The clock is ticking and the main part of the Canvassing Season will be kicking off very shortly. It’s March 13th this year. Day light savings time begins and the weather starts improving and the opportunities will present itself. Will you be ready with the right people to start the canvassing season?
You don’t want to miss most of the Spring because you’re playing catch up trying to build your team for this year.
What is the best way to recruit the most qualified candidates? It’s the question I get a lot. People will often want to short cut the recruiting process by asking if I know anyone in their market that I can recommend; because I work with many of the top direct sales companies in the country. First of all, this is a terrible strategy to start your recruiting efforts. Hope is not a strategy. Handing them ‘the’ people would surely help them, but only for the short term. Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him how to fish and you feed him for life.” The most effective systems are those learned through practice and experience. Recruiting is a fundamental for every direct marketing organization and one you must master to be successful.
There are a number of online job sites with people looking for a job who are hoping to meet you. Unfortunately, these are not the best places for you to be looking. Historically they’ve not proven to produce motivated, qualified canvassers or show & event people. Sure, every now and again you can find them, but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. They’re there, but not really the best use of your time, energy and resources. The job sites put applicants in front of you, but do you really want people who are looking for a job. If they were any good they’d already have a job and you wouldn’t find them at these sites trolling for the leftovers.
Before I get started here I want to make a blunt statement of warning. What I’m about to share isn’t for everyone. If you’re stuck in your ways and you believe that all the good people can be found in the traditional areas, then my experience here and your time to read it will both be wasted.
“Insanity is doing things over and over again, but expecting different outcomes.” Albert Einstein.
I also get people who will call looking for a solution to a specific situation. They approach recruiting with no strategy and are always just putting out fires. Unfortunately, the kinds of fixes most people are looking for to these specific situations are only ‘band aide’ fixes at best. Virtually all of them can be avoided in the recruiting process if they look to developing systems.
Everything you say and demonstrate during the recruiting will not only identify the right candidates for the job, but also give them the direction and foundation they’ll be doing on the job. It solidifies retention and drives growth and advancement within the department.
I’ve referred to the Marines’ recruiting methods in past articles. Documented studies have proven the Marines have the most intense training methods of all the major US military branches. With that known, only 20% of the people who apply for military service (to all 4 branches) are actually eligible and qualified for enlistment, the field of candidates is pretty narrow. The Marines are the second most sought after and applied to branch of service, behind only the Army, yet when you look at the number of recruits each branch accepts against their annual recruiting goals, it’s only the Marines who consistently surpass their recruiting goals. Why? Because they’re very clear on who they’re looking for and they’re very clear in communicating their requirements and expectations.
My recruiting approach mirrors that of the Marines in the sense that my clients are very clear about what they want in a candidate and effectively communicate it. Your recruiting message is the most important message you can communicate. It will affect the 3 roles you will have as a manager.
- Recruiter
- Trainer & Coach
- Administrator/ Manager
Part of recruiting is selling the job. You have to sell the benefits they’ll get from being on your team. You not only show them the financial benefits, but also the higher concept aspects of the job.
You can refer to past articles and Silver calls where I discuss the higher concepts more in depth. You can find all the articles on the member site. If you’re not presently a Silver Member or higher, contact my assistant Ava at ava@canvassking.com to upgrade your member status.
You have to get on message from the start. Your recruiting must be congruent with your hiring, training and management methods.
What Medium Do You Communicate Your Recruiting Message?
How do you advertise for your core business? You can put an ad in the newspaper, on TV or on radio for your products and services. They’ll generate leads for you, but those are shotgun, inbound methods of advertising. They produce expensive leads. Leads you have to sift through to find the qualified buying prospects. If you know your CPL numbers (cost per lead) you know how expensive these leads can be. If done right, the canvassed leads are less expensive and far more predictable.
The same is true when recruiting for marketers. You can place a job ad at Monster.com, Indeed, Craig’s list or any other cheap recruiting sites. You’ll get a number of applicants, all which you’ll have to sift through in order to qualify them. You can produce a better qualified applicant with a better recruiting ad, but that’s not the subject of this article.
Face-to-Face Recruiting
I’m talking about a more grassroots method of recruiting. You should always be recruiting. When you’re buying your Starbucks coffee in the morning you should be paying attention to the barista who takes your order. When checking out or being served at a store, how are you taken care of by the hourly waged employee. I call this the 3 Foot Rule; anyone within 3 feet of you that appears as a possible job candidate…. You recruit!
Now, the position you’re recruiting for has to be considered with regard to where you’re looking. For example, if you’re looking to fill a full time position you wouldn’t want to look for candidates at high schools or colleges. Those people are going to school full time and wouldn’t be able to dedicate the time the full time job requires. However, if you’re looking for part time canvassers, then school campuses make perfect sense.
Never be shy about recruiting a candidate who’s already employed. The best marketers to recruit are those who are already employed. They’re likely to be found working jobs totally unrelated to the work you could offer them. In most cases work ethic and attitude can’t be trained, but they’re two important fundamentals for the type of people you’re looking for. Some of the best people I’ve ever employed, or people I’ve recruited for my clients were found working in other jobs, but they had the personality necessary to be successful as a marketer for us.
The Keys to Face-to-Face Marketing (Where you can meet with people)
This ties into my lead canvassing approach. You’re not selling on the spot. You’re qualifying prospects and lead capturing first, and then making time to sell the opportunity.
Make it very easy for the prospective job candidates to look into the job opportunity.
If you were recruiting for McDonalds employees, it wouldn’t require a lot of explanation about the job because they’ll pretty much know what the job is if you’re asking them to work at McDonalds, but we’re not. It takes more explanation for them to fully understand the job responsibilities. The recruiting message you put out works to qualify the candidates that respond, but you make it easy and comfortable for them to come to a safe informational meeting.
Empower them with the facts and proactively counter any negative preconceived thoughts they may have going door-to-door.
Every potential candidate wants to know certain things about the job. What are the hours, compensation, etc.? It’s important and the key information should be communicated, but in such a way it attracts the right candidates and eliminates the time wasters. In addition, you want to plant the seeds of the unique skill sets you develop with the job.
Finding Places and How to Recruit Face-to-Face
Once you identify your target job candidate then you can research events or places to meet them. The events or places to meet them will vary depending on the demographic you’re going after. Places to meet candidates could be job fairs, college campuses, club gatherings, networking events, conferences, festivals and all the events that are going on in your community.
For example, a job fair is very much like a show or event you’d attend to prospect for leads for your products or services. People are walking by, but they don’t want to engage you in conversation. The first objective is to get a passerby’s attention. There are a number of ways to do this.
As a manager or owner those are the 3 things you should be doing actively to get qualified marketers.
To simplify the face-to-face recruiting process, it is:
- Get them to stop – you use a mechanism of value that makes them stop
- Once they stop you engage and qualify them
- If they qualify you make them an offer; this is the lead capture stage
The entire recruiting process mirrors my canvassing at shows & events lead system. The only difference is who and what we’re prospecting for.
I offer several other ideas of this on the live Silver tele-coaching call.
You then want to offer a qualified job candidate an informational guide or video link regarding the job. Like my info guide used by so many clients on the canvassing side of the business, I’ve created info guides for their recruiting activities as well.
The strategy for the canvassing info guide is to offer the prospect a low-threshold item they can receive in exchange for their contact information (the lead). In recruiting, the same psychology and methodology is at work. The candidate can be given a guide that will educate them about the job. However, I use the term ‘educate’ loosely. It educates job candidates in the same way my canvassing info guides ‘educate’ prospects. The education is more in positioning what is important for them to know and all the roads lead to us. We’re always the logical solution based on the information we put in front of them. It then leads to the outcome you want by the job candidate pursing the job opportunity you have available. If they’ve accepted the guide or video emailed to them, then you’ve already identified them as a person you want to take to the next level.
I suggest you review the recording from my live call from February 17, 2016. I present several scenarios and offer the different approaches and scripts I teach in each situation.
If you have any questions regarding this topic you can email me at cthompson@canvassking.com or post your questions at www.AskTheCanvassKing.com
Recruiting in face-to-face situations can be overwhelming and intimidating if you don’t have the right approach and strategy to prepare you for the task.
You want to get on point with your recruiting message to differentiate yourself from every other job opportunity put in front of a candidate. But first you have to be sold on the job you’re going to try and sell someone else on. If you don’t have passion and purpose of the wonderful opportunity the position holds, then you can’t convey the message to the candidates.
Committed to your canvassing success,
Chris Thompson, The Canvass King