Call Reluctancy And The Tools Needed To Overcome This

Hey gang, it's Richard, and, uh, it is Monday coming. I'm all dressed up for today, ready to go. I had knee surgery last week, and so I'm going casual today. My knee's like swollen up like crazy, and so I'm wearing very comfortable clothing today. Hi guys, it's Rachel. I guess I could have faked it. I could have worn like the nice collared shirt up top and done and been played the part that like they do as newscasters or whatever. They wear shorts or athletic clothes underneath, but I'm congruent today and congruency is important, right? So I'm excited to get this week started. Had a great coaching session just now. I'm coming fresh out of— I'm going to record a short podcast around this. This comes up, this topic that I'm going to share with you comes up again and again and again. And it's call reluctancy, call trepidation, fear of rejection. I mean, those things really are things that you probably deal with on an ongoing basis depending on what season you're in as a recruiting leader. So it's important that you address them, that you hit them head on, that you acknowledge the tension that that's creating and you solve that problem. If you don't solve that problem, it doesn't get any better. It doesn't go away. And eventually, look, I've seen this happen. I've had people that have come into my coaching that couldn't get past the cold trepidation, the cold call reluctancy, and because of that decided to move out of a leadership role altogether simply because they sensed the tension, their inability to actually move towards picking up the phone and calling people with confidence. So we're going to talk about that today. I'm going to go live on my podcast here in just a second, in 3, 3, 2, 1. Hi everybody, it's Richard Milligan here with Recruiting Conversations. I'm back and I'm fresh off a recruiting conversation. Imagine that, like, I get to use the recruiting conversation in every aspect of my business. Like, earlier today I was talking to someone about a specific moment they had with the recruit over the phone, and I, and I brought up the terminology recruiting conversations Like, it's so brilliant, right? It's just brilliant. And, and I came up with it. So, you know, if I say it's brilliant, maybe a little egotistical. But if you think it's brilliant, shoot me a line. It's not egotistical. I need somebody else to think that Recruiting Conversations, the podcast, is brilliant. And if somebody else does, then I can get off the hook with calling it brilliant, right? I don't know if it works that way or not, but I'm just in a fun mood. It's Monday. I'm coming off of a knee surgery last Tuesday. I'm just glad to be back in the office and in my studio here recording a podcast after having had some conversations with recruiting leaders like yourself. And so I am fresh off a conversation. I'm jumping straight into a podcast past that conversation because I'm realizing this has come up multiple times today with recruiting leaders that I'm coaching. So I know that a lot of you are struggling with this one idea. This one topic, and so we're just going to address it. So without any further ado, it revolves around call trepidation, or cold call reluctancy is what most of us know it by. But it is that moment where you want to move towards something, but you can't because of this element or aspect of fear. That is going on inside you. Now look, as a recruiting leader, there were different places and times where this would insert itself. It wouldn't always insert itself, but it seemed as though when, when I was at my weakest, this was where it was strongest. But when I was at my strongest, there was no sign of it. And so if you're going through a difficult season, maybe you just lost a couple of people on your team and now you've got to rebuild and you've lost some confidence. Perfect place for cold call reluctancy to insert itself. And so where you lack confidence and this rears its head, you need a way to solve the problem, right? And this is a problem to be solved. I, I've actually had leaders that have left the recruiting leadership role because they couldn't get over cold call reluctancy. So this is how devastating this can be to someone's career, an inability to move towards the phone or to move towards a conversation with someone. And that— and the phone is changing, right? It's not now. A lot of times it's not the phone, but maybe, you know, creating a conversation through a video text or through a video message on LinkedIn or through a video message on Facebook. You may struggle moving towards something Because of fear of rejection. And so I'm going to give you a couple of tools in your toolbox to go at this. So first and foremost, here's what I found is that there is a narrative here that when we confuse the narrative, it causes us to be fearful. And so I'll give you an example. I've got a couple of speaking engagements over the next 7, 8 days. And as well as I know my material, look, I coach 8 to 10 hours a day. I know my material. I know my philosophy and my beliefs around recruiting. So when I get on stage, it's not a question of knowing my material. But when I get on stage, I'll have some heart palpitations going on. My energy will be going really high. And I could, in that moment, say, oh goodness, I'm fearful. I'm not sure if I can do this. And I could create that narrative, or I could change the narrative. And the narrative could be, I'm excited. I'm energized with the idea of sharing what I know about recruiting. Either way, it's my choice what the narrative is. I get to choose the narrative. So I'm very careful as my heart begins to speed up to not allow my brain to actually take over the process and to move me towards fear. Because fear can paralyze me, right? That's why public speaking— they say most people would rather jump out of a plane and skydive than actually public speak because they're so fearful of it, right? There's a narrative there. Am I excited or am I fearful? You control the narrative. Now, as a believer, one of the things that I look at scripture, and in the Bible it says this, it says that we are to capture our thoughts. Well, when I think of the word capture, I think that's a word that is used around bad guys, around terrorists, right? Like, we want to capture that individual to keep them from harming other people, right? We want to capture them. Well, it's interesting that that word would be used in the context of our thoughts, because if we allow our thoughts just to, to go do their own thing, they will actually terrorize us. They'll actually create fear. They'll actually paralyze us from being able to move towards the things that we know we have to move towards if we're going to win as recruiting leaders. So make sure that whatever narrative is being created, you're controlling it. And here's what I found. Look, I'm a huge believer in personal affirmations. And here's why. Your thoughts are silent to the world, right? They can run rampant. There's a reason why people, when they go to bed, that can't turn their brain off, stay up all night, because the brain will just go and go and go, and it will work out worst-case scenario. Am I right or am I right? It'll take that simple phone call that you were going to make to recruit, and it will turn it into somebody rejecting you so hardcore that you can't even move towards recruiting anymore. And somehow the brain has this narrative that it can move towards that. So you have to interrupt that thought pattern by speaking things out loud. And therefore, personal affirmations are so powerful. Like, I can actually have my brain run towards fear and I can out loud affirm myself personally, and I can cut that off so that it doesn't terrorize me. Okay, so I've got to quarantine. I've got to capture that. And how you do that is by speaking things that are true out loud. You can't actually think a negative thought while speaking a positive thing. Try it. It's like trying to sneeze with your eyes open. You can't do it. Like, and if you can do it, somebody shoot me a message because you're one of— you're the 8th wonder of the world because you just can't do that. You can't have something running negative and then speak positivity out loud as a personal affirmation And not do anything other than interrupt it and reject it. So if you want a good personal affirmation app, I use ThinkUp. So it's a really powerful app. You can actually record your affirmations. You can set them to music. You can set reminders to on your phone to remind you to do them in the morning, afternoon, or evening, whatever you decide. But I do encourage you to in the minimum write out some personal affirmations and where you begin to have this issue with cold call reluctancy, with this trepidation to actually just pick up the phone and call. Begin to speak truth to yourself because there is— that's a pathway for you. Now, you know, direct solicitation is only 1 out of every 4 recruits right now, but it is a, it is an element that you have to have in your game if you're going to succeed on the highest level of recruiting. So there's one part of that. Okay. The other part of it is this. Confidence is a big reason why most people struggle calling. It just is. Confidence comes from knowing what you're going to say. Confidence comes from having a solid phone script, from already understanding what objections you're going to get, and from being able to confidently overcome those objections. So what I found is that most people will say, I'm struggling with this, when I say, Okay, let's go ahead and role-play with your phone script. They go, well, I don't know it that well. Well, that means that's pretty obvious to me why you wouldn't want to move towards the phone, because ultimately if you did, you would expose yourself and you wouldn't be prepared. And you realize we can work the negative pieces out, like if you're unprepared and someone gives you an objection that you're not ready for and you fumble around with that, you embarrass yourself. Right? So you gotta step into your phone script very confidently. What does that mean? It means you're gonna memorize it frontwards and backwards. You're not just gonna go over this 5 times or 10 times or 100 times. You're going to go over your phone script probably 1,000+ times. In fact, record it and then listen to yourself again and again and again on the way to work, on the way home from work. Your phone script's important. Recruiting is all about gaining confidence, gleaning confidence. And the quickest way to move past a very short season where you're experiencing cold call reluctancy is to get really confident and then to go execute a strong phone script and to have some wins. Look, my phone script that I use is one that gave me 30 to 40% appointment rate. So 3 to 4 out of every 10 people I would speak to would actually schedule an appointment with me. Hey, I'll give it to you here now. Here's my phone script, right? I did a bunch of research on you, and in my research, I see some similarities in our core values. And because of that, I wanted to reach out and introduce myself. Okay, now from in the industry that I'm coming that I came out of the mortgage industry, the average tenure in that industry was 2.5 years. Okay, so I would on the end of that script, I would say understanding that people in our industry transition on average every 2.5 years, and because of that. If you were to transition, I realize that you have a group of leaders that you trust, that you have relationship with, that you'd pick up the phone and call. And I want you to be able to pick up the phone and say, hey, Richard, because you and I have a relationship. So if you're willing to meet with me next Thursday because my calendar is open, then I promise not to recruit you and I promise not to talk about my company value proposition. What do you say? So, that was my phone script and I would get 3 to 4 people of every 10 that would say yes to that. Now, several things. High integrity. Integrity matters. So, high integrity says that if I'm going to say I did a bunch of research on you and in my research, I see some similarities between your core values and my core values, that better be true because they will challenge you in that space. Really, they'll ask you the question, what did you find out about me? You better be able to answer that. If you can't answer that, then you don't have any business in using my phone script. Okay? So if you can answer that and you can answer what core values that you saw, and look, with Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, or you can just a regular good old-fashioned Google search, in most industries you can identify where they are and who they are and maybe a couple of other platforms. In the mortgage industry, I could go to Yelp or ActiveRain or just a number of other sites where I could get more information. I can piece together a picture of who you are. So the game has changed as it comes to recruiting people, because I don't have to really truly cold call people anymore. I can actually warm that up by having a lot of information about you before I actually call you. So identify what those tools are that you can actually incorporate into your research, do your research, And you can use that phone script and it works extremely well. Okay? And if you know that and you know what objections you're gonna get, right? I'm happy where I'm at. I'm not interested. I don't have time to talk. Those tend to be the top 3 that you're gonna get. How are you going to overcome those? And if you know, like what I would teach is I don't address them. I acknowledge them. That's right. Addressing them is kind of wallowing around in that, oh, I've heard great things about your company. And I, Didn't think that you'd be happy to, that you wouldn't be interested. And you know, I'm, I'm, I'm addressing it. I'm giving, I'm giving them more ammunition to support that. I'm just simply going to acknowledge it. And acknowledging it says, look, I appreciate the fact that you're happy where you are. So let me be real direct. I appreciate the fact that you're busy right now. So let me be real direct. I understand that you're not interested. So let me be real direct. And I don't care what objection you give me. I can use that to overcome most things that you give me. I had a young lady that once told me, she said that her— the objection she gave to people that no one had ever overcame to the date was, out of respect for you and honoring your time, I'm gonna decline. Right. I could say, well, I appreciate the fact that you wanna respect and honor my time. So let me be real direct. And I can move into the remaining part of my phone script. Right? So you can handle most things through that narrative. And in the end, as a recruiting leader, you're someone who's fishing in a smaller pond. So you don't have full-on permission to keep throwing the right bomb and trying to overcome objections and upsetting people. Corporate recruiters get more leeway, even though I don't encourage your corporate recruiters to do this. But if the corporate recruiter wants to do that, they've got 1,000 other markets that they can go 1,000 other ponds that they can go fish in, right? You don't. So you have to stand on the framework of your attractive leadership. So where someone gives me a strong objection and, and I'm not able to, you know, move beyond that, then I'm going to make sure I walk away from that phone conversation with a good next step. And so I would say something along the lines of, look, just to say thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to spend it on the phone with me. I would love to text message you a copy of a book that I read recently through Audible. What's, what's a good number? Is this number here your cell phone number that I can text it to? And now you've created a next step. Now I can engage them in a different conversation. Okay? So confidence is a big deal, right? That just simply means you're going to know your script frontwards and backwards, all of your objections frontwards and backwards. And then the other part of this is We're going to intercept the narrative that our brain's trying to create, which our brain is trying to incite fear. It's trying to undermine our confidence. And what we're gonna do is we're going to take a complete different narrative with that to say, this is energy and excitement that's moving me towards this, not moving me away from this. So if you are struggling with cold call reluctancy, know that you're not alone. This is something I address in my coaching over and over and over again. There's another 5 to 10 different ways that you can overcome this. I do think that creating accountability where the person that's holding you accountable actually has a reward, where when you win, they win. I'll give you a quick example of that. But a quick example of that would be, as a married man of 20 years, if I told my wife, look, every week that I make 50 phone calls, then you get to go Saturday and get a massage, or you get to go on Saturday and get your nails done. So every day I'm asking you to ask me, Did you make your 10 calls today? And if I answer no, then I'm sorry, I let you down. You don't get to go do this thing this weekend, right? So I would let myself down before I would let my wife down in that situation. Look, I could incorporate my kids and say, look, if Dad does his 10 calls per day over the course of the next week, you guys get to go to a movie on Friday night. And don't think that my kids wouldn't be connecting with me every single day to see if Dad actually Made his phone calls for that day. And I would do it for them before I would do it for me. So there's other tools in the toolbox here that you can incorporate into this. Just make sure that you have these, that you're using them and you're solving this problem. Do not let this defeat you. Okay? The phone is always gonna have an element that you're gonna have to be able to manage and master. And if you don't manage and master it correctly, it will beat you. Okay, so you got this. The phone's just some another thing, another tool in the toolbox. We're gonna get past this. We're gonna use it to our advantage. So with that said, pass this on to somebody. Look, you're not the only person that experiences cold call reluctancy in this industry. Whatever industry it is that you're in, pass this on to somebody else and say, "Hey, I came across this and thought I'd share it with you." Everybody deserves to win in this space of recruiting. It's a difficult position being the recruiting leader. So let's go figure out how we win. This is a couple of tools that you can use to do that. And until I talk to you again here on Recruiting Conversations, wishing you all the best this week. Have some fun recruiting. It should be fun. And until we talk to each other again, have a great week, everyone. There you go. Another Recruiting Conversations in the books. I always love to leave an extra nugget at the end that I didn't include in the podcast to give you a reason to watch the video, or in the minimum, if you're smart, to fast-forward to the end. I'm on to you all. I know what you're all about. And so that last idea that I gave, that's a brilliant idea, by the way. I've seen more people that will bring a third party in, a neutral party. It could be a spouse or kids or another person on their team to hold them accountable and then to give them a reward if if they actually do what they say they're going to do. It seems a lot of people go, well, that's counterintuitive to how I would structure that. But we won't let other people down. We will let ourselves down, but we won't let other people down. It's important to make sure that we identify the most important people in our life that if they win, then we would see that as a win as well. A lot of times that's a spouse or kids. It can be a fiancé, a significant other, and it can be someone on your team. Maybe there's someone on your team. Look, there have been times and seasons where I've had single mothers that have had 3 kids that were on my team, and I would have done anything to help them win. And so I could have created that same situation with them, like, I need to make these 50 calls per week. I need you to ask me every single day if I did. And if I do, then if you'll ask me that question and I do it at the end of the week, I'll give you a $50 gift certificate to wherever. Okay, a simple $50 gift certificate to wherever has been the key thing to get people over the hump. And the truth is that as we get momentum and as we get wins and as we build confidence, this just goes away. It's crazy how people that in one moment can't pick it up, that 2 weeks later are suddenly excited and energized by it. Okay, so you'll move through this, solve the problem. Okay, there's always 2 things in business, right? A problem to be solved or a tension to be managed. There's no tension here to be managed. You have to solve this problem. If you solve this problem, you're on your way to becoming a better recruiting leader. So have a great week, everybody. Look forward to seeing you next time here on my video, and we'll talk to you soon.