Phone Scripting And Making The Most Of Your First Recruiting Call - Episode 1 of 2

Hey everyone, Richard Milligan here, and this video is the intro to my podcast. So if you've seen any of these, we record our podcast on video, and then we also do the podcast live. And so we have a beginning and an ending to the video where we try to bring you just a little extra value. So that you're willing to watch the videos. This will be on our YouTube channel. We'll use this in some of our social platforms. We'll dissect this up and turn it into multiple pieces of content. So there's that. The topic today is phone scripting. This is a very critical part of the recruiting leader success model. Good scripting versus bad scripting. Even should I have a dialer that's making the calls for me, or should I not have a dialer that's making the calls for me? All of those things are good questions and critical questions that you have to answer, and you have to be able to navigate through well if you're going to win inside the lane of recruiting. The phone's dying today, right? Statistical data says that, thank you to robocalls, you know, that we are less likely to answer the phone. So this is a problem that you have to solve, to have a good script when you're calling a recruit to move them to next steps. So we're going to talk a lot about that. I'm going to encourage you to stay to the end. I'm actually going to give you a URL, a link to get more information, a presentation around this that hopefully will bring more value to you there. And so with that said, we're going to jump right on in and get the podcast started here in just a second. The one thing that I will encourage you as you're thinking about your phone scripting to do is to identify fully what you want to accomplish, not just in the time on the phone, right? When I think phone scripting, I'm thinking trying to engage someone at a high level. I'm trying to motivate them to go to a next step, to meet me face to face or in a Zoom, you know, meeting or, you know, a phone call, whatever that might be. And but on the other side of that, there is the what's next The what's next, the what's next. I want you to think about that part, 'cause your phone scripting ultimately is setting an agenda for the what's next, okay? And you need to— one of the reasons why my phone script that I use works really well is because I determined what I wanted in the what's next, and that included the framework for the face-to-face meeting. We'll talk a little bit about that today. I want you to start there, okay? And that will equip you better with a phone script. I'm gonna give you one today that may or may not work for your line of business, but at the minimum, I'm gonna plant some seeds some good seeds for thought so that you can come to some clarity around it. Okay. We're going to go live here in just a second on the podcast, and we're going to do that in 3, 2, 1. Hey everybody, this is Richard Milligan and welcome to a very special edition of Recruiting Conversations, the podcast. Excited to be back with you here today. The past, I don't know, 3 weeks have been interesting for me, to say the least. I had set a goal to record these on a weekly basis, multiple ones per week. Well, I had knee surgery, and then in the midst of my knee surgery, managed to fall down a flight of stairs. You know, it's— I guess there's art to, uh, in agility required to navigate stairs on crutches, and if you just get stuck in the wrong place, I can tell you that it doesn't work out well. So, I had surgery on my knee, got that thing tucked up underneath me, and managed to slide down a flight of stairs. So, I have been good managing the day-to-day. My grandmother had a great quote, and the quote was, sometimes surviving is considered graceful. And what I can tell you is that that was true of some of those moments over the past few weeks, but I'm back. And I'm excited to be back. I love doing these podcasts. I get a little amped up to do them. My energy feels like I'm coming on stage. Our audience is growing around this, and so I'm excited to know that the message that we have to share with the world for recruiting leaders is resonating. I would ask, look, if you— if I'm bringing value to you, I would just ask one thing that you can do for me is you can share this podcast. Right, that's pretty easy to do. If you're on an iPhone or a Droid, you click a couple of buttons and you share it with one person. I would feel honored if you would do that in this moment. We're going to talk about phone scripting today. We're going to talk about, you know, that one thing that most people aren't really good at, which is getting on the phone in a cold call type situation And what I found specific to the recruiting leader role. So let me— let's identify that if you're new to the podcast. This is someone who manages a team, but then is also responsible for growing, building, recruiting to that team. This is not someone who is a true recruiter, but this is someone who has to wear that as one of the 12 to 15 hats that they navigate on a monthly ongoing basis. So your skill set is not necessarily in the sweet spot of a recruiter skill set. What I found is that the recruiting leader is typically very relational, loves people, loves to help grow people, build people, mentor people. And for whatever reason, that personality, when it comes to having to pick up the phone and cold call someone, has some hesitancy around that. A lot of times does not have the skill set to actually do that. And for a number of reasons. I was blessed when I came into the recruiting leader role that I had actually as one of my first jobs, Spent 2 and a half years as a successful telemarketer. So I had picked up some great books like Stephen Schiffman's book, Telemarketing 101. I, I understood some of the things that you needed to accomplish early on in establishing rapport and having good phone scripting to get to the next step. So I think my phone scripting was better than most recruiting leaders' phone scripts. And so I probably had better results from it than most people have. But I think one of the reasons why people move away from the phone is that, one, it doesn't fit their particular skill set, but then two, they just don't have a good script and they definitely haven't memorized the script that they're going to use to a place where they're confident and comfortable with it and able to overcome objections. So there's an element to that, but we're not here to talk about that part of it today. We're gonna talk specifically around the scripting piece of this and some of the things that you can do to maximize the results that you get from the script that you use. Okay? So let's just establish this. The phone is dying right now. And when I say the phone is dying, that may sound a little dramatic, but I remember back in 2007 reading an article in Entrepreneur Magazine that said that the phone would be dead, that phone prospecting would be dead in less than 10 years. Well, here we are, 12 years removed from that. And what I know is that inside my own coaching, in the data and the surveys that we've done— and now we've got several hundred people we've surveyed with this that have been through our coaching— what we know is that about 1 out of 11 actually answer the phone. So for every dial that you make, approximately 1 out of 11 is going to answer the phone. So you— it's hard to scale That type of behavior when you're a recruiting leader. So understand that, like, if I'm going to dial 11 times and one person's going to answer, and I've got 30 minutes to 45 minutes per day, which is about what we found the average recruiting leader can carve out of their schedule for recruiting, like, you aren't going to be making hundreds of calls in a day. You're making a handful of calls in a day. Okay. Understand that the phone is dying, right? Data says that people are coming to organizations specifically in that recruiting leader role. People are coming to that particular position because of things like strong leadership branding and social media through non-direct solicitation, right? Direct solicitation would be considered the phone. Non-direct solicitation would be building a relationship on LinkedIn or Facebook or in some other social media platform. Right? So yes, the phone— I do believe the phone is dying today. I think some of the truth is in our own behaviors. How many of you right now feel no tension when someone leaves you a voice message? Like, I'm raising my hand because if someone calls me and leaves me a voice message and doesn't follow up with a text, I probably am not that concerned about the voice message. It's probably a robocall. I'm probably getting called by a robot and a voicemail being left by a robot. Right. Or at some degree, a telemarketing call. And so I'm just not that intrigued by my voicemail anymore. Now, I know that's not true of all people, but a higher percentage of people today will say that voicemail is not a good way to communicate with them. Okay? So that's an established fact. So what are our choices inside of that? Well, We've got to develop a good phone script. That's what we're going to talk about here today. But in front of that, we want to identify and research out the talent that we're going to make contact with. I'm not going to dial everybody. I'm not going to go purchase a lead list with all the phone numbers of those specific people and just start smiling and dialing. There's some old terminology for telemarketers, smiling and dialing. I'm going to be very specific in who I'm researching and who I'm making contact with before I dial. So we're going to do that. We're going to talk about that. Now, here's your choice. You do the research, you make the dial, or you go hire what I would call a dialer, a recruiting assistant of sorts. You hire the dialer, you train the dialer, and you have them set appointments for you. Now, In truth, I spent 10, 10 and a half years as a recruiting leader making all the dials myself. And then in a 3 and a half year window where I had enormous success, I started with a dialer and then had 2 dialers and then had 3 dialers that were just dialing, were doing the research for me, making the dials for me, and were setting the appointments for me. Okay. So what I get In business is that each of us has a very narrow lane, that if we will get in that very narrow lane and maximize the time that we spend in that very narrow lane, which is our gifting. If I'm in this narrow lane where my gifting is, I'm the Visioneer. Each of you should be developing your ability to meet with someone and present a vision very clearly. So if you're the Visioneer, Man, your narrow lane where you are going to win at scale is if you're setting in that a lot. And I got to a place where 3 people were researching, making the phone calls, and using a short phone script representing me to get people into a conversation with Richard. So that is the best formula. But I get, like, I spent a long season in my career where I could— that was not an option for me. I didn't have the financing or the freedom or the empowerment from an organization to go create that position. And when I got there and I created that, I was able to grow at scale very quickly. So this was a key piece to me being able to grow at scale, was getting in front of people. I think we all understand the more bats that we have, right? At-bat is a baseball term. Okay, so the more swings that I have at the plate, The more likely I am to win. That's just basic common sense, right? That's not like an epiphany moment for anybody. If you made 4 Visionaire presentations a day to people versus making 1 per week, you're going to win more. Am I right or am I right? That's just truth. So the dialer is a great way to get there and to just enable you to make more swings, more bats at the plate. And one of the things that comes from that Is that the more you do it, the better you get. The muscle memory, so to speak, comes into play. If I was going to go play golf, which by the way, I don't play golf anymore. So after having my C4-C5 fused from a boating accident, my rotation's not that great, and so my swing's not that awesome. So I don't play golf anymore, which is a win because I, you know, 4 to 5 hours, that's more that I can do, you know, with my family and other things that matter. But if I was going to use a golf analogy, if you and I went to the golf range and I was going to hit a bucket of balls and you were going to hit a bucket of balls and you stood in that little tee box and you would hit one, tee it back up, hit another, tee it back up, hit another. But me, on the other hand, had a requirement that every single time I teed up a ball and I hit it, I had to walk all the way back to the clubhouse to get a drink of water and then come back and hit another ball. My muscle memory would not be there. It would be like starting over again and again and again, and your swing would improve because of the muscle memory. You hit one right and it goes well, you're like, yes, that's it. I can do that again. The problem that you have is where you don't get the swings at bats, the tendency is that you don't quite get to the level that you could get if you were constantly presenting it again and again and again. So that's a side benefit of having someone setting these appointments for you, is that you've got more time available to take the appointments. You are going to get more of the appointments at scale. And when you present them, you inevitably get better and better and better at presenting. Okay? So the dialer is an obvious choice if you have a chance to do that. And we'll talk a little bit about the phone scripting and how it should differ between a dialer and how it should differ between you. Okay? But understand, the dialer could be a critical component to you being able to grow at scale. Okay, enough said. Let's move on. Okay, phone scripting. Let me tell you a quick story. In 2013, going into 2014, that was really— there was a divider in my career where I had average results versus results on steroids. Okay? One of the key factors was was getting the dialer, but a key factor prior to that was me actually developing a phone script that worked. Okay? Now, I don't remember my exact phone script leading up to 2013, but I can tell you it was a bit— the basic premise around it was this: are you open to a new opportunity? And if so, I'd love to meet with you. Now, when you think about that phone script, Are you open to a new opportunity and are you willing to meet with me? I'm obviously setting an expectation. I'm recruiting you and I'm setting an expectation that if you're open to an opportunity that we're going to meet. And so, a lot of times what I was getting from that were people who were already discontent or unhappy. Right? If you're already looking for a new opportunity, then you're probably unhappy where you're at. In most industries right now, when you look at data, people say they're happy where they are. The environment is a good environment for most people where they work. The specific industry that I came from, the mortgage industry, that data today says that 94.6% of people are content where they're at. That only leaves 5.4% of people that are in that particular zone that I was setting the expectations around. Okay, if you're open to a new opportunity, meaning you're— that you're looking to make a change, then you would say yes to that. So I was immediately cutting off the 94.6% and only making myself available to the smaller 5.4%. Would you agree with that? So if you can agree with that premise, then we know that immediately, if only 1 out of 11 is going to answer the phone and I'm only going to be able to position myself for the 5.4%, Excuse me. Then I'm gonna make a lot of dials, a lot of dials. And if you're someone who doesn't enjoy the dials, that's a pretty painful way to build the team, right? So your scripting has to change, and it needs to go to 100% of the people that you're gonna call. Now, here's how I had this aha moment. I went— I, into the end of 2013, when I dissected my recruiting efforts, here's one thing that I noticed. When I got people to a face-to-face, there was 2 distinct meetings that took place. And the next podcast I'm gonna do as a follow-up to this is gonna be the face-to-face meeting piece. So, this is gonna set a precedence for that face-to-face meeting piece. It only makes sense that our next podcast is that particular podcast. So, if you're listening to this, listen to the next one. It'll help make more sense of this. In the face-to-face meeting, what I realized is that there were 2 types of meetings taking place. One was what I would consider the company value proposition meeting where I was leading with the company value proposition. The other one was that meetings were happening, and this was not intentional, they were kind of happening like this on their own because I did not have an agenda when I went into my face-to-face meeting. I didn't have a set agenda for that other than trying to sell you on the company. But for whatever reason, a small percentage of those meetings ended up as relationship-building meetings. Now, here was the aha moment. When I followed the people that came to the organization, that came to my team, almost all of them came through a meeting that took place as a relationship-building meeting. Okay, so it was just an aha moment of, oh wow, how do I create more of that? Because if I can get people to a meeting that's relationship building, then I'm highly likely to get them to my team. So, as I began to dissect all this, I went back to my phone script and I said, okay, why are people showing up at scale? Most of the people that showed up were there and they were asking questions about my company. And part of that was the expectation around the phone script, right? Are you open to a new opportunity? That set the expectation that when you show up, I'm going to talk about the company. That's obvious, right? So I changed the phone scripting to solve the problem of that. Okay, so there were 2 elements to my phone script that I added. Okay, one was this: if you're willing to meet with me, I promise not— I promise to not talk about my company, and I promise to not try and recruit you. Okay, I immediately said, look, I need to set precedence So that when— so that if people say yes and they show up to that meeting, I've now put guardrails around the meeting. I put buffers around the meeting that say, look, we're not going to talk about the company. We're not going to talk about me trying to recruit you. Okay? So I added that element to my phone scripting. And when I added that element to my phone scripting, my efforts inside my specific meetings Accelerated. The number of people that were willing to go to next steps with me accelerated. Okay, we'll talk about the face-to-face meeting in the next podcast. I want you to understand this: that first meeting that you have with someone should not be a recruiting meeting. It just shouldn't. Okay, think about this. People come to an organization, okay, because of who you are as a leader. Not because of the company. Now, company value proposition matters. It does matter. Yes, it matters. But truth be told, your leadership value proposition matters more. No one gets to the organization until they come through a leader with the organization. So, who you are, especially at this level. Remember, this podcast is for the recruiting leader. Like, the people you recruit, you also lead. Okay, and so who you are as a leader matters most. When I had that aha moment, it changed that face-to-face meeting completely. It was no longer a sales presentation of the organization. It was talking, building relationship, and talking about who I was as a leader. And that was the framework for it. And I protected that. If people showed up and asked questions about the meeting, I would say, haha, when I talk to you over the phone, I promise not to try and recruit you and talk about the company value proposition. And so I put boundaries around that. But if you've got some questions about the company at the end of this meeting, let's discuss those, or let's set up another meeting so we can talk about the company. So I'm protecting that first meeting. The phone script is critical to that. You're not going to be able to protect that first meeting unless you're setting different expectations. Now here's what happened. I went from getting about 1 out of every 20 to 25 people that would say yes to meeting with me to 3 out of 4 of 10, 30 to 40% would say yes to meeting with me. So I'm going from around a 5% or less appointment rate per individual I'm talking to, to a 30 to 40% appointment rate per individual I'm talking to. Because I simply changed my phone script. Okay? And what I know, because I coached that to a phone script, what I know about that phone script is that that's true of anyone that uses that phone script. Okay? So I want you to get this. Now I'm going to give you some bullet points around the phone scripting so that you have an understanding. I'm not going to give you an exact script, but I'm going to give you some bullet points around the phone scripting that's going to help you set the expectation. That, that face-to-face meeting is now a relationship-building meeting. It is not a recruiting presentation. We have to change our models. Okay, most industries today lead with company value propositions specific to this role that we're talking about, the recruiting leader role. Most recruiting leaders are leading with the value the company brings, the toolbox, as I call it, the widgets. Okay? What's in the toolbox? The things that are in the toolbox are maybe a CRM that you use, maybe a point of sale that you use, maybe the support that you have. It could be the compensation structure that you have. It could be things like sign-on bonuses that you're offering. All of those things are inside the company toolbox. Even to a large degree, a lot of people lead with company culture. Okay, company culture does not matter as much as local culture, leadership culture, right? You can have great corporate culture, and when you get to the corporate offices, you can feel that. But in the field, at the local office level, you have to have leadership culture. Okay, so, so you've got to get this, and you've got to be able to describe what that leadership culture looks like when you're meeting with someone face-to-face. Okay.