most energy and get the fewest interruptions first thing in the morning. For me, recruiting is the task that I feel is most important in building my program into what I want it to be so I schedule it first. From 8-9am every morning, I shut my door and all I do is recruiting tasks: I send and return emails, plan recruiting trips, plan my next month’s recruiting messages, meet with my staff to discuss who we are going to make calls to, etc. I don’t answer my phone, I don’t return any new emails that have come in. All I do is focus on recruiting for that hour.

Just by doing these three things, I am amazed at how much more I get done and that I even have time left over in the day before I head home. I love the peace of mind and feeling of control that I get knowing that I am scheduling my day based on my program goals and getting it all done before I leave.

Mandy Green is the author of a soon-to-be-released productivity guide and calendar especially designed for college coaches. Look for more details soon! You can find more articles on organization and planning your coaching and recruiting life here.

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Why Every Coach Should Track Their TimeSunday, November 6th, 2011

by Mandy Green, Head Soccer Coach – University of South Dakota

How long do you spend each day on unimportant things?

Things that don’t really contribute to the success of your program?

Do you KNOW how much time you’ve spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, getting interrupted by somebody walking into your office, or getting phone calls everyday? And how often have you thought, “I could achieve so much more if I just had another half hour each day.”

In my years of being associated with Tudor Collegiate Strategies, I know they continually hear from smart, capable college coaches who struggle with their day. They lament how often time seems to get away from them.

As the first step towards fixing that problem, the first thing I would want you to do is identify the high-payoff activities within your program.

These activities could be building relationships with recruits, making phone calls to parents, sending emails to recruits, managing your current team, and other essential success-oriented activities. They are your unique discipline or distinctive skills and abilities that distinguish you from other staff members.

Are you in this category coach?

Your Homework Assignment -Time Tracking in an Activity Log

Do this for a week: Write down everything you do, from the time you start working until the time you go home. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to, note down the things you do as you do them.

Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the change.
As well as recording activities, note how you feel…are you alert, flat, tired, energetic, or frustrated? Do this periodically throughout the day.

At the end of every time-tracked day, tally the total hours you spent in high payoff vs. low payoff activities. Although this may seem like a hassle, it’s vitally important for you to become very clear on how you actually spend your time over the course of the week. You may be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low value jobs!

Mandy Green is a Division I soccer coach at the University of South Dakota, and is a frequent contributor to College Recruiting Weekly on the topics of organization and time management for college coaches. She is a regular speaker at the National Collegiate Recruiting Conference, and is the author of a soon to be released time management guide for college coaches.

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Squeezing the Most (and the Best!) Out of Your Coaching DayMonday, October 17th, 2011

by Mandy Green, University of South Dakota

Coach, have you ever sat down and really analyzed how effective and efficient you are being with your day? Which task do you choose to focus on? Is one more important to you than the other?

In his book, The On-Purpose Person, author Kevin McCarthy describes the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. “Efficiency is doing things right in the most economical way possible; effectiveness is doing the right things that get you closer to your goals.”

It seems to me that being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe. What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Now, being efficient is still important, but we all know that it is useless unless applied to the right things.

There are two ways for you to increase productivity that are inversions of each other:

1. Limit daily tasks just to the important to shorten your work time (80/20).
2. Shorten work time to limit your tasks so you only focus on the important (Parkinson’s Law)

Pareto’s 80/20 Law can be summarized as follows: 20 percent of your priorities will give you 80 percent of your production.

Ask yourself these two questions about your program, your team, and your staff:

–Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
–Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?

Once you have identified your top 20%, commit to scheduling those activities into your day, everyday. Then, go the next step further by putting a time restriction on how long you will give yourself to complete each high-priority activity.

Timothy Ferriss, in his book The 4-Hour Workweek, introduces a concept called Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

The best solution is to use 80/20 and Parkinson’s Law together: Identify the few critical high-payoff tasks that contribute most to effectiveness and efficiency within your program and then schedule each activity with very short and clear deadlines.

Coach, it is critical to the success of your program that you know what your high-priority activities are and are incorporating those high-payoff activities into your schedule consistently every single day. Once identified, set an aggressive deadline for each task and block off certain sections of your day where you focus on nothing but that task to ensure completion.

If you haven’t identified your high-priority tasks and are not setting aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant emails, phone calls, and people popping their head into your office becomes the important. These unimportant things can and will eat up a good chunk of your day if you continue to let them.

Mandy Green is a Division I head soccer coach at the University of South Dakota, and a frequent contributor to College Recruiting Weekly. She will be a featured speaker at the 2012 National Collegiate Recruiting Conference in Boston, this coming June 1-3, 2012. You can register now to hear Coach Green and a host of other nationally recognized recruiting experts and save big on the conference fee, as well as hotel rooms. Click here for all the details!

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Time to Let Go and Go Home, Coach!Monday, October 3rd, 2011

by Mandy Green, Head Soccer Coach – University of South Dakota

In the past when I have had the chance to work with some coaches on managing their time better in the office, it is fun to see their eyes light up as we set recruiting, team, administrative, and personal goals and then come up with a plan on how accomplishing these goals to make it reality.

Never fails, we always hit a snag when I mention the “D” word.

That word that seems to hang up a lot of coaches is delegation.

“If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” This seems to be the favorite saying of a lot of the coaches that I am working with. To me, it says a great deal about their willingness to delegate. These coaches work non-stop morning to night, and still do (although they are getting better), because they somehow can’t embrace the notion that it’s possible to get things done any other way.

Beneath the many excuses for not delegating lays the reason why many of us coaches avoid delegating things: True delegation means giving up a little of what we would like to hold onto (some measure of control) while keeping what we might prefer to give up (accountability).

Delegation is an area of personal and professional management that many coaches struggle with. The difficulty stems from our need to control outcomes and a strongly rooted belief that we know how to do things best.

It’s often a scary prospect even to think about letting someone else take over a task or duty we’ve been doing for a while:

What if they don’t do it correctly?
What if the outcome is not up to my standards?
What if they don’t do it the way I’ve been doing it?
What if I become less essential to my program?
What if, (gasp), they do it better than me?

Think about it coach. By nature we love to keep control. We also fear the repercussions when our support staff fails to complete something correctly or in a timely manner. The failure might reflect badly on us so we take the path of least resistance. Rather than working on improving our delegation skills to the other coaches we work with, sometimes we simply keep hold of more tasks. That way we can make sure things are done completely the way we want them done. Being overworked somehow seems less risky than having things done that might not meet our exact requirements.

Delegation means taking true responsibility and inevitably means giving up some control. If that sounds a bit scary, how can you overcome your mindset and become a better delegator? Here are some tips:

Realize that you just can’t do it all. Everyone has limits. If you fail to acknowledge yours, you will burn out. Maybe not tomorrow and maybe not even next year, but the stress and pressure of trying to do it all will get you eventually.

Start small. Delegation is a skill and learning it needs patience, persistence, and practice. Start by giving away small, uncomplicated tasks. As your confidence grows so will your willingness to delegate more.

Realize that “Your Way” is not always the “Only Way.” A big part of letting go is the fear that the task will not be done “right.” Consider that there are other ways to achieve the same result.

Work on giving others the tools to do what you do. Delegation will only work if you help your support staff succeed. So make sure he or she has the right resources and then keep communicating, participating and supporting your staff. Remember, delegation means NOT abdicating your responsibility, so you need to make sure you have done everything you can to influence a successful outcome.

Appreciate others’ accomplishments. You might be bored with organizing on-campus visits, but if one of your coaches has never done it, the challenge can be exciting, invigorating, and motivating. The successful outcome is not just a well-organized visit. It’s the opportunity for someone else to shine and get recognized for their achievements.

Seize the opportunity to work on more stimulating projects. The less time you spend on lower level tasks, the more time you have to concentrate on your main objectives. (You know the ones, the really important issues that keep getting shoved to the bottom of the pile because you’re so overloaded…)

Use the leverage. Delegation can put the right people on the right tasks. And the better allocated your coaches and staff are, the greater the productivity, effectiveness and the opportunity for organizational growth.

Delegation, when done well, benefits everyone. You have more time to concentrate on the main responsibilities of your position. Your support staff will have more opportunities to expand and enrich their jobs. An added bonus is the fact that because delegation relieves your own time pressures, the job gets done better in the long run.

So, cast off your preconceptions about delegation! You were doing a good job before: You can do even better when you delegate more. With a fresh perspective and little courage to “let go”, you’ll be amazed by what you can achieve!

Mandy Green is a leading expert on coaching organization, and a frequent contributor at conferences and in publications for Tudor Collegiate Strategies. Additionally, she is a successful Division I women’s soccer coach and proud new mom! Look for her new coaching calendar and organizational system coming soon.

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Why College Coaches Need to Pay Attention to DetailMonday, August 29th, 2011

by Sean Devlin, Front Rush

A story recently came out in the press in response to Steve Jobs’ sad announcement that he is leaving Apple as CEO due to his ongoing health issues.

As the story goes, one of the top product guys at Google received an email in the middle of the night from Steve Jobs complaining that there was a major issue with the Google icon that appeared on the iPhone. It was such a big issue that Steve Jobs was personally going to assign an Apple representative to work directly with the Google employee to resolve the issue immediately.

So what was the problem? It turns out that the yellow color in the letter O of GOOGLE was slightly off.

Was this slightly off-colored letter going to cause major issues for Apple or Google? Absolutely not!

The key takeaway is the care for the granular detail that Steve Jobs has had over the past decade. In product development, maybe some of the details are more apparent but certainly in recruiting there are parallels.

For example, when a recruit calls your phone and you don’t answer, what type of message will they hear on your voicemail? Is it something that is welcoming and open, or is it a brief ‘leave a message’ recording. If you are out of town for a few weeks and they send you an email, is the automated message back informative and interesting? Or, is it something ordinary like “I’m out of town for the next 3 weeks with limited access to email”. When they browse your website, is the information about you enticing and powerful, or is it something ordinary like “Head Coach for past 3 years”.

The trick is to look at every single interaction a recruit could have with you, your program and your school. This is not just limited to emails, calls, and on-campus visits. There are many, many other signals that they absorb, and you can’t control them , you can control more than you currently are if you employ a little out of the box thinking like Steve Jobs has made a career of doing.

Apple did not go from near bankruptcy to one of the most wealthy companies in the world because they built a few great products. They did this by looking at all the granular details – from the yellow O’s to the box that the product comes in.

If you start controlling the signals and pay attention to your slightly off-colored O’s, they will add up.

Sean Devlin and the team at Front Rush have established themselves as the go-to team of technology experts for thousands of college coaches and their programs. It’s their personal service and attention to detail that have made them the leaders in easy-to-use web recruiting management tools. If you aren’t using them yet, you need to click here right now.

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Changing Their Worldview of You and Your ProgramTuesday, June 21st, 2011

There’s a challenge for many college coaches, and it’s a big one.

You need to change the worldview of your prospect.

Think about that for a second…that’s an amazing challenge! As if your job as a college recruiter wasn’t challenging enough, not finding a way to change how your recruit defines your program in his or her mind could mean everything else in the recruiting process grinds to a halt.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: A great recruit has grown up in the shadow of your college. They’ve seen highlights on the local news, maybe they’ve been to one or two of your youth camps in the Summer, and they may have had a few friends enroll for classes there. On the surface, those may appear to be advantage. Afterall, they’ve had a chance to experience your program and the college up close and personal.

However, what we’re finding in our ongoing series of focus groups on campuses around the country is that familiarity is not necessarily good thing. The problem? Many of your prospects have already defined you: They’ve decided if you’re the right size (or not), if your facilities are up to par (or not) and if your program is “good enough” for them (or not).

It doesn’t have to be the example of the local athlete having already defined your school. We’ve seen examples of a college being labeled “not academic”. Or a conference being defined as “not a great place for serious athletes”. Or maybe you’re coming off a season that was less than spectacular, and they’ve decided that “you’re not a winner”.

Each of those three examples are real. Three of our clients had those exact objections thrown at them. In other words, their athletes’ had worldviews that had been previously defined, and it was going to be tough to change their mind.

So here’s my question for you:

What are you doing with this next recruiting season to address (and change) any worldview problems that your program may have?

Like I said at the start, it’s not an easy solution. But, it can be done (and it’s a really important aspect of how your recruit decides whether or not they should pay serious attention to you). Starbucks did it…before they came around, did we really think of buying a $4 cup of coffee?

No.

But back to my question about what you can do to change the worldview of your prospects: It takes planning, it won’t happen overnight, and you’ll have to mold it with a creative, passionate alternative story.

The first thing I’d recommend doing is define what you think your current story is in the mind of the recruits that you really want, but are losing. Target that specific group. There are others, I know, but this group seems to be the most highly coveted (or maybe just the most frustrating) to serious recruiters. So, start by writing down what you think they think of you, and how they’re probably defining you. Think of the potential negatives that they might associate with you and your program, and make a comprehensive list of those things that might be stacked against you in their mind.

The next step is to take one of those things that you’ve identified as one of the prime negatives that might be associated with your program, and tell yourself that you need to establish it as one of the reasons that your prospects would want to choose you over anyone else. In short, make one of your greatest negatives one of the first things you ”sell” to your prime recruits.

It sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but it is one of the best strategies I can recommend when it comes to redefining the worldview of your top tier prospects. More importantly, as I’ve tried to point out when we’re conducting one of our On-Campus Workshops for an athletic department, making sure that you set the boundaries for how your prospect thinks and feels about you instead of your competition.

That’s an important piece to this puzzle:

Most college coaches, by virtue of taking a passive approach in defining themselves, allow competitors to set the narrative. And, in the best case scenarios where a competitor’s meddling is not involved, the void of definition allows an individual athlete to set their own random view of a program, a coach, or a college campus. In the example I cited earlier, a local student-athlete – left to their own devices – might define your program negatively given a lifetime of observation and time to form their own “story” about you.

This is the core reason I point to a strong, creative, consistent definition of your program as being incredibly important to your program’s long term success. That means that you’re not just giving them the facts about your school and your program; done correctly, your story should give your prospect a reason why your program should be one of their top considerations. Simply stating a fact does not do that. You need to connect the dots for your prospect: Tell them what the fact is, but (more importantly) tell them how to think about that fact and what it means to them.

By virtue of your role as the seller in this relationship, it is your job to do that. That, in short, is how you start affecting the worldview of your most important prospects.

So, where’s the “how to” advice on putting that kind of strategy into action? You won’t find it here, and for good reason: Each and every school, as well as each and every program within that school, will need to create a separate and unique strategy to meet the individual goals of your recruiting message. And because it’s rather challenging, most college coaches reading this will pull the rip-cord on this article, bail out, and continue with their day.

But if you’re one of the 1% who has read this, feels like it makes sense, and would like to take control of their message, it will be one of the most significant long term investments in your program that you could make.

You have the power to change the worldview of your prospects. The question is, will you roll-up your sleeves and do the heavy lifting required to do it?

The Tudor Collegiate Strategies Team is scheduling their next series of On-Campus Workshops for college athletic departments. Are you ready to experience a live, personalized session with you and your fellow coaches? Recommend us to your athletic director and fellow coaches! Click here for all the information, or email Dan directly at dan@dantudor.com for a full list of workshop options and schedule availability.

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Building Your Recruiting Philosophy for 2012Monday, May 16th, 2011

There are two types of coaches reading this today, and you fall into one of two possible categories.

Either you’re a coach who is still scrambling to scrape together the final tattered remnants of what was supposed to finally be a great recruiting class, or you have long wrapped-up recruiting for the year and are evaluating how to do it better next year.

Today’s article works for both groups. Granted, it’s better to be sitting in the second group, but even if you find yourself still stressing about this year’s class, you can put these principles to work right away.

They are four primary principles that are a great foundation for building a solid approach to recruiting. Talk to a successful coach and recruiter in your sport, and I’ll bet they have a few of these down cold and part of their annual recruiting plan.

Here they are:

Over-deliver on what your prospect gets from you and your program. By “getting”, I’m not talking about a bigger media guide or longer, more fact-filled letters. That stuff plays virtually no role in getting an athlete interested in you and your program. What does? Being genuine in the way you communicate with them, and delivering more than what they are probably expecting: More focused on them, more focused on what they want out of their recruiting visit, and more personal interaction from your team when they get a chance to interact with them. That’s the stuff that matters…if you over-deliver and exceed their expectations in those areas, you’ll win almost every time (see our detailed study of how athletes choose their college program).

Focus on creating a bond with your recruits, not selling your program. You need to resist selling your program too early to this next class or recruits. Instead, focus on creating a solid bond with your prospect. They aren’t ready to listen to what you have to sell early on anyway, so spend that time making sure you’ve build the beginnings of a relationship. Don’t focus on selling too early: Look at your first recruiter letter, for instance. Does it have a lot of references to how great your school? That won’t sell your recruit on your program…to do that effectively, you need to have developed a really solid communication basis with your teenage prospect established first. Don’t rush it, and don’t worry about selling (there will be plenty of time for that later in the recruiting process).

Make sure you, your department, and your team go the extra mile in making prospects feel like family. Two big words in that sentence: “Feel” and “family”. If you’ve read our two popular recruiting guides for college recruiters, you know how important their feelings are: About you, about your team, about your school…they are all big factors in how they make their final choice. And, if they get the feeling like they are part of a family on the visit, you’ll be at the top of their list. “Feeling like part of the family” is always cited as a big reason for why coaches end up signing their recruit. So here’s the question for you, Coach: What kind of planning goes into your campus visits, and how are you ensuring that your prospects feel like famiy when they are around you and your team? It’s an important question…take it seriously as you prepare for 2012.

Don’t give up too easily on those top tier prospects. Most of you do way too soon, and you shouldn’t. Persistence is a learned skill, and if you haven’t learned to keep going after recruits even though they don’t show immediate interest, you need to. The more I visit campuses and conduct closed-door focus group sessions as a part of our On-Campus Workshops, the more I hear stories from athletes that said they came to the school because their coach didn’t give up on them. At a Division III college I visited a few weeks ago, a few of their athletes specifically mentioned that the coach who was recruiting them at that school never, ever gave up. Even after a few of them said that they had decided that they weren’t interested, the coach kept at it. They didn’t take no for an answer. And in quite a few cases, they are able to turn things around and get the prospect to change their mind. At some point, recruiting a prospect comes to an end. I just see too many coaches give up way too early.

Here’s my promise: If you put these four principles to use this coming year, and make them a part of the foundation that you build your recruiting upon, you will really see a difference in your results. And, you’ll find that the recruiting process itself is less stressful and more productive earlier in the cycle.

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Dan Tudor

Why Defining a Vision Helps Coaches Save Time in the OfficeMonday, March 5th, 2012

Scheduling Your High Priority Activities as a College CoachMonday, February 13th, 2012

Achieving Your Coaching and Recruiting Goals in the New YearMonday, January 23rd, 2012

Three Ways to Make Sure You’re a More Organized CoachMonday, December 19th, 2011

Why Every Coach Should Track Their TimeSunday, November 6th, 2011

Squeezing the Most (and the Best!) Out of Your Coaching DayMonday, October 17th, 2011

Time to Let Go and Go Home, Coach!Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Why College Coaches Need to Pay Attention to DetailMonday, August 29th, 2011

Changing Their Worldview of You and Your ProgramTuesday, June 21st, 2011

Building Your Recruiting Philosophy for 2012Monday, May 16th, 2011

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Dan Tudor

Why Defining a Vision Helps Coaches Save Time in the OfficeMonday, March 5th, 2012

Scheduling Your High Priority Activities as a College CoachMonday, February 13th, 2012

Achieving Your Coaching and Recruiting Goals in the New YearMonday, January 23rd, 2012

Three Ways to Make Sure You’re a More Organized CoachMonday, December 19th, 2011

Why Every Coach Should Track Their TimeSunday, November 6th, 2011

Squeezing the Most (and the Best!) Out of Your Coaching DayMonday, October 17th, 2011

Time to Let Go and Go Home, Coach!Monday, October 3rd, 2011

Why College Coaches Need to Pay Attention to DetailMonday, August 29th, 2011

Changing Their Worldview of You and Your ProgramTuesday, June 21st, 2011

Building Your Recruiting Philosophy for 2012Monday, May 16th, 2011

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