by Dan Christensen, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
Do NOT start selling too early.
This is some advice you have probably heard if you are a Honey Badger subscriber or have been part of one of the Tudor Collegiate Strategies on-campus workshops.
So if you shouldn’t try and sell your program and your school right away, what are some things you should be talking about?
Here are two questions that you can, and should, ask a recruit in the first or second conversation you have with them:
- Who is going to be helping you make your decision?
Almost every single prospect is going to have people in their life influencing their decision. For about 90% of recruits, their parents will be helping them make their decision in some way. For around 80%, their high school or club coach is going to have some influence over their decision.
If you want those outside influences to help guide your recruit to choosing your school, you need to be communicating with those people throughout the process. The first step in doing that is asking your recruit who those people are!
- When do you plan to make your decision?
Hopefully you have a timeline for yourself and your program as to when you will wrap up your recruiting class. If the prospect’s timeline is way earlier or way later than your own, you’ll want to find that out sooner rather than later. You do not want to be the coach that is surprised when a recruit says they already committed somewhere else and you thought you still had months to recruit them.
Even if you do not have a set timeline for your program, you want to get a feel for when each prospect will be making their decision. This way you can plan for when certain steps in the process should happen like hosting them on campus or going to see them play live if you haven’t yet.