So the big question is this, how do recruiting leaders like us who have 12 to 15 other job responsibilities win at this game of recruiting? How do we build a system that allows us to recruit effectively in a minimal amount of time while motivating recruits towards meaningful change? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Richard Milligan and welcome to Recruiting Conversations.
Hi everybody it’s richard milligan your host for recruiting conversations welcome back we are going to talk about recruiting seems obvious right that’s the only thing i ever talk about on my podcast i eat breathe and sleep it and when you eat breathing sleep recruiting you cut podcasts to share your ideas so this is a topic that i think is relevant to leaders who lead recruiting leaders but also recruiting leaders who are producers that are also responsible for the team and recruiting to the team so one of the challenges i found is that in certain industries your real estate being one of those mortgages being one of those insurance being one of those where you have a producing recruiting leader it can be a real challenge to block time to build the team because it would be normal that this role would have 12 to 15 things going on at any given time but then you throw production into it and it changes the dynamics of that all together which is that now you’re up to 20 25 things that are in the air at all times and recruiting doesn’t seem to be a fire to put out it doesn’t seem to be a client that needs a return call it’s not aligned with what is immediate it’s not aligned with what is like 9-1-1 in the moment and so this a lot of times gets pushed and in industries like insurance and real estate mortgage where you have sometimes 25 to 30 percent churn as an industry for your experienced sales roles right real estate agents insurance agents loan officers branch managers sales managers those positions have a lot of churn because they are recruited heavily and part of that is also these industries are dynamic and that they’re constantly changing so when you combine the recruiting pressure with a changing industry you get tenures that are you know people stay at a company for somewhere around two and a half to three years so if you’re not recruiting consistently you’re actually dying your team may not lose anyone this year but there always comes a time when the law of averages come into play no you you can retain your people at a higher level than 25 to 30 percent churn no doubt if you lead well that’s a part of that right we have a hat that we produce that we send to people from time to time and on it says lead well recruit right legacy matters so if you’re aligned with that framework you will retain your people a lot of times in the single digits you’ll have churn eight percent is it can be normalized and even in industries where you have 30 churn for you if you’re leading well and you’re recruiting people to the right lens to your team if you’re recruiting them right now with that said here’s a challenge most producing leaders don’t think they have time to recruit so if you’re leading this audience one of the things that you have to do is make sure you have a game plan for leading them through this if you’re the individual that is in that seat then you have to figure out a game plan for how you can consistently recruit there is a thing called mind memory mind memory is very similar to muscle memory and that when you do things again and again and again you get good at them i used to play golf i don’t play golf anymore but when i played golf one of the things that was very true is that before i actually played around the golf i would show up i would hit a couple buckets of balls to get my muscle memory going now they were rhythmic i hit one right after the other and in that i found a rhythm i would never go to the first tee box without hitting a couple of bucket of balls because i was an amateur a serious amateur golfing in the mid to low 90s and that game that i played without warming up would be in the hundreds so what’s very true is that you need in a recruiting leader role you need rhythm you need mind memory as it relates to recruiting or you’re not as good as you are when you have consistent rhythmic day-to-day actions that you’re taking conversations stories phone scripting right how you follow up with people where you bring value those things have to be rhythmic and recruiting or your average at them so as a producing leader what i have found is that and if you’re leading these people here’s another thing that would be helpful what i’ve found is five percent of your role can be recruiting so we’ve done about 700 surveys this year what we found is that the average producing manager is working about 50 hours a week and if you take my framework if five percent of your role is recruiting what you come up with is that two and a half hours a week is how much time you would be investing in recruiting five days in a week 30 minutes a day is two and a half hours so if i’m leading you i’ve got to gain agreement around this i use the framework recruiting leader a lot why because in these industries if you’re not recruiting you are dying and so a part of your role is recruiting this is an identity you can’t be a market leader in these industries unless you’re growing unless you’re building so i would never give you the title of market leader or branch manager or office leader or whatever unless i gained agreement around the role of this which is that you have to recruit you have to be able to recruit and so then with that framework in place now i have to go to what can i actually gain agreement on because expectations without agreements are toxic so i want to make sure i clearly communicate to you not that we would like to grow but it’s an expectation for the role to grow if you’re leading this you’ve got to do that you’ve got to gain agreement on this and an easy way to gain agreement on this is get buy-in for 30 minutes of recruiting a day five percent of your role 95 can be everything else five percent has to be recruiting now once you’ve gained agreement on that or once you as a producing leader come here and say i can do that five percent is attainable 30 minutes a day that makes sense i can do that now what’s the framework for the 30 minutes a day you’ve got to lay that out if you’re leading this you got to lay it out because they need clarity of the vision what are you asking them to do cast a vision around this if you’re in the role okay and you’re buying into this you need to know what you’re going to do so i’ll give you a very simple framework recruiting is nothing more than three things ready it’s identifying talent you gotta you gotta know the talent pool in your market right and you you’ve gotta go and identify these people cell phone numbers email addresses where do they reside on linkedin where do they live on facebook instagram these social platforms i need that information so as there’s a lot of times there’s production tools um i say production tools there’s tools that aggregate the production data for a market and you can see what people are doing so you need to know who your avatar is you need to know what your model match is is it a certain number of employers in the last decade that’s kind of a loyalty score for me is it a amount of production if you’re an experienced salesperson is it a book of business mix is there a blend in the business mix that you have that matters it may or may not but in some industries like the mortgage industry it can there are things here that matter in relationship to the avatar if you’ve got these tools that allow you to aggregate the data around production you will know who your avatars are who your model matches are in your market so you can go make initial contact which is the next thing identify your talent make initial contact how are you going to make initial contact what’s your script how do you enter how you cross that relationship bridge matters because most of you are fishing in ponds okay these are little groups of people in your market that meet your model that are actually an avatar fit for you and even if you’ve got 300 people it’s not that’s not a big audience to go after and so how you cross the relationship bridge matters because you’re going to be pursuing them for long lengths of time so how we make initial contact and set up our process matters so we’ve got to be identifying talent i’ve got to be making initial contact the third part of this is in the follow-up right i’ve got good scripting and minimally i gained agreement to stay in touch every month forever i need to bring you something of value something of value we are drowning a noise today we’re drowning in noise while starving for wisdom yes or yes that is a true statement do not be part of the noise show up with some wisdom for these people and what can you give that’s a of tangible value to someone and that is where the follow-up comes into play so if i’m leading you i’m going to cast a vision this is simple recruiting made simple right that’s one of the one of the websites we own recruiting is simple we own both of those urls because recruiting is simple it’s initial it’s identifying talents making initial contact it’s follow-up and now i can take my five days a week and say how do the 30 minutes every single day break down i know it takes me about three minutes to do research to make a dial so i know that in 30 minutes i can identify 10 people i also know that about one out of 11 depends on the market but one out of eight to one out of 11 actually answers the phone so i know that in 30 minutes if the average conversation is somewhere between 7 and 12 minutes i can have one to two conversations in dialing the people that i actually identified as people that i want to call and now i begin to set up a process which is follow-up okay and so every single month moving forward as this list grows of people that i’ve identified as talent i’ve made first contact with that either moved forward with me in next steps or said minimally i can stay in touch that list grows at every single month i allocate time to bringing something of value to this small audience a small group of people that meets my avatar and now you have a very simple process a very simple system to get buy-in if you’re a leader to actually execute on if you’re the actual market leader that’s the producing manager and this simple framework can be incredibly powerful here’s the number one question i get asked by executive leaders heads of sales president ceo ceos the number one question i get asked in these three industries is this how do you get your producing leaders to recruit that is the ceiling for the organization in markets this is a path to removing that ceiling so first the year is coming up here in the next 45 days perfect opportunity to cast a new vision around this get buy in on this five percent of the role should be recruiting minimally even if you’re producing and i gave you a framework to actually put that piece in place now with that said beyond that you’ve got to have some way to measure what’s actually being done pearson’s law pearson was a mathematical genius from the 1800s he was a genius scientist in that era he said there was a universal law the law was this what is measured is improved what is measured and reported is improved exponentially so i want to measure this okay because i want to improve it so how are you going to measure it give me some simple metrics that they can report back to me okay because the reporting piece is where we get the exponential i can just say i want you to measure it but the moment i say report it back to me what am i doing i’m creating some level of accountability and we all need this embrace this if you’re a producing leader to market embrace the accountability why because we’re all weak we all get distracted we all make choices in the day-to-day for what is important and recruiting is imperative to your success embrace it as a leader the right way to articulate this is we know that what we measure we improve and what we measure report we improve exponentially as a team we will be world class the only way we’ll be there is if we create this layer of measurement and how we report it okay and now for you it’s an opportunity to create a feedback loop a simple feedback loop how many people people are identifying as talent each week how many people are you making initial contact with how many people are on your list to follow up every single month our data says our data says we again we’ve surveyed about 700 recruiting we call recruiting leaders this year our data says that the average size of the pipeline is 5.6 people that they follow up with consistently most times it’s somebody you’ve worked with at a prior company it’s somebody you know really well in some way shape or form that is a tiny tiny list that you cannot win with you cannot win the this thing called recruiting with a list of five people that there has to be a larger list in play and that list should be growing consistently if we’re doing this correctly so that’s today’s podcast i know it brought you some value because this would have brought me value a decade ago to have this some simple framework around this because i think we over complicate this thing called recruiting it is simply it mic ffu that is identifying talent making initial contact and forever follow-up and if you can remember that you know everything and you know behaviorally around what makes a successful recruiting leader i look forward to connecting with you again here on our next podcast this is gonna kick out the week of thanksgiving so i’m thankful to have you as an audience i would be even more thankful if you would pass this on to someone that’s in your lane there’s another leader that’s in a similar position as you um that needs to recruit or needs to have a better understanding around recruiting so i’d be honored if you’d pass this on i would also be honored if you’d leave me a review if you’re getting value from this if you can take a few moments in whatever platform you’re on leave a review for recruiting conversations i would be incredibly thankful that would be an early christmas present if you would do that and i would take that as a gift have a great thanksgiving everybody i’ll look forward to cutting another podcast week after thanksgiving be blessed stay safe we will see you again soon.
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