Part 1 of Face To Face Meetings

Hey, it's Richard Milligan here, 4C Recruiting. Another podcast is about to go down. This is actually going to be cut up into multiple podcasts, so this video will be multiple videos as well. We're covering a really large topic today, and it's an important topic to those that our recruiting leaders because it's very normal that they would be doing face-to-face meetings with the recruits that they're recruiting. And a lot of times that's a market leader, that's a sales manager, that is a broker. It is someone who is in a smaller pond fishing in one market typically. What that means is that a lot of times you're meeting face-to-face and that comes early on in that recruiting process. So what happens because of that, because of the structure of the recruiting leader role and the way they recruit, they meet very quickly with someone, is that it puts a lot of pressure on the agenda for that face-to-face meeting, whether you're going to win or lose. So we want to talk about that. And that's a really large topic that a lot of people may think is not a large topic, but there's so many little things that go into making a great face-to-face meeting. And so we're going to break this up into multiple podcasts. So I'm excited to share it with you. It's going to— follow this because it will make you a better recruiter. It will give you more wins on the recruiting side because this meeting matters forever, right? This is just not a— it's, I mean, you got one shot, right? That's Eminem's line, right? You got one shot. And in this one shot, We want to make sure that we're best prepared to maximize that opportunity because forever this individual will either say you're a person of interest or they will say that you're not a person of interest. And it all comes down to this face-to-face meeting. We're going to talk about it today. So we're going to go live here in 3, in 2, and in 1. Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan. Welcome back. It's another Recruiting Conversations and we are going to talk about a really, really, really important topic today. And that topic is face-to-face meetings. So our audience here is typically in a single market. They're typically some sort of market leader, broker, sales manager. I mean, these are leaders that already have a team and then they're recruiting to this team. A lot of times because they're in a In a single market, a lot of the recruiting that you do, yeah, it's done through engagement with LinkedIn or it's done through a phone or Facebook Messenger. You maybe use Instagram to make connections and to get into conversations with people. However you do it, one of the things that is very true is that early on when you engage with a recruit, it goes pretty quickly to a face-to-face meeting. So I'm gonna put a lot of pressure on that face-to-face meeting. And because there is a lot of pressure on that face-to-face meeting, man, you better have a formula for it. So this podcast is— let's see how long this goes. This is gonna be a longer podcast, which means that we're probably gonna break this up into multiple pieces. So this might end up being 3 different podcasts. It will for sure at least be 2, but follow this. What I'm going to teach you is you must show up with an agenda. You have to lead with an agenda. What I have found over the last 2 years, I've coached 758 different recruiting leaders. So, I'm a bit of an information aggregator. This isn't me coming up with information saying most people do this. What I would say is that almost all, I mean, it's really close to all recruiting leaders, almost all recruiting leaders have no agenda other than build relationship in that first meeting. And so they understand contextually, I need to build a strong relationship with the individual that I'm trying to recruit. And that's great framework to start with, but then what's next? What I will tell you is that most people fill in the blanks in that agenda with a value proposition for the organization. And my belief is that that is not only wrong, but it is all wrong. That is, if you've got one opportunity to leave a lasting impression on someone, the biggest mistake you can make is going into this meeting Building relationship and then immediately moving to trying to sell your company value proposition. It's a huge mistake and I want to tell you today why that is. But I'm going to lay out even better than that, lay out a framework for you that allows you to not share the company value proposition. Look, we as human beings have been designed in such a way that we need more motivation than a better opportunity. We just do. If I'm happy where I'm at, and most recruits that you're going to engage in a conversation are going to be happy where they're at. If I'm happy where I'm at, your better value proposition, whether it be better technology or a little better compensation or better support or better leadership or better pricing or more products or whatever it is that you're leading with, Those things aren't enough to motivate me beyond this position of where I'm at, which is most people would say today they're satisfied. This is a different environment to recruit in. The job market's extremely healthy right now. There have been times when the job market hasn't been this healthy, and I think recruiting shifts and recruiting can change in that environment. But when you have a strong job market and most people, around 95% of people today, say they're happy where they're at, they put a little Satisfied checkmark in the box. If they're satisfied where they're at, your better opportunity is not enough to actually motivate me to move. So we're going to talk today about some things that will help you create more motivation than sharing that. So let's just get this out there right now. In that face-to-face meeting, we do not share the company value proposition. We don't share it. So one of the things I found, because look, I spent 20 years in this space doing this myself. One of the things I found is that early on in a meeting, it's easy to get this train, this agenda of yours taken off the track because the recruit will show up and immediately ask questions. And so we've got to be prepared for that. So one of the ways we prepare for this is that when I talk to someone over the phone, One of the things that I'm doing is I'm saying, if you're willing to meet with me, I will promise that I won't talk about my company, that I won't try and recruit you, and that this will be a relationship-only meeting. This will be a relationship-building-only meeting. One of the reasons why I established this coming into this meeting, that agenda, is that I need to protect the agenda for this meeting. Because if someone comes in and says, hey, I heard you all have great products, tell me about it. Hey, I heard your compensation model is this, tell me about it. I was talking to someone and they said that you are licensed in 32 states, tell me about that. Immediately this meeting is following their agenda. So when I get asked that at the beginning of a meeting, one of the things that allows me to stay on track is to say, look, I want to honor what I said to you over the phone last week, and one of the things I told you was that I wouldn't try and recruit you in this meeting, And I wouldn't talk about the company. So I'm gonna make a note of that question that you have. And when we get into the meeting, I would love to address that, but I wanna make sure I honor what I said to you. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get into what I call 4 stages. I think that this face-to-face meeting followed BEST is gonna go through 4 stages. Now, let me put a lot of pressure on this meeting. Okay. And I'm gonna intentionally do this because I think it's true. 99.999999% of people are going to show up and they're going to wing this meeting. That means that, yeah, they're going to show up and they're going to work to build relationship and to build rapport. And that's the overall general consensus that I have heard from most recruiting leaders of what they're trying to accomplish in this face-to-face meeting. And that is important, and that is an element of what we're going to do. But I think I'll throw some framework around that that will also change some of how you're doing that. Okay, so that's where we're going to start, right? In a meeting, the first thing that we want to do ultimately is truly get to a place where we build relationship. Now, in that stage 1 of building relationships, I have found that the talking should be them at 80% and you about 20%. So, if that's going to take place, You're going to have to ask questions. So, within that, I love framework because framework allows me to stay on my agenda, allows me to remember a process like this. And so, I'm all about creating great framework. And if I'm going to ask great questions, let's just lay a good framework out there for asking great questions. A lot of people use the acronym FROG as framework, and you may have heard that before. If you haven't heard about that acronym FROG, what FROG stands for is family, Recreation, occupation, and goals. Family, recreation, occupation, and goals. Now, here's what I found. There's a better way to go about that. It's close, but it's not what we want. Really, what we're trying to do in this meeting is I'm trying to uncover desire. I'm not trying to uncover hot buttons. I'm not trying to figure out what your pain points are. I'm not trying to ask questions that are leading questions like, tell me what you love about your current company. And And then tell me what you don't love about your current company. Those are what I call pain agitators. Pain agitators are detrimental to building relationships. And let's just say this. In this current era, this is 2020, the people are the most over-recruited that they've ever been. And I don't just mean in in their employment, I mean just generally. The average American sees over 5,000 advertisements per day right now. That's nuts to me. Just before this, I was skimming through my Instagram and my Facebook to catch up and to engage with my content, with my followers. As I'm doing that, I can't hardly get to my content because I got so many sponsored ads coming through my newsfeed. And so in an environment like that where there's so much Selling pressure to try and promote a product or trying to get me to take on a new career, it's the equivalent of having 1,000 people in a gym shouting at you. When that 1,001st person shows up to shout at you, it's impossible to hear them. So, this is the environment that we're recruiting in today. One of the other pieces that is affecting this is that, look, if we're recruiting experienced salespeople, Most industries today have some sort of tool aggregator that actually tells you what the production looks like for that individual. Think about that. So now, we have created an even more hyper-focused environment that focuses on the real producers. In most industries, you can follow the Pareto principle where it's that 80/20 rule, where it's like 20% of the producers deliver 80% of the volume. And 80% of the producers deliver 20% of the volume. Well, what's happened today is that whatever the equation is in your industry, that the noise is scaled at those people that are the real producers. And so, what happens in that environment? Man, if I'm in the gym and 1,000 people are yelling at me, I don't hear anybody. And when that 1,001st person, when that next person shows up, I for sure don't hear them. Right. So, in this, one of the things that we have to really do is understand this season that we're in and have a better formula than trying to ask questions that lead me to solving problems. I'm not trying to solve a problem here. I'm literally trying to build a relationship. Salespeople are doing needs analysis and trying to solve problems. I'm trying to recruit people to my core value system, to my vision, to why I'm doing what I'm doing. And that's not a sales pitch. Okay, this is different. This is relationship building, right? That's where we start is relationship building. So let me give you a better way than FROG, and here's what it is. It is an acronym that's FORD. Okay, now I do own a Ford, so I'm partial to a Ford pickup, but regardless, it doesn't stand for a vehicle. Okay, what it stands for is this: family, occupation, recreation, and And dreams. And if you're watching this on video, there's a little part of me that smiled when I got to that dream part of it, because that is a powerful question. So let's talk about how do we do this, right? These are just simple questions. Tell me a little bit about your family. How'd you get into this industry? That's the occupation. That can be a lead into the occupation question. What do you all do for fun? What do you do for fun? What do you and your family do for fun? But the last question is the most powerful one, and that question is geared around dreams. Look, our hearts are desire factories. That's a true statement. For better or for worse, in my own life, when it's been good and when it's been bad, my heart has been conjuring up desire. So, if you have an environment of 95% people that say they're satisfied, That just simply means I'm content. I'm not in any urgent need for change. I love in Latin, content actually means status quo. The definition of status quo in Latin means mess we're in, mess I'm in. Most people, even if they're content, don't realize that there's something better, something more that's available. If you're a leader, Like me, that's really centering their team and what they're building around 3 big things. I think, like, well, I always think along the lines of doing what I love with the people that I love while making a greater difference. That's what I'm after. I'm not after being content. I'm not after being satisfied. I think that there's more available. What this dream question propels you towards is actually asking a question that requires someone to dream. If I have been content and satisfied for a long time, it's highly unlikely that I've been dreaming. It's like things are normal. When you show up and say, what's something dreamy that you would like to accomplish over the next 5 years? You put me in a position where I actually have to turn my heart, my manufacturer, my desire manufacturer on and think about that. Look, You'll get some incredible answers around that dreamy question. You'll get answers like, oh, we've been married for— me and my wife have been married for 20 years and one of the things we said we were always going to do for our 20th anniversary was that we would love to go to Bora Bora. That's a great answer to that question. The reason why is that that's just the initial response. I'm going to pull so much more out of that. And I'm gonna follow that up with a couple of questions like, why? Why is that so important to you? And I might respond with, you know, early on in our marriage, it was something that we always dreamed about and we didn't have the money to actually go to Bora Bora. And so we always were looking at pictures of it and we're talking about what we would do when we get there. And so it's just always been a dream of ours, right? And the next question is how? Well, if that's a dream of yours, how are you going to accomplish that over the next year? And that allows me To come alongside them and to actually be a part of this dream. So, I'm gonna ask the why and the how question when it comes to that dreamy question. This is a very powerful framework, but here's what you've got to understand as part of this. 2 of the greatest interviewers of our time have been Oprah Winfrey and have been Larry King. Oprah could get anybody to cry. If you haven't ever seen Oprah interview someone, Holy smokes, she could get anyone to just bawl when she was interviewing them. Larry King, he could get people to spill the beans on things that they've never told anybody else, right? In very similar interviews, one of the things I noticed both of them responding to questions that were very aligned in their responses was questions around, why do you think you were such a great interviewer? And one of the things that Oprah responded with was, I always came in with a list of scripted questions, but it was the question after that question that was unscripted that made me a great interviewer. Oprah was a great listener, is what Oprah was. Larry King was a great listener, is what Larry King was. And so, it's not the initial question you ask around Ford, That family question, Richard, tell me about your family. And my response to you might be, been married for 21 years. I've got 4 kids, 2 daughters, 2 sons. The youngest is 6, the oldest is 17. Now, I might give you that as an answer. It's the next question that's the most powerful question. That question might go along the lines of, wow, you've been married for 21 years. That's incredible. Like, what advice would you give someone That's a newlywed that's just been married. That's a great question. It might be, wow, 4 kids. Welcome to the crazy 4-kid-plus club. That's impressive. Like, as a successful business person, what's one piece of advice that you would give somebody that's looking to have kids? Those are better questions, right? The family question, tell me about your family, that's the scripted one. It's the next one that matters, right? Occupation. How'd you get into your industry? How'd you get into this business? That's the scripted question. I might say it's a crazy story and here's how it happened. But behind that, you've got to be listening and asking the next best question. We are trying to peel the layers to the recruit back. I'm trying to get to the core of the individual. I'm trying to get stories out of them. I'm trying to get to know them. Here's a— this is something I've remembered. For the last 20 years. The magazine Psychology Today, almost 2 decades ago, it's probably been a little longer than that. The magazine Psychology Today ran an article and it was a non-scientific study that they did. Here's what they did. The chief editor of the magazine got on a plane and flew across the United States. He had no clue who he was going to sit beside, okay? As he's flying across the United States, there's 2 staffers that are staged at the airport where he's going to land. So, they knew this was going to go down. They wanted to try and extract some information to prove a point. And so, as they land the plane and get off the plane, the chief editor points out the guy that he sat beside. And the 2 staffers walk up to this gentleman and they say, hey, can we ask you a couple of questions around the person that you flew beside? And he said, sure. First question they asked was, tell us what you think about him. Just a general thought. Tell us what you think about him. And his response was this. He's the most interesting person I've ever met. So the follow-up question was, what's his name? I don't know, he didn't introduce himself to me. What's he do for a living? I don't know, we didn't talk about that. Where is he from? I don't know. And as they got through the list of questions that they asked, what came out is that this person who had just said, this is the most interesting person I've ever met, knew absolutely nothing about the chief editor of the magazine. What the chief editor did as he flew across the United States is he worked through a process very similar to this, which is that he was simply asking great questions. And as he got information, he was asking great follow-up questions. So this is how in stage 1 you build relationship. This is how you get to a place where someone would leave a meeting not maybe hearing but 20% of the time you talking, And then saying something like, that's the most interesting person I've ever met. So this is the framework that you want to take into your meeting, and that, that becomes your stage 1. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. Because of the length of time, because we want to keep these somewhere around 20 to 30 minutes, we're going to end this podcast here. And then what we're going to do in the next podcast is we're going to pick up with stage 2. And stage 2, if you thought stage 1 was important, stage 2 is more important than stage 1. We're going to give you a framework that you probably have never heard about that is going to take you to a place in your recruiting meetings where people are going to see you as a leader that's in a different category. And that's what we're about here. When people leave this face-to-face meeting, what do we want them to say? Not just that they're the most interesting person I've ever met. We want them to say, that's a leader that I could see myself following. That's a leader I could see myself aligning my talents with. So that's what we're after. So thanks so much for listening to this Recruiting Conversations. Do you know, like right now, this blows my mind. Right now we are top 100 on iTunes in iTunes marketing category. I don't even know how we've gotten there, right? But how we've gotten there is through people like you listening to this and then sharing it with peers, sharing this with people that you know it'll bring value to. So thank you so much that you're doing that, that you're passing this on to people. As an organization, our primary goal in doing what we do is this: we want to help great leaders build teams. We want to help great leaders equip themselves, grow their skill set, and build great teams because what we believe is this, is that when we influence leaders, when we influence recruiting leaders, when we improve their leadership, when we improve their recruiting because there is an intersection there where your recruiting skills and your leadership skills overlap. That when we help you grow, that we're impacting people beyond you. Because that's the truth. Great leaders impact people underneath their umbrella, inside their teams, inside the walls of their businesses. And then what happens is that influence and that impact then goes on to moms, it goes on to dads, it goes on to children, it goes on to friends, it goes on to our communities. And so when we help you, And when we equip you to pursue people correctly, which by the way, we all want to be pursued in the right way. There's just something about being pursued in the right way that's affirming, that's enjoyable. We all want that. That when we pursue people correctly like that, we are most likely to have the opportunity to bring them to our teams. And that's what we're passionate about. So thank you for sharing this with people and let's continue to do so because we want to grow this podcast. In 2020 as much as we did in 2019. So, I'll talk to you again on the next podcast. We'll get into that second point of 4 points while we're present, when we're face-to-face with people, and I'll see you on the other side then. Thanks so much. Okay, so this is gonna be this video. Come back, part 2. Come back, part 3. Come back, part 4, because we're gonna be talking about the other 4 pieces that you've got to get If you're going to actually get to a place where you're winning around this, around your recruiting efforts. Okay? So I'll see you again. It will literally be the same shirt. I'm not going to try and impress you and change shirts. I'm going to go back to back to back because I have the time right now to do it. So I'll see you again in the next video.