Answering Your Prospect's Difficult Questions
One of the secrets to out-recruiting your competition is to make sure you define your narrative - before your competition does it for you.
Guest article from Paul Nemetz-Carlson, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
On my first day as a college head coach, I learned one of the most important lessons about recruiting.
If you aren’t able to provide answers to your program’s difficult questions, you will never out-recruit your current status.
You see, when your first stop pulling into town off the highway is at a roadblock where 10 State Troopers - armed with shotguns - inspect your over-packed station wagon carrying all your belongings, there are a lot of questions.
Is this normal? Is this a trade-off for living in a town with a maximum-security prison? Did I make a mistake taking this job? And at that moment, the most pressing one - how am I ever going to be able to tell people to come here?
For background, I grew up in one of the safest towns in America. It was a small college town of 8,000 people that housed 2,000 high-achieving students during the school year, replaced by Hollywood celebrities and festival crowds in the summer. My introduction to college athletics was a peaceful community with a school that annually found itself atop both national academic rankings and the Director’s Cup standings.
Needless to say, I wasn’t prepared to tell a story of why my new home - in the midst of a county-wide manhunt for three violent criminals who dug through the roof and repelled down bedsheets to escape from the maximum-security prison on the day I moved in - was the right place to go to school.
But I did! And because we worked to proactively answer the question of safety and location for the next five years - we got great kids, we won a lot and I learned this important lesson.
There are actually a lot of coaches who struggle with recruiting because they don’t have answers to their own difficult questions. Or, don’t have GOOD answers. It might be the location, but just as easily could be academic reputation, the league you play in, or a lack of historical athletic success. Coaches will often choose not to talk about it or avoid it, making it easy for recruits to choose OTHER, better options.
I was just talking to a Division I head coach this week about a competing program - that checks all the boxes - yet hasn’t been able to consistently recruit high level talent or find sustained success. We agreed that while they have so many strengths, they haven’t been able to tell a compelling enough story to overcome specific objections. When compared to similar institutions, there is still a perception that many things are good, but not AS good.
And in recruiting, if they FEEL you’re not as good - they will choose the BETTER option.
As a rule, college coaches don’t spend enough time thinking about stories that offer solutions for their recruiting challenges. They’ll complain about what others have, instead of searching for their specific why. My best advice is to not avoid difficult questions. Take the time to identify the objections of your recruits and the negative perceptions of your school. Connect those with stories of how your athletes have learned or adapted to those circumstances to succeed and make the positive spin part of your story.
Your recruiting story is a performance story, a culture/experience story, an outcome story, and and aspirational story that connects who you are to where you’re going. However, it’s also an explanation, of why certain things matter and why others will have a lessor impact on a recruit’s college athletic experience. The secret to winning recruits lies in both what information you share and how you tell it. The most successful recruiting stories are comprehensive stories - delivered consistently - that explain why these positive features, collectively, make your school a BETTER option.
Especially now, with uncertainty about fall classes, health concerns, and a challenging economic situation affecting colleges and universities across the country, there are more difficult questions that will impact your recruiting than ever before.
Are you prepared to answer whether on-line education is worth it?
Why should an athlete use a year of eligibility on a shortened fall season?
What protocols are in place to keep student-athletes safe when they return to campus?
Or even the most basic question: why should your high school prospects even go to college in the first place?
There will always be questions in recruiting. When things return to normal, coaches will be challenged with finding new ways to overcome traditional obstacles. There will still be a need to explain why a DII, DIII, NAIA program is the right option for someone who dreams of “going DI.” There will still be competing coaches who get recruits thinking your your campus isn’t as safe, your education isn’t as strong, or your staff lacks the experience to provide the best development plan. There will still be parents wondering about their child’s safety and the value around their financial commitment.
The truth is, Coach, you know the questions and it’s up to you to provide answers. You pick what you highlight and what you emphasize. Find your own answers and tell your story.
Explain why the regular-season competition in your three-bid league better prepares them for success in the NCAA Tournament than dominating in a one-bid conference.
Let them know despite the US News and World Report rankings, in the program they’re interested in your professors and resources produce successful, prepared graduates who get great jobs and do great things.
Show them that a small school, located near other big institutions, can provide personalized attention - AND the social opportunity of a large university.
Project a vision for the future, including your recruit’s role in it, that answers how you’ll win more and re-write your program’s historical performance story.
If you want to recruit better athletes and change the status of your program, you must address the fears and objections of your prospects. The best athletes have options and are sifting through numerous recruiting pitches. They see the positives, but they also have questions and concerns. The coaches who provide the best answers to the difficult ones separate themselves from their peers.
If you don’t answer your most difficult questions, someone else will.
Be Distinct. Be Different.
Paul Nemetz-Carlson is part of the team at Tudor Collegiate Strategies that works with programs, athletic directors and coaches to improve their messaging strategy, and helps them overcome the difficult questions that prospective student-athletes have during the recruiting process. If you want your program to get better responses from better prospects, we have a proven formula that we can put to work for you. Click here to learn more.