Digging Deeper with Prospects Who Don't Communicate Very Well
How can coaches get more info and move the needle with recruits who seem stuck in neutral during the recruiting process?
I don’t need to go into much detail or set-up for this article, because what I described in the headline is experienced by every single coach, at every single level, every single year.
At some point in the process - or maybe throughout the process - with a recruit, they just seem to shut down. Not even intentionally, but almost because they don’t know where to go in the process. In other words, it’s not that they ‘want’ to not have a discussion with you and open up, they really just don’t know how. That means they need someone to help show them them the way…and by ‘someone’, I mean you.
“But Dan, I don’t want them to feel pressure by me asking a bunch of follow-up questions and feel like I’m pushing too hard to get them to commit.”
I agree, with a caveat: I do want them to feel some pressure, because applied the correct way, pressure is what they need to move forward. That’s true for a steam powered engine, it’s true if you want to drill for oil, and it’s true for your recruiting efforts. Without some element of pressure, nothing moves. The key, of course, is pressuring without pressuring too much. When there’s too much pressure, stuff explodes (and we don’t want that, in a train engine or in college recruiting).
So, how can coaches pressure just enough to get movement by digging deeper in their communication with recruits?
We’ve found that it’s a four step process:
Ask questions that focus on their process for making a decision.
Offer up assumptions you have so they are prompted to clarify positions.
Throughout the process, tell them what you view as the next step.
Deliver it all through the lense of what your established timeline and deadline is.
Movement involves a lot of different mechanics, working together at the same time. Movement in recruiting doesn’t differ that much from how you would coach and develop the mechanics of an athlete you’re coaching, it’s just that it focuses on verbal movement. Let’s dig a little deeper, starting the fist step that I outlined…
1. Ask questions that focus on their process for making a decision.
Traditionally, coaches ask questions about what an athlete ‘wants’ in a college or athletic choice. And, that’s fine - I don’t need to coach you on that aspect of your relationship building with them, because it comes naturally to you. The real problem is that it also comes naturally to every other coach who is also talking with them, which means that same prospect is getting the same set of standard questions over and over and over again.
Want to break out of that cycle and stand out?
Ask questions that focus on their process for how they’ll be making their decision.
“Walk me through how you’re seeing you and your family plan out visits to campuses that you’re interested in.”
“When do you see yourself wanting to make your final decision?”
“What is one part of the process that you’re kind of dreading?”
Why are these types of questions so important? First, your prospect knows how to answer them…because the questions are about them. You’ll get more honesty, more insight, and more detail than the traditional questions they get asked by nearly every coach who is interested in them. Plus (and this is critical to your ultimate goal of gaining their commitment at the end of the process) it will give you a much clearer roadmap as to how and when each individual prospect will make that decision.
2. Offer up assumptions you have so they are prompted to clarify positions.
Very quickly, as you know, recruiting conversations can start to drag.
What keeps that from happening? By shaking up the conversation path, which could usually be characterized by a straight line that’s predictable and the same as every other coach’s approach.
How? One way is to insert ‘assumptions’ into your communication with prospects. By that I mean, state an assumption in an effort to get them to react and share insights they may not have told you before. This is something we have recommended to our coaching staff clients that we work with on an ongoing basis as a way to break lulls deep into the recruiting process, but they can also be used occasionally throughout the process.
A sample of how to do this:
“It seems you’re really interested in that other school you visited last month, and my assistant and I were talking earlier today that we’re kind of assuming you’re leaning towards committing to them.”
Whether that’s actually your assumption or not isn’t really important; the goal is to get a reaction, and have them take a side on the hypothesis that you’ve offered up.
If their reaction is, “Coach, no! I mean I like them, but I think I like you just as much. In fact your location is actually a big plus to me, since I want to stay closer to home. I’m still really interested in you”, what does that signal? Strong interest in you. And the reason you got that clarity from her is because she doesn’t want you to assume what you just said you were assuming. She wants to correct it, and fast. The result? You break out of the standard vanilla, non-committal, murky answers that are the hallmarks of most long recruiting conversations.
If, on the other hand, their reaction to your assumption is, “Yeah, I really liked their campus, and they just sent me a really nice financial package, so it’s going to be hard to say no to at the end of the process”, what have you just learned? At best, you’re in a fight for them. At worst, that prospect has already decided he’s going somewhere else (and just hasn’t mustered up the guts to make it official with you).
In either scenario, you get information that helps you judge what should come next in the process.
3. Throughout the process, tell them what you view as the next step.
Want more movement through digging deeper in your communication with recruits? Give them a deeper view into your thought process, especially when it comes to what you see as the next step in the process.
Whether that’s a video call, a visit to campus, getting their paperwork in, or whatever you want to see happen next, tell them. In the focus group feedback results we gather on campuses when we conduct our recruiting workshops for athletic departments, teenage prospects observe that they don’t know what to do next in the process - they aren’t getting instruction from coaches, and are waiting for what you see as the next thing that needs to happen.
Be direct, and be consistent in outlining what you want to see from them. Look for ways to insert those ideas into your conversations with them…it’ll help take the process deeper as they respond or ignore your next-step suggestions.
4. Deliver it all through the lense of what your established timeline and deadline is.
We are firm believers in timelines and deadlines in the process.
Movement requires limits and structure, and these two tools you have need to be used in guiding that aspect of making sure you’re getting deeper and better feedback in your conversations.
And, we’ve done a lot of research and writing on these two incredibly important topics:
Click on those two links, and read-up on how coaches at all levels are incorporating these principles into their recruiting approach.
Most prospects don’t communicate all that well, it’s true. But let’s give them a break, Coach…they’re teenagers, they haven’t grown up with a lot of the verbal communication skills that you and I have, and they need help if you want them to reveal the deeper feelings and leanings they’re having during the recruiting process.
And you’re just the person to do it, if you follow this simple four step formula.
Questions? Let us know! Email Dan Tudor, author of these popular coaching guides and founder of Tudor Collegiate Strategies, at dan@dantudor.com.