We’ve been talking to many of your fellow clients who are feeling desperate to text their prospects a recruiting message. They hear about some of their other non-client or non-member co-workers down the hall doing that, or they get reports from a prospect that they received a “recruiting text” from a competing coach.
Understandably, coaches are calling and emailing to ask if they should be doing that also, and if we can start producing text message content as a normal part of our TRS plans.
In short, Coach, resist the temptation to recruit via text message.
First, let me define what I mean by “recruit”:
- Giving your prospect facts and information about your college or program.
- Giving your prospect any kind of “sales message” about you or your program.
- Making the text message look and sound like one of your traditional recruiting emails or letters.
Under no circumstances should your text messaging with a prospect include anything that would remotely look or sound like one of those three points. Let your buddies down the hall know, but let your competitors keep doing it.
Why?
It ticks-off your recruits.
- Text messaging isn’t used to “sell”, it’s used to communicate and hold conversations.
- Text messaging should be executed in short, conversational bursts, not long-winded, boring sales messages.
- They don’t use text message for that reason, and neither do you.
Text messaging should be something you ask permission to have with your prospect, and then use it to casually communicate back and forth during the process. We’ve started to treat it as something that is quickly replacing the phone call in the recruiting process, and you wouldn’t call and deliver a cheesy sales message like a telemarketer, would you?
Of course not. So, don’t risk the same outcome by texting on the phone. That’s something we are ONLY telling our clients (because, quite frankly, we want your competitors making this mistake…and trust me, many of them are).