Would you like to fix most of your canvassing management problems? Then take a lesson from the United States Marine Corps.
Have I lost my marbles? No! I have been doing extensive study into the US Marines and their recruiting and training methods and there are a significant number of similarities between the Marines and Canvassing.
Your feelings about the Marine Corps or the military in general are not important with regard to my comparison. What’s important is what you can learn from it; additionally, the similarities between the Corps and canvassing.
Many people believe the Marine Corp to be the most physically and mentally challenging of military branches. Canvassing is considered by many to be the more challenging a career to enter in marketing.
To be a Marine requires a special type of person. To be a canvasser requires a special type of person.
The Marines are typically the first into battle. Canvassers are on the front-line battle in marketing the company.
The Marines are the smallest of the military branches, getting the least attention, funds, etc. The canvassing department is often the smallest department in the company, getting the least attention, funding, etc.
Why do you canvass? To put qualified leads into your sales funnel; and you’re trying to fill a quota each month with a predetermined number of leads from canvassing (or at least you should be). You know the challenges that objective present’s month in and month out. It can be made easier with the right canvassers.
It might surprise you the United States Marine Corps has a quota of 40,000 new recruits annually (that’s over 3,300 per month). It may come as an even bigger surprise to know they fill this quota every year, without problem. They’re able to achieve it because they recruit the “right” people for the job.
A business is only as strong as the people it brings in; a canvassing department is only as strong as the canvassers it recruits. The success and survival of your canvassing efforts starts with recruiting the right people.
I speak with many companies either starting out or struggling with their canvassing program and in most cases the solution to their challenges could have been avoided during recruiting. That’s not to say that other parts of your program aren’t important, they are, but whom you recruit is vital to making the rest of the program work.
Recruiting is about finding the right person for the job. Who’s best suited to find such a person?
Your top canvassers! Birds of a feather flock together. Who better to identify the characteristics of a potentially successful canvasser than one who already possess the work ethic, attitude and skill?
Your existing, successful canvassers have the battle scares from being on the front line canvassing every day. They know what it takes to weather the grind of canvassing and would be more attuned to attract and develop people just like themselves. I’ve long encouraged existing canvassers to recruit their friends, again, birds of a feather. They know the company culture too.
You don’t want warm bodies. It’s too costly to recruit, hire, develop and train people only to turn them over in 6 months once they’ve burned out. You want commitment.
You also can’t be in a hurry to recruit. You need to give your “recruiters” the latitude to entice and bring in new people at their pace. You want a recruit to enter the job with their eyes wide open. An applicant that comes on board on their own, without cohesion is more likely to stick out the bumps through the initial stages of training; they’ll take getting their nose bloodied as part of the training. Your recruiters will have already prepared them for what to expect.
So then, how should they go about recruiting? Communicate your objectives in clear terms; tell them exactly what you want, more people just like them. Give them some direction and ideas where to look (friends, social acquaintances, etc.) and let them go. You know I’m big on scripts, but here’s a time when you shouldn’t script it and tell your recruiters that you’re relying on them to draw on their skills to sell, but you don’t want them misleading newbies. If you’re uncomfortable with this or have corporate issues (skeletons in the closet) you’re afraid they’d share then your problems are bigger and recruiting the right people won’t fix that.
Recruiting really isn’t something you want your H.R. department to be doing. You want to develop and retain successful people and H.R. is the least qualified to recruit the people you need (remember, I ran my own company and canvassers weren’t recruited by our H.R. person, it was something I did; and not just as planned or a scheduled function. If I was out to dinner and the waiter or waitress exhibited the kind of attitude and work ethic I was looking for, I’d talk to them on the spot. It wasn’t a formal, high-pressure recruiting conversation, rather a casual conversation about how many hours they worked, and wages, tips, etc. then transition into soft-selling “the dream.”