Hi everybody it’s Richard Milligan, welcome back. It’s another recruiting conversations and we are going to talk about a really really really important topic today and that topic is face to face meetings. So, you know our audience here is typically in a single market you know they’re typically some sort of market leader, broker, sales manager. I mean these are leaders that already have a team and then they’re recruiting to this team, right? A lot of times because they’re in a you know in a single market, a lot of the recruiting that you do, yeah it’s done through engagement with LinkedIn, or it’s done through a phone or you know Facebook Messenger, you maybe use Instagram to make connections and to get into conversations with people. How you do it, one of the things that is very true is that early on you when you engage the recruit it goes pretty quickly to a face-to-face meeting. So, I’m gonna put a lot of pressure on that face-to-face meeting and because there is a lot of pressure on that face-to-face meeting man you better have a formula for it. So, this podcast is we’ll see how long this goes this is gonna be a longer podcast which means that we’re probably gonna break this up into multiple pieces. This might end up being three different podcasts well for sure at least be two but follow this, what I’m gonna teach you is you must show up with an agenda, you have to lead with an agenda. What I have found over the last two years I’ve coached 758 different recruiting leaders. So, I’m a bit of an information aggregator. This isn’t you know me coming up with information saying most people do this, what I would say is that almost all, I mean it’s really close to all, your recruiting leaders, almost all recruiting leaders have no agenda other than build relationship in that first meeting, and so they understand like contextual I need to build a strong relationship with the individual that I’m trying to recruit and that’s great framework to start with but then what’s next? Well I will tell you is that most people fill in the blanks in that agenda with a value proposition for the organization, and my belief is that that is not only wrong, but it is all wrong. That is if you’ve got one opportunity to leave a lasting impression on someone, the biggest mistake you can make is going into going into this meeting, building relationship, and then immediately moving to trying to sell your company value proposition. It’s a huge mistake and I want to tell you today why that is but I’m gonna lay out even better than that lay out a framework for you that allows you to not share the company value proposition. Look we as human beings have been designed in such a way that we need more motivation than a better opportunity. We’re just due, if I’m happy where I’m at and most recruits that you’re going to engage in conversation are going to be happy where they’re at if I’m happy we’re on that you’re better value proposition whether it be better technology, or a little better compensation, or better support, or better leadership, or better pricing, or more products or whatever it is that you’re leading with those things aren’t enough to motivate me beyond this position of where I am at. Which is up most people would say today they’re satisfied, this is a different environment to recruit in at the job market is extremely healthy right now. There have been times in the job market that haven’t been this healthy and I think recruiting shifts and recruiting can change in that environment but when you have a strong job market and most people around 95% of people today say they’re happy where they’re at. They put a little satisfied checkmark in the box, if they’re satisfied where they’re at your better opportunity is not enough to actually motivate me to move.
So we’re going to talk today about some things that will help you create more motivation than sharing that so let’s just get this out there right now. In that face-to-face meeting we do not share the company value proposition. We don’t share it. So, one of the things I found because look you know I spent 20 years in this space doing this myself, one of the things I found is that early on in a meeting, it’s easy to get to get this train this agenda of yours taken off the track because the recruit will show up and immediately ask questions, right? And so we’ve got to be prepared for that. So, one of the ways we prepare for this is that when I talk to someone over the phone one of the things that I’m doing is I’m saying “if you’re willing to meet with me I will promise that I won’t talk about my company that I won’t try and recruit you and that this will be a relationship only meeting this will be a relationship building only meeting” one of the reasons why I established this coming into this meeting that agenda is that I need to protect the agenda for this meeting because, if someone comes in and says hey I heard you all have great product products tell me about hey I heard your compensation models this tell me about it I was talking to someone and they said that you are licensed in 32 states, tell me about that, right? Immediately this meeting is following their agenda. So, when I could ask that at the beginning of a meeting one of the things that allows me to stay on track is to say look I want to honor what I said to you over the phone last week, and one of the things I told you was that I wouldn’t try and recruit you in this meeting and I wouldn’t talk about the company. So, I’m gonna make a note of that question that you have and when we get in the meeting I would love to address that but I want to make sure I honor what I said to you, and then what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna get into what I call four stages. I think that this face-to-face meeting followed best is going to go through four stages. Now let me put a lot of pressure on this meeting, okay? and and I’m gonna intentionally do this because I think it’s true 99.999999% of people are going to show up and they’re gonna wing this meeting, that means that yeah they’re gonna show up and they’re gonna work to build relationship and to build rapport or and that’s the overall general consensus that I have heard for most recruiting leaders of what they’re trying to accomplish in this face-to-face meeting, and that is important, and that is an element of what we’re gonna do, but I think I’ll throw some framework around that that will also change some of how you’re doing that, okay? So, that’s we’re gonna we’re we’re gonna start right in a meeting the first thing that we’re that we want to do ultimately is truly get to a place where we build relationships.
Now in that stage one of building relationships I have found that the talking should be them at 80% and you about 20%. So, if that’s going to take place you’re going to have to ask questions, right? So, within that I love framework because framework allows me to stay on my agenda allows me to remember a process like this and so I’m all about creating great framework and if I’m gonna ask great questions, let’s just lay a good framework out there for asking great questions a lot of people use the acronym frog as framework, and you may have heard that before if you haven’t heard about from that acronym FROG it really what frog stands for is family, recreation, occupation, and goals okay? Family recreation occupation and goals now here’s what I found there’s a better way to go about that it’s close but it’s not what we want okay really what we’re trying to do in this meeting is I’m trying to uncover desire, I’m not trying to uncover hot buttons, I’m not trying to figure out what your pain points are, I’m not trying to ask questions that are leading questions, like you know tell me what you love about your current company and then tell me what you love what you don’t love about your current company, those are what I call pain agitators, pain agitators are detrimental to building relationships, like and let’s just say this, “in this current era okay this is 2020 the people are the most over recruited that they’ve ever been” like and I don’t just mean like in in their employment I mean just generally, like the average American sees over 5,000 advertisements per day right now. Like that’s nuts to me, like I just before this I was skimming through my Instagram my Facebook to catch up and engage with My content, with my followers as I’m doing that I can’t hardly get to my content because I got so many sponsored ads coming through my newsfeed, and so in an environment like that where there’s so much selling pressure to try and promote a product or trying to get me to take on a new career. It’s the equivalent of having a thousand people in a gym shouting at you there’s when that 1,000 of first person shows up to shout at you, like it’s impossible to hear them. So, this is the environment that we’re recruiting in today one of the other pieces that is affecting this is that look if you’re and if we’re recruiting experienced salespeople most industries today have some sort of app tool aggregator that actually tells you what the production looks like for that individual. Like think about that, so, now we have now created even a even more hyper focused environment that focuses on the real producers like in most industries you can follow the Pareto principle, where it is that 80/20 rule right where it’s like you know 20% of producers deliver 80% of the volume, and 80% of the producers deliver 20% of the volume. Well, what’s happened today is that whatever the equation is in your industry that the noise is scaled at those people that are the real producers and so what happens in that environment, I mean if I’m in the gym and a thousand people are yelling at me, I don’t hear anybody, and when that 1000 and first person when that next person shows up, I for sure don’t hear them, right? So, in this one of the things that we have to really do is understand this season that we’re in, and have a better formula than trying to ask questions that lead to solving problems. I’m not trying to solve a problem here, I’m literally trying to build a relationship. Sells people are doing needs analysis and trying to solve problems, okay? I’m trying to recruit people to my core value system to my vision to why I’m doing what I’m doing, and that’s not a sales pitch, okay? This is different. This is relationship building right. That’s where we start is relationship building.
So, let me give you a better way than FROG and here’s what it is: an acronym that’s FORD, okay? Now, I do own a Ford so I’m partial to a Ford pickup, but regardless it doesn’t stand for a vehicle, okay? What it stands for is this family, occupation, recreation and dreams, and you if you’re watching this on video there’s a little part of it smiled when I got to that dream part of it because that is a powerful question. So, let’s talk about how we do this, right? These are just simple questions that tell me a little bit about your family, right? What how did you get into this industry that’s the occupation that can be a lead-in to the occupation question what do you all do for fun, what do you do for fun, what are you and your family do for fun, you know but the last question is the most powerful one, and that question is geared around dreams. Look at our hearts, our desire factories that’s a true statement, for better, for worse in my own life, all right? When it’s been good and when it’s been bad my heart has been conjuring up desire, right? So, well, if you have an environment 95 percent of people that say they’re satisfied, right? That just simply means I’m content, right? I’m not in any urgent need for change, okay? And I love in you know in Latin can content actually mean “status quo” and the definition of status quo in Latin means “mess we’re in, mess I’m in” okay? Like most people were even their content, don’t realize that there’s something better, something more that’s available and if you’re a leader like me that’s really centering their team and what they’re building around three big things, I think, like I always think along the lines of like doing what I love with the people that I love while making a greater difference, that’s what I’m after. I’m not after being content, I know after being satisfied, I think that there’s more available, what this dream question propels you towards is actually asking a question that requires someone to dream. When we, if I have been content and satisfied for a long time it’s highly unlikely that I’ve been dreaming, right? It’s like things are normal when you show up and say what’s something dreamy that you would accomplish over the next five years, you put me in a position where I actually have to turn my heart, my manufacturer my desire manufacturer on and think about that. Look you get some in credit you’ll get some incredible answers around that dreamy question, you’ll get answers like oh we’ve been married for me my wife has been married for 20 years and one of the things we said we were always gonna do for our 20th anniversary was that we’re gonna we would love to go to Bora Bora. That’s a great answer that question, okay and and the reason why is that like that’s just the initial response I’m gonna pull so much more out of that, and I’m gonna follow that up with a couple of questions like, why, why is that, why is that, why is that so important to you? And I might respond with you know early on in our marriage it was something that we always dreamed about we didn’t have the money to actually go to Bora Bora. So, we always were looking at pictures of it we’re talking about what we would do when we get there and so it’s just always been a dream of ours, right? And the next question is “how” well if that’s a dream of yours how are you how are you going to accomplish that over the next year, and that allows me to come alongside them and to actually be a part of this dream. So, I’m gonna ask the why and how question when it comes to that dreamy question, okay? This is a very powerful framework but here’s what you here’s what you’ve got to understand up as part of this, two of the greatest interviewers of our time have been Oprah Winfrey, and had been Larry King, right? Oprah could get anybody to cry, right? If you haven’t ever seen an Oprah interview someone, holy smokes she could get anyone to just bawl when she was interviewing them. Larry King could get people to spill the beans on things that they’ve never told anybody else, right? In very similar interviews, one of the things I noticed both of them responding to questions that were very aligned in their responses was questions around why do you think you were such a great interviewer, and one of the things that Oprah responded with, was it I always came in with a list of scripted questions but it was the question after that question that was unscripted that made me a great interviewer. Oprah was a great listener, is what Oprah was. Larry Keene was a great listener, is what Larry King was. And so, it’s not the initial question you asked around FORD that family question Richard tell me about your family and my response to you might be been married for 21 years, I’ve got four kids, two daughters two sons the youngest is six the oldest is 17 that I might give you that as an answer. It’s the next question, that’s the most powerful question. The question might go along the lines of “wow you’ve been married for 21 years that’s incredible” like what advice would you give someone that’s a newlywed that’s just been married, that’s a great question. It might be while four kids welcome to the crazy four kid plus Club, that’s impressive. Like as a successful businessperson, like what’s one piece of advice that you would give somebody that’s looking to have kids, those are great, those are better questions, right? The family question tells me about your family. That’s the scripted one, it’s the next one that matters, right? Occupation how’d you get into your industry, how’d you get into this business, that’s the scripted question, I might say it’s a crazy story and here’s how it happened but behind that you’ve got to be listing and asking the next best question. We are trying to peel the layers to the recruit back, I’m trying to get to the core of the individual. I’m trying to get stories out of them, I’m trying to get to know them.
Here’s a, this is something I’ve remembered for the last 20 years, the magazine Psychology Today, almost two decades ago it’s probably a little longer than that. The magazine psychology day ran an article and it was a non-scientific study that they did. Here’s what they did the chief editor of the magazine got on a plane and flew across the United States he had no clue who was going to step aside, okay? As he’s flying across the United States there’s two staffers that are staged at the airport where he’s going to land. So, they knew this was going to go down they wanted to try and extract some information to prove a point, and so as they land the plane and get off the plane the chief editor points out the guy that he sat beside, in the end and the two staffers walk up to this gentleman they say “hey can we ask you a couple of questions around the person that’s you that you flew beside” and he said sure, first question, they asked was “tell us what you think about him” just a general thought, would tell us what you think about him and his response was this he’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met. So, the follow-up question was what’s his name? I don’t know, what he didn’t induce himself to me, what’s he do for a living? I don’t know we didn’t talk about that where is he from I don’t know, and as they’ve gone through the list of questions that they asked what came out is that this person who had just said this is the most interesting person I’ve ever met, knew absolutely nothing about the chief editor of the magazine. What the chief editor did is he flew across the United States, is he work through a process very similar to this, which is that he was simply asking great questions and as he got information he was asking great follow-up questions. So, this is how in stage one, you build relationship, this is how you get to a place where someone would leave a meeting not maybe hearing but 20 percent of the time you are talking, and then saying something like, that’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met. So, this is the framework that you want to take into your meeting, and that becomes your stage one, okay? So, here’s what we’re gonna do because the length of time because we want to keep these somewhere around 20 to 30 minutes we’re gonna end this podcast here. and then what we’re gonna do in the next podcast is we’re gonna pick up with stage two, and stage two if you thought stage one, was important stage two is more important than stage one we’re going to we’re gonna give you a framework that you probably have never heard about that is going to take you to a place in your recruiting meetings where people are going to see you as a leader that’s in a different category, and that’s what we’re about here. When people leave this face-to-face meeting what do we want them to say, not just that they’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met. We want them to say that’s a leader that I could see myself following that’s a leader I could see myself aligning my talents with, right? So, that’s what we’re after so thanks so much for listening to this recruiting conversations do you know like right now this blows my mind right now we are top 100 on iTunes, in iTunes marketing category. I don’t even know how we’ve gotten there, right? But how we’ve gotten there is through people like you listening to this and then sharing it with peers, sharing this with people that you know to bring value too. So, thank you so much! that you’re doing that that you’re passing this on to people are as an organization. Our primary goal you know, what we are doing, what we do is this, we want to help great leaders build teams. We want to help great leaders equip themselves, grow their skill set, and build great teams because what we believe is this is that when we influence leaders, when we influence recruiting leaders, right? When we improve their leadership, when we improve the recruiting because there is an intersection there where you’re recruiting skills and your leadership skills overlap, that when we help you grow, that we’re impacting people beyond you, because that’s the truth great leaders impact people underneath their umbrella, inside their teams, right? Inside the walls, their businesses and then what happens is that that influence and that impact then goes on to moms, it goes on to dads it goes on to children, it goes on to friends, it goes on to our communities. And so when we help you and when we equip you to do to pursue people correctly, which by the way we all want to be pursued in the right way. There’s just something about being pursued in the right way, that’s affirming, that’s enjoyable. We all want that then we pursue people correctly like that we are most likely to have the opportunity to bring them to our teams, and that’s what we’re passionate about, so thank you for sharing this with people and let’s continue to do so because we want to grow this podcast in 2020, as much as we did in 2019. So, I’ll talk to you again on the next podcast we’ll get into that second point of four points, while we’re present when we’re face to face with people and I’ll see you on the other side then, okay? Thanks so much!
