Recruiting Conversations - Richard Milligan - EP67 - Oversimplify Recruiting For Producing Managers

Hey everybody. It's Richard Milligan, your host for Recruiting Conversations. Welcome back. We are going to talk about recruiting. Seems obvious, right? That's the only thing I ever talk about on my podcast. I eat, breathe, and sleep it. And when you eat, breathe, and sleep recruiting, you cut Podcasts that you share your ideas. So this is a topic that I think is relevant to leaders who lead recruiting leaders, but also recruiting leaders who are producers that are also responsible for the team and recruiting to the team. So one of the challenges I found is that in certain industries, you know, real estate being one of those, mortgages being one of those, insurance being one of those, where you have a producing recruiting leader, it can be a real challenge to block time to build the team because it would be normal that this role would have 12 to 15 things going on at any given time. But then you throw production into it and it changes the dynamics of that altogether, which is that now you're up to 20, 25 things that are in the air. At all times. And recruiting doesn't seem to be a fire to put out. It doesn't seem to be a client that needs a return call. It's not aligned with what is immediate. It's not aligned with what is like 911 in the moment. And so this a lot of times gets pushed. And in industries like insurance and real estate and mortgage, where you have sometimes 25 to 30% churn as an industry, For your experienced sales roles, right? Real estate agents, insurance agents, loan officers, branch managers, sales managers— those positions have a lot of churn because they are recruited heavily. And part of that is also these industries are dynamic and that they're constantly changing. So when you combine the recruiting pressure With a changing industry, you get tenures that are, you know, people stay at a company for somewhere around 2.5 to 3 years. So if you're not recruiting consistently, you're actually dying. Your team may not lose anyone this year, but there always comes a time when the law of averages come into play. Now, you, you can retain your people at a higher level than 25 to 30% churn. No doubt, if you lead well, that's a part of that, right? We have a hat that we produce that we send to people from time to time, and on it says, lead well, recruit right, legacy matters. So if you're aligned with that framework, you will retain your people. A lot of times in the single digits, you'll have churn. 8% is— it can be normalized, and even in industries where you have 30% churn. for you if you're leading well and you're recruiting people through the right lens to your team, if you're recruiting them right. Now, with that said, here's the challenge. Most producing leaders don't think they have time to recruit. So if you're leading this audience, one of the things that you have to do is make sure you have a game plan for leading them through this. If you're the individual that is in that seat, Then you have to figure out a game plan for how you can consistently recruit. There is a thing called mind memory. Mind memory is very similar to muscle memory in that when you do things again and again and again, you get good at them. I used to play golf. I don't play golf anymore, but when I played golf, one of the things that was very true is that before I actually played a round of golf, I would show up, I would hit a couple buckets of balls to get my muscle memory going. Now, they were rhythmic. I'd hit one right after the other. And in that, I found a rhythm. I would never go to the first tee box without hitting a couple of buckets of balls because I was an amateur, a serious amateur golfing in the mid to low 90s. And that game that I played without warming up would be in the hundreds. So what's very true is that you need, in a recruiting leader role, You need rhythm. You need mind memory as it relates to recruiting, or you're not as good as you are when you have consistent rhythmic day-to-day actions that you're taking. Conversations, stories, phone scripting, right? How you follow up with people, where you bring value— those things have to be rhythmic in recruiting, or you're average at them. So as a producing leader, what I have found is that, and if you're leading these people, here's another thing that would be helpful. What I have found is 5% of your role can be recruiting. So we've done about 700 surveys this year. What we've found is that the average producing manager is working about 50 hours a week. And if you take my framework of 5% of your role is recruiting, what you come up with is that 2.5 hours a week is how much time you would be investing in recruiting. 5 days in a week, 30 minutes a day is 2.5 hours. So if I'm leading you, I've got to gain agreement around this. I use the framework recruiting leader a lot. Why? Because in these industries, if you're not recruiting, you are dying. And so a part of your role is recruiting. This is an identity. You can't be a market leader in these industries unless you're growing, unless you're building. So I would never give you the title of market leader or branch manager or office leader or whatever, unless I gained agreement around the role of this, which is that you have to recruit. You have to be able to recruit. And so then with that framework in place, now I have to go to what can I actually gain agreement on? Because expectations without agreements are toxic. So I want to make sure I clearly communicate to you, not that we would like to grow, but it's an expectation for the role to grow. If you're leading this, you've got to do that. You got to gain agreement on this. And an easy way to gain agreement on this is Get buy-in for 30 minutes of recruiting a day. 5% of your role, 95% can be everything else. 5% has to be recruiting. Now, once you've gained agreement on that, or once you as a producing leader come here and say, I can do that, 5% is attainable, 30 minutes a day, that makes sense. I can do that. Now what's the framework for the 30 minutes a day? You've got to lay that out. If you're leading this, you got to lay it out because they need clarity of the vision. What are you asking them to do? Cast a vision around this. If you're in the role, okay, and you're buying into this, you need to know what you're going to do. So I'll give you a very simple framework. Recruiting is nothing more than 3 things. Ready? It's identifying talent. You got to, you got to know the talent pool in your market. Right? And you, you've got to go and identify these people— cell phone numbers, email addresses, where do they reside on LinkedIn, where do they live on Facebook, Instagram, these social platforms. I need that information. So as there's a lot of times there's production tools, um, when I say production tools, there's tools that aggregate the production data for a market and you can see what people are doing. So you need to know who your avatar is. You know, you need to know what your model match is. Is it a certain number of employers in the last decade? That's kind of a loyalty score for me. Is it an amount of production if you're an experienced salesperson? Is it a book of business mix? Is there a blend in the business mix that you have that matters? It may or may not, but in some industries like the mortgage industry, it can. There are things here that matter in relationship to the avatar. And if you've got these tools that allow you to aggregate the data around production, you will know who your avatars are, who your model matches are in your market, so that you can go make initial contact, which is the next thing. Identify your talent, make initial contact. How are you going to make initial contact? What's your script? How do you— how you cross that relationship bridge matters because Most of you are fishing in ponds. Okay? These are little groups of people in your market that meet your model, that are actually an avatar fit for you. And even if you've got 300 people, it's not— that's not a big audience to go after. And so how you cross the relationship bridge matters because you're going to be pursuing them for long windows of time. So how we make initial contact and set up our process matters. So I've got to be identifying talent. I've got to be making initial contact. The third part of this is in the follow-up, right? I've got good scripting and minimally I gained agreement to stay in touch every month forever. I need to bring you something of value, something of value. We are drowning in noise today. We're drowning in noise while starving for wisdom. Yes or yes? That is a true statement. Do not be part of the noise. Show up with some wisdom for these people. What can you give that's of tangible value to someone? And that is where the follow-up comes into play. So if I'm leading you, I'm going to cast a vision. This is simple recruiting made simple, right? That's one of the, one of the websites we own. Recruiting is simple. We own both of those URLs because recruiting is simple. It's initially, it's identifying talents, making initial contact. It's follow-up. And now I can take my 5 days a week and say, how do the 30 minutes every single day break down? I know it takes me about 3 minutes to do research to make a dial. So I know that in 30 minutes I can identify 10 people. I also know that about 1 out of 11— depends on the market— but 1 out of 8 to 1 out of 11 actually answers the phone. So I know that in 30 minutes, if the average conversation is somewhere between 7 and 12 minutes, I can have 1 to 2 conversations in dialing the people that I actually identified as people that I want to call. And now I begin to set up a process, which is follow-up. Okay. And so every single month moving forward, as this list grows of people that I've identified as talent, I've made first contact with that either moved forward with me in next steps or said that minimally I can stay in touch. That list grows. And every single month I allocate time to bringing something of value to this small audience, the small group of people that meets my avatar. And now you have a very simple process, a very simple system to get buy-in if you're a leader, to actually execute on if you're the actual market leader, that's the producing manager. And this simple framework can be incredibly powerful. Here's the number one question I get asked by executive leaders Heads of sales, presidents, CEOs, COOs, the number one question I get asked in these 3 industries is this: how do you get your producing leaders to recruit? That is the ceiling for the organization in markets. This is a path to removing that ceiling. So first, the year is coming up here in the next 45 days. Perfect opportunity. to cast a new vision around this, get buy-in on this. 5% of the role should be recruiting minimally, even if you're producing. And I gave you a framework to actually put that piece in place. Now, with that said, beyond that, you've got to have some way to measure what's actually being done. Pearson's Law. Pearson was a mathematical genius from the 1800s. He was a genius scientist. In that era, he said there was a universal law. The law was this: what is measured is improved; what is measured and reported is improved exponentially. So I want to measure this, okay? Because I want to improve it. So how are you going to measure it? Give me some simple metrics that they can report back to me. Okay? Because the reporting piece is where we get the exponential. I can just say, "I want you to measure it." But the moment I say, report it back to me, what am I doing? I'm creating some level of accountability. And we all need this. Embrace this. If you're a producing leader to market, embrace the accountability. Why? Because we're all weak. We all get distracted. We all make choices in the day-to-day for what is important. And recruiting is imperative to your success. Embrace it as a leader. The right way to articulate this is we know that what we measure, we improve, and what we measure and report, we improve exponentially. And as a team, we will be world-class. The only way we'll be there is if we create this layer of measurement and have you report it. Okay, and now for you, it's an opportunity to create a feedback loop, a simple feedback loop. How many people, people are you identifying as talent each week? How many people are you making initial contact with? How many people are on your list? to follow up every single month. Our data says, our data says we, again, we've surveyed about 700 recruiting, what we call recruiting leaders this year. Our data says that the average size of the pipeline is 5.6 people that they follow up with consistently. Most times it's somebody you've worked with at a prior company. It's somebody you know really well, uh, in some way, shape, or form. That is a tiny, tiny list that you cannot win with. You cannot win the, this thing called recruiting with a list of 5 people. That there has to be a larger list in play, and that list should be growing consistently if we're doing this correctly. So that's today's podcast. I know it brought you some value because this would have brought me value a decade ago to have this, some simple framework around this, because I think we overcomplicate this thing called recruiting. It is simply ITMICFFU. That is identifying talent, making initial contact, and forever follow up. And if you can remember that, you know everything you need to know behaviorally around what makes a successful recruiting leader. I look forward to connecting with you again here on our next podcast. This is going to kick out the week of Thanksgiving. So I'm thankful to have you as an audience. I would be even more thankful. If you would pass this on to someone that's in your lane, there's another leader that's in a similar position as you, um, that needs to recruit or needs to have a better understanding around recruiting. So I'd be honored if you'd pass this on. I would also be honored if you would leave me a review. If you're getting value from this, if you can take a few moments in whatever platform you're on, leave a review for Recruiting Conversations. I would be incredibly thankful. That would be an early Christmas present. If you would do that, and I would take that as a gift. Have a great Thanksgiving, everybody. I'll look forward to cutting another podcast week after Thanksgiving. Be blessed, stay safe. We will see you again soon.