Hey everybody, it’s richard milligan the host of recruiting conversations welcome back to another podcast if you’re seeing the video i’m a little bit animated today i love what i do and i’m excited to bring you a idea that will further you on your journey as a recruiting leader i have so much passion around helping the recruiting leader because i think that you if you list this podcast and that’s you you have the most difficult job in any organization you have to inspire the uninspired to make a change this isn’t you know it’s one of the things i was talking about earlier today with a with a coaching client he’s like we most people that recruit think they’re trying to find someone that’s already experienced a trigger event that’s motivated to make a change and we’re not we are ultimately trying to find people that are already happy where they’re at and we are trying to motivate someone who would say i’ll put quotations around content someone is content where they are we’re trying to motivate that person to make a change and so that has to be the most difficult thing on the planet to do and so that’s why i’m here to support you that’s why i can get excited about doing a podcast for you in the middle of a crazy season it is a crazy season right now but thanks for tuning in today that’s not what i was here to talk about what i’m here to talk about is a simple idea that i shared earlier today with a coaching client and i think it was a good aha for him so i want to share that aha with you because i know i spent more than a decade as a recruiting leader not knowing this thing and it may be above all things the one thing that you need to know in fact i think in that coaching session i said if in the 12 weeks you spend with me the only thing you get is this it’s actually worth the price of admission because this thing is that important one of the things i’m very aware of is that most people think they’re trying to they’re trying to recruit unhappy people or people have experienced some sort of career event to come to their team and ideally what we want to do is find people that are happy where they’re at that would i’d put quotations around happy and motivate those people to make a change and there’s only a couple of things that really motivate someone who’s not motivated to make a change one of the things that motivates the unmotivated to make a change is something that i would quantify as dream something that might you might quantify as desire that motivates someone who wasn’t previously motivated and i would i would say there was even a wind of time in my own career around beginning of 2014 where i was i started doing some things different as a recruiting leader and i couldn’t figure out why i was moving people into the next step and the next step and the next step and a very short one this time grew a team where i left one company went to another company which so i was starting at zero and quickly built a region out of nothing because of this one thing and i was confused by it in the beginning people were taking next steps with me nothing was wrong in their career they weren’t experiencing any major event at their current organization but they were willing to go to next steps with me anyways and the reason why i believe is that i was creating a framework for them as a leader who was also recruiting that they had never experienced before and i’ll give you the framework the framework is this when i meet with someone for the first time in a 15-minute meeting and i purposely do that so if i was going to call you over the phone or i was going to engage you in messages whether it be facebook or linkedin or instagram or text messaging my framework would be i’ve done my research on you prior to this moment so i know a little bit about you and i would be inviting you into a non-recruiting conversation where no recruiting is allowed because i believe that change is coming in a major way this is true of every industry by the way consumer behavior evolved more over the last 18 months than ever in the history of the world technology’s playing a much larger role technology’s accelerating the pace that we communicate the pace that we do transactions it’s changing the framework for how we’ve done business historically change is coming so with change coming in my scripting i would say i believe change is coming i think we’re going to see big changes in our industry over the next two to three years because of that i think it makes a lot of sense to build relationships with other leaders that you know and trust that in the event something happens in your career you’d be willing to pick up the phone and call does that sound fair to you and in that scripting what i’m inviting them into is a 15-minute meeting so with that said i’d love to invite you into a 15-minute meeting where no recruiting is allowed i simply get to know you and you get to know me for the future okay so that’s what we’re inviting people into now in this 15-minute meeting i follow a specific framework and part of that framework that i follow is i ask a question that is engaging them around desire trying to conjure up dreams and so one of the questions i will ask is what is something big that you want to accomplish through what you’re doing over the next decade that’s the dream conversation a lot of people don’t know what that is it allows me to actually come alongside them and dream with them now a lot of people will ask a different question which is the goal conversation what is the big goal that you want to accomplish over the next year or three years or five years or 10 years and and an important part to get in this is that goals are very left brain oriented it’s numbers measurements right it’s it’s it’s vetting a lot of times like it’s like buying a car buying a house uh what’s what’s what’s the house worth what are the amenities of the house do we like the carpet do we do we want hardwood floors do we like the location what are the school systems like it’s similar to buying a house a house primarily for most people is very left brain when you move people to their to their right brain which is the emotional side of their brain they make decisions more quickly they are more decisive in the decisions that they make with the right brain because because emotions are involved and so when i ask a goal question i swing the pendulum over here to the left when i so if i ask you that that what do you want to accomplish in terms of goals for the next year it’s left brain when i say what’s something big and dreamy that you want to accomplish over the next decade through this business i’m in the right brain i want to be there for a couple of reasons one you make decisions decisions faster okay when people say i feel like this is the right place for me i feel like you’re a leader that i can trust my gut is telling me that’s all right brain thinking and when you’re there make this decisions much more quickly and more decisively and you feel better about that decision in your right brain so when i ask you that that dream question that’s why i’m asking that dream questions because i’m in that space now here’s the other reason why i want to do it in all my career i never had a leader asked me the question what do you want to accomplish in a wind of time that was beyond 12 months never in my career having a leader come alongside you and say what’s the big dream that you want to accomplish in your career over the next decade the decade is an important wind of time the reason why because anything’s possible within a decade anything’s possible within a decade right so what does that allow for allow us for a dream when i say what’s possible in the next year not everything is possible in the next year in fact it might have been gary vee once heard say that we accomplished less than what we think we can accomplish in a in a year but we accomplish more than what we think we can accomplish in the decade that’s a big aha for us as leaders to have the reason the two two reasons for this the people that i currently have if i want to retain them look if you’re in real estate today you’re in mortgages today you’re in insurance today most industries if you are if you’re if you are recruiting experienced sales people that are top producers in the industry it is very normal to have 25 to 30 percent churn in that position year over year one out of three will churn year over year one out of three to four so if you’re a recruiting leader you’re also a retention leader you got to retain your people what’s the best way to retain your people find out what their dreams are and become the leader that’s constantly resurfacing the dream and what you can do to help them accomplish the dream it’s your best retention tool a number of years ago probably seven years ago there was a survey done by divorcees they asked the question of divorcees what was the primary reason that you got divorced the number one answer is what we all know we struggle in finances um they were bad with money right it was it’s financial is the primary driver for divorces today but what was interesting to me in the survey is that the number two answer in the survey was that they stopped dreaming together there is power in dreaming with our people think about it when you if you’re married the courting process the dating process it’s all about dreaming right where do you want to live what do you want to do for your cur your career what what’s the size of family you want where do you want a vacation where do you see yourself in 10 years like we it’s a dreaming journey that courting journey is that’s how people fall in love right through this lens of dreaming but there’s another lens there and it’s a word called desire what what are we doing we’re conjuring are our desires aligned if if we’re if you want to live in scotland and i want to live in oklahoma okay okay we don’t have similar desires we don’t have similar dreams yes or yes so be very difficult even if there was a physical attraction to actually get together as a couple if that were true so dreaming together being aligned in our dreams and us as leaders understanding that we’re aligned with helping people accomplish their dreams it’s a retention tool but it’s also a recruiting tool now you have to become a leader that has the right heart posture in this it’s not about manipulating people and asking the right questions around their dreams and desires and convincing of this and then getting them there and not being the leader that actually facilitates the dream because this is a short-term win you have to be a leader that has the right heart posture to say i’m all about it like and go to a level where when you ask someone on your team what’s your big dream and they say something along the lines of i want to build a cabin on a lake in the southeast portion of the state that you and they say it’s a log cabin that that you’re all about helping them accomplish that dream when someone says they want to send their four kids to college and they don’t want any of those kids to college have any debt coming out because they were so handcuffed by debt when they got married because they had you know gone to college for five years and financed it all and their dream is to provide that financial freedom first step of freedom to their kids then then you have to you have to help them accomplish that as a leader so how do you do that well at one point i’ve had a dream board in my office where where i could visualize the dreams of every one of my people and that person wanted a cabin on the lake i had a cut out picture of a cabin and and a sticky note with their name above it and they had a spot on my dream board because i wanted to see it i want to revisit it i wanted to be reminded of that and i would buy you a subscription to cabin magazine and i would go out of my way to get a lake magazine real estate magazine and give it to you so that you could see what was available for real estate and i would be talking with you around the financial component and the planning of that and the saving of whatever was required to get your finances in order to make sure that you could do that so we can’t just be someone who’s actually in conversations about dreams we have to be dream facilitators the best recruiters that also lead get this that if they do this with their current existing group of people and they then also lead with this when they’re recruiting that this can become the one thing i don’t know about you i’ve never had a leader that asked me about the dream that asked me about what my ultimate desire was to what i wanted to accomplish through what i was doing in my career but if they would have they’d have been very likely to actually get me to their team i was in a recent conversation with the mega producer in an industry this person’s top one tenth the one percent in the industry uh this individual recently got a million dollar sign-on bonus no no jokes got a million dollar sign-on bonus to leave one company and go to another company conversation was around what motivates you most in coaching what’s your largest motivator what’s your why the question comes up and the question goes along the lines of what if your only motivator is money and i didn’t hesitate my immediate response is that will be short-lived there will come a time and a place where you will run out of motivation i’m in a live zoom meeting with the individual individual leans forward puts his hands in his in his puts his head his face in his hands probably five seconds then comes back and says that’s me and then goes on to tell the story of how this individual left one company to go to another company primarily not for the sign-on bonus primarily because couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t get motivated built a massive book of business it’s a place where they can’t get motivated to continue building the business or just even facilitating status quo in the business so it makes a massive change takes a big check for sign-on bonus gets to this next place and now there’s no motivation and what i would say to that is that there’s no big dream what do you do when desire runs out and most people come to a place in their career where they don’t have a big dream like desire is very powerful it leads us to some very dark places when it’s not healthy but when desire is healthy it leads us to some of the most incredible places that will motivate us that will drive us to do things that we couldn’t do otherwise so as a recruiting leader a question you have to ask is what’s the big dream what do you want to accomplish over the next decade that’s big and dreamy that you’ll you’ll accomplish through what you do in this business and when someone says i haven’t thought about that it’s our job to ask better questions to come alongside them and to be someone that inspires a dream and if you can do this as a recruiting leader it becomes your secret sauce and recruiting because once i have this again my heart posture has to be to to help you accomplish this once i have this at all cost i will have you believing and i will be mapping out a strategy to help you accomplish this and give you a perfect example of this uh it’s been probably 10 years ago that was recruiting a top producer in a market they were the number one producer in their market and i was recruiting around compensation because the difference in compensation with where they were and where i what i was going to offer them was more than twice what they were currently making and it seemed obvious to me that even if all things were just equal which they weren’t but if all things were equal if you’re going to make twice the amount of money like i should be able to motivate this person to make a change right and that was wrong i couldn’t make a change now what was true of this individual that that that this individual had actually adopted several children from another country and their heart was very aligned with that it was that they were very aligned with with orphans in other countries and because of that i took the time one afternoon just to say what would the difference in money be as it relates to where their dream is and i created a document and the document was basically spelling out what would it look like in the next five years where you are compensation wise with where we are compensation wise but i took that number and i converted into their dream which is how many orphans they don’t have moms and dads could you help with the difference i kid you not within five minutes of sending an email with that context around it this individual calls and says let’s have a conversation as a recruiting leader you have to know the dream and you have to be a dream facilitator not someone who convinces people that that your opportunity is better than their current opportunity that your compensation opportunity is bigger and better than their current compensation opportunity it is your dream to under is your job if you’re going to build a a have success recruiting and build a team recruiting around you as a leader it will be your job to make sure that you ask the right questions to get to the dream that once you have it you never let that dream die that in every conversation you have you come you come back to this and ask questions around it hey richard where are you in relationship to our last conversation last conversation we had was around this and i was thinking about that today one to reach out to you and if it’s building that cabin on the lake okay at christmas time you will get something in your mail and it might be a little note with it with a real estate magazine that i went out of my way to pick up at that lake it might be a cabin subscription with a little note from me that says want to keep the dream alive can’t wait to see you build that cabin on lake whatever okay when you get this okay then you’ll not only recruit with this but you will lead with this as a leader with your current team because this is how you insulate your people against leaving where a leader has an identity as a dream facilitator people very rarely leave that leader where people leave leaders is where leaders don’t facilitate dreams show me a leader who’s a dream facilitator i’ll show you a leader who has virtually zero churn that doesn’t lose people so i hope this brought some value to you today actionable steps for you an idea not activated on within 24 hours is a dead idea i learned that decades ago be an activator on this what’s your first step your first step is probably scheduling 15-minute meetings with your current team and saying like i was i was thinking the day that i don’t know what ultimately is your biggest motivator and i really want to find that out have you thought about what your big dream is what do you want to accomplish that’s big and dreamy through what you do here over the next decade do you know that and if they don’t know that be someone who comes alongside them and inspires them to know it and when you get that go build yourself a dream board have the names of your people on it create photos of things that they want to accomplish to what they do in their career let them know that you are all about helping them accomplish that make it practical if someone’s got wants to have a 529 plan for all their kids to go through college then go find them a financial planner and pay whatever it would cost to have them sit down with a financial planner and then to develop a plan that’s powerful that’s telling me you as a leader or a dream facilitator that’s very practical schedule meetings with your current team practice this on them how do you ask questions that stimulate the dream that that forced people to to move towards this to begin thinking around this and it will make you better on the recruiting side because when you ask that dream question what’s the one big thing you want to accomplish through this industry through your business over the next decade and someone says i don’t know you’ll be better at being able to uncover that and desire okay desire is what what will motivate people to make a move you as a leader that will conjure up desire that will actually be a dream facilitator will will will help motivate people that are happy and content where they are to actually move to where you are so i know this brought value to you it’s brought value to me in my own in my own career now go act on it and until i talk to you again on another recruiting conversations have a great week everybody.
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