by Dan Christensen, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
Ever find yourself stuck in front of your laptop trying to put together the perfect recruiting message?
What should you say? How should you say it? What is going to really connect with the prospect and move them closer to wanting to choose you?
It can be hard to create a final product that you feel confident in when there are so many things to consider.
So, I want to give you two things to focus on in your recruiting messages. If you include these two things, it is going to be hard for that message to not be effective!
1) Tell your recruit ONE reason why they should choose you
This is a little bit of a two-parter. First, give your recruit a reason why they should choose you. This doesn’t mean list a bunch of facts about your school. It doesn’t mean just send your recruit some links to cool highlight videos or campus tours.
This means take an aspect of being a student-athlete in your program and explain specifically why that aspect is a reason for your recruit to want to choose to be part of what you have to offer. What is in it for that recruit?
So often, coaches do not take that next step of explaining why and it is a critical one.
The second part of this is to keep the message to one reason.
Don’t explain five different reasons in one message. Doing so will probably make your message too long. Which will decrease the chance your recruit will even read it.
And, even if the recruit does read the message, it will be hard for any of the five reasons to stick in their mind when there is too much being said.
Focus on one reason per message and spread those messages out consistently throughout the recruiting process.
2) Define the next step
In order to move forward with a recruit, there are steps that need to be taken. If you as the coach are not defining those steps and guiding the prospect through them, it will be much more difficult for that recruit to stick it out with you as an option.
When you do not define the next step at the end of the recruiting message a few things happen.
First, your recruit does not know what to do. Should they respond? If so, how and when? They definitely do not want to do or say the wrong thing. And so, they feel safer just doing nothing.
Second, your recruit does not know what to expect from you. And that confusion does not help them get excited about choosing you.
So, make sure at the end of every message there is some kind of defining of the next step. It can be as simple as asking them a question and requesting they reply with the answer. You could ask them to send you something like their upcoming season schedule. Or it could even just be you letting them know what is coming next. Like, “keep an eye out for my next email coming on Friday.”
Defining the next step both eases your recruits mind and reassures them that you are interested because you want to keep moving forward.
Give them a reason why they should choose you and define the next step in the process. Doing those two things will make sure the message is productive!
Another way to gain next level strategies for your recruiting efforts: Host one of the TCS experts on campus for one of our customized on-campus or virtual recruiting workshops. They work, and they’ll revamp recruiting approach from the ground up. Click here for details.