Hey everybody this is Richard Milligan, and welcome to a very special edition of recruiting conversations, the podcast, excited to be back with you here today. The past, I don’t know three weeks, have been interesting for me to say the least. I had set a goal to record these on a weekly basis Multi ones per week, well I had knee surgery and then in the midst of my knee surgery managed to fall down a flight of stairs, you know, it’s I guess there’s art too in agility required to navigate stairs on crutches and if you just get stuck in the wrong place, I can tell you that it doesn’t work out well, so had surgery on my knee, got that thing tucked up underneath me and managed to slide down a flight of stairs. So, I have been good managing the day to day, my grandmother had a great quote and the quote was “sometimes surviving is considered graceful” and what I can tell you is that that was true of some of those moments over the past few weeks, but I’m back, I’m excited to be back, I love doing these podcasts. I get a little pumped up to do them, my energy feels like I’m coming onstage, our audience is growing around this, and so I’m excited to know that the message that we have to share with the world for recruiting leaders is resonating.
I would ask, look if you, if I’m bringing value to you, I will just ask one thing that you can do for me as you can share this podcast, right? that’s pretty easy to do, if you’re on an iPhone or android you click a couple of buttons and you share it with one person. I would feel honored if you would do that in this moment. We’re going to talk about phone scripting today, we’re going about you know that one thing that most people aren’t really good at, which is getting on the phone in a cold call type situation, and what I found specific to the recruiting leader role, so let me, let’s identify that if you’re new to the podcast, this is someone who manages the team, but then is also responsible for growing, building, recruiting to that team. This is not someone who is a true recruiter, but this is someone who has to wear that as one of the 12 to 15 hats that they navigate on a monthly ongoing basis. So, your skill set is not necessarily in the sweet spot of a recruiter’s skill set. What I found is that the recruiting leader is typically very relational, loves people, loves to help grow people, build people, mentor people, and for whatever reason that personality when it comes to having to pick up the phone and cold call someone has some hesitancy around that, a lot of times does not have the skill-set to actually do that, and for a number of reasons. I was blessed, when I came into the recruiting leader role that I had actually as a one of my first jobs, it’s been two and a half years as a successful telemarketer. So I had picked up some great books like Stephan Schiffman’s book telemarketing 101, I understood some of the things that you needed to accomplish early on, instead establishing rapport and having good phone scripting to get to the next step. So, I think my phone scripting was better than most recruiting leaders phone scripts were, and so I probably had better results from it than most people have. I think one of the reasons why people move away from the phone is that one it doesn’t fit their particular skillset, but then two, they just don’t have a good script, and they definitely have it memorized, the script that they’re going to use to a place, where they’re confident and comfortable with it and able to overcome objections, right? So, there’s an element to that, but we’re not here to talk about that part of it today, we’re going to talk specifically around the scripting piece of this, and some of the things that you can do to maximize the results that you get from the script that you use, okay? So let’s just establish this, the phone is dying right now, and when I say the phone is dying, that may sound a little dramatic but I remember back in 2007 reading an article in Entrepreneur Magazine that said that “the phone would be dead the phone prospecting would be dead in less than 10 years”, well here we are 12 years removed from that, and what I know is that inside my own coaching, in the date and the surveys that we’ve done, Now we’ve got several hundred people we’ve surveyed with this that have been through our coaching, what we know is that about one out of eleven actually answer the phone, so for every dial that you make approximately 1 out of 11 is going to answer the phone. So you, it’s hard to scale that type of behavior when you’re a recruiting leader, so won’t so understand that, like if I’m gonna dial 11 times and 1 person is gonna answer and I’ve got thirty to thirty minutes to 45 minutes per day, which is about what we found the average recruiting leader can carve out of their schedule for recruiting, like you aren’t going to be making hundreds of calls in a day, you’re making a handful of calls in a day, okay? So understand that, the phone is dying right data says that people are coming to organizations specifically in that recruiting leader role people are coming to that particular position because of things like strong leadership branding, and social media, through non direct solicitation, right direct solicitation will be considered the phone non direct solicitation will be building a relationship on LinkedIn or Facebook or in some other social media platform, right? So yes the phone, I do believe the phone is dying today I think some of the truth is in our own behaviors, how many of you right now feel no tension when someone leaves you a voice message? like I’m raising my hand because if someone calls me and leave me a voice message and doesn’t follow up with a text, I probably am not that concerned about the voice message it’s probably a robo call I’m proud getting called by a robot in a voice mail being left by robot or it’s some degree a telemarketing call, and so I’m just not that intrigued on my voicemail anymore. Now I know that’s not true of all people, but at a higher percentage of people today, will say that voicemail is not a good way to communicate with them, okay? So, that’s an established fact, so what is what are our choices inside of that? Well we’ve got to develop a good phone script, that’s what we’re going to talk about here today, but in front of that we want to identify and research out the content that we’re going to make contact with. I’m not going to dial everybody, I’m not going to go purchase a lead list with all the phone numbers of those specific people and just start smiling and dialing, alright? There’s an old some old terminology for telemarketers smiling and dialing, right? I’m not I’m going to be very specific and who I’m researching, and who I’m making contact with, before I dial, okay? So we’re gonna do that, or and talk about that now here’s your choice you do the research you make the dial, or you go higher what I would call a dialer, a recruiting assistant of sorts, okay? You hire the dialer, you train the dialer, and you have them set appointments for you, know in truth, I spent 10 and a half years as a recruiting leader making all the dials myself and then in a three-and-a-half-year window where I had enormous success, I started with the dialer and then had to dialers, and then had three dialers, that were just dialing were doing the research for me, making the dials for me, and we’re setting the appointments, for me, okay? So what I get in business is that each of us has a very narrow lane, that if we will get in that very narrow lane and maximize the time that we spend in that very narrow lane, which is our gifting okay? If I’m in this narrow lane where my gifting is I’m the Visioneer right each of you should be developing your at your ability to meet with someone and present a vision very clearly, okay? so if you’re the visioneer, man your narrow lane, where you are going to win at scale, is if you’re setting in that a lot, and I’ll got to a place where three people were researching, making the phone calls, and using a short phone script representing me to get people into a conversation with Richard. So that is the best formula, but I get, like I spent a long season in my career where I could, that was not an option for me. I didn’t have the financing or the freedom or the empowerment from an organization to go create that position, and when I got there and I created that, I was able to grow at scale, very quickly. So this was a key piece to me being able to grow at scale was getting in front of people. I think we all understand, the more bats that we have right at bat as a baseball term, okay? So the more swings that I have at the plate, the more likely I am to win, that’s just a just basic common sense, right? That’s not like an epiphany moment for anybody, if you made four visioneer presentations a day to people versus making one per week, you’re going to win more, am I right or am I right? That’s just truth, so the dialer is a great way to get there, and to just enable you to make more swings, more bats at the plate and one of the things that comes from that, is that the more you do it ,the better you get the muscle memory, so to speak comes into play. If I was going to go play golf which by the way I don’t think off anymore so after having my c4 c5 fused from from a boating accident my rotations not that great and so my swings not that awesome, so I don’t play golf anymore, which is a win, because I go four to five hours that’s more that I can do, you know with my family and other things that matter, but if I was going to use a golf analogy, If you and I went to the golf range, and I was going to hit a bucket of balls, and you were gonna hit a bucket of balls, and you stood in that little tea box and you would hit one to get back up hit another tee it back up hit another, me on the other hand had a requirement that every single time I teed up a ball and I hit it I had to walk all the way back to the clubhouse to get a drink of water and then come back and hit another ball my muscle memory would not be there, it would be like starting over again and again and again and your swing would improve because of the muscle memory you hit one right and it goes well you’re like yes that’s it I can do that again. The problem that you have is where you don’t get the swings at-bats you the tendency is that you don’t quite get to the level that you could get if you are constantly presenting it again and again and again. So that’s a side benefit of having someone settings appointments for you is that you’ve got more time available to take the appointments, you are going to get more the appointments at scale, and when you present them you inevitably get better and better at better at presenting, okay? So the dialer is an obvious choice if you have a chance to do that, and we’ll talk a little bit about the phone scripting and how it should differ between a dialer, and how it should differ between you, okay? But understand the dialer could be a critical component to you being able to grow at scale, okay?
Enough said, let’s move on okay phone scripting, let me tell you a quick story in 2000 to 2013 going in 2014, that was really there’s a divider in my career where I had average results, versus results on steroids, okay? One of the key factors was, getting the dialer but a key factor prior to that was me actually developing a phone script that worked, okay? Now I don’t remember my exact phone script leading up to 2013 but I can tell you it was a bit the basic premise around it was this “are you open to a new opportunity and if so I’d love to meet with you” now when you think about that phone script, are you open to a new opportunity and are you willing to meet with me, I’m obviously setting expectations, I’m recruiting you and I’m setting an expectation that if you’re open to an opportunity that we’re going to meet, and so a lot of times what I was getting from that were people who were already discontent or unhappy, right? If you’re already looking for a new opportunity, then you’re probably unhappy where you’re at.
In most industries right now, when you look at data, people say they’re happy where they are, okay? The environment is a good environment for most people where they work okay the specific industry that I came from the mortgage industry that date of the day says that ninety four point six percent of people are content where they’re at that only leaves five point four percent of people that are in that particular zone that I was studying the expectations around okay if you’re open to an opportunity meaning you’re uh that you’re looking to make a change then you would say yes to that so I was immediately cutting off the ninety four point six percent and only making myself available to the smaller five point four percent would you agree with that so if you can agree with that premise then we know that immediately if only one out of 11 is gonna answer the phone and I’m only gonna be able to position myself with a five point four percent excuse me then I’m gonna make a lot of dials a lot of dials and if you’re someone who doesn’t enjoy the dials that’s a pretty painful I it build the team right so your scripting has to change and it needs to go to the hotel hundred percent of the people that you’re gonna call now here’s how I had this aha moment I went I into at the end of 2013 when I dissected my recruiting efforts here’s one thing that I noticed when I got people to a face-to-face there was two distinct meetings that took place okay the next podcast I’m gonna do as a follow-up to this is gonna be the face-to-face meeting peace okay so this is gonna set a precedence for that face-to-face meeting peace it only makes sense that our next podcast is that particular podcast so if you’re listening to this listen to the next one it’ll help make more sense of this in the face-to-face meeting what I realized is that there were two types of meetings taking place one was what I would consider the company value proposition meeting where I was leading with the company value proposition the other one was that meetings were happening and this was not intentional there kind of hopping like this on their own because I did not have an agenda when I went into my face-to-face meeting I didn’t have a set agenda for that other than I and to sell you on the company but for whatever reason a small percentage of those meetings ended up as relationship building meetings now here was the aha moment when I followed the people that came to the organization that came to my team almost all of them came through a meeting that took place as a relationship building meeting okay so it was just an aha moment of oh wow how do I create more of that because if I can get people to a meeting that’s relationship building then I’m highly likely to get them to my team so as I begin to dissect all this I went back to my phone script and I said okay why are people showing up at scale most the people that showed up were there and they were asking questions about my company and I’m part of it was the expectation on the phone script right are you open to a new opportunity that set the expectation that when you show up I’m gonna talk about the company that’s obvious right so I changed the phone scripting to solve the problem of that okay so there were two elements my phone script that I added okay one was this if you’re willing to meet with me I promise not to not talk about my company and I promise to not try and recruit you okay I immediately said look I need to step precedents so that when so that if people say yes and they show up that meeting I’ve now put guard rails around the meeting I put buffers around the meeting that say look we’re not going to talk about the company we’re not going to talk about me trying to recruit you okay so I added that element to my phone scripting and when I added that element to my phone scripting my efforts inside my specific meetings accelerate at the number of people at will were willing to go to next steps with me accelerated okay we’ll talk about the face-to-face meeting in the next podcast now once you understand this that first meeting that you have with someone should not be a recruiting meeting it just shouldn’t okay think about this people come to an organization okay because of who you are as a leader not because of the company now company value proposition matters okay it does matter yes it matters but truth be told okay your leadership value proposition matters more no one gets to the organization until they come through a leader with the organization so who you are especially at this level that remember this podcast is for the recruiting leader like the people you recruit you also lead okay and so who you are as a leader matters most when I had that aha moment it changed that face-to-face meeting completely it was no longer a sales presentation of the organization it was talking a building relationship and talking about who I was as a leader and that was the framework for it and I protected that if people showed up and asked questions about the meeting I would say haha when I talked to you over the phone I promise not to try and recruit you and talk about the company value proposition right and so I put boundaries around that but if you’ve got some questions about the company at the end this meeting let’s discuss those or let’s set up another meeting so we can talk about the company so I’m protecting that first meeting the phone script is critical to that you’re not going to be able to protect that first meeting unless you’re setting different expectations in the phone script now here’s what happened I went from getting about 1 out of every 20 to 25 people that would say yes to meeting with me so three out of four of ten thirty to forty percent would say yes to meeting with me so I’m going from around a 5% or less appointment rate per individuals I’m talking to to a thirty to forty percent of because I simply changed my phone script okay and what I know because I coached that to a phone script what I know about that phone script is that that’s true of anyone that uses that phone script okay so I want you to get this now I’m gonna give you some bullet points around the phone scripting so that you have an understanding I’m not going to give you an exact script but I’m gonna give you some bullet points around the phone scripting that’s gonna help you set the expectation that that face-to-face meeting is now a relationship building meeting it is not a recruiting presentation we have to change our models okay most industries today lead with company value proposition specific to this role that we’re talking about the recruiting leader role most recruiting leaders are leading with the value the company brings the toolbox as I call it the widgets okay what’s in the toolbox the things that are in the toolbox are you know maybe a CRM that you use maybe a point a cell that you use maybe the support that you have it could be the compensation structure that you have could be things like sign-on bonuses that you’re offering all of those things are inside the company toolbox even to a large degree a lot of people lead with company culture okay company culture does not matter as much as local culture leadership culture right you can have great corporate culture and when you get to the corporate offices you can feel that but in the field at the local office level you have to have leadership culture okay so so you’ve got to get this and you’ve got to be able to describe what that leadership culture looks like when you’re meeting with someone face to face okay so let’s talk specifically the phone script now.
