You know the drill: You’ve sent letters, hand-written postcards, typed e-mails…and there’s no response. The replies have quit coming.
What do you do if you want to jump-start your recruiting relationship with that kind of prospect? It’s simple, coach. You make a commitment to rekindling that relationship…no matter what. What happens when you do that?
You regain your confidence. When you have a lot of pending decisions hanging out there, you tend to start questioning your sales and recruiting ability. You blame yourself for failing to get another great prospect. You become negative. You get down on yourself. Talking personally with your prospect erases the doubt and mystery, helping you to regain your confidence. Need more confidence when it comes to knowing how to recruit? Read our special recruiting guides for college coaches.
You eliminate stress. Having ten, twenty or thirty prospects that you’re waiting to hear back from is extremely stressful. Once you nail down a final answer from your prospect, that stress is eliminated. You know where you stand, and know where you need to go from here. You’re crossing prospects off your list who aren’t serious "buyers" of your product (your program).
You stop acting like a salesperson. Once you know what a prospect is thinking, you can stop acting like a desperate salesperson disguised as a college coach. There are times when it’s time to walk away and focus your energy on other prospects. After speaking with a prospect personally, you may find that time is now. Breath a sigh of relief…you don’t have to keep-up the high pressure sales tactics anymore!
How do you do it? Simple:
Call your prospect on the phone. Don’t leave a message. Keep calling back until you get them live on the phone. It’s imperative at this stage of your selling process that you speak with them live, one-on-one. Messages, e-mails, voicemails…none of those things cut it. You need to speak with your prospect live.
Take responsibility for the problem. Ease your prospect’s concerns and their uncomfortable feelings by taking the blame (even if it’s not your fault…and it probably isn’t): "Hey Amy, it’s Coach Jenkins. First, its great to talk to you. I wanted to apologize for not doing a good job of getting us together on the phone, and to let you know that I’m sorry that I dropped the ball. I think I could have given you some better information so that you’d have a chance to really understand what a great program we have going here. You’ve probably already made a commitment with another program, which is fine, so really all I’m doing is checking in to get your feedback as to how I can improve for the next prospect I talk to."
If they haven’t made a commitment yet, they’ll let you know. And then you’re back in the game. It’s the best cure I know of when it comes to reigniting a promising recruiting relationship.
