by Dan Christensen, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
As coaches we track a lot of stats.
How fast did our athletes run or swim?
How many turnovers did we have in our last game?
What was our 4th quarter shooting percentage last year?
While this is common, I think tracking recruiting data tends to be less frequent for college coaches. Yet, it can be a game changer if coaches pay attention to the right data.
Here are two pieces of data that every college coach should be tracking about their recruiting results:
1) Where do you get most of your commits?
The athletes that commit and come play for you, where are they coming from?
When is the last time you evaluated that? Many coaches have a little bit of an idea but very few actually track this carefully.
What I have found is that when I have coaches that I work with begin to track where their last few recruiting classes came from, the number of actually productive sources is very small.
Out of ten different recruiting events that a coach may go to every year, there tend to be one or two that they have the most success recruiting from.
Some coaches find they actually aren’t getting many recruits from showcase type events but have more success on recruiting websites or through ID camps.
It will be different for each coach but when you track this for you and your program, the result will help you be so much more efficient with your time.
With the sources that are most productive for you, keep spending time searching for new recruits there. In fact, maybe spend more time going to those sources.
The sources that are not productive for you, stop using them. Save money. Save time. Save energy. And at worst you’ll get the same recruiting results you’ve been getting.
If you need a starting point for evaluating this data, email me at danchristensen@dantudor.com and I can share a simple template for tracking where you get your athletes.
2) When do you lose recruits?
Recruiting can be very simply broken down into beginning, middle, and end.
In the beginning you’re trying to start the relationship. Get their attention, get a response, and make a mutual decision to move forward in the recruiting process.
In the middle you’re trying to guide your prospect through the recruiting process and keep or increase their interest through your recruiting message.
At the end you’re trying to close and get your recruiting to ultimately feel you are better than their other options.
Looking at all the recruits you reached out to at least once last year, where did you lose them?
How about the year before?
If you can breakdown where you lose recruits, you can identify where you need to focus on improving your recruiting strategy.
If you lose a lot of recruits in the beginning, your approach to first contact as well as the branding of your program probably needs improvement.
If you lose a lot of recruits in the middle, your approach to consistent communication and storytelling might need evaluation.
If you get recruits through to the end and when it comes down to you and one or two other programs you end up losing them, your ability to set your timeline and ask the right questions down the stretch needs to improve.
Track this. Make adjustments. And then track it the next year to see if things change.
The more successful you can be in each area, the better results you’ll get for your program.
Dan Christensen is part of the staff at Tudor Collegiate Strategies helping college coaches bring in better recruits for their programs. Want help evaluating your recruiting results? You can email Dan at danchristensen@dantudor.com to set up a strategy call.