5 Disneyland Recruiting Lessons for Coaches
A recent trip with the family to Disneyland yielded some great lessons that can tell almost ANY college coach how to recruit more effectively when they host recruits on a campus visit.
If you've ever been to Disneyland in California or DisneyWorld in Orlando, you know that the "experience" is what they're selling to the millions of people that visit each year. However, not every experience goes well...and that's where coaches can step in and learn from the good and the bad from a visit to the "magic kingdom".
Consider the pictures below, and apply them to your campus visits:
Here's a picture of me standing in line with 1.3 million other people waiting in line for a roller coaster.
I hate to wait in lines, and after a day of walking around the look on my face says it all. I've had enough, and I'm ready to end the day.
A lot of your campus visits are the same way, coach. Your recruits are visiting, and instead of a relaxing, insightful relationship-building experience, their campus visit turns into an exhausting ordeal that they just want to see come to an end.
That's NOT what you want. This is what you want...
Happy, excited, screaming fans (that's me along with my two daughters).
We're not thinking about the lines, or the $4 bottled waters, or the hot sun, or the exhaustion. We're experiencing what we imagined we would experience at Disneyland: Big time fun!
THIS same experience is what you want to shoot for with each and every one of your campus visits when you have a prospect come to your school. Here are five ways to make sure it happens:
- Don't wear-out your prospects. In the last On-Campus Workshop that we conducted for a school on the East coast, we made a point of making sure they understood the importance of creating a balanced campus visit for their recruits. Resist packing the schedule full of meetings and activities. Make sure you leave time for some rest and lots of "hanging out" time with their potential teammates. That's what your prospects really want, according to our studies.
- Sit-in on interesting classes. This may be something that you end up eliminating all together, since our feedback from recruits indicates that most of them would be fine if this wasn't a part of your tour (but check to make sure). If you do end up scheduling them for a class, make sure it's a class that is discussion based rather than a lecture, or a class that is about a subject that they won't usually find in their high school (like Astronomy, Anthropology, and classes like that). The best attractions at Disneyland are the ones that create a lot of hype and a little bit of mystery. When it comes to your campus visits, skip the "kiddie rides" and go straight for the big time rollercoasters.
- Build in time to rest and hang out. After eight hours of darting around Disneyland, we were exhausted. I can't even say that we really "enjoyed" every bit of it. Why? We were spent. Lots of your recruits tell us that they feel the same way...the campus visits you schedule for them are too intense. What they want most is time to hang out and get to know the team, and a little bit of time to just walk around campus and explore the place they might be calling home. Build that into your schedule.
- Choreograph the visit. When you go to Disney, the interactions with the characters is really interesting. They are all about playing the part and giving you the best experience possible while you're visiting the park. Your prospects are looking for the same thing. You need to work with your fellow coaches and your team to make sure you create an amazing experience while they are on campus. The goal here is not to create a "fake" visit experience; rather, it is to accentuate the best of what they would find on your campus if they were to become a part of your team. That's best achieved through a choreographsed visit.
- Beware! Your prospects are looking for reasons NOT to commit. One of the things that we recommend you do is to design a thorough recruiting plan that eliminates objections and removes hurdles, just like we do for our TRS clients. That holds true for campus visits, as well. Just like a bad employee at Disneyland is magnified because the rest of the experience is so flawless, your campus visit is going to make any inconsistencies or mistakes stand out. And like the warning states, when it comes to campus visits your prospects are there to figure out what is wrong with you and your program, so be on your toes and make sure you leave no part of the visit to chance.
A bad experience at Disneyland will leave you a few hundred dollars poorer, exhausted and sun burnt.
A bad recruiting visit will probably be THE reason they say no to you. In the dog-eat-dog world of collegiate recruiting, too many "no's" can be career killers. Learn from these lessons, and correct the mistakes that may be happening when your prospect comes for a visit.
Did you know the recruiting pros at SFC can help you design a winning strategy for hosting a campus visit as a part of a Total Recruiting Solution package? It's an effective way to make sure you develop the kind of campus visit that leads to the best possible chance at success with your prospects. Email Dan Tudor directly at dan@sellingforcoaches.com with the subject line "Help Me Plan my Recruiting" and we'll set up a time later this week to discuss your individual situation.