Richard Milligan explains why recruiting leaders settle without clarity, accountability, and systems, then introduces a 4-point framework for leadership branding. A Flowify study of 13,000 mortgage originators found only 25% respond to direct outreach and 9% answer phones, meaning roughly one person per 1,000 prospects is actually reachable.
Hey, it's Richard Milligan with Forsee Recruiting. And if you're seeing this video, you actually just probably listened to a podcast or saw a video of a podcast I just created. And the podcast is really centered around this idea that a lot of times people, especially recruiting leaders, settle because they don't know what they don't know. As part of that, we've talked about 3 main components to that, which is that clarity matters, that accountability matters, and that your systems matter. If you don't have those 3 things honed in, then you're actually, to a large degree, settling, not from an effort and energy perspective, but from a not executing on the right things perspective. As part of this, one of the things I wanted to give to you, and it's on this page here, just right below me is a, it's a 3-page presentation, but it's really 1 page. And that is predicated around 4 things, 4 important things that relate to your leadership brand. One of the things we didn't talk about in the podcast is how important leadership brand is. And in one of those areas that I find people settle is in the capacity to fully develop their leadership brand. When you understand and are able to interpret the data today as it pertains to recruiting, one of the things that we know is that recruiting has changed. Recruiting is quickly evolving. I'll give you a perfect example of that. Inside the mortgage industry, Flowify did a study of 13,000 top originators, and what they found is that only 25% of those originators moved through direct solicitation. I mean, 75% move in, move to mortgage companies through other methods. We also know that people are answering the phone less and less. Only 9% of people say they take a phone call today that's not someone that's plugged into their contacts list. One of the things that, that we're also aware of is that in terms of how it impacts recruiting, Is this idea that people are happy where they're at, right? Like a lot of people would say they're content. And in that same Flowify study, Flowify found that 94.6% of loan officers said they're content, they're satisfied to some degree where they're at. When you work that data down, like let's just do it, okay? Let's start with 1,000 loan officers that you might recruit. Now that's a big number, right? 1,000 people. Of that, we know that only 90 out of the 9— only 5.4% of them are going to be interested because they're unhappy. So now we take a list of 1,000 and now we're down to 54 approximately that are actually even going to be in the ballgame. And now what we also know is that of the 54, only 25% of them are going to move through direct solicitation. So now we've reduced that number all the way down to about, what is that, 13 or 14 people? That if I map that out correctly, that are now going to be in your sweet spot out of 1,000. And then from that, only 9% are actually going to take your call. So 1 out of 11, right? So you drill down, drill down, drill down, you get down to like you're a needle in a haystack. You're like a 1 out of 1,000. I feel like that's a line from Dumb and Dumber, right? Where he says like, so what are my odds? Like 1 in a million? And she says, yes, I would say that's about right. And he goes, so you're saying there's a chance, right? So to speak to this, your leadership brand is an area that most people are settling. And you have to hone your leadership brand, otherwise you are settling. And so as part of this, below me here is a sheet that talks about what we call the 4 C's of social leadership branding. And they're connect, they're content, communicate, and conversion. And we just speak a little bit about that. Intent here is just to get to really whet your appetite to say, do I have this figured out? Do I have a problem? Because this is an area where close to 100% of people are whiffing. They don't have a leadership brand, and the leadership brand is going to be such an important component to you winning and losing as it relates to recruiting. So I wanted to make sure we dropped this video to you here. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. Thanks so much for checking out my video. If there's anything I can ever do to support you, that's what this— that's what we're doing is building a community here of people that we actually bring value to, that we support. We do this no strings attached, happy to do it. Glad that we brought you here. Glad that we actually have the document below. You can check that out. And if there's anything else that we can do to help you or support you, you can find us pretty easily.
