In my line of work, a person who responds promptly to communications is like manna from heaven. I say that not to shame anyone, in fact my hope is the opposite. I recognize we live in an environment where attention is drawn constantly from things that are probably healthy for us to engage with to ultimately meaningless fluff.
I was talking with a new potential client today and complimenting them on their excellent and prompt communication. In the process, my thoughts went back to my days coaching at Georgia Tech and an insight from the world of recruiting that I thought was worth sharing.
Often we think of recruiting (or marketing and sales, as I call it now) as a game of excitement. Get people jazzed up about working with you, and that will get at least some of them to commit to paying cold hard cash for whatever your selling.
In the recruiting game, I always hear a lot about excitement. There is backwards reasoning from that excitement too. Why swim fast in dual meets? Because it generates excitement. Why have a popping social media presence? EXCITEMENT.
Now perhaps I am just molding the world to fit what I am capable of, but I find that excitement is vastly overrated in all of these instances. What I find myself drawn to is far less sexy. What I find gets me to commit is a sense of reliability.
Safe Harbor
Reliability is the definition of underrated. How many people would say that they chose their partner on the basis of reliability? Maybe some, but not nearly as many as have as the absolute bedrock of their relationship the calm, steady and somewhat boring presence of another person who you can really trust.
Whereas excitement seeks to capitalize on the emotional rush of positivity and ride that crest to an impulsive decision, reliability answers a different call. Reliability steps in where fear and worry dominate. While there are many reasons why we may respond unproductively to fear, reliability is not among them.
Reliability is the safe harbor that we need to whittle away at fear. It softly proclaims that fear is unnecessary, because things will be alright.
To bring this back to coaching, and recruiting for my audience, let me tell you about something that worked brilliantly for me. When I was coaching at Georgia Tech, I eventually came to be the clearing house for nearly all the recruits at the school. In one year, I directly from start to finish would recruit 90% of the athletes entering the program.
Recruiting is often seen as the most demanding non-coaching task a coach does. Many coaches perceive that in order to beat others at recruiting they must outwork them. That is true, in a sense, but probably not in the way that they think.
I found that the most important factor to do well in recruiting was to promptly and reliability communicate. It sounds simple, and small, but it beats the pants out of awkward phone calls and the “hard work” that many coaches torture themselves with. Simply be available when potential recruits want to know more about your program.
As a side note, this approach also naturally filters for people who are enthusiastic about your program. They will want more communication from you in many cases. By guiding them through the process of recruiting reliably, you are establishing a healthy coaching relationship.
You are saying in effect “yes I know this is scary, but you don’t need to be scared because I am right here with you”. This simple approach will absolutely make a difference.
Proactive Measures
To be reliable involves a lot of proactivity. If you are reactive, I have learned, you will not be reliable. You will bounce from task to task but if things don’t get addressed immediately they will eventually slip away from you.
So reliability is it’s own form of positivity, both for you and for the people you interact with. Take it seriously.