A New Diet For Recruiters

Quite often, the best way to capture someone’s attention is to tell them a story… especially if it is true and something that would interest them.  For example, let me tell you…

I was in Wal-Mart one time buying a large bag of Purina for my dog Jack and as I was standing in the check out line a woman behind me asked if I had a dog…

Being two behind and not on mission that month, I was feeling a bit crabby so on impulse, I told her no, I was starting The Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn’t because the last time I tried it I ended up in the hospital, but that I had lost 50 pounds before I awakened in the intensive care unit with tubes coming out of almost everywhere and IV’s in both arms. Her eyes about bugged out of her head.

I went on and on with the bogus diet story and she was totally buying it. I told her that it was an easy, inexpensive diet and that the way it works is to just load your pockets, or her purse, with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The package says the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

Now ya’ll, I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a tall guy behind her.

Horrified, she asked if I thought something in the dog food had poisoned me and was that why I ended up in the hospital.   

I said no…..I was sitting on the road, licking my butt, when a car hit me.

I thought the tall guy was going to have to be carried out the door.

True stories are powerful tools for the Professional Recruiter!  Now, let’s move out smartly and make some good things happen. 

Bill Malone

Malone’s Rule

After a prospect has made a decision to enlist, the RRNCO has 72 hours from that hour to put the applicant in the Army National Guard or probability of enlistment will begin to drop dramatically.

     Working as a RRNCO I quickly found out that after I made my enlistment presentation and closed the prospect on a decision to enlist I had 72 hours to put that applicant into the Guard or my probability of getting that enlistment would diminish rapidly. No, no one told me this but I developed this rule after a number of painful experiences with no shows. 

     What happens in the presentation (some call it the interview) is that the prospect makes a commitment to enlist based on emotional factors that are related to the expectations that enlisting will satisfy his/her particular needs and wants.  The applicant will then rationalize, to those that he/she trusts such as friends and family, why they decided to enlist.  Sometimes rather than support the great decision that the applicant has made, these people will give them numerous reasons, albeit mostly uninformed, why they should not enlist.  I like to say that sometimes they are “talking louder than we are”.  Here is another reason why “influencers” (yes, find out who they are) should be included in the decision making phase, so that they are informed also.

     The rule, besides helping me get the enlistment, helped create in me a sense of urgency and intensity of action that helped focus me on my applicant as well as focused the applicant on the importance of what we were doing which also served to reduce “no shows”.  If you don’t know already, the ability to focus is a critical skill the RRNCO must develop to become a successful recruiter.

     This rule was so helpful to me that after I became a NCOIC I imposed this rule on my team.  It became one of the important factors that contributed to our Team’s success for the next five years and helped make us the top team in the state (over 100% mission every year) and one of the top ranked teams in the nation for those five years!

     It works!…even with MEPS’s 72 hour rule.

Now, let’s all move out smartly and make some good things happen.

 

Bill Malone

No, it is not all about the numbers!

By Bill Malone

     “If you talk to as many people as you can every day you will be successful. It’s about the numbers!”  That’s what “they” said and it sounded reasonable to me so that is what I proceeded to do.  Needless to say I presented the Guard to anybody that would listen that I thought was remotely qualified and althougth I got lots of practice on my presentation and closing skills, a lot of “yeses” but few enlistments. I quickly learned the value of pre-screening, discovering that I was spending a lot of time with prospects but not the right prospects!  It was fortunate that along the way I was able to enlist some good soldiers into the Guard but I was working 28 hours a day to make my mission.  I quickly came to the conclusion that, “they”, had left out the word “qualified” or maybe in my enthusiasm for doing my job I did what Recruiters sometimes do…hear what I wanted to hear.   Sheer exhaustion caused me to pause and reflect on my experiences and here are just some conclusions I came to about prospects:

• If the prospect walks unannounced into my office wanting to enlist them probably are looking at serious jail time, recently got a possession charge, suffered a serious illness or some other insurmountable obstacle that would cause me to waste too much time trying to get them qualified. 

Getting someone qualified to join is okay but making someone qualified will get you in deep trouble! Remember this rule always “The good prospects are not going to come to you until you go to them!”   

• The thicker the prospect’s packet the less likely they are going to get into the Guard. 

Trust me when I say that it is much easier to process high quality than low quality!  Less problems, less paper work, less worry!  That is why the high school market is better to work; easier to see who is qualified and who is not…high school applicant packets are thin.

• Prospects that did not return my phone calls, emails or respond to repeated attempts were not prospects and were wasting my time. 

No question that persistence pays off but there comes a time to cut the cord and that was usually after my fifth attempt. 

• If they kept giving me the “run around” on a decision then I knew I was wasting my time, worse, I was allowing them  to waste my time. 

These are the prospects that will “no show” you and usually resulted from a poor presentation and/or poor closing. 

• Having more than two interviews with the prospect spelled trouble and usually a waste of time.

The longer that it took me to get them to say yes the less likely they were to join so anything over two meetings I considered a waste of my time unless they called me!       

     Now, seeing as many people as you can is important but like I learned, it was the quality of people that I saw and the efficiency of my prospecting activities that made me a successful RRNCO.  I also found that working the lower quality market was so time consuming (gathering paperwork, court documents, etc.) that it was seldom worth the effort.  Besides, we know that bad people make for bad soldiers.

     To help me focus on seeking out a higher quality prospect I created a “straw man” for each of my markets.  Want to know what a “straw man” is and how it works?  Look for “Straw Man” post coming soon!  Until then…

Let’s all move out smartly and make some good things happen!

Do they ‘hafta’ like me?

By Bill Malone 

 

     Over and over I have had sales experts tell me that it’s important to my success as a Recruiter that my prospects like me or they won’t enlist.  Well, I think that is a lotta bunk because some of you out there are probably like me, not the most likeable person you have ever met, especially if not on mission.  Yet, I have enlisted a lot of great young people into the Army National Guard despite this supposed handicap.  So how did I do it?  

     You professional Recruiters know that it is not about like as much as it is about respect.  I really don’t care if they like me or not (okay, so I do a little, but just a little), what I really want my prospects to do is trust me.  That trust is only gained through building respect and more importantly, mutual respect.  My prospects came to trust me by knowing that I cared about who they were and what they wanted, not what I wanted.  These are some of the things that I knew about my prospects when they sat down to talk to me:

 

-They are very knowledgeable and I knew that the vast majority of them had already checked the Guard out on the internet and probably checked me out too. They had chosen the Guard first and then they had chosen me!  About the only reason for a qualified person to not enlist was if I failed to build trust and provide for their needs and wants.

 

-Early into our conversation they knew that I was there to help them make a decision, not make it for them, not force them into it, not sell them…. but help them.

 

-They know that there is a war going on and it’s not any secret that the Guard is a big part of it yet they are still there wanting to talk to me!  The war is not a factor for many but it may be for their parents (we will talk about how to deal positively with this in later postings).

 

-They expected me to know what I was doing and hence, they respected my knowledge of the features and benefits, the qualification requirements and how they could use all of this to better themselves.  The prospect will not trust a rank amateur who isn’t prepared.

 

     One more time, you are not there to be “liked” because plenty of people might like you but walk out of your office saying “really nice guy (woman) but dumber than a box of rocks” or “all he wants to do is enlist me.”  So, remember that you are there to first build and maintain a mutual respect and through that, the trust by your prospect. This mutual respect and trust can only be gained by thorough preparation and a genuine desire to help your prospects achieve their goals.  You don’t have to be liked so you Recruiters with no sense of humor can still be highly successful.

     Now, let’s all move out smartly and make some good things happen.

School Protocol – Part I

- Karen Hix, M.Ed., Education Specialist

 

JAMRS Educator Study (2004) reveals that 87% of teachers don’t really know what and how military enlistment is all about.  They are also not “wowed” by lots of free stuff.  They take it, and they appreciate it – but it generally doesn’t gain invitations to talk to students learn more about what you or the Guard have to offer.  At PEC, you are taught that the Principals and the Counselors are the main POCs in school markets.  NG-PAM 601-1 gives you many hints on what to do with your school program. 

 

If you are lucky, if you have grown up in that community, if your family and your children are heavily involved in the education system in your area, you might be lucky enough to get presentations to students other than to their JROTC.  They will allow you to have lunchroom displays, but even those are becoming very strictly limited in recent times.

 

School protocol says that you must contact the Principal, the Assistant Principals, and the Counselors for permission on school campuses.  They are the primary gatekeepers of all things on campuses – including access to students.  Consider them like the R&R Commanders, the SGMs, and the NCOICs.  However, just like those Commanders, the Principals are generally not directly involved in the day-to-day “field operations” of those they lead.  They are usually not the ones who schedule what will happen on a daily basis in classrooms. 

 

You have to meet the teachers to find those times and subjects where your SEVs are most valuable.  Teachers have “planning periods” – the school receptionist can let you know when those are.  Make advance appointments to meet with them during those times to share what you have to offer!

What am I doing at the WIC office!

By Bill Malone 

While prospecting and looking for places to leave my RPDs (Remote Prospecting Devices i.e. brochures), I stumbled into the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) Program office and asked if I could put up a flyer and leave some brochures.  I didn’t expect and was surprised at the responses that I soon started receiving  from single mothers who began calling and asking about what the Guard had to offer.  Not only did I begin to enlist them but developed a whole new market for the Guard at my station, “The Single Mother” market.   

This really helped solve a problem for me. I was working in a rural area, supporting a Cavalry Troop and the closest dual gender unit to me was over seventy miles away.  As a new Recruiter I quickly discovered that few parents would let their seventeen to eighteen year old son, not to mention their daughter drive seventy miles to this unit alone in the family  car or even their car if they had one.   So my market was really cut in half.  You can imagine my surprise then when I found out that these single mothers would readily drive to that unit to take advantage of the benefits offered such as the extra money, the skill training and educational benefits.  The bonus to the deal was that soon there was a carpool and I was able to include some high school girls into the unit by having them ride with the “Single Mothers”.  More enlistments then had my high school enlistees carpooling together.  What a deal! 

What I discovered about the “Single Mother” market was that these ladies know what they want but before discovering the Guard, their problem was finding it.  Many of them found that enlisting in the Guard was perfect for them.  They looked at the time away from home and their children as an obstacle but saw the benefits so great that this often enabled them to overcame this obstacle.  To them the Guard is packed with benefits that appeal to their needs and wants  such as an improved work environment, extra money as well as educational benefits to gain skills that they can make a living at and other benefits that were especially important to them such as insurance.  Over and over I heard “I am tired of being a waitress” or “working at $%*-mart” just wasn’t cutting it.  The critical focus in this market is to finding out where they are, what they want and when they are willing to do it. Don’t be surprised if they say yes but want to delay shipping as long as possible.  Why? Most often it is because they need to make arrangements for their children and whether they tell you or not, they know they have to get physically prepared; RSP is perfect for them! Another thing about this market to remember is that you had better “know your stuff” and be prepared to give a lot of detail because they are going to ask you for it. 

There were also some other unexpected benefits like when one lady called and asked if this was the Guard Recruiter and finding this out, said she had read my brochure at the WIC office and her husband wanted to talk to me.  Then I heard, “Honey, this is a guy from the Guard Recruiting Office and you need to talk to him”. I did and she helped me enlist him!   The WIC office, a good place to go to develop a market that needs our benefits  and another example of creative prospecting. 

Complaining about YOUR job?

WORLDS APART?

By Karen Hix, M.Ed.

The education world and the military world – not too much in common?  Think about this:

• Which one has salary and budget funded by the legislature – typically just before deadlines?

• Which one is generally and typically misunderstood and sometimes maligned by the public?

• Which one has people saying, “I couldn’t do what you do – thank you for doing what you do.”

• Which one has more “bad side” than good side focused on by the media?

• Which one has to work with less and do more with it?

• Which one has difficulty recruiting for positions?

Contact us for more similarities and how we can help you bridge the differences with your educator COIs!

Ever Feel Like This?

Military Recruiter Training

Strength Maintenance Workshops

NCOIC and Recruiting and Retention NCO Training 

Management and Training Consultants, Inc (MTCI) conducts Strength Maintenance workshops training NCOICs and RRNCOs for the Army National Guard on how to improve leadership and recruiting skills.  Our workshops are participant centered based on real world scenarios that Army National Guard leaders and RRNCOs encounter everyday.  We focus our training efforts on the “how to” for leaders and RRNCOs by showing them how to be successful in the recruiting of soldiers for the Army National Guard.  Our combined experience of 36 years of recruiting as on the street field RRNCOs, NCOIC of the top team in Texas and nationally ranked for five consecutive years and five years as a Recruiting and Retention Sergeant Major gives us a unique ability to transfer knowledge and experience that is recruiting specific and works! Our training is supported by a pre-training assessment that identifies the specific skill set training needed by our clients.  From that assessment we customize the training to improve those skills identified by our clients that will help them improve production.  We conduct five different types of training: 

Strength Maintenance Leader Workshop-These workshops are for NCOICs and other SM leaders that focus on such critical skills as:

 -The fundamental and advanced leadership skills essential for NCOICs and SM leaders to be successful 

-Team Building techniques and tactics for building Recruiting and Retention Teams 

-The role of the NCOIC and what it takes to develop a successful Recruiting and Retention Team 

-Techniques the NCOIC can use to develop Recruiting and Retention Plans

-Establishing and enforcing Team and Production performance standards 

-Selecting the right soldier to be a RRNCO, we call it “Hiring Champions” 

-Techniques, methods and methodologies for increasing production 

RRNCO Performance Improvement Workshop- These workshops are directed at providing RRNCOs the skills and techniques needed to be successful.  Some of our course offerings: 

-Prospecting: Learning how to prospect for appointments, not leads, by showing the effectiveness of capability and power statements 

-Prospecting: Learning the skills and techniques for increasing the number of qualified prospects

-Prospecting: Learning how to make the telephone the Recruiter’s friend 

-Presentations:  How to conduct pre-approach planning, set up and arranges the presentation environment for the prospect 

-Presentations:  We show the RRNCO the techniques and skills of “Gap Analysis”, “engineered” needs and solutions by introducing the RRNCO to Solution Recruiting

-Closing:  We show and train RRNCOs on all the major closing techniques that will increase enlistments and commitment by prospects 

RRNCO Remedial Training Workshops- We custom design these workshops to the skills identified by the Strength Maintenance Leadership that the RRNCOs need improvement on in order to be successful 

School Program Improvement Workshops- These are 12 hour workshops focused on showing RRNCOs how to:

 -Plan and execute a school program for maximum effectiveness 

-Gain access to the classroom 

-Make the RRNCO knowledgeable of School protocols that will increase access 

-Effective presentation techniques that give the RRNCO confidence 

-Show the RRNCO the different types of school programs to increase market segment 

Incentive Training- MTCI conducts incentive training for top producing RRNCOs and Teams at such locations as Alaska, Puerto Rico, Key West, Colorado, and West Virginia.  Along with a great site that is fun for your RRNCOs, we conduct hard skill training and leadership training to move the RRNCO into a higher level of productivity.  Whatever Strength Maintenance and Recruiting training your organization requires we are sure that we can do it based on our previous success, our skills and experiences.  To contact us about your Strength Maintenance training needs please contact:

Bill Malone                                                                                 

Leadership and Training Consultant                                       

MTCI

(254)213-5949 Office                                                     

(903)368-0386 Cell Phone                                                     

Bill.malone@mtci.us                                                                

Craig.scrivner@mtci.us