Your prospects have grown up using text messaging as one of the primary tools for communicating with their friends.
That has certain consequences for you as a college coach who is recruiting this generation of prospects.
Of all the mistakes you can make as a college coach engaged in that effort, inconsistent communication with some or all of your recruits is one of the errors that can grind your recruiting to a halt the fastest. Why? Because with this generation, timely communication is a sign of interest. Inconsistent communication is a sign you don’t like them. It’s a way they measure everything in their text-heavy communication life.
Fortunately, the fix is easy for a coach who understands what will trigger red flags in the mind of your recruit, and who is willing to make some simple adjustments to their communication strategy. Here are Five common consequences of inconsistent communication:
- Your prospects will misinterpret your interest. You need to eliminate irregular communicate patterns. What confuses recruits? When you send something to them every other day for a week, and then go two weeks without any communication. Then you send them something, but then another three weeks go by. That inconsistent communication signals you aren’t serious about them. The fix? All of our research continually points to a regular stream of communication about you and your program that goes out every six to nine days.
- Prospects assume you’ll begin serious contact when you get more serious about them. What’s key to that idea is their natural assumption that you aren’t interested yet. Is that your intention?
- They’ll wait. They’ll wait for you to reach out, they’ll wait to talk to you, they’ll wait for signs of interest. Not getting a good response from the random messaging you’re sending out? It’s because you’re waiting.
- Recruits will turn their focus to coaches they perceive being more interested in them. Something has to fill that vacuum created by their assumption you’re not interested in them. That replacement comes in the form of your competition engaging with that prospect you really want.
- When you need action from them, it’s hard to get. Coaches are finding it difficult to fire-up interest when they finally want that intense conversation with recruits, especially down the stretch. You can’t flip a switch and turn their interest on and off at will. It takes a long, consistent stream of communication in most cases – and if you don’t do it, it’s hard to engage them the later it gets in the recruiting process.
The good news is that all of this can be fixed almost immediately. Fixing inconsistent communication doesn’t take long, it just take a mindset – and a game plan – to develop a plan internally to give these prospects what they want: Proof you want them, in the form of consistent communication.