Building A Relationship With Your Prospect’s Parents

There is new data we’re gathering regarding how parents interact with college coaches early-on in the recruiting process, and I wanted to share it with you .  I think some of these ideas will help you during this time of year as you’re trying to win over parents.

Let’s get right to the latest data:

• Once you make contact with parents, it’s vitally important to know that they expect you to communicate with them as much as their son or daughter.  This is especially true if you are recruiting an athlete that is a Freshman or Sophomore in high school, as so many of you are now doing.  Their expectation gets proportionally stronger as the age of the recruit drops.
• While no formal statistics are in place at this point, we’ve noticed that one of the best ways to navigate (dare we say, “juggle”?) the parent/athlete communication is as follows:
  • Set up a call with the parent first, asking them some of the same types of questions that you ask the recruits.
  • Take the same attitude of “selling” the parents on aspects of your school and program as you would the athlete.
  • As your conversation with the parents is winding down, ask to speak to the athlete.
  • This simple three step process seems like a natural communication pattern, based on the feedback we’re getting from clients who have tried it.
• One big question we’re getting from you is, “How can you get parents to choose my school as an early campus visit choice?”  Again, understanding that there aren’t solid statistics behind our idea, what seems to be working best is a two-fold justification:
  • Let them know that you need them to come to campus because your Athletic Director wants to meet with them, and that you want to go over the early offer you’re ready to present to them.
  • If you aren’t ready to offer, or don’t have scholarships to offer, but still want a prospect to visit campus, we strongly suggest that for the process to continue you need them to come to campus so that you can show them what the plan for their Freshman season would look like, and what you can offer them in the way of an education, facilities and their future teammates.