by Mandy Green, Busy Coach
Last week I shared part one of my recruiting email workflow that I use to get through 10x more email in a week than most coaches get to in a month.
Part 1 that I shared last week was research. Remember, the difference between good and great is an extra week of research in an effort to find a better way of doing things.
In part 2 today, I am going to share with you my planning process.
Now, this is what I used to do with my emails.
1. I would show up in the office and then look through my email to see who I needed to respond to.
2. I would on-the-spot try to figure out what to write to them.
3. I would just go in chronological order as emails came in.
4. I often would get pulled away by one distraction or another and ended up working through my email randomly all day.
My results from working this way were:
1. I did a poor job of staying on top of who I needed to contact and a lot of my top recruits slipped through the cracks and didn’t receive messages for a long time.
2. I wasted a lot of time staring at a blank screen as I tried to figure out what to write.
3. Because everything was so random and reactive, the quality of what I was sending wasn’t very good so my recruiting wasn’t as good as it could have been.
I eventually got over wanting to do things the same ol’ way and figured out how some of the top coaches and business professionals use their email more effectively.
Based on my research, here is the planning process that I now to set myself up to efficiently and effectively get through my emails. It is this planning process that I estimate saves me at least 2 hours every day.
Already have templates made up.
1. I start planning the night before.
2. I look at my Recruiting Tracking Form. I use this really simple tracking tool to keep track of my top 5-10 recruits in each position. On this form, I can keep track of:
a. Who I have sent things to,
b. What email they have got,
c. How long it takes them to respond.
Using this tracking form really helps me to stay consistent in communicating with my top recruits and it also visually shows me when they stop responding. This has really helped me to see at which part of the process I am losing them. From this information, I tweak my processes and make improvements.
3. I batch the recruits together depending on what they need to be sent based on where they are in the process. Batching allows me to get through emails quicker because I can use the same template for multiple recruits. Just make sure you are careful to change the information where appropriate (I have made that mistake a few times where I forgot to change the club team or the position they play because I was going through too quick. It is sloppy and I hate when I do that.)
4. I find my pre-made email templates that have already been written so I don’t have to figure out what to write and so I can get through them quicker.
5. I look at my schedule to see what is going on the next day. I block off practice, meetings, my workout, etc on my calendar. Then I find the biggest chunk of time that I can and block it off to just work on recruiting emails and nothing else.
6. I review the next day to make sure nothing has changed in my schedule.
7. When it is time to work, I WORK. Block off all distractions and stay focused until the work is done.
It is not rocket science and of course, some days it works better than others depending on what is going on. For the most part though, going through this planning process and then working the plan the next day gets me through a ton more emails than most coaches and ultimately, I free up a lot of time each day that I can use on strategy, or team building, or can even go home early if I want to.
If you try it out, let me know what you think and how it works for you. Good luck.
Part 3 coming next week.
If you have questions about how you can be more efficient with your recruiting email, reach out to Mandy Green at mandy@busy.coach.