by Dan Christensen, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
Coach, if I had to guess you’ll be getting on the phone with a lot of new recruits over the next few months. What are you focusing on for these calls?
There are plenty of tips I could give you.
Unless the recruit is very engaged and talkative, keep the call short.
Try to avoid selling your program too much unless you can do so in response to the recruit’s questions.
These are two good ones. But, what I really want to give you are two topics you should bring up on this first call. These are two things that are going to be important for the recruiting process going forward and so I want you to figure these two things out during that first call:
1) Who is helping them make their decision
Every recruit is going to have someone. For most it will be mom and dad. For some prospects it might be another relative, a coach, a guidance counselor, a teacher, or maybe just a friend.
But there will be someone helping that recruit. And that is a person you need to introduce yourself to early in the process. It doesn’t have to be on that first call but soon after.
So, make sure at some point during that first call you ask your recruit, “who is going to be helping you make your college decision?” Make a point to let the recruit know you’d like to introduce yourself to that person so they can get to know you as well.
If that person has an influence on your recruit’s decision, I want you to have an influence or their opinion of your school and program!
2) When do they plan on making their decision
Some of your recruits will have no idea. They haven’t thought about it yet. Great! That is your chance to come in and talk about YOUR timeline. Being able to guide them and offer advice to this topic will help both of you going forward.
If they do have an idea of when they want to make their decision, you’ll want to know that too! Do they want to decide in three weeks? Or eight months? There is a big difference in those timelines. If you walk away from that first not having a clue as to when they will decide, you might be shocked when they commit elsewhere way sooner than you were expecting!
If you can have a brief first call where you express your excitement for recruiting that prospect AND can come away with these two pieces of information, you’ve started the recruiting relationship off on a great foot!