College football’s national signing day is becoming something of a national recruiting event. Not just for football programs, either. It really is becoming a day that can send ripples through an entire campus and an entire athletic department. As one Associate Athletic Director recently told me, “As football recruiting goes, so goes our athletic program.”
There’s a lot riding on who signs at what school. There will be a few programs celebrating, and even more who will be reaching for the Extra Strength Tylenol and regrouping with their coaching staff as they see their recruiting dreams go up in smoke.
And when it comes to recruiting plans gone bad, its not just a football problem: One of our clients, who is a women’s soccer coach, just had two recruits that he was sure were coming to his school call him within a week’s time of each other and tell the coach that they were going elsewhere. Just like dozens and dozens of football programs around the country, this soccer coach is faced with a problem midway through the school year: He needs to get his recruiting efforts back on track. And fast.
If you’ve read our book, “Selling for Coaches”, you know the importance we place on asking the right questions at the right time. It’s what determines how well coaches connect with athletes, and how likely it is that they will move to the point of being ready to commit to your program.
Want two fantastic questions to ask your prospects? Here they are. Use them and watch how fast you can get your recruiting efforts back on track, and get better connected with the athletes you’re still recruiting:
- Instead of asking a prospect “So why are you interested in our program?”, you might ask them “If you had to pay us for the right to play in our stadium, what would be your reason for doing that?” Or, instead of asking a prospect “Do you need any financial aid?”, perhaps you should ask them “What kind of help could we give you on the financial side of things to get you to become delirious with joy and come play for us?” Notice the difference in how you’re asking the same basic question? The second type of questioning style makes the prospect stop in his or her tracks and think. Why? Because if you ask a question like this, it forces them to let their guard down and expose what they’re really thinking.
- I’ve heard a lot of coaches ask a prospect they really want, “So when do you think you’ll be making your final decision?” Instead, what if you asked them, “Run me through how you’re going to be making your decision, and who all is involved in helping you decide?” After they tell you the first part of their answer and stop (which they always do), you should ask, “And then what?” They’ll tell you a little more, and you ask “And then what.” And so it goes until you really get down to the nitty gritty details of how the decision is really going to be made, and who’s helping them make that decision.
One important aspect to these types of questions is that they need to be written out ahead of time. You can’t ask these on the fly (well, you can, but it doesn’t usually work out very well). Here’s the trouble with waiting until the phone call or personal visit to think of those questions: It’s really hard to do. And sometimes, the questions you think of at the spur of the moment don’t come out so good. So make sure you write out a few thought-provoking questions ahead of time, commit them to memory, and determine what you’re looking for in whatever their answer is.
Your questions are important – vitally important – to the whole process. The biggest benefit to asking fantastic and original questions (other than staying organized, controlling the sales process, and making your calls and conversations more productive and insightful) is that you’ll sound smarter and more interested in your prospect compared to other coaches who ask the same “yes, no” mundane questions that recruits have heard before. That might be the biggest benefit of all.
It all comes down to the questions you ask, and how you use those questions to quietly but consistently sell yourself and your program to the prospect you really, really want.