by Mandy Green, Busy Coach
Before I do anything in the office, I start out by asking the question “who do I need to reach out to today that will help me progress forward?”
For example, what club coach can I reach out to today and develop a better relationship with that could potentially help me with recruiting quality student-athletes to my program? Or, what person on campus could I reach out to today to introduce myself or to thank them for helping me with something?
Answering and acting on this one question has single handedly changed the pace and quality of recruits that I was able to get to commit. It is amazing how much easier recruiting gets when you have more people out almost recruiting for you just because you took the time to say something nice.
Here is how I do it. As the year goes on, I would pay attention to little things people would do that I thought could be a potential key relationship to build. This list included coaches of a team I saw over the weekend, a parent of one of my top recruits, a local business owner, a faculty member on campus, etc. This list was always growing. At the beginning of each day or if I was really on top of it, I would have one person assigned to reach out for the entire week.
As soon as I get into the office, I turn on my computer and before I would allow myself to look at any other email that might have come in, I crank out a quick email to them.
I usually only write to one person a day and only give myself 10 minutes to try to connect and build a relationship with whatever person I am writing to. I also do it first thing in the morning before I do anything else because I found that if I leave it until later in the day, there is a good chance that it won’t get done.
I didn’t notice much of a difference at first but over the course of the year, spending the first 10 minutes reaching out to one person a day really started to pay off. These coaches started to help me and my staff get in contact with recruits faster, are now talking to recruits on our behalf which is helping to get them serious about us sooner, and it has helped us narrow down our recruiting pool because of the insights they are now giving us.
This is a simple idea but hard to do. You need to be organized and disciplined to do this every day. When I stayed on top of it, it really was amazing to me how much faster the recruiting process started to go and how much better the quality of recruits that were being referred to us got, just because I took 10 minutes out of my day to say something nice.
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If you decide to try this, reach out and let me know how it goes at mandy@busy.coach. If you want more ideas or to see my templates for it, just let me know. I’d love to help.