College Recruiting: 2 Things to Remember

This is a bit of a follow up to the recent post on college recruiting. I received some interested messages via e-mail after that post and there were also some very good points made in the comments section by readers.

One of the big questions that came through after that post was…

"We've already contact college coaches, but still don't have any communication going with them. What else can we do?"

or

"My daughter goes to recruiting camps and showcases, but there still doesn't seem to be interest. What else can we do?"

This brings me to 2 critical things you need to remember when it comes to "getting noticed."

1. I call the attempt to get noticed "marketing." Why? Because it's just like marketing or sales. What you are really doing is "marketing" your student-athlete. The thing to remember is, and anyone in sales knows this and will tell you this, you will hear NO way more than you hear yes.

Therefore, in addition to everything else college recruiting is, it's also a numbers game. Just like any other type of sales and marketing, the more you put in, the more you get out. The more people you reach and get the word to, chances are, the more responses you have.

Many college recruiting services or advisors suggest that you contact 70+ (if not 100 or more) schools. Have you done that? Or have you only contact a handful of schools?

I know many, many businesses who consider a 2% conversion rate to be a pretty solid number (they know that only about 2% of the people they reach will buy their stuff). Let's say we go a more generous number and use 5%.  Let's say that 5% of the programs you contact will show serious interest. Even if you get in touch with 50 schools, only 2.5 will respond with serious interest. If you've only been in touch with 20 schools, then you'll only have real interest from about 0.4 schools. That's less than 1 school!

So if you've been contacting schools and aren't getting the number of responses you want, it could simply be that you haven't put enough IN to marketing your student-athlete to get the results that you want.

But there's another major issue as well, and I'm going to talk about that next…

2. Are you marketing to the right people? I'm sure you'd agree that if a sales person came to Hawaii with a super thick, fur lined, full length jacket in the middle of the summer, his sales conversion would be quite low. Even if he talked to everyone on the island, he wouldn't get the same kind of sales as he would say, in the dead of winter in Michigan. I think you agree that this sales person is going to sell a lot more product with less effort if he "markets" to the right people.

The same is true with college recruiting. One of the biggest mistakes families make is marketing to the wrong coaches. The most common scenario: only marketing to DI schools. Did you know that over 70% of college athletes are NOT playing DI athletics? By only marketing to DI schools you are eliminating 70%+ of your opportunities.

Not only that, while it may be tough to accept as a parent, there's also a possibility that your child is NOT DI material (or not a good fit for whatever level you're targeting). It's possible that you are simply trying to "sell" something the coaches you are in touch with don't need. You will have much more success marketing to the right coaches.

One thing I realized again after the other college recruiting post is how many families and student-athletes there are out there that are just not as informed as they need to be to make the best choices along the college recruiting journey.

If you need more information, a good starting point is the NCAA website. They have a bunch of great information any high school aged student-athlete (and their family) needs to know.

If you are a Softball Peak Performance member - get into the member area and check out the new college recruiting library available! There's even more information there on eligibility, formulating a plan, working your plan, going on visits, testing, training for the next level, and more. If you're not a member yet, sign up today for just $1. Click here to learn more.