by Mandy Green, Busy Coach
I wanted to share you with you an excerpt from my book Kick Ass Recruiting Workbook where I help coaches get their recruiting plan and strategy organized and executed on.
As you know Coach, communicating with your recruits is no simple matter. There are just so many things to consider when selling your program… and you’ve probably realized by now that you can’t just “wing it” and expect to get great results.
If you are one of those “wing it” coaches, after you’ve spontaneously written one message, you probably waste a significant amount of time trying to figure out what to do next.
You cannot overwhelm your recruits with eight things in one message. You can’t send them six messages in two weeks. You have to give them one bite-sized chunk at a time, and you have to do it consistently… and the only way to do that is to have a plan.
Do you have a plan? I mean a really detailed, week-by-week phone call, letter, and email plan that serves as a guide for you and your staff. Do you have something that lets you measure success (or failure) in your goals for a particular recruiting class?
To me, entering the season without a recruiting plan is like building a puzzle without the picture on the box. Sure, you may eventually finish the puzzle, but not without wasting a lot of time and energy with putting pieces in the wrong places.
Very few coaches will take the time to sit down and develop an 18-month or even a 12-month game plan on how to recruit. What is going to happen week by week and month by month with their recruits? Far too often, I see coaches who go three or four weeks without communicating with an athlete, feel guilty or stressed out by this lack of contact, and all of a sudden they bombard them with four things in one week… and then it’s another two weeks before they talk to them again. First, this is largely ineffective: Your recruit will feel smothered when you are communicating and ignored when you’re not communicating. Second, this is very inefficient: You’re going to waste a significant amount of time trying to figure out what to do next, because everything is spontaneous and unplanned. You need consistency. You need a plan.
Not having a plan is one of the big factors I work with coaches with when they are not having consistent recruiting success.
The 2nd factor for lack of consistent success is when coaches fail to follow a consistent procedure when recruiting
Coaches don’t have a set procedure for when they are doing their recruiting, who is doing what, and what is going out. You should have a clear set of steps that you work through as you move deeper into the recruiting cycle, and each one of those steps needs to have a desired outcome associated with it. Once this happens, you will see that your conversations with prospects are both clearer and more productive. And you will save a lot of time because you will know who is doing what when.
I have heard many times that every minute you spend in planning saves ten minutes in execution. While the numbers may be a little bit off, the gist of the saying is quite true. If you plan correctly, using all the techniques I give you in this Kick Ass Recruiting workbook, you will save time and effort in the long run, and the end result will be much more effective.
The best way to start planning is to just start: Put something down on paper, anything that you can think of that will help you reach your goal, and keep going. Add to it and refine it often, and continue tweaking it even after you’ve launched it. Although you won’t be able to account for everything that could possibly happen, you want to plan everything that you can ahead of time to eliminate those periods where you waste time because you don’t know what to do.
No recruiting plan or strategy is going to be perfect because you often don’t realize what’s missing until you test the strategy in the real world and get feedback. And that’s fine. You will need to experiment with different ideas and messages to see what works and what doesn’t with this generation of recruits. Getting your recruiting plan to function like a well-oiled machine takes time, practice, and patience. You just have to keep trying until you achieve the results that you desire.
Have a question for productivity and recruiting expert, Mandy Green? Email her at mandy@busy.coach to set up a strategy call.