6 Reasons Why Coaches Fail to Get the Recruits They Want
Mar 28, 2022A few weeks ago, Dan Tudor wrote in his newsletter, “If you’re having issues with getting the recruits you really want, it’s probably because you are failing to tell a compelling story, with a mix of logic and passion, done over an extended period of time.”
While I certainly agree with this quote, I also believe that there are a lot of other reasons coaches fail to get the recruits that they want.
Here are 6 other reasons I feel…
- They do all their recruiting off the top of their head. A common mistake is to try to use your memory to keep track of all the recruiting tasks you need to accomplish every day. I don’t care how good you think your memory is, the fact is that most people simply cannot rely on their memory alone to keep track of everything that needs to get done.
- No Recruiting Plan. To me, entering the season without a clear recruiting plan is like building a puzzle without the picture on the box. Sure, you may eventually finish the puzzle, but not without wasting a lot of time and energy putting pieces in the wrong places. Very few coaches will take the time to sit down and develop an 18-month or even a 12-month game plan on how to recruit. What is going to happen week-by-week, month-by-month, with their recruits?
- Coach, we are not in the business of managing email. We are in the business of building great teams and people. Anything that distracts from that takes us away from our purpose. Many, many, many coaches I talk to every week tell me that their email is out of control.
- Coaches don’t have a set procedure for when they are doing their recruiting, who is doing what, and what is going out. You should have a clear set of steps that you work through as you move deeper into the recruiting cycle, and each one of those steps needs to have a desired outcome associated with it.
- A lot of coaches I’ve worked with don’t block out a specific time to recruit. They end up fitting it in around everything else in their life, which results in weak results and a lot of frustration.
- Distractions at the office can be a key barrier to getting a lot of key recruiting activities done. You’re in the middle of sending out some recruiting emails when you get an “urgent” email. You reply, only to have your phone ring shortly after. You hang up, but now there’s another email that demands your response. Then a coach stops by. Before you know it, its 5 p.m. and you still haven’t finished your recruiting emails, even though you started them first thing in the morning. Sound familiar?
I could go on with more reasons that coaches are potentially losing recruits, but you get the idea. How many of these are you guilty of?
We all know that recruiting is a 365 day-a-year beast. You could easily spend 40+ hours-a- week just watching practices, making recruiting phone calls, sending texts, emailing, on-campus visits, watching video, having staff meetings, etc. On top of your recruiting responsibilities, you also have to manage, train, and develop your current team. Some of you also have to teach classes or have additional administrative responsibilities. It’s a lot.
The demand for our time as a coach is increasingly exceeding our capacity — draining us of the energy we need to bring our skill and talent as coaches fully to life. The rise of digital technology is perhaps the biggest influence, exposing us to an unprecedented flood of information and requests that we feel compelled to read and respond to at all hours of the day and night.
It is really easy to get lost in all of the details of what we do day-to-day. But for all of us, obviously recruiting quality student athletes is vital to the continued or future success of our program. Recruiting is and should be a priority, so we need to find a way to give it the time it deserves.
To do that, we need to get organized, come up with a better strategy to progress step by step through everything, and then be able to stay focused by eliminating distractions so we can successfully execute on those strategies to maximize our results.
I’d like to invite you to a free webinar that I will be doing this Wednesday January 2nd at 1pm EST. I will be going over how to overcome all of these common mistakes, so you can crush your recruiting goals for 2019.
Want in? Just click on this link. Thanks.
Happy New Year!
P.S. If you have found this article helpful, please share it with your staff or other work colleagues! Studying time and energy management over these last 8 years and applying it to my coaching and recruiting has been a game changer for me. I am committed to helping coaches get more important work done in less time so more time can be spent with family and friends. Thanks!
