Your Secret Weapon - Dreaming With Recruits

Hey everybody. It's Richard Milligan, the host of Recruiting Conversations. Welcome back to another podcast. If you're seeing the video, I'm a little bit animated today. I love what I do, and I'm excited to bring you an idea that will further you on your journey as a recruiting leader. I have so much passion around helping the recruiting leader because I think that you, if you're listening to this podcast and that's you, you have the most difficult job in any organization. You have to inspire the uninspired to make a change. This isn't, you know, it's one of the things I was talking about earlier today with a coaching client. It's like we, most people that recruit think they're trying to find Someone that's already experienced a trigger event that's motivated to make a change. And we're not— we are ultimately trying to find people that are already happy where they're at. And we are trying to motivate someone who would say— I'll put quotations around content— someone who's content where they are, we're trying to motivate that person to make a change. And so that has to be the most difficult thing on the planet to do. And so that's why I'm here to support you. That's why I can get excited about doing a podcast for you in the middle of a crazy season. It is a crazy season right now. But thanks for tuning in today. That's not what I was here to talk about. What I'm here to talk about is a simple idea that I shared earlier today with a coaching client. And I think it was a good aha for him. So I want to share that aha with you because I know I spent more than a decade as a recruiting leader, not knowing this thing. And it may be above all things, the one thing that you need to know. In fact, I think in that coaching session, I said, if in the 12 weeks you spend with me, the only thing you get is this, it's actually worth the price of admission because this thing is that important. One of the things I'm very aware of is that most people think they're trying to recruit unhappy people or people that have experienced some sort of career event to come to their team. And ideally, what we want to do is find people that are happy where they're at. That would— I'd put quotations around happy— and motivate those people to make a change. And there's only a couple of things that really motivate someone who's not motivated to make a change. One of the things that motivates the unmotivated to make a change is something that I would quantify as dream, something that might, you might quantify as desire that motivates someone who wasn't previously motivated. And I would, I would say there was even a wind of time in my own career around the beginning of 2014, where I was, I started doing some things different as a recruiting leader. And I couldn't figure out why I was moving people into the next step and the next step and the next step. In a very short window of time, grew a team where I left one company, went to another company, which— so I was starting at zero and quickly built a region out of nothing because of this one thing. And I was confused by it in the beginning. People were taking next steps with me. Nothing was wrong in their career. They weren't experiencing any major event at their current organization, but they were willing to go to next steps with me anyways. And the reason why I believe is that I was creating a framework for them as a leader who was also recruiting that they had never experienced before. And I'll give you the framework. The framework is this: when I meet with someone for the first time in a 15-minute meeting, and I purposely do that. So if I was going to call you over the phone or I was going to engage you in messages, whether it be Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or text messaging, my framework would be I've done my research on you prior to this moment. So I know a little bit about you and I would be inviting you into a non-recruiting conversation where no recruiting is allowed because I believe that change is coming. in a major way. This is true of every industry, by the way. Consumer behavior evolved more over the last 18 months than ever in the history of the world. Technology is playing a much larger role. Technology is accelerating the pace that we communicate, the pace that we do transactions. It's changing the framework for how we've done business historically. Change is coming. So with change coming, in my scripting, I would say I believe change is coming. I think we're going to see big changes in our industry over the next 2 to 3 years. Because of that, I think it makes a lot of sense to build relationships with other leaders that you know and trust, that in the event something happens in your career, you'd be willing to pick up the phone and call. Does that sound fair to you? And in that scripting, what I'm inviting them into is a 15-minute meeting. So with that said, I'd love to invite you into a 15-minute meeting where no recruiting is allowed. I simply get to know you. And you get to know me for the future. Okay. So that's what we're inviting people into. Now in this 15-minute meeting, I follow a specific framework. And part of that framework that I follow is I ask a question that is engaging them around desire, trying to conjure up dreams. And so one of the questions I will ask is, what is something big that you want to accomplish through what you're doing over the next decade? That's the dream conversation. A lot of people don't know what that is. It allows me to actually come alongside them and dream with them. Now, a lot of people will ask a different question, which is the goal conversation. What is the big goal that you want to accomplish over the next year or 3 years or 5 years or 10 years? And, and an important part to get in this is that goals are very left-brain oriented. Numbers, measurements, right? It's, it's, it's vetting a lot of times. Like, it's like buying a car, buying a house. What's, what's, what's the house worth? What are the amenities of the house? Do we like the carpet? Do we, do we want hardwood floors? Do we like the location? What are the school systems like? It's similar to buying a house. A house primarily for most people is very left brain. When you move people to their, to their right brain, which is the emotional side of their brain, they make decisions more quickly. They are more decisive in the decisions that they make with the right brain because, because emotions are involved. And so when I ask a goal question, I swing the pendulum over here to the left. When I— so if I ask you that, what do you want to accomplish in terms of goals for the next year? It's left brain. When I say, what's something big and dreamy that you want to accomplish over the next decade through this business? I'm in the right brain. I want to be there for a couple of reasons. One, you make decisions faster. Okay? When people say, I feel like this is the right place for me, I feel like you're a leader that I can trust, my gut is telling me that's all right brain thinking. And when you're there, Make decisions much more quickly and more decisively, and you feel better about that decision in your right brain. So when I ask you that, that dream question, that's why I'm asking that dream question is because I'm in that space. Now, here's the other reason why I want to do it. In all my career, I never had a leader ask me the question, what do you want to accomplish in a window of time that was beyond 12 months? Never in my career. Having a leader come alongside you and say, what's the big dream that you want to accomplish in your career over the next decade? The decade is an important window of time. The reason why? Because anything's possible within a decade. Anything's possible within a decade, right? So what does that allow for? Allows for a dream. When I say what's possible in the next year, not everything is possible in the next year. In fact, it might have been Gary Vee I once heard say that we accomplish less than what we think we can accomplish in a, in a year, but we accomplish more than what we think we can accomplish in the decade. That's a big aha for us as leaders to have. The reason— the 2 reasons for this: the people that I currently have, if I want to retain them— look, if you're in real estate today, you're in mortgages today, You're in insurance today. Most industries, if you are, if you're, if you are recruiting experienced salespeople that are top producers in their industry, it is very normal to have 25 to 30% churn in that position year over year. 1 out of 3 will churn year over year, 1 out of 3 to 4. So if you're a recruiting leader, you're also a retention Leader. You got to retain your people. What's the best way to retain your people? Find out what their dreams are and become the leader that's constantly resurfacing the dream and what you can do to help them accomplish the dream. It's your best retention tool. A number of years ago, probably 7 years ago, there was a survey done by divorcees. They asked the question of divorcees, what was the primary reason that you got divorced? The number one answer is what we all know. We struggled in finances. They were bad with money, right? It's financial is the primary driver for divorces today. But what was interesting to me in the survey is that the number 2 answer in the survey Was that they stopped dreaming together. There is power in dreaming with our people. Think about it. When you, if you're married, the courting process, the dating process, it's all about dreaming, right? Where do you want to live? What do you want to do for, you know, your career? What's the size of family you want? Where do you want a vacation? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Like, we It's a dreaming journey, that courting journey is. That's how people fall in love, right? Through this lens of dreaming. But there's another lens there, and it's a word called desire. What are we doing? We're conjuring— are our desires aligned? If you want to live in Scotland and I want to live in Oklahoma, okay, we don't have similar desires. We don't have similar dreams. Yes or yes? So it'd be very difficult, even if there was a physical attraction, to actually get together as a couple if that were true. So dreaming together, being aligned in our dreams, and us as leaders understanding that we're aligned with helping people accomplish their dreams— it's a retention tool, but it's also a recruiting tool. Now you have to become a leader that has the right heart posture in this. It's not about manipulating people and asking the right questions around their dreams and desires and convincing them of this and then getting them there and not being the leader that actually facilitates the dream because this is a short-term win. You have to be a leader that has the right heart posture to say, I'm all about it. Like, and go to a level where when you ask someone on your team, What's your big dream? And they say something along the lines of, I want to build a cabin on a lake in the southeast portion of the state. That you— and they say it's a log cabin— that, that you're all about helping them accomplish that dream. When someone says they want to send their 4 kids to college, and they don't want any of those kids to college to have any debt coming out because they were so handcuffed by debt when they got married, Because they had gone to college for 5 years and financed it all, and their dream is to provide that financial freedom, first step of freedom to their kids, then you have to help them accomplish that as a leader. So, how do you do that? Well, at one point, I've had a dream board in my office where I could visualize the dreams of every one of my people. And that person wanted a cabin on the lake. I had a cutout picture of a cabin and a sticky note with their name above it, and they had a spot on my dream board because I wanted to see it. I wanted to revisit it. I wanted to be reminded of that. And I would buy you a subscription to Cabin Magazine, and I would go out of my way to get a lake magazine, real estate magazine, and give it to you so that you could see what was available for real estate. And I would be talking with you around the financial component and And the planning of that and the saving and whatever was required to get your finances in order to make sure that you could do that. So we can't just be someone who's actually in conversations about dreams. We have to be dream facilitators. The best recruiters that also lead get this, that if they do this with their current existing group of people, and they Then also lead with this when they're recruiting, that this can become the one thing. I don't know about you. I've never had a leader that asked me about the dream, that asked me about what my ultimate desire was to what I wanted to accomplish through what I was doing in my career. But if they would have, they'd have been very likely to actually get me to their team. I was in a recent conversation with a mega producer in an industry. This person's top 1/10 of 1% in the industry. This individual recently got a million-dollar sign-on bonus. No jokes. Got a million-dollar sign-on bonus to leave one company and go to another company. Conversation was around what motivates you most in coaching. What's your largest motivator? What's your why? Question comes up and the question goes along the lines of, what if your only motivator is money? And I didn't hesitate. My immediate response is that will be short-lived. There will come a time and a place where you will run out of motivation. I'm in a live Zoom meeting with the individual. Individual leans forward, puts his hands in his In his— puts his head, his face in his hands, probably 5 seconds, then comes back and says, that's me. And then goes on to tell the story of how this individual left one company to go to another company, primarily not for the sign-on bonus, primarily because couldn't figure out why they couldn't get motivated. Built a massive book of business. Gets to a place where they can't get motivated to continue building the business or just even facilitating status quo in the business. So makes a massive change, takes a big check for sign-on bonus, gets to this next place, and now there's no motivation. And what I would say to that is that there's no big dream. What do you do when desire Runs out. And most people come to a place in their career where they don't have a big dream. Like, desire is very powerful. It leads us to some very dark places when it's not healthy. But when desire is healthy, it leads us to some of the most incredible places that will motivate us, that will drive us to do things that we couldn't do otherwise. So as a recruiting leader, a question you have to ask Is what's the big dream? What do you want to accomplish over the next decade that's big and dreamy that you'll accomplish through what you do in this business? And when someone says, I haven't thought about that, it's our job to ask better questions, to come alongside them, and to be someone that inspires a dream. And if you can do this as a recruiting leader, it becomes your secret sauce in recruiting, because once I have this Again, my heart posture has to be to, to help you accomplish this. Once I have this, at all costs, I will have you believing, and I will be mapping out a strategy to help you accomplish this. I'll give you a perfect example of this. Uh, it's been probably 10 years ago that I was recruiting a top producer in a market. They were the number one producer in their market. And I was recruiting around compensation because the difference in compensation with where they were and where I— what I was going to offer them was more than twice what they were currently making. And it seemed obvious to me that even if all things were just equal, which they weren't, but if all things were equal, if you're going to make twice the amount of money, like, I should be able to motivate this person to make a change, right? And that was wrong. I couldn't motivate them to make a change. Now, what was true of this individual, that, that, that this individual had actually adopted several children from another country, and their heart was very aligned with that. It was that they were very aligned with, with orphans in other countries. And because of that, I took the time one afternoon just to say, what would the difference in money be As it relates to where their dream is. And I created a document. And the document was basically spelling out what would it look like in the next 5 years, where you are compensation-wise with where we are compensation-wise. But I took that number and I converted it into their dream, which is how many orphans that don't have moms and dads could you help With the difference. I kid you not, within 5 minutes of sending an email with that context around it, this individual calls and says, let's have a conversation. As a recruiting leader, you have to know the dream and you have to be a dream facilitator, not someone who convinces people. That the— that your opportunity is better than their current opportunity, that your compensation opportunity is bigger and better than their current compensation opportunity. It is your dream to under— is your job. If you're going to build a— have success recruiting and build a team recruiting around you as a leader, it will be your job to make sure that you ask the right questions to get to the dream, that once you have it, you never let that dream die. That in every conversation you have, you come, you come back to this and ask questions around it. Hey, Richard, where are you in relationship to our last conversation? Last conversation we had was around this. And I was thinking about that today, wanted to reach out to you. And if it's building that cabin on the lake, okay, at Christmas time, you will get something in your mail. And it might be a little note with the, with a real estate magazine that I went out of my way to pick up at that lake. It might be a cabin subscription with a little note from me that says, want to keep the dream alive, can't wait to see you build that cabin on Lake Whatever. Okay, when you get this, okay, then you'll not only recruit with this, but you will lead with this as a leader with your current team, because this is how you insulate your people. Against leaving. Where a leader has an identity as a dream facilitator, people very rarely leave that leader. Where people leave leaders is where leaders don't facilitate dreams. Show me a leader who's a dream facilitator, I'll show you a leader who has virtually zero churn, that doesn't lose people. So hope this brought some value to you today. Actionable steps for you: an idea not activated on within 24 hours is a dead idea. I learned that decades ago. Be an activator on this. What's your first step? Your first step is probably scheduling 15-minute meetings with your current team and saying, like, I was, I was thinking the other day that I don't know what ultimately is your biggest motivator. And I really want to find that out. Have you thought about what your big dream is? What do you want to accomplish that's big and dreamy through what you do here over the next decade? Do you know that? And if they don't know that, be someone who comes alongside them and inspires them to know it. And when you get that, go build yourself a dream board. Have the names of your people on it. Create photos of things that they want to accomplish through what they do in their career. Let them know that you are all about helping them accomplish that. Make it practical. If someone wants to have a 529 plan for all their kids to go through college, then go find them a financial planner and pay whatever it would cost to have them sit down with a financial planner and then to develop a plan. That's powerful. That's telling me you as a leader or a dream facilitator, that's very practical. Schedule meetings with your current team, practice this on them. How do you ask questions that stimulate the dream, that, that force people to move towards this, to begin thinking around this? And it will make you better on the recruiting side. Because when you ask that dream question, what's the one big thing you want to accomplish through this industry, through your business over the next decade? And someone says, I don't know, you'll be better at being able to uncover that. And desire. Okay. Desire is what, what will motivate people to make a move. You as a leader that will conjure up desire, that will actually be a dream facilitator, will, will, will help motivate people that are happy and content where they are to actually move to where you are. So I know this brought value to you. It's brought value to me in my own, in my own career. Now go act on it. And until I talk to you again on another Recruiting Conversations, have a great week, everybody.