Two Ways to Instantly Improve Your Recruiting Texts to Prospects
There are right ways, and wrong ways, to communicate with prospects through text messaging. Here are two of the right ways.
Guest article from Dan Christensen, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
“Kids love to text.” I hear this all the time. And it is true!
Texting is one of the easiest ways for college coaches to get a hold of a recruit. Most kids spend little time away from their phones and a text message almost always pops in their notifications.
Yet, I still also hear, “they don’t always respond to my texts.” Even though texting is a fantastic tool for connecting with your prospects, it still needs to be done strategically in order to be effective because it is far from a guarantee that recruits will always engage when you text them.
When you are texting with a recruit, make sure to keep these two things in mind to help make that communication more effective:
1) Ask good questions
If you ever text a recruit and they don’t respond or don’t give a helpful response, look back at your last text. Did you ask a question? If you did, was it a good question?
One way to judge if you asked a good question via text is to think about how easy it is for them to answer your question. If the question might be complex and require a lengthy answer, you’re making it harder for the recruit to respond. They might feel they don’t have time to answer you in the moment and so they put the phone away with the intention of going back to answer later. And maybe they just forget. These kinds of questions might be better asked over the phone or in an email where it is easier to type out a better response.
Another strategy to enhance the text conversation is to avoid “yes” or “no” questions. If you ask a question that can be answered in one word, that is probably what you can expect to receive. If you want better responses, ask questions that will allow for that. Adding interrogative words will often do the trick. Instead of asking, “is immediate playing time important to you?”, ask “why is playing immediately a priority for you?”
2) Avoid selling over text
We already established that kids love to text. One easy way to make them not want to text with you anymore is to constantly give your sales pitch through text messages. That is what letters and emails are for.
Instead, use texting to build the relationship. Share quick, small bits of information such as a picture or a link to something. Ask them some quick questions about how their last competition went. Tell them something short that you want them to know.
If you instead are flooding them with texts that sound like you’re trying to sell them something, they will quickly start to ignore you and you’ll be missing out on this great tool for communicating with that recruit.
Dan Christensen is one of the recruiting experts on our team at Tudor Collegiate Strategies, working with college coaches throughout the Atlantic region of the country. Want to know what we do to help college coaches get better results from their recruiting messaging? Click here.