Recruiting Doesn't Need to be an Uphill Battle

Growth happens either by increasing production per advisor per week or by adding more financial advisors to the team.

Recruiting could arguably be called the backbone of a business.

Without a consistent source of qualified candidates, how will you continue to grow your net field force?

Despite the importance of recruiting, for almost all firms any activity associated with recruiting gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list. Closing new business or courting prospects always take precedence.

To make matters worse, I find that leadership across the board willingly accepts excuses from those responsible for attracting new talent. I’m sure you’ve heard the following once or twice:

“Sending emails and making cold telephone calls off the Internet isn’t the best use of my time. I should only get involved once someone expresses interest.”

“With all the home office changes that are happening how am I to recruit?”

“Sorry I got distracted this quarter with several large cases. It’s only Q1, I have the entire year to focus on recruiting.”

“It’s just too hard to convince someone with an established book to make a move.”

Let me be clear. All these excuses and all the other ones you hear are ridiculous, outlandish, and widely accepted by leadership teams throughout the country.

This acceptance of excuses results in little to no net field force growth. Managers find themselves in a position of “needing” candidates versus being in the proper position of “wanting” candidates. This mindset shift has a massive impact on an agencies ability to qualify a person to see if they will succeed within their culture versus hoping and selling the position and the career so the candidate will move to the next phase of the recruiting process.

This approach can and will negatively impact your revenue now and for months and years to come.

So, how do you solve the problem of recruiting?

When I work with a client whose primary objective is to consistently source and ultimately hire candidates that stay for longer than two years, I immediately implement a proven method called IPDE.

IPDE (Identify, Plan, Decide, Execute) is a structured approach to setting clear expectations, removing excuses, and increasing accountability. I’ve put together a brief overview of items covered in each phase of the program.

Identify
● How much money the sales manager/recruiter wants to earn.
● A recruiting cookbook that will help the person responsible for recruiting identify granular metrics such as the number of touch points, first interviews, referrals, industry events, and college job fairs as well as how to increase awareness internally.
(BTW—Did you now that if you increase your referral activity by 35% it translates to a 300% response rate?!)

Plan
Your recruiting cookbook becomes your plan that outlines daily, weekly, and monthly activities needed to achieve your goal. If you’d like a copy of our recruiting cookbook call our office: 631-726-3537
● Review and talk through the inconsistency, highs, and lows of past recruiting results.
● Take a hard look at the need to hire vs. the want to hire and plan accordingly.
● Understand daily behaviors to accomplish with key sources.
● Discover the amount of “time” out of your day and week all actions surrounding sourcing, interviewing, and hiring entails.

Decide
This is the time for a gut check and to have your intellect buy-in. No more “selling” yourself you can do this, you can follow the plan. Its time to be super real. This is not about “can you” do the activities, it is all about “will you.”
● Make the decision—are you really going to do it?
● Go through all excuses imaginable; your goal is to get them to defend the decision.
● How you are going to increase referrals? Last year you got referrals for the whole year, this plan says you have to get 8 per month—are you sure you can do that? Seems like a big jump. Instead of being a cheerleader and pumping them up, be a flat sounding board. Have them intellectually understand what they are committing to. Does their head and heart believe?

Before you start you have to buy into the effort that will be needed. The reality is you will hit roadblocks and challenges, and you must face them and deal with them in a positive way.

Execute:
Once you have made the decision to follow your own plan for success, its time to get to work. Look ahead, work the plan, and don’t allow “noise” to get you off course.
● Take no less than 100% accountability.
● Do whatever it takes to achieve the goal. Are you ready?

Remember to do a little bit all of the time, not a lot some of the time.

I’d like to hear how your recruiting program is working for you. Please reach out to me via LinkedIn and let me know how it’s going.