One of our Total Recruiting Solution clients called last week with a problem...

On Monday, they were hosting a recruit on campus, and three days later he and his assistant coach were making a home visit to try and make one last pitch to an athlete they had been recruiting for the past year.

Their question for me was a good one: What could they show their prospects, and have them take with them, that would really make them stand-out compared to their competition.

With some help from a friend, and one of the greatest modern-day marketing minds in the business world today, I think we've come up with a great answer for those coaches, and you.  In fact, it's going to be one of the segments we're going to teach in detail at our upcoming "The Art of Persuasion for Recruiters Workshop" in New York City on October 10, 2009.

Seth Godin came up with the concept of "the talking pad" in a recent article on his blog, and I've adapted it to use in recruiting situations.  It worked for the coaches who contacted me, and I am sure it will work for you as well.

Here's what to do, when to do it, and how to do it:

• Your "talking pad" can either be a yellow legal notepad of paper, a large pad of paper with your school's logo on it, or - even better - printed pages spiral bound like a book that you can leave behind for a prospect.
• Leave your laptop behind.  Laptops are awkward to use, and scream "canned presentation" the second you ask your prospect to stare at the screen.
• The purpose of a recruiting meeting with your prospect and their parents, either in your office or in their home, is to have a conversation and get them to open up to you.  And, you want them leave the meeting with a convincing argument as to why they should commit to your program.
• So, you will first want to create a really good PowerPoint presentation.  Not one filled with bullet points and lots of text.  Instead, include some graphs, pictures and key words that will anchor your conversation.
• On every page of your presentation, look for information you can remove.  Then, remove it!
• Print the presentation out.  Create it and print it horizontal (landscape), not vertically (portrait).
• Take it to your campus print shop, or to Kinkos, and get the presentation bound with a nice spiral binding (avoid using the cheap plastic combed binding at all costs).  Use heavy, 28 lb. paper if possible.
• Buy a really good, sharp tipped felt pen. 

• Now, when you make your recruiting presentation, sit next to your prospect and their parents you are meeting with and go through the booklet page by page, writing directly on each page. As you work your way through the ideas in the booklet, you can talk about what's in front of you and mark it up.  Let them mark on it and make notes on it, too.

• It's not a brochure like you typically would hand to them as your leave-behind, it's the outcome of a working session between you and your prospect's family. Leave it behind when you go if you are visiting their home, or let them take it with them if they are leaving your campus.

The result?  Your prospect now has a customized piece of information that was created in front of them, with their help, based on their individual conversation with you.

Think that it would make more of an impact compared to what you are using now?  Try it.

We will be devoting an entire segment of our upcoming workshop for recruiters in New York to this idea.  Coaches who use it will be able to revolutionize the way they present their programs in person, and we will help this first group of coaches who attend this special workshop launch it in time for this year's recruiting class.  Want to come and learn more about this technique and others?  Click here.