by Mandy Green, Selling for Coaches 

I got a call about a month ago from a Division III coach in the Midwest and with her permission, I am sharing her story. 

Katie is finding it hard to keep her enthusiasm high when she started receiving ‘no’ after ‘no’ from prospective recruits.

“What can I do to reignite my confidence and enthusiasm before I start completely dreading the whole recruiting process all together?”

When I spoke to her she shared with me that her confidence to recruit was low, and she was no longer enjoying her job she had once been passionate about. She was normally focused, driven and had been getting the recruits that she wanted in the past. This drive helped her achieve a certain amount of success in the past, but it had also been a major factor in her recent loss of confidence. As soon as she suffered a few rejections from recruits, she took them personally, and blamed herself for not being successful.

She realized that because she didn’t trust herself to do a good job, she was making each recruiting call with the expectation of failing – an attitude which, unsurprisingly, led to more rejections. She recognized that she was on a rapid spiral downwards, and needed a major readjustment in her approach and thinking before it was too late.

It was apparent that the outcomes of Katie’s recruiting calls – good or bad – were a direct result of what she was thinking and anticipating. Over the next few weeks, we spent some time monitoring what she regularly told herself before she phoned a recruit. Inevitably, these thoughts were unhelpful:

“She’s not going to be interested in what I have to say.”
“I’m going to sound so desperate.”
“I don’t know how to approach her.”

We then challenged each thought, and replaced it with a more useful and positive thought to hold instead. For example:

“I’m selling a product (my team and school) that I believe in, and I’ve already got many talented players. I can do it again.”

With conscious effort, and her trademark determination, Katie started to practice this. Although initially it didn’t change the outcome of her calls, it did have a big impact on how she felt about herself.

I also used the ‘GEAR’ technique with Katie, to help increase her success rate. This is a useful tool to use if you’re stuck, and not sure how to solve a particular problem.

It works well when you have all the necessary tools, resources, and solutions already filed away in your memory from previous recruiting experiences to sort out the recruiting issues you may be having today. It’s just a question of drawing on them, and then adapting and re-applying them to your current situation.

GEAR is an acronym for:

1. A Goal or set of goals (direction).
2. Evidence to suggest whether you’re reaching your goal or not.
3. Actions you can take to reach your goal.
4. Recovery strategies you use if you’re not reaching your goal.

Here is Katie’s Current Situation

Goal: To feel more motivated and successful again while recruiting.

Evidence for not achieving goal: Regularly getting “no’s” from her targeted recruits.

Actions employed to achieve goal: Call more and more recruits to get more ‘yes’s.’

Recovery strategies: Keep calling all more and more recruits to get more ‘yes’s.’

Her actions and recovery strategies were clearly not working, and were much too haphazard. I asked Katie to think back to a time when she was motivated and successful. She only needed to think back to last year’s recruiting class, and at that time it was a very different scenario, as she recalled it:

Katie’s winning situation from last year

Goal: To get 6 top tier recruits committed.

Evidence: She exceeded her target date to get these commitments within 2 months.

Action: She called each recruit when she was well rested, relaxed, and had positive energy and thoughts about the call she was about to make. 

Recovery: If she was having a bad day, she stopped and changed her focus – maybe she did some paperwork, checked her email, or went for a quick walk. She then reminded herself of all the successful recruiting calls she’d made, and all of the talented players who were already playing for her.

When she was successful, she was extremely organized, methodical, and positive with herself. When she kept receiving rejections from this year’s recruiting class, desperation came through in her voice and behavior. No wonder she wasn’t convincing people to commit to her program.

Outcome

To get back on track this year, Katie had to re-employ her ‘winning’ strategies from last year. She needed to think calmly about each call, and what frame of mind she was in at the time. She also allowed some calls to reach a dead-end, without being hard on herself.

The GEAR technique, together with her new-found positive approach, had the desired effect of helping her regain her motivation. Once that happened, it only took about a week for her to get her first “yes”, and she was back on track – with a smile on her face.

Apply GEAR to your recruiting:

• What experiences could you use from your past to help you today?
• Do you need to be more organized? More structured? More focused? Or more passionate?
• When did you last experience these feelings while recruiting, and what were you doing?
• Try the GEAR technique to focus on what actually works for you when recruiting.
• By applying strategies that worked for you before, you have much more chance of recapturing that success, and rediscovering your motivation.

Mandy Green is SFC's team and coach development specialist, and works with hundreds of coaches every year to help them build their success as a coach outside of the x's and o's of their sport.  To contact Mandy, or to discuss having her help your coaching staff with development strategies to make you better coaches, email her at mandy@sellingforcoaches.com.