Hey everybody at Richard Milligan here with 4C recruiting and I’m coming to you today from my awesome studio here in Edmond Oklahoma, and if you haven’t been to Oklahoma in say you know the third week of December, it’s not exactly a place that’s notoriously on people’s hit list to vacation too, but it’s where I’ve called home for well over you know 40 years now so it’s hard to remove yourself from a place that’s considered home. We love it here, and so I’m doing this podcast from a very cold location a very windy location but nonetheless my spirit is high we are recording this the week prior to Christmas and that’s important because I always approach that week between Christmas and New Year’s very strategically with some specific tactics that I’m going to use in that week. Now if you’re recruiting leader, you know this, we know that the week between Christmas and New Year’s is notoriously slow, a lot of people push their vacation at the end of the year, take vacation during that week you know business can tend to be slow just simply because there’s two holidays it almost seems like there’s four holidays right? You’ve got Christmas Eve, New York Day, New Year’s Eve, Christmas Day and so a lot of people tend to check out this time of year if they’re on your team and so it can be a wind of time that we look at just kind of cruising through the end of the year getting some clarity rejuvenating all of the above, right? For a long time I’ll approach this week strategically knowing that is the case and knowing that the noise from the matrix is going to be reduced, and I always saw this as a way for me to cut through the noise of the matrix, and I was most interested in cutting through
that noise because if I can get to you in a place where you’ve got clarity and you don’t have other things clamoring your time and your attention, then I can get to the real you. And a lot of times you know this, when you pick up the phone, you call someone if you catch them in the middle of a busy season or a busy day, which can be most days it’s very difficult just to even get a response a normal response from somebody because they’re in the chaos of business. So, that week between Christmas and New Year’s was always a springboard for my recruiting efforts in the upcoming year I want to challenge you to think of this as a springboard for your upcoming year 2019. If you’re hearing this and you aren’t hearing this before Christmas or the week before Christmas and New Year’s, I don’t want you to disqualify this particular episode of my podcast and here’s why, there’s going to be ideas for you in this, that I’m going to give it to you that are going to matter for the rest of the year. So, I encourage you, this is one you should take notes on I’m going to give you some very tactical pieces that you can insert into your recruiting system that’s going to make a big difference, okay? So, let’s just look and see what most people are thinking this week between Christmas and New Year’s, most people are looking to get rejuvenated to get some time away a lot of people use that week, to kind of gain a fresh approach, a fresh perspective, a renewed approach to the upcoming year that’s going to take place a lot of people set goals at the very end of the year or the very beginning of the year. So, I take all of that into consideration when I’m going to make contact with any recruit. So, one tactic that I would encourage you to use specifically with anyone that you’ve engaged over the course of the year. This would mean this tactic works with someone that’s a warm or a hot prospect, now it can also work with someone that’s a cold prospect as long as you’ve established a foundational relationship and that doesn’t have to be a very large foundation for this tactic to work. It simply could be that you had a five-minute conversation but you’ve done a great job of staying in front of them over the course of the year, and a lot of people will say well in a five-minute conversation. I don’t get permission to actually stay in front of people and if that’s the case for you you’re not approaching that five-minute conversation correctly, because that five-minute conversation should absolutely give you permission to approach that recruit from this seat of being a what I would call surrogate leader. The surrogate word means in place
of, and what I want to do is I want to insert myself in a role in a place of a leader in their life, and so I’ve got to be very creative in doing that very tactical in that but it’s part of my larger system, and one of the ways that I would do this in a simple phone conversation is at the end of that phone conversation where someone says I’m not interested, I’m happy where I’m at, I would just say I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to actually speak with me and out of respect for you I’d love to send you one of my favorite book, what’s a good address to send that to. Most people will give you an address most people actually give you the home address when you actually act when you ask for the address because I don’t want you sending it to their office, they don’t want their boss seeing the book that you’re sending and that creating some tension there most people are going to give you the home address, and so now I get the home address from them, and now get to engage in a conversation. The book that I always sent, now there’s
dozens of books that you could send, the book that I sent was John Gordon’s book “One Word” that book is a 55 minute read. The principle inside the book is very powerful and in the at the end of the year it’s extremely powerful because most people are looking to establish some new goals, some new framework, what are they going to grow towards in the upcoming year. That book does an incredible job of reducing that down to a single word and most people will read the book, create one word, and then for the upcoming 12 months will look at the next year through the lens of that. If I provided the book for you and you actually did that I’ve now engaged you in a different conversation which is what I am all about. Like I don’t want to have a recruiting conversation with you right out the gate. I want to have a relationship building conversation, if I have a recruiting conversation with you right out the gate, I am ultimately putting myself in this category what I call the opportunity improvement offer. If I lead with my company toolbox that’s the recruiting conversation for the most part that most people are having, if I lead with that company toolbox I’m just saying I’m better than your current opportunity and so let’s look at my toolbox versus your toolbox it’s all left brain thinking and I want you to be a right brain recruiter. We want to recruit through the lens of of reaching people at a heart level before we actually try to reach people at the head level, okay? So I sent I would send that book, now here’s the deal, if you’ve had a if you’ve laid the foundation for that correctly throughout the year, that person that I would still quantifies being a cold candidate is gonna fit into some of these tactics that I’m gonna share with you here okay but if you have not had at least that type of a conversation or engaged in that type of relationship building then that person is gonna be truly a cold cold candidate and I’ll give you some tips on how I would navigate through that. So let’s go at this and give you some real meat and potatoes with this. Here’s how I would approach this, during the week of Christmas to New Year I loved to buy books in bulk and ship them out, now I’m gonna give you a handful of books that I would use I think most people are in that mindset of change, goal-setting, getting clarity, that’s where most people
are in this particular week of Christmas the new year. So I want books that are gonna speak to those things to change goal-setting to gaining clarity, so a great one that I used was “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy. Incredible book, it definitely puts things in perspective for people, you know a fresh approach very simplistic very actionable items throughout the book that is one that I used a lot a lot success with that I can remember specifically a team that I actually recruited because I sent that book to the team leader or the branch manager at soundless desk for a number of months, one of his in one of his teammates came into his office and said hey what’s up with the book? and he said I got it from somebody, I haven’t read it
yet, and his teammate said hey can I take it home over the weekend and read it, with that book became a springboard for the team leader to actually reconnect with me, and say hey you brought value to me, and the books been sitting on my desk, I’d love just to engage and
follow up with where we were, that ended up turning into relationship building and then it turned into a recruiting conversation and that the entire team joined me. So, that books a powerful book
for that I’ve already mentioned, John Gordon’s book “One Word” I love that book. It’s simplistic, it is something that you can engage in a long-term conversation of the course of a year with people love that book. Another book that I would recommend is Neal knob over at a book called moving forward seven days to life-changing clarity and direction, great book at the end of the year were you just sense that someone is intrigued by who you are as a leader or possibly intrigued by making a change in the upcoming year. That book actually comes with a journal and it comes with a workbook and the reason why I love those extra two pieces is because I would send the book the move forward seven days of life-changing clarity and direction, I would just send the book around Christmas and then the week after New Year’s I would follow up and say “hey I’ve also got a workbook and a journal for that I’d love to give you what’s your schedule look like here over the next week? Most people want to, if they’ve picked, if they’ve read any part of that book, yes! I want the journal, yes! I want the workbook, and yes I actually sent you that book without the workbook and the journal on purpose. You know it doesn’t diminish the fact that I was intentional about sending you the book, and so a lot of times I’d move people into that next step just to meet up and to give them the journal and the workbook and so it created next steps and the one thing if you know anything about me and my my belief in recruiting is that next steps are one of the key principles that you have to understand. I look back at when I was my weakest, inside my recruiting efforts and I had some of the lamest next steps I look at it now and I go what was I thinking, but you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it a lot of times it’s too late right because it’s history, but I can remember after having a face-to-face meeting with a lot of my recruits, I would ask for a good email address because I wanted to
follow up with an email and a corporate presentation and I’m sorry but that’s not a powerful next step, that never no one ever said Richard because you sent me that email with that great corporate presentation that great PDF or that great whatever file it was that I said as that’s motivated me in any way shape or form. It’s actually it actually creates a this barrier for you to move them to something that’s powerful because now you’ve engaged them basically in the left-brain conversation that we want to stay away from, until we reach them at a heart level, right? Because if I send that corporate presentation, it’s what are my products? What are my offerings? What are my benefits? like what is the company presentation? that’s all left brain. So I’m thinking in this, how can I create a very powerful next step? I’m sending the book out. So that’s a great tactic now it’s a standalone tactic, unless you make it part of your system. So it was part of my system at the end of every year, I did this and it actually was inserted into my overall recruiting efforts one of the things I would say laughingly is that once I engage you in a conversation, I would stay in front of you forever. I mean forever until you said leave me alone and I figured out ways to actually stay in front of you to where it was if you were cold and you weren’t interested that my communication was relationship building, bringing value to you, not asking you for coffee, not asking for you to have lunch with me, and talk about the company value proposition again to see if you’re happy, okay? I was able to move in this other space of relationship building and giving you things of value so, that I could say that I could stay in front of someone forever, okay? So that’s important so the book is a powerful piece of this. Now look if you’ve got someone that is a true cold candidate and you did you weren’t able to engage them in any relationship building at all here’s one thing that I did that still brought value, and I saw on a reap benefits from planting these seeds. This is I would use “slide Isle” now if you’re not familiar with slide outs simply a smartphone app you can get it on you know the iPhone or android either one and what it does is if you have a cell phone number it will automatically backdoor their voicemail. So it will show up that you’ve called so it actually tricks I think it tricks the phone PBX to where it blinks on the phone and then it actually pushes it automatically to the voicemail and you get to leave a voicemail. But if I’d only spoken to you once in the prior year, and I didn’t build relationship with you, I would still leave you a voicemail and I would say “Richard I’m just reaching out to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, one let’s know you were on my mind I hope you had a phenomenal closing to your year end and then wishing the best in the next year” then what I would do is I would follow up within 24 hours
the text message with something similar “hey I left you a voicemail one let you know I was thinking of you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” that should be part of your pursuing a relationship with someone and it’s always this time of year it’s always accepted no one ever is ever going to get offended because you had called them earlier in the year and they had actually said I’m not interested and I’m happy and then you leave a kind message around Christmas and New Year’s no one’s ever been offended by that. So, it does require intentionality to in two places one you have to track the people that are in your system. If you don’t track them, and you don’t have good methodology around tracking them, you don’t have a system, right? So you have a spreadsheet, or you have Outlook, or you have a binder, a note binder with notes on it, that’s not a system. So you need a system you need a tool, there’s lots of tools out there pipedrive is one that I’m very familiar with, it’s a very inexpensive tool it’s a whiteboard CRM that any industry can really use and incorporate. I used it because when I started using it, it was very inexpensive and it still is, it was $6. So I started using it six dollars a month in 2009, I
think it’s 15 dollars today per month and so anyone can afford that I’m going to put every contact I make in the tool every time I call somebody, or any way shape or form I touch them via text, via LinkedIn, via backdoor voicemail, via email, via video text whatever you’re doing then I’m gonna note note take that and then I’m going to create another activity, so that I will be following up with them again in the upcoming month. So once I get to a place where I’ve actually connected with you in any way shape or form, one time per month, as a minimum, I will actually reach out and connect with you. Now I’m being very creative in doing this I’m not doing what most people do on the recruiting site, which is pounding people like over and over again, that doesn’t work, look I know of a guy in an industry that actually leaves escalating voice messages in order to get people on the phone and you get to a place where you think it’s a 911 emergency and your kid is at the hospital, and and that’s how he gets people on the phone is by escalating it “Richard call me back”, “Richard I called you a message early day it’s urgent call me back”. You know we don’t the attractive leader fish is in a small pond and the attractive leader that operates and acts like that loses. Bottom line, the attractive leader who operates like that in their market loses. One of the things that I did incorrectly for a number of years in my markets was I really hounded people, like went at them aggressively over and over and over again, and what happened was people actually in essence was giving them the bricks and the mortar to build the brick wall between the relationship every single time I did that I was being unintelligent in doing that. So we have to be creative in how we build relationship we have to be aware emotionally intelligent and aware of what we do last, what they say last, what should I be doing next, and we do it through the lens of building relationships and bringing value to people. Now, here’s what I would encourage you to do, make contact with people in the space of in a space that is not
typical and that is not normal for you, okay? So let me give an example, most people get phone calls and most people get normal text, and that’s very normal. In fact, it’s so normal today I don’t know about you I don’t feel any tension in my voicemail, you call me and you leave me a voice message, it may set there for two days before I listen to it, and that may make me a bad person but the truth is that marketers have run my phone, I get a dozen telemarketing calls a day, okay? and so if you call me you miss me, someone that knows me sends me a text, hey left you a voice message, okay? so I want you to think in this week between Christmas and New Year’s how am I going to communicate in doing the things that I’m doing. So the email noise is reduced, text noises reduce, phone calls and written noise is reduced, but I want to look at some original ways where I would actually communicate as well. Look video text very powerful, I don’t know anybody that’s really using this and trying to scale this, and if you wanted to use this a great tool for this as BombBomb. I’ve used BombBomb for a long time would recommend checking out BombBomb, there’s several functions of BombBomb, one you know you have analytics with it, so when you send it you can see if they’ve read it, I mean if they’ve watched it and how many times they’ve watched. It that’s powerful right if somebody watches my video text five times I go home entry intrigued because they’re interested in whatever it was I sent them. The other thing is that that works well with BombBomb is that you can integrate it with LinkedIn you can send video messaging video DMS directly through the LinkedIn the other thing that you can do with BombBomb you can integrate it with your email, and then again you can see the watching my video, okay? So that’s a great way to do that and if you don’t want to pay though I think it’s $69 to have BombBomb a month right now, then you could just go straight you know using your iPhone recording a video and texting it, that’s fine. Another way for you to go is Facebook Messenger, a lot of people don’t know that inside facebook Messenger you can leave video and voice or voice, most don’t know that voice messaging exists inside Messenger, I love being different when a voice message shows up inside messenger I’m intrigued, because for the most part I haven’t gotten any of those. Now, I know it exists there because I have to be a marketer because right we’re recruiters. So voice or video on facebook Messenger is a great place to go. We’ve already talked about backdoor voicemail and slide dial again only gonna do that to people that have told me they’re not interested, were really cold, on that I’ve spoken to prior, I’m not going to spam people, okay? that is again, a way that the attractive leaders, just don’t represent themselves authentic real communication, no spamming, and then the LinkedIn direct message and we’ve talked about that through BombBomb, and you can connect that here’s one thing for you to remember, when you DM someone on LinkedIn a lot of people forget that they’re accessing the email inbox if that account is tied to, and that is really important, look even if you had their email inbox there’s a high probability that spam filters are going to pick up your email, okay? If you’re emailing their corporate email and you have that, it’s highly likely that the corporate email filter is gonna pick you up, and even if it’s not if it’s their personal a lot of times it will pick it up but LinkedIn gets through it, LinkedIn gets through the spam filter. So when you direct message on LinkedIn and LinkedIn pushes an email out to their inbox you are in
the LinkedIn framework don’t forget how important that is because you’re not just reaching them on LinkedIn you’re reaching them in their inbox, okay? So a lot of ideas here that you can go implement, execute, strategize this out incorporate it into your larger system because extreme structure equals extreme success. So this needs to be a touch point along the journey, along the way, this is not a standalone tactic that you try and then you’ll move on. The real power comes in when you do what’s next and then you do what’s next and then you do what’s next, right? One of my podcast is about the power of seven and there’s this specific number seven in sales that is a critical number. The average number of contacts that it takes to actually convert someone, so think about that, if you’re gonna do this what’s next and then what’s next and map that out this does not have to be hard, you can simply write out on a piece of paper what are the seven steps that you’re gonna follow and then follow them, okay? Communications most effective when it’s followed up by more communication. So our intent here is simply to recruit
Intentionally, okay? And that comes through developing a strategy, the noise is reduced this week we know it. It’s a great time of gaining clarity, we can gain we can actually make significant leaps and relationship-building where people have clarity, and so it’s an amazing time, I use this every year to actually springboard into the next year okay so use this as your springboard for yourself. I love what Andy Andrew said, and if you’re not familiar with Andy Andrews, he’s written a number of books one of those books, that’s an incredible book is called “The Principle of the Path” I highly recommend picking up that book. Andrew says this, “everyone ends up somewhere but few people end up somewhere on purpose” so you ending up in 2019 where you want to be in terms of your goals and building your team growing your team in recruiting is gonna you’re only going to accomplish those, if you’re intentional. So here’s one extra step that you can use in this week to actually be intentional. If you hear this before Christmas Merry Christmas to you it’s an incredible time of year I’ve got four kids, we are actually this year doing an experience instead of doing a normal Christmas, and so we’re actually going to be on a beach on Christmas Day which is going to be unique and different for us because we’ve been very traditional in our approach to Christmas in the past looking forward to that looking forward to getting some time away, and if I don’t talk to you in a podcast before then have a great new year. I will have one podcast between now and new year that will actually be talking about establishing goals and establishing a leadership plan for yourself. They’ll be great value in that as you go into 2019. I’m here to support you the recruiting leader is the toughest role inside any industry and there’s just few resources that help you inside this area of recruiting that’s my commitment and so we’re looking forward to getting to October 2019, we anticipate we will have a hundred of these podcasts available to you to go through but October 2019, simply by doing two of these a week that’s my commitment and so if you have topics that you want me to address send me an email and I’ll be more than happy to address a specific topic. It could be
an issue that’s specific to your market specific to your industry, my email address is [email protected] the number four the letter C the word recruiting dot com more than happy to take your email and address an issue that you may have in your market or in your industry, will be all about into 2019 and until I talk to you again here on recruiting conversations Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody.
