It’s something that we all use to make a buying decision in our regular lives, but seldom – if ever – utilize it in our recruiting lives as a college coach.
And I’ll go one step further: When you use it, you set yourself apart from other coaches so much, you become impossible to ignore in a crowded field with other coaches, even if they’re from a higher division level, or had a better record than you did last year, or have a newer locker room than you do.
What is it? Testimonials.
Testimonials from other recruits who have committed, current athletes you coach, and their parents, can be your secret weapon as your recruits begin to separate the coaches they’re interested in from the coaches they’re really, really interested in.
In the real world, marketers know that 72% of consumers (all of us, when we’re making a. buying decision) are heavily influenced to see that brand, product or service that features a real life testimonial in a more positive light. In other words, we are more likely to buy somebody we like and trust, and we tend to like and trust those who others tell us are good, reliable and trustworthy.
That’s the role your committed prospects, current athletes and parents play. They give validation to the prospects that are still considering their options, and in a lot of cases, it’s a big tie-breaker for them. The interesting thing is, very few coaches use their current prospects to help them ‘sell’ their program to future student-athletes. Why? From the comments we’ve heard from coaches, it’s either too time consuming, or they don’t want to ‘bother’ their current athletes or parents with having them help with recruiting.
In reality, utilizing this strategy is easy – and most of your current athletes and their parents are happy to be involved with helping you build your program. Here are some ideas we’ve seen coaches successfully use to get you started:
- For campus visits, make sure you are including your team in the recruiting process. All of our research shows that prospects gauge what they perceive to be the current team’s relationship with them as a way of deciding whether or not they would be a good fit in your program. Make sure you give them plenty of time with your freshmen and sophomores, as we’ve outlined in our recruiting book about effective campus visits. It’s critical that you include them in this process, and make that natural interaction a big part of your visit.
- Have your current team record short videos about why they chose to come to your program, what they like about the campus, and that they would love to have them part of the program. This is similar to what they’d see on social media as they are going through the process, but more personalized because they’d be getting that video texted to them by you.
- One Division I coach has actually let their team be the ones to ask the recruit for the commitment. Of course, the coach makes the ultimate decision about whether or not the prospects gets to get asked by the team, but the engagement and experience of having their future teammates doing the asking has shown to be powerful.
- Have your team engage with the prospects throughout the process, with a focus on why they should be there, and what they like about the college, coach and program.
- Ask the parents of your current athletes to write a letter, or record a video, outlining why they are glad their family chose the program they did, and offer to answer any parent-to-parent questions to the parents of your current recruits.
All of these strategies require your current team to be on board with the idea of helping you recruit their future teammates, and having them be involved with it, but if you can lay the groundwork and make this an integral part of your recruit process, you’re going to see some big benefits from it moving forward!
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