Anyone who’s gone fishing before will tell you that maintaining control and reeling in consistently, with strength as well as a little personal touch at just the right time, is going to land you the one you’ve been aiming for.
It’s the same for you, Coach: Your job as a college recruiter is to lead the conversation, and lead your prospect through the process. Period.
Nobody else can do it as well as you, and your prospect doesn’t want anyone else trying to do that! It’s essential, in their mind, that you tell them what to think, how to view things, and what they should be doing next as you talk to them about coming to compete for you.
A coach who we work with, and have for several years, is always cognizant of how he is sounding to the high value recruits he talks to, which means he partners with us in analyzing what an athletic prospect is really asking about or saying, and what his response should be to keep the process with his best prospects moving forward.
Because I know you love hearing about how other coaches are building great programs, and winning recruits, I wanted to take you inside this conversation, starting with a response he got from a prospect who just visited campus. Here’s what she said to the coach after he followed-up with a text message after she was back home:
Normally, a college coach would have the tendency to reply back with something polite but passive, and give her space to figure out the complicated money scenario. But we shouldn’t want to wait - we want to stay in control, even when it comes to leading her through that difficult aspect of the recruiting process. Here’s what I said we’d want to see him do in my first reply to his initial email (let us know if you agree):
<Coach Name>, this is great - lots of positive feedback.
MY next step for you would be to ask her: “Do you feel like you need to know that number down to the dollar before you commit? I’m just asking because after you visited, we all agree we want you here. I know you’ll probably be getting between X and Y. I was just wondering how you were seeing it.”
I don’t know if you have asked or not, but this would be the opportunity for a pretty soft ask, if you wanted her.
The main point I want to stress here is that there should always be a next step. You have a prospect you want in a conversation, in this example. The last thing I want to see a coach do is end the conversation politely, and offer some vague promise to get back and talk with each other at some unspecified point in the future. You and I can do that with each other, in our conversations as adults, but this generation of prospect needs you to lead. They want you to lead.
So, lead! Which this coach does whenever we formulate a strategy together - he stayed in control, and asked the prospect the question we developed to gain more insight, and extend the conversation, and then he updated me:
This was her reply:
“Thank you Coach for the opportunity
I think my parents would appreciate a breakdown in numbers. I’m still waiting to hear back from my counselor. Do you need my transcripts before giving me an offer?”
This was my reply: “We can do it based off your current GPA. Remind me what your current GPA is and your ACT score too.”
I’m not a fan of our estimates as it’s always a worse case scenario and it can scare people off. I guess it’s better to know now than later though.
I want you to notice something that causes most coaches to stop the process, and shrink in the face of a looming money conversation:
This coach digs deeper into this money question. He does the opposite of shrinking…he expands his knowledge, trust and relationship building with a prospect who is obviously searching for someone to help her make a decision.
Here’s what I told him to communicate next:
I think you give her the high and the low, and tell her to base any decision at this point on the low - BUT that you will work to get her as much as possible.
The phrase “If we had all full scholarships to give, you’d be getting one - you deserve it” is helpful, because it takes you out of the equation when it comes to the possible perception that you might be secretly negotiating with her or holding something back.
Keep me updated - I still think it’s going in a positive direction, but now we’re getting down to the realities. Just keep in mind, if you outline the offer and she knows its the best but that it’s also got an expiration date, and that you seem o.k. if she doesn’t want it and that you will move on, that’s powerful.
He carried out that suggestion perfectly, and got this response back from the prospect:
Well thank you that really means a lot. And thank you so much for all of this, it’s very helpful. I really want to be that last commit for you were just trying to work everything out to make the best decision for my athletics as well as academics. And of course picking somewhere that won’t leave me in lots of debt.
I do want to let you know that my list has been narrowed down to two schools and your school is one of them.
Will he get the prospect to commit? That remains to be seen. But, that’s not really the point of this.
What I’m trying to show you is that your ongoing conversation with each and every one of your prospects is essential. Keeping the conversation going, and getting more detail, is what separates mediocre recruiters from outstanding recruiters - and everybody can do what we just described here as you watched a coach execute it all over a 24 hour period.
Go back and read the first response from the prospect, and imagine your conversation ended there. Look how much opportunity to dig deeper and learn more could have been wasted! Don’t let that happen during your next prospect exchange.
The good stuff happens the longer, and deeper, you probe into what your recruit is really thinking, and what’s really going on behind the scenes. Be the coach that makes sure that good stuff is happening for you in your recruiting.
Did you know Dan Tudor and our team of experts at Tudor Collegiate Strategies works one-on-one with coaching staffs every day of every week? It’s true, and it results in some incredible success for them year after year when it comes to getting their highest value recruits. Want more information about how we can do that with you and your staff this year? Email us at dan@dantudor.com and we’ll arrange a free consultation and show you the approach that’s been building great programs for over two decades in college athletics.
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