Episode 114: The Truth about First P Candidates

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso. Greetings friends. This is Mike Troms bringing the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit Podcast. I am pumped and I'm excited to to do actually a follow up at the request of many, many agents and Others after episode 112 aired. The cluster F. And what's going on with the first P in today's business society? Hey, you're not alone. If you are experiencing that, many, many people are and we want to help you solve that puzzle as quickly as we can. If you remember we talked about in episode 112, in today's society it is becoming increasing, increasingly, increasingly difficult to find people who are excellent team members. And remember, the philosophy of the UPP program is based on the three Ps, a simple philosophy developed over 35 years in your industry. A proven three step blueprint. It's people, excellent people. You've got to be satisfied with the best, not the best available excellent people working within your world class processes and systems and simply promote the heck out of it. Is it ongoing? Yes. Do you have to keep your constantly keep your finger on the pulse? Yes. You or somebody else on your team. So that is our goal for you as well as you know, once you locate the people and that is what we talked about a lot in episode 112, then you have got to take them to the next step. And the full progression of the first P is this simply, and I'm teaching this a ton right now in what we affectionately call UFS or uppfaststart.com that's upfaststart.com I'm teaching this often, alright? So stay with me on this. Always be recruiting. Always be recruiting. Yes, I'll say it again. Always be recruiting. You must always be recruiting. And I probably say that my sleep nowadays. I repeat it so much, but it's so, so vitally important to your business success. But what happens after they raise their hand? Because a lot was a question from a lot of people after episode 112 aired. What do we do now once we find them?

I'm going to take you through that today. I'm going to give you some nuts and bolts that you can walk away from this podcast immediately with and implement in your own business. So at the end of the day. If it's locating the people, interviewing them, actually offering and hiring them, onboarding them, training them, motivating them.

And actually holding them accountable and ultimately growing them up as leaders in your organization. That's the progression of an excellent person within the upper thought process and in the unstoppable profit producer program. And that's what we teach. Soup to nuts. So at the end of the day, everybody said, mike, alright, I find these people, what do I do now? Well, you start the interviewing process. And in my humble opinion, if you said, what's the most important part of the entire process? It's the interviewing process. You've got to be a great interview interviewer and you have to learn to become a great interviewer if you're not quite there yet. And at the end of the day, how did I learn everything I know about interviewing people? Exactly. I kept doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it and doing it some more until at some point I figured it out and I thought, wow, I get it now. Let me give you the absolute key to being a great interviewer and it's one of the absolute keys to being a great leader, period. Ask great pointed questions and shut up. Ask great pointed questions and shut up. And keep digging, keep digging, keep digging. Your goal is to get to the truth. And let me be transparent with you. You may not get to the whole truth in the interviewing process. You may not get to the whole truth until they've been on your team for 30 or 60 days or so. That's why you've got to always be recruiting, always be recruiting, always be recruiting. Because if they don't make it or you find out something after 30 or 60 days, that's not good. And you need to send them back to the marketplace. You have to have somebody else ready at that point. That's why you always want to be recruiting. Vitally important. So let's get to it. You find somebody, they raise their hand and they say, I want to talk to you about a position on your team. Fantastic. The very first thing that we do is the phone screen. It's the phone screen. Because at the end of the day, think about it like this. When somebody is on your team, how often are they talking on the phone to a customer, to a prospect, to somebody else, another team member or a vendor, or to somebody in your community marketplace? A lot, right? Maybe as much as 50% of their day. So they have to be skilled in their phone etiquette and how they handle things on the phone. Their Voice has to be clear. It has to be concise. They have to be sharp, quick, fast, efficient, the whole nine yards. And so we've designed the questions for everybody that's in our programs to be able to execute and do the interviews properly, to ask the right questions, specific questions that you can continue to dig on. So what we do also in our program, the phone screen. Fortunately, I don't do the phone screens myself. I've got two people in our organization who do the phone screens. Yes. Not one, two. We have two people on the phone screens because it's so vitally important. And they evaluate the person together and they come up with a letter grade which is at the end of the phone screen sheet. It says, rate the quality of the person interviewed on a scale, scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best. And then they compare their answers and decide if we're going to invest time in the first interview. We'll get to that in just a minute. So I've got a description on these forms. It's about 20 minutes. Your objective, you're looking to eliminate all non A players. That's part of the goal of the phone screen. Results and skills and unfitting attributes and culture contributors, if you will. You want to eliminate them quickly. You're looking to disqualify people who not are not for you, not for your culture, who are not excellent team players. Hit the gong fast on this baby. If they're not there, hit the gong as fast as possible and quickly in the interview. That's happened multiple times in the history of us doing this. I've quickly identified. First five or ten minutes, they say something stupid, drop derogatory, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Gong, they're gone. I find, oh, you know, something's up, blah, blah, blah. We'll get back to you. Okay. Only 10 to 20% should actually pass this screening test. Yes, my friends, I'm sorry to say that 10 to 20% only pass this. Here's a tip for you. Remember, as your candidates answers, gently probe further with responses like, wow, I'm curious about that. Tell me more. What do you mean by that? Can you give me an example of that? What happened? What did you do? How so? That's interesting. I'd like to learn more about that. By the way, the word learn is a key word. I say that a lot. I'd like to learn more about that. And you don't have to last the entire 20 minutes either. If you get to the end, great. But be diligent about asking Your questions and don't stop digging. And so it's got about seven questions on it. Let me take you through number six, since this is something that a lot of people ask questions about even after they've done it once or twice. So number six, we ask the candidates to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 in these areas. So if I'm interviewing Susie, I, I might say, hey, Susie, my next question is, I am going to ask you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. Sound good? Great. Fantastic. I have got about 14 items. I am just going to say what they are and you rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the. Being the best. Now let's pause for just a minute. Yes. You need to say it to them twice to make sure they understand because you are looking for their ability to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, get the right answer and get it fast. Because ultimately at the end of the day, you want to gauge how responsive they are. I mean, think about the speed and pace of our agency industry nowadays and how fast people expect something. So at the end of the day, their expectation is speed, efficiency, and the right answer all of the time. So, Susie, ready at number one, your best answer. Rate yourself on the scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. Ready. Ambition. 8. That's fantastic. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in your confidence with 10 being the best. 9. Fantastic. Your ability to face rejection. Yes. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. Pause if they have to stop and ask again for directions after you've given it to them twice. Red flag. Keep in mind, friends, you can only be satisfied with the best, not the best available. So let's say they've passed the phone screen. The next step in our evaluation or interviewing process is what we affectionately call simply the first interview. The first interview. Okay, so this is the description on this. It's a 20 to 30 minute interview or video conference. Face to face is always best. Face to face is always best. And if you can't get face to face, do a video conference. And ultimately, at the end of the day, collectively focused on specific results, skill sets and character attributes. All of them vitally important. All of them need to be top notch in the description of, of an excellent a player. And that's what you're looking for. Okay, your objective in the first interview, primarily you're looking to see if they will fit well with your team and your culture, while at the same time you're further assessing who they are, their skills and capabilities to deliver the results of that particular position, and their conduciveness to behavior, methods of operation that the environment demands. All of this is important. Again, ask the question and shut up and keep digging. So question number one, short questions. By the way, what is the number one reason that you want to position on our team? Now, let me be clear. The form isn't exactly that. I always freelance and make it conversational because ultimately, at the end of the day, I learned years ago from somebody that I was coaching under in this particular realm, and she told me something I'll never forget. She said, hey, you want to pretend like you're just having coffee? Great, I'm in. Okay. And then there's 11 questions on this, and question number 10 says, do you have written goals? As an example? And if you do, what are your top three? So if they're brilliant, sunshining you, or BSing you, okay. That they have goals, they better know what they are. If they don't, they're not reading them often enough or they're BSing you. Okay, we asked them to tell us about their favorite reading material. We want somebody who's growth oriented, who's learning oriented, etc. Etc. Now, so let's say they pass the first interview, they pass the phone screen to people on one day. On a second, different day, they pass the first interview. Great. What do you do then? In our world, our goal is to always deliver and, and administrate any assessments that we might be doing in the evaluation process. So with that being said, it's just another way to further evaluate the teammate, the possible teammate, prospective teammate, better said, okay, so you got the phone screen, you got the first interview, then you have the assessments, and you're reviewing all of those right now. At that moment, you have a great picture of, of who that person is. And at the end of the day, that's what you want to know. Because at the end of the day, you can also, let's say you're in a hurry, okay? You can do the phone screen on one day, do the team, the individual first interview on a second day, and do the assessments on the same day. You could have all three steps done in just two days. I recommend you do the phone screen and the first interview on separate days just to get a different take, because people act differently on different days depending what's going on in the world. And frankly, no disrespect to anybody, this is a business decision. If you've been Around UPP for any period of time. You know exactly what I'm going to say next. Yes, there's two kinds of relationships. There are personal relationships and business relationships. And they're two different things. This is a business relationship evaluation, nothing else. And, and if they're not having a good life personally, it's going to flow to the marketplace. That's why you want to do this on different days, to get a really solid take on who they are. So you've got the first, you get the phone screen, you've got the first interview, you've got the assessments, you've evaluated it all, you still like what you've got. Great. Take it to the next step, which is the team interview. Now, the team interview is something that should be done by multiple team members. We are extremely fortunate to have four excellent leadership people. And at every potential opportunity we get all four of us on the team interview. Now, it's also my recommendation, and I say this with all the love in my heart for everybody out there in the world. It's good if you have somebody from each gender in that interview. Why? Because the gals can pick up things that I can't pick up and sometimes I can pick up things that they can't pick up. It's a blend of personalities, blend of all sides. So you get the best take available for your candidate. Okay. And the team interview, the description of it, it's one hour or more in person, best of all worlds, in person, face to face. Or if you can't get it done, do a video conference. It's not the end of the world, but you're going to get a better take doing it in person. Okay? The objective of the team interview, this is with the highest level leader, or leaders, if you will, in the organization possible and any other key team members that you want to include. So if you're interviewing, for instance, for a commercial line CSR person and you've got an excellent commercial line CSR that you want to bring in, bring them in. Because at the end of the day, it's vitally, vitally important. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, this is the final, this is the final character and culture, fit, assessment skills, experience, proof of results should have already been verified aside from the reference checks. We'll get to that in just a couple of minutes. Alright. Ultimately, at the end of the day, you're looking to sell them on the agency. And when I get into this and the team interview is something that I'm always involved in, so, so I'm looking To make sure that I dig as deeply as I can. And part of my job is to sell them on the agency, our culture, and every other great thing that we've got going on in our agency business. You're looking to scare them a little bit. Maybe you want to see how thick of skin they are because, I mean, let's think about it. Do customers ever get disgruntled about something and then take it out on the people? Yeah, they do. So they got to have some thick skin going on. So you need to evaluate that in this process. Sell, scare them a little bit and sell them again. And you want all of your team selling all of the time. Selling is the world's highest paid profession, including selling an excellent candidate on your organization. And you're also going to want to come up with some of your own questions for your organization that's unique, relevant, and the such for your particular organization. The position, the personality of your team, the culture. But listed on this form are a few must asks. Must asks. Let me say one other thing. Back to the phone screen, back to the first interview, back to the team interview. Before you go into any of those sessions, make sure that you review the questions and, and get clear in your mind on how it should go. You want to envision how it should go before you even get into the process. That'll bring you to a better comfort level, it'll put you more at peace, and it'll cause a better interview, which is what you want. Okay, Remember, you're selling them. And if you're fumbling all over the place and if you're not sure about what you're doing, if you lack ultimately confidence in front of the candidate, guess what? They don't want to work under a non confident leader. They want to work under a confident.

Quiet, calm, effective leader. And that's what they want ultimately, at the end of the day. Okay? So I mean the simple first question is for all of the leadership people and team members we have here. Remind us, how did you find us? Shut up. Okay. One of the things that I love to ask.

What have you learned about us online?

Okay. And as an example, I've heard this many, many times I've heard them say, I didn't look at you online. I didn't even think about it, Flag. I looked at your website, just briefly. It was awesome. Okay? That's all they say. Say, did you look at us on social media? No, I didn't think about it, Flag. Possibly. I mean, you want the best, not the best available. You want a well rounded, forward thinking, outside the box thinking team member with high character and everything else that you need. Okay, so that's just some of the questions. There's four pages of questions here.

In addition to that, you, you say to the candidate. So, candidate John, so tell me. Pause. Okay. Before you ask a question, you've got to frame the question and you've got to frame your tone of voice and smile and have a patitude, not a baditude. A patitude is a positive attitude. A baditude is a bad attitude that was actually born in cousins camp. That's what we teach. You got to have a patitude, not a baditude. So with your best patitude and smile, take a deep breath and say, hey, so John, tell me something that is true that almost nobody agrees with you on. It's a leading question with the rest of the questions. Ok, to piggyback on that. So John, everybody finish this sentence for me. Everybody says you are great. But.

See, we're causing them to come to dig from within. We ask them what motivates them. We ask them about the software packages they have expertise in and that we do a quick start. Okay, so John, I'm going to do a quick start. Just give me your best answer. There's no right or wrong answer. Tell me which one is. You sound good. Here we go. By the way. Pause. Yeah, I might say that depending on the candidate and a lot of my team members looking at me like, stop your silliness. Well, ultimately at the end of the day I want to get a feel for how they react to things and how they think they might say, why did you say here we grow because we're a growth oriented organization. Is that something you want to be part of?

Shut it. Okay, so John, back to the fast start. Just give me your best answer. There's no right or wrong answer. Do you consider yourself more outgoing or reserved? Outgoing. Great. Do you consider yourself more process or people oriented? People oriented. Great. Are you more confrontational or non confrontational? Confrontational. All day long. Great. Pause. Not really, but okay. Do you consider yourself more patient or impatient? Impatient, Got it. So confrontational and impatient. Okay. Is it better to be perfect and late or good and on time? Good and on time. By the way, I. In previous interviewing sessions, I always had a tendency to agree. I quit that. Don't agree with them, just put down their answers. Last one for you on this session, John. Do you prefer bullets or lots of detailed information? Bullets. Got it. Okay, we're going to move to the next questions. You see how it Flows you're just having coffee. Ok. And my favorite question to wrap up the team interview. So, John, it's been a pleasure to get to know you more. Thank you so much for sharing from the heart. Some of the things that you shared, I know might have been kind of confidential. Thank you for being so transparent. So. So, John, we're sitting here a year from now celebrating What a great 12 months it's been for you in this role. OK? It's been phenomenal. Just share your thoughts on what we achieved together. What did we achieve together, John? Ok. And you just let them go and you keep digging. Let them go and keep digging. Ok. Your last comment or question is this. So, John, if you had to describe the debate going on in your head about doing this or not, how would you and the best candidates that are really serious about joining your team say? I don't have any debates going on right now in my head. I want this position. And ultimately, at the end of the day, you've got to look them in the eye and get clear. Okay, so quick recap for you. Phone screen, first interview, assessments, whatever you choose to do, team interview. At that point, you should have a really, really good idea if this candidate is worthwhile or not. Like I said earlier, hey, you never know until they get 30, 60 days down the road. But you've got a really good take right now. Now, we've had situations in the past where we got two that are neck and neck and we just can't decide. Even after a vote. We're still stalemate. Two, two. We don't know. What do we do? We go to a working interview. That's something we've also done. And it really helps us further identify the candidate. So at the end of the day, you bring them in for four hours on a different day, not at the same time. And you let them work for four hours. They shadow somebody. They might jump into the chair and answer some phones or whatever, whatever. But you. And then you pay them for the four hours as well. Okay, so you pay them for four hours, bring them in and work for four hours and, and just see what you got. Many times one of them will reveal their true colors more. Or they might say, this organization is not for me. There's something about it. I'm not so, so comfortable. That's fine. At least we're getting it out on the table before we put forth the offer. Because after that point or anything else you choose to evaluate, that is the time when you extend a conditional offer of employment. Okay, we have A conditional offer form. We have offer compensation offer forms. We also have an employment agreement. Those are the three documents that we give to them. They're all they're required to sign. All of them. That is the beginning of their commitment. Because commitment is the thing you said you're going to do long after the mood you said in his past. If they show their commitment, they're committed, then we start the process. Once we get those back, we set their first starting day. And yes, if they need two weeks notice, totally fine with us. In fact, I respect that. So if they give two weeks notice, great. So then you go through the process. The next thing on the docket is reference checks and background checks. We have a reference process form with your ultimate question always being.

Is this person eligible for rehire? Now, at the end of the day, you're not always going to get an answer. In fact, you will contact some companies that say it's part of our process not to answer any questions. All right, so be it. At least you must try. Okay, so the description of the reference process. Call at least three previous supervisors, subordinates, and three peers and or customers that they provide. Okay? And we asked for three personal references and three professional references for everybody that we put a conditional offer to. And at the end of the day, you're looking to discover the decoys. You're looking to find those who interview well, but later lift the lid of their crazy can. And you don't want anybody with anything crazy inside the can. You want a proven, successful, committed, coachable, excellent team member. So that's our goal, my friends, and that's all we want for you. Is it easy? No. The great Les Brown, the motivational speaker, said, if you do what's easy, your life's going to be hard. But if you do what's hard, your life is going to be easy. I am super proud, super pumped for one of our platinum coaching members. Who I had a one on one what? One on one call with yesterday who told me that they had seven candidates in the funnel right now. Seven. And they were following our process to the T, which I strongly recommend, because anybody that's ever skipped a step, guess what? There was something in the can and they couldn't identify it because they skipped steps. We don't want you to lose. We want you to win. We, we don't want any lessons. We want a business full of WINS. At least 80% of the time, the lessons are going to come. Yes, but we want 80% wins. So this platinum member, seven candidates in the funnel, he's got other people doing the phone interviews and the first interviews just like we coached him and taught him. And he's going to come to somebody who's going to be the final one or two and he'll have a great team member. In addition to that, let me add a couple of additional thoughts. In my years of doing it just like this, I have also found that the best people, not the best available, appreciate the depth of our interview process. Many of them have said, I have never been through anything like this. I really enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed getting to know you. I've really enjoyed getting to know your team. I've really enjoyed going deep and and learning more. I think your process is awesome because at that point they are believing in what you have going on and that's what you want. You want somebody who wants to be part of something special. See, it's not just a job, it's a career and that's what we're looking to provide as part of organization. Back to selling, sell, scare, sell. At the end of the day you're selling what you have going on. So great stuff, wonderful stuff. I hope this has helped you. Let me do one last recap. Episode 112 we talked about the cluster cluster F with the first P going on in today's world and really at the end of the day it's the ability to recruit and get even a candidate to the interview table. But once you do that now we just went through our interview process. I hope it helps you remember, remember, recruit. Always be recruiting. Please always be recruiting. Recruit, interview offer, actually hire onboard, train, motivate, hold accountable, build up leaders within your organization. That's what we believe. That's what we find will at the base level create an excellent agency organization. My friends, I hope this has helped you. This is Mike Strompso and in addition to that we have a ton of people that continue to ask. We want to learn more about the UPP program but we just want to learn more like an initial discovery. Simple. We have got two ways you can learn more. One actually three ways. One. We are doing the Million Dollar Agency Blueprint series again at the request of many. It has come back. It is a quick one hour session covering the three P's with examples Further explanation the Million Dollar Agency Blueprint series is back. That's one way you can find out more if you want to invest a little bit more time and take a much deeper dive. Get a hold of us@uppfaststart.com that's upfaststart.com you can sign up. We have those going on throughout the year. Candidly and transparently. We invest 6i hours together and I take you through all of the all of the examples and much deeper thoughts and more with a lot more detail about the 3P's people, processes and promotion. UPPFastArt.com that's the two online training opportunities to learn more about the 3P's million dollar agency blueprint UPFast Start.com if you're interested in a live event, please join us at Be Unstoppable Boot Camp. Just go to be unstoppable boot camp.com that's beunstoppablebootcamp.com generally there aren't many tickets available. If you want a seat at that event, you better act now because they disappear very quickly. We're pumped, we're excited. We have an all new list of speakers, entrepreneurs and other people who share to help people grow their business, create wealth so so they too can have more freedom to live life on their own terms. My friends, I hope this has helped you. Get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable and leave no regrets. And remember, it starts with two things, a decision and action. Get out there and make decisions, take actions and we'll see you in the next episode. Until then, you rock. See ya. Thank you for listening. If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference, be unstoppable and leave no regrets.