Comparing and Contrasting: Why Your Recruits Do It, and How You Should Plan For It

It's a natural occurrence as you communicate with them during the recruiting process

There’s an interesting thing that happens all the time as you’re communicating with your prospects throughout the recruiting process, and you need to understand it - because once you do, it’ll change how you approach what you talk about, and when.

Most coaches understand the need to tell their story, explain what their program is all about, show prospects their campus, and make a connection with the recruit and their family. Great. Absolutely. Keep it up.

But while you’re at it, I want you to keep something in mind:

They are comparing you to what they’re seeing and hearing from other coaches, and how those coaches seem to be treating them. Like all of us, we compare a situation with what we’ve seen or experienced in the past, and then create a value judgement based on our assessment. That’s normal.

So if we know that your prospect is doing what we all do - comparing and contrasting - shouldn’t we factor that into how you recruit them?

Of course, the answer to that question is ‘yes’. Here’s how you should move forward when it comes to positively positioning yourself when it comes to using this ‘compare and contrast’ decision making process…

Good news: You don’t need to be ‘better’, you just need to be different.

One of the biggest fallacies coaches carry with them in the recruiting process is the idea that they won’t be able to win a recruit because they aren’t ‘better’: Someone else has a better facility, a better record, a better…whatever. And that’s a fair assumption, especially as we’re talking about them comparing and contrasting as a part of their decision making process.

But what you may not realize is that you don’t need to be better, you just need to give