by Dan Christensen, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
The other day I was talking with a new Dan Tudor client and he told me how there were a lot of recruits that he had been talking to for a couple months but things had slowed down.
They weren’t responding as quickly. Some weren’t responding at all.
He was trying to get kids to visit campus but they weren’t committing to dates.
All the excitement and interest he had a few months ago was seeming to dwindle and he wanted to figure out what the problem was.
We ended up identifying two things that he was doing that were holding his recruits back, unintentionally of course.
Here are the two things we decided that he needs to stop doing, in order to move forward with these prospects:
1) Checking in, over and over again
When we looked back at the last 5 messages that he sent to his top recruits, every single one was essentially the same.
He asked questions like:
“How are you doing?”
“How has training been going?”
“How did your last game go?”
“How is school going?”
Essentially, he was just asking surface-level, check in questions, over and over again.
In the recruit’s mind, he appreciated that this coach was contacting him. But the conversations left nothing to be excited about. And they sounded the same as the other five programs that were contacting him.
For this coach to stand out, we discussed having more focused questions. He needs to bring a purpose to each conversation.
As a coach, always be thinking, what can I learn about this recruit that will help me know they are a good fit?
Or, what can I ask to better understand where we stand with this recruit and what is important to them?
So, we decided, no more checking in.
Each text, each phone call, each email will have some kind of purpose. And that alone will help this coach stand out and get his recruits to start seeing the program through a different lens. One that makes them curious and wanting to learn more and take steps forward.
2) Pushing the campus visit too early on
One thing this coach was doing in these early conversations, and most conversations after was pushing his recruits to find time to visit campus.
In order to get recruits to visit campus, they need reasons why they should want to visit. This should be the focus early on, rather than simply asking recruits to visit.
We are going to have this coach tell his recruits more about the school, the program, and the team. He’ll do it consistently and in a way that gets his recruits excited and curious. That way they will want to visit campus and get that experience.
He will start to see his recruits making that commitment to visit campus naturally because of this new emphasis on giving them reasons to visit instead of simply pushing the visit as the next step.
Are you stuck? Having trouble getting the right recruits through the process? Dan Christensen and the team at Tudor Collegiate Strategies are helping college coaches with their communication and strategy to bring in top recruits. Email him at danchristensen@dantudor.com to set up a strategy call.