Follow-Up or Fail

by Matt Mattson

I got an E-mail recently from a member of Delta Chi Fraternity’s expansion staff (professional fraternity recruiter).  There are two great lessons in his E-mail, so I’ll start this blog post by just sharing what he wrote.

From: Justin Sherman {Delta Chi HQ}
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 11:18 AM
To: Matt@PhiredUp.com
Subject: Greetings!

Matt,

Hope all is well with you! Just thought I’d share some information with you. Danny and I have been using your cold calling script on our current expansion. So far 100% of the men we have made contact with have set up a meeting with us. This has resulted in 30 meetings in two days. So if people need proof that the script works, here it is!

Thank you for the help at Florida State. It has made a tremendous difference at this expansion. My days are less stressful and far more productive.

Fraternally,

Justin Sherman

There are two excellent, practical, replicable recruitment lessons from that E-mail that stick out to me…

First of all, doing follow-up calls as Phired Up has taught them (here and here) can work incredibly well.  I’m not sure I’ve ever even gotten 100% success when using those scripts, so I’m thrilled that it worked so well for these guys.  The big lesson here is simple, call!  Phired Up teaches a series of lessons about how the best recruiters in the world behave, called Behaviors of the Best.  One of these behaviors is FOLLOW UP OR FAIL! 

Once you’ve met someone and gotten their contact information, within 24-72 hours they need a phone call.  Not a mass E-mail, not a Facebook poke, not a text message because you’re too chicken to call…  Call them!  In fact, now is a great time for you to call 5 people off of your chapter’s names list.  Now…

The other big lesson I take from this E-mail is the level of intensity a high performing recruiter should be at.  Thirty meetings in two days is what these 2 guys are doing. How many should your entire chapter (of 25, 50, 100 members?) be doing?  A lot more than 30. 

I talked with a chapter yesterday that said they were going to be satisfied with having 5 meetings with potential members next week.  5? 5?!  Chapters that want quantity to drive quality (if you want to be able to choose better members because you are choosing from among more potential members), chapters that are high performing recruiting chapters… these chapters understand that they should be meeting individually with 5-25 potential members a day at a minimum — especially during peak recruitment periods.  See this example.

This really speaks to recruitment intensity.  See this recent blog post for more on that, and see Phired Up’s new E-book on 365 Days of Dynamic Recruitment for Fraternities that was written by a college fraternity man for college fraternity men for even more.

Thanks to the staff at Delta Chi for letting us post this E-mail.