How To Build Your Recruiting Plan For The Upcoming Year
Richard Milligan breaks down a five-pillar recruiting plan: Influence, Daily Activities, Internal Engagement, Innovation, and Accountability. He explains the difference between lead metrics like contacts and lag metrics like hires, and stresses that what you measure, you improve. Personal growth and a 10-year vision paired with concrete roadmaps keep plans on track when unexpected events force changes.
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So the big question is this: how do recruiting leaders like us who have 12 to 15 other job responsibilities win at this game of recruiting? How do we build a system that allows us to recruit effectively in a minimal amount of time while motivating recruits towards meaningful change? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Richard Milligan, and welcome to Recruiting Conversations. Hey everybody, welcome back. It's another Recruiting Conversations with your host, Richard Milligan. We are coming into a year end. It's 2020 as I'm cutting this, but I think that what I'm going to give you here today is probably applicable to any year end. And when I think of the questions that I'm getting the week between Christmas and New Year's, a lot of people are asking for help around establishing goals. Building a business plan for the upcoming year, casting a vision to the team, creating a daily or a weekly or a monthly scorecard as to what their day-to-day activities should look like. So I want to share with you a recent coaching session that I had with someone who came in and said, I've been asked to present a business plan, and I'm unsure how to actually create this business plan. So this is something that's very practical that everyone can actually pull nuggets from. I always look at the vision plan from a vision perspective. And I think of vision— my definition of vision is the roadmap to what we want to achieve. And a lot of people think vision is almost like a goal that they want to accomplish. But when you think of goals, a lot of people just come up with a number and say, this is what I'm gonna do, and I'll work hard to go get that number to accomplish it. But there's not a real specific plan associated with accomplishing the goals. So over the years, one of the things I realized is that if vision is going to be accomplished, vision has to have a roadmap attached to it. So one of the things that I do inside my own organization is that we review that business plan. That vision, that goal. Okay, so I like to use the term vision in place of all those things. And I like to build the roadmap out, understanding that the roadmap can change. Think about 2020 as an example, because in March of 2020, some things happened that were outside of all of our control that created a scenario we had to revisit our vision for the year. One of my Part of my vision for 2020 was tied directly to traveling and speaking at live events. Well, immediately that was gone. That couldn't be accomplished based on something that was outside my control. So when that happened, I went back to the vision and revamped the vision for the year. And so typically in a normal year— this hasn't been a normal year— but typically in a normal year, what I will do is I will review it quarterly. And I take a lot of time towards the end of the year to review it, and take a lot of time at the end of the year to establish where are we going in the upcoming year. Now, I have a larger 10-year vision, and we're now moving into year 4 of that 10-year vision. And so, the year 4 part of the vision is, is tied to the larger 10-year vision that we want to accomplish in 2027. We started this organization in 2017. And we're way ahead of where I thought we would be at this point. So it makes a lot of sense for me to review it annually and to recast the vision for where we're going to go in the upcoming year. And so those— these things can change. But if you don't have a larger vision, there's no way that I think you can clearly establish a 1-year vision. I love— I think it was John Maxwell that once said, we accomplish less than what we think we're going to accomplish in the year. But we accomplish more than we think we can accomplish in the decade. And I buy into that. I believe that. I think we fail a lot of our annual goals that we set because we think we can accomplish more in the upcoming year. And there are things that are unpredictable that get in the way. Sometimes we get in the way. We're the ones that get in the way. Sometimes life gets in the way. I mean, right now I have a kid sitting at a doctor's office getting tested for COVID because he's lost his sense of taste and smell. That's outside my control to some degree. And these things are happening to lots of people right now. And so inside that, I'm aware that there are things that we control, there are things that are outside of our control. But, but inside the things that we control, we do need to have those tied to a larger vision as much as we need to have them tied to the upcoming year's vision. And so there's some things around that that I think are critical that I want to share with you all. And Part of what we're gonna share here is a coaching session I recently had with one of my clients, and we'll share parts of this, we won't share all of it, but there's nuggets I think everyone can glean from in how you build out the vision for the upcoming year and some ideas that will probably force you to innovate and to act like you've never acted before. One of the things that most people leave off when they're developing their goals or their business plan is they leave off Some things like, where do I need to grow personally? The thing that I say to myself all the time is this: the current version of me is not even hireable by the 10-year better version of me. Well, what does that mean? It means that I have to grow. The challenge is that I need to grow to accomplish this larger vision. The version of me that sits in this chair right now cutting this podcast can't exist in 10 years if I'm to accomplish that larger vision, which is why I have a 10-year vision. It challenges me to grow. I've had to learn how to have more influence on social media. I've had to learn how to write good content. I've had to learn just the platforms. Some of the platforms that have really challenged me, like Instagram, is one that's really challenged me. I have to— I've had to learn that platform. I've had to learn new tools and technology. I have to be constantly interpreting the data as it comes in around recruiting to see what things are changing. I mean, it forces innovation, but it forces me to constantly grow personally. So as part of this, I encourage people, part of your larger quote-unquote business plan or goals for the upcoming year is challenge yourself. Where are you going to grow? Make it practical. Like, what things do you need to learn? What books do you need to read? What influencers do you need to follow? What podcasts should you be listening to? What industry events should you be attending? What non-industry events should you be attending? I attended a non-industry event in 2020. And when I say non-industry, I typically coach in 3 different industries. So this was way outside of that. I went to this so that I could actually be challenged to bring some things back to the people that I coach, the people that I lead, that would force innovation. So go outside your industry to attend an event. Virtual events have just blown up in 2020. What virtual events can you attend that can be part of your larger personal growth plan? You're going to hear me sharing this inside this coaching session, but you're going to hear me presenting this to you in terms of pillars, what I call pillars. So when you think about a house, it's built on these cornerstones, right? It's built on a foundation. If you go to any house that's built on a on a beach or in a place where there's a marsh, it's always built on these pillars, right? It supports the larger house. This idea is that there are these pillars that need to exist in order to support your larger business plan, and you need to identify what those things are. What are the pillars that are gonna support you being successful in accomplishing whatever the plan is, whatever the goal is, whatever the vision is for this upcoming year? And I'm gonna share with you what those pillars could be. And we'll give you some insight in how you can actually develop your own business plan for success in 2020. So with that said, we're gonna go to that coaching session now. Here we go. Your business plan, okay? Uh, we just— we could also call it goals is how I promise you they're thinking of it. Um, how I'm thinking of this is vision. What's the larger vision? And how I would want to know, how does 2021 play into a larger vision. Okay, that, that's— that means you're going to have to think really big. And it's going to force you to do some things you wouldn't otherwise do. Okay, but this is how this looks in real life, is that there are pillars that support this. And these pillars are our daily activities, our daily behaviors. Right. And so what they're looking for, in essence, is what are the pillars that are going to support the goals or the business plan or the vision up here. Okay. And so part of this is going to be influence. How are you going to create more influence in 2021? That's a question you're going to have to answer. Okay, LinkedIn is part of that influence. Facebook is part of that influence. Where else are you going to go? Is it going to be Instagram, Twitter? TikTok, you're gonna create your own blog. Where else are you going to create influence? Okay, there's all kinds of ways to go about this. You know how I started creating early influence? I started writing articles for Scotsman. Okay, I said, hey, I'm a mortgage recruiting expert. I'd love to— I reached out and was intentional reaching out to the editor of the magazine to say I'd write articles for you. They said, submit us a couple of articles, we'll take a look. I submitted several articles, both of them got published. Anytime I wanna get published at Scotsman's Guide, I'll ask. So that was part of, but this part of this influence concept, where, how, and how can I create influence? Okay, for me it was a podcast, it was a YouTube channel, it's a Vimeo channel, it's definitely my LinkedIn content. I started writing articles on medium.com. Okay, influence, you're gonna have to answer that question. And look, building that influence in the first 3 years has required a lot of me. I mean, like, I wanna throw up when I say a lot. Because I wrote some of the Scotsman's Guide articles. I had a couple of opportunities with Scotsman's Guide where they said, hey, we need to fill space, can you get us an article in 48 hours? And I stayed up and pulled an all-nighter one time to write an article. And that was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but it got published. I got more recognition out of it. I was able to create influence through that article that I wrote. So these are all places nobody wants to talk about this, but influence is one of those things, okay? Daily activities is part of this, and this means the phone is part of this. Okay, this does mean, you know, LinkedIn, um, is going to be part of this, uh, connecting, communicating to people. Um, you know, text is going to be part of this. What other tools are you going to use? You're going to use BombBomb? Are you going to use— are you just going to— you have something else that you want to use? Uh, maybe you've got a activity tool like a Daily AI or something like that that you're gonna put on your to-do list that you're gonna go learn and you're gonna integrate into what you're doing. But I mean, the daily activities, most people wanna see how many phone calls are you gonna make? How many LinkedIn messages are you gonna send? How many texts are you gonna do? You know, what's your follow-up look like? That's gotta be part of this. Okay, how many people are you gonna follow up with on a daily basis? Because basically recruiting is pretty simple. It's identifying talent, making initial contact, and follow-up. That's all it is. Okay, so activities needs to be part of this. Now, some of this needs to be internal. So we're talking a lot about external, but internal. Okay, so you've got the external, now you've got the internal. What are you going to do internally to engage people? Are you going to send an email a week? Are you going to ask for leads in local market that you can follow, that you can call? Are you going to have a 15-minute Meeting every couple of weeks with all the managers you're serving so that you can do a pipeline review and find out what's going on in their market? Are you going to provide them with some training resources on the partnership between Randy and them? Right. So for example, my podcast is a great training resource. You could take nuggets out of that and say, hey, I'd love for you to listen to this. Richard's talking about what the agenda for a first meeting should look like. So you've got these things. You don't have to create these things, but these things are things that you should be providing because this is an internal perspective of what your business plan is. Again, what they're looking for is what is the day-to-day going to look like for Randy so we can hold him accountable.
Right.
That's measurable. Okay, so what are the things you're going to do internally to bring value? Okay, so these other things are external, then internal. Right, so what you're doing is basically, this is the plan. What are you— these are supportive mechanisms of the plan. Okay, now I think there's 4 pillars here, you know, so the question is, what's this other pillar? I don't want to fill in the blanks to steal any creativity from you, but, but just know that what wraps around all of this is a big, big framework, and it's called accountability. Some of the things that you might think about that could be external ideas that are outside the box are, you know, maybe industry events where you're going to have a presence. I got Mortgage Mastery. So it could be events, and some of these could be even virtual events that you're identifying and you're participating in, but you're having a presence there. One of the things to think about that could be an additional pillar is an innovation pillar. And if you're going to innovate, what are you going to do that no one else is doing that's brand new? Right? So innovate means first to act, not first— not next to respond, first to act, meaning no one else is doing this. So what is that? I don't know. I want to see us kick off a virtual open house visit. I want to see us kick off Um, I want to see us kick off a monthly webinar where we're inviting people outside the company into almost like a virtual open house where our CEO gets on and talks for 15 minutes and our head of secondary gets on and talks for 15 minutes. And, you know, but what would fall in that box that no one else is doing that we could do? It might even be some of the innovation could be around It could be internal, which is that I wanna hold once a month a 1-hour recruiting event where everybody comes live into Zoom and we all say, here's what I'm gonna do in the next hour, and we keep everybody live on Zoom and mute and everybody does it together. Right, like you're gonna make 25 phone calls in an hour, great, mute it and now you're dialing and you're waving to people while you're doing it, you're giving people thumbs up and you're jumping in the chat box going, I just set an appointment for next week. Maybe once a month you have a regional hour that you come in and you do it live together, right? And someone— and I don't know, maybe someone, you know, you take turns and you hear what the other person's saying and you bring people into this and you really challenge people to improve in some of these areas. So how can you innovate? Maybe part of the pillar around this is like, we need to innovate in this area. We need to bring more energy in this area. Part of your success is going to depend— it's going to depend on the amount of internal synergy you create around recruiting.
Mm-hmm.
If you have none, it's all on you, you'll have limited success. If you can get other people on board with this, then there's no limitations to the amount of success that you can have. Okay, and so around this big circle accountability, and how are you gonna hold me accountable to this is A weekly recruiting scorecard, and I will turn that into you every Friday. Okay, you can expect me to be innovative, to create more influence, to have my daily activities in place internal, to be of influence, and then for me to be outside external creating influence as well in some of these events. There's also part of this, but then what wraps around all of this is accountability around this. And so what does that look like? Well, you're going to get a weekly scorecard. And then what I'm asking for is someone sit down with me quarterly and review this. I don't want to turn this in and have someone, you know, at the end of the year go, how do we do? I want to sit down with someone quarterly or even monthly or maybe both. Okay, to make sure that these things are on track. So in terms of industry events, right, I'll report to you what those are. Maybe between now and turning this in, you'll already know what those are, right? What are the industry events you're going to attend? What virtual events have you identified? And maybe you'll turn this in every quarter. I'm asking that every quarter that I have at least one virtual event that I'm attending. Okay, or maybe that's monthly. I don't know. Maybe it's monthly that you've got one virtual event that you're attending. These things pop up on LinkedIn all the time. Okay, where Dave Savage just had one. A couple weeks prior— previous, Cindy Ertman had one. I can think of Todd Bookspan recently did one. So these things are popping up all the time. You can show up and be of influence in these virtual type events. Be a connector for people. And even if it's a— I'm showing up to help you promote this, Todd Bookspan, what can I do to help? I saw your event. I'd love to promote it internally within my organization. Dave Savage, I'd love to promote it internally inside my organization. Todd Duncan, I'd love to promote it internally inside this organization. Okay, these are all things that you can do. And so, but really map this out, like quarterly, what am I gonna do? Monthly, what am I gonna do? Weekly, what am I going to do? I'm gonna answer these questions. And of course, annually, yearly, what am I going to do that you can hold me accountable to? This is the only way you'll execute on all of these things is if you put it in your business plan. And it's almost like, hey, my business plan is 12 pages long. Or maybe it's only 4 pages long, and every quarter I'm going to tear the sheet out. I'm going to hand it to you for accountability. This is Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. And then what are— what's the— what are the results I expect that we would get around this? That's the big question mark, because that's what they all want to know. What are the results? Well, it's, it's kind of like licking your finger and sticking it in the wind, right? Recruiting is— it's not— it's a combination of science and art. Science is predictable. Art's not, right? It's a combination of both. And so a couple of things. One, I'm always asking myself— there's 2 parts to me. One is the dreamer and one's the reality guy, you know, the idealist and the realist. Okay, the, the idea guy, the idealist, is the anything's possible, and it is. Right. The realist says, okay, How do I take— how do I really create some realistic expectations around this? You can start doing the math and you can start seeing what would it cost to have an external recruiter in this position. So you start looking at this and seeing, am I making it with this number right here, 24? Am I making sense in terms of the ROI of what I'm being paid versus what would someone pay external? Because they pay about 10 bps. On production
to
hire that person. That's how you come up with that math. So internally, I'm saying, is there an ROI? Is there an ROI? Is there an ROI? And, and you should be able to hire. Look, and I start thinking about this at a team level. I mean, the average team that I brought on was somewhere around 7 people. What does it look like if I went after teams? Well, that's 3 to 4 teams per year. Can I hire a team per quarter? Oh, absolutely I can. Okay, I'm not— yeah, I'll look for loan officers, but I'm going to primarily focus on teams. And so let's go find the team. I mean, if you hired 2 teams that had 12 people on the team, you're there. Is that realistic? It is. And I need this tension internally myself to know whether I'm winning or losing, and I need something to drive me and stretch me. So it's always scary to come up with this number. But the truth is that, man, this is really going to require you to innovate. It's really going to require you to be real intentional with your time in this upcoming year. And if you execute on this, you will be one of the— you'll be a 1 percenter. I think how you present it matters. I trust that there are a few nuggets that you could glean from that time I spent with one of my coaching clients. The challenge for you now is beyond that and developing the business plan, your goals, your vision for 2021. There's one key ingredient, and that's the accountability part of this. There's something I go to from time to time that is known as Pearson's Law, and I believe in this with everything in me. Pearson was a scientist in the 1800s, and he developed a law that said What we measure, we improve. And what we measure and report, we improve exponentially. What we measure, we improve. What does that mean? Well, we do need something to track, something to measure the day-to-day. Like, it's actually like keeping score. Like, am I doing these lead things, not lag things? Lagging's hires, number of hires that we have. It's a lagging metric. What is a lead metric? Number of contacts that you make. Number of messages that you send, right? The things that actually engage people in conversations, those are lead metrics. You should be measuring those. Okay, what we measure, we improve. You got to measure those. What we measure and report, we improve exponentially. Okay, so the reporting component for us comes into the form of accountability. Who can we actually bring into this that we can actually give this to on a weekly basis That will hold us accountable. I work with a couple of top brokers in the real estate world, and they are on opposite sides of the United States, but there's a partnership between them where there's a level of accountability. They're actually holding each other accountable to the things that are going to move their business forward into 2021. So who will you report it to? It can be someone internally. It can be inside your organization. It can be someone externally, and that can be a coach. It can be a friend. It can be— I have actually meet every Tuesday with a group of entrepreneurs, and I have for going on 7, 8 years. It could be that someone inside that group, or it could be that group for me. But you need someone to hold you accountable. And what does that mean? We literally have to open our hands. And ask for accountability. That word, it just, for a lot of people, it reeks of like micromanagement, like someone standing over us and telling us what to do on their terms, not my terms. But honestly, accountability is where we get the exponential results, right?
