Why Shorter First Contact Phone Calls Matter
End sooner for a higher percentage of success with new recruits
This is the final post in a special free training series for college coaches from Tudor Collegiate Strategies, “First Contact Strategies That Create Unfair Advantages.” It’s a part of our new Honey Badger Recruiting subscriber package: A daily training message focused on one key training and teaching point for coaches who want an edge in their approach to strategic recruiting against their competition. To continue to receive daily advice and training, make sure to subscribe (it’s a ridiculously inexpensive way to boost your college coaching career).
As adults, you and I usually enjoy longer, more detailed phone conversations. There’s a chance for interaction, getting questions answered, and getting to know the other person better.
For the teenage recruits you’re about to contact for the first time, the opposite is true.
They’re nervous, they don’t like talking on the phone, and they’re usually afraid they';ll say something wrong that will cause you to not want them any longer. That’s why it’s hard for coaches to get most prospects to give them a lot of information when they talk on the phone.
The secret to making it a more comfortable experience for them?
Keep your initial contacts (especially the first one) to 10 minutes.
Shorter phone calls still feel like an eternity for many recruits, so don’t worry that they’ll wonder why the call ended so quickly.
Focus on asking them one or two questions, rather than selling your program. Remember, when you first start communicating with them, they probably aren’t ready to be ‘sold’ on competing for you yet.
The biggest benefit: It shows them that your calls will be quick, efficient, and not take a lot of their time. That causes them to feel good about picking up the phone the next time you call, rather than sending it to voicemail and rejecting it because they get the feeling that your upcoming call is going to be long and drawn out like the last one was.
Here’s the caveat to that rule:
If they are the one’s asking questions and driving the conversation, you have permission to go as long as you want. If they are the party causing it to go long, then go long with them.
Shorter calls are proportionately more successful in the long term compared to making long phone calls when you start your contacts.
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