Fanatical Military Recruiting

The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging High-Impact Prospecting to Engage Qualified Applicants, Win the War for Talent, and Make Mission Fast

Jeb Blount

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119473626
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Military Recruiting is a war. It's just a different kind of war than what you were prepared and trained to fight for. Recruiting is a war for talent.

Smart, competent, and capable people are rare and in high demand. Every organization, from commercial enterprises, healthcare, non-profit, sports, and education, to the military is in an outright battle to recruit and retain these bright and talented people.

Rather than bullets and bombs, the war for talent is won through high-impact prospecting activity, time discipline, intellectual agility, emotional intelligence, and human to human relationships. On this highly competitive, ever changing, asymmetrical battlefield, to win, you must operate at a level of excellence beyond anything asked of military recruiters before.

Yet, in this new paradigm, many recruiters are struggling, and most recruiting units are staring down the barrel at 50 percent or more of their recruiters consistently missing Mission.

It is imperative that we arm military recruiters with the skills they need to win in this challenging environment. The failure to make Mission is an existential threat to the strength and readiness of America's fighting forces and our democracy.

Fanatical Military Recruiting begins where the Recruiting and Retention colleges of the various branches of the military leave off. It is an advanced, master's level training resource designed specifically for the unique demands of Military Recruiting. In FMR, you'll learn:

• The Single Most Important Discipline in Military Recruiting
• How to Get Out of a Recruiting Slump
• The 30-Day Rule and Law of Replacement
• Powerful Time and Territory Management Strategies that Put You in Control of Your Day
• The 7 Step Telephone Prospecting Framework
• The 4 Step Email and Direct Messaging Framework
• The 5 C's of Social Recruiting
• The 7 Step Text Message Prospecting Framework
• How to Leverage a Balanced Prospecting Methodology to Keep the Funnel Full of Qualified Applicants
• Powerful Human Influence Frameworks that Reduce Resistance and Objections
• The 3 Step Prospecting Objection Turn-Around Framework
• Mission Drive and the 5 Disciplines of Ultra-High Performing Military Recruiters

In his signature right-to-the-point style that has made him the go-to trainer to a who's who of the world's most prestigious organizations, Jeb Blount pulls no punches. He slaps you in the face with the cold, hard truth about what's really holding you back. Then, he pulls you in with stories, examples, and lessons that teach you exactly what you need to do right now to become an ultra-high performing recruiter.

Fanatical Military Recruiting is filled with the high-powered strategies, techniques, and tools you need to keep your funnel packed with qualified applicants. As you dive into these powerful insights, and with each new chapter, you'll gain greater and greater confidence. And, with this new-found confidence, your performance as a military recruiter will soar and you will Make Mission, Fast.

Part I
Mission Critical

1
Military Recruiting Is Facing a Perfect Storm

America without her soldiers would be like God without His angels.

—Claudia Pemberton

The military is no longer, and will never again be, the place of last resort for troubled and low-IQ members of our society. Military service has become an upwardly mobile career choice for the most gifted, talented, and intelligent among us.

Members of the military receive consistent pay raises, enlistment and retention bonuses, recession-proof job security, college tuition, guaranteed retirement income, and incredible benefits including paid housing, free health care, training, and paid education. They also have access to facilities on military bases that are unavailable to most civilians.

From a purely economic standpoint, joining the military is a smart financial move that gives a fortunate few access to a lifestyle and standard of living far above that of most civilians.

Yet deteriorating attention spans have made it difficult to get prospects to sit still long enough to learn about this incredible career opportunity. Meanwhile, fewer young Americans are interested in or even aware of the benefits afforded by a military career.¹

Studies suggest that the majority of those who enlist and serve come from a family in which a parent or sibling is also in the military.² Yet the size of the active-duty US military is at its lowest level in more than 50 years.³ With this, fewer young people than ever before have family members who are in the military or are learning about military life from influential mentors.

Worse, a high percentage of active-duty military members come from just five states—mostly the Southeast—with the Southern states consistently contributing the highest number of new recruits as a proportion of the population.⁴

Despite the incredible career opportunities available in the modern armed forces, military recruiters are increasingly operating in an America where there is a divide between the civilian and military classes.⁵

The pool of prospects with family or geographic associations to military service is steadily evaporating.⁶ With increasing base closures and consolidations, fewer cities have a large military presence. This means young people are less likely to be exposed to military personnel beyond those they see online and in the media.

The connection between civilians and the military is eroding,⁷ making it much more difficult for recruiters to engage prospects and their parents. “We speak a different language. We are governed by a separate set of norms and dogma. We even live apart from each other,” says Phillip Carter of the nonpartisan think tank the Military, Veterans and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security. He describes America’s sprawling military bases as our “most exclusive gated communities.”

This gap has extended to public schools and universities. Increasingly, faculty are ostracizing the military and its recruiters, either overtly or in more nuanced ways. These institutions, despite legal obligations to provide access, make it difficult for military recruiters to engage students, using either passive roadblocks or outright hostility to create de facto no-go zones.

Though the military is among the most trusted and revered American institutions,⁸ in the words of Lieutenant Colonel Remi M. Hajjar, a professor at West Point, “Many Americans consider the military a bit like a guard dog. They are very thankful for the protection, but they probably wouldn’t want to have it as a neighbor. And they certainly are not going to influence or inspire their own kids to join that pack of Rottweilers to protect America.”

Qualification Standards Continue to Tighten

Meanwhile, as the available talent pool shrinks in the midst of this perfect storm, the military apparatus continues to tighten qualification standards, and politicians play games that strain recruiting budgets.

Still, even when recruiters identify qualified prospects who have a propensity for joining the military, they face another, daunting gauntlet. The prospects in this new generation have more power—more information, more distractions, more options, more at stake, and more control over their future—than at any time in history.

With so many options available for talented people, they can afford to wait for “something better to come along.” This, combined with extreme information overload, creates fear and insecurity that often leaves prospects and their parents clinging to the status quo. Doing nothing, making no choice at all, is often their preferred course of action.

It’s no wonder so many recruiters are struggling. It’s no wonder that recruiting leaders are frustrated and more stressed out than ever. And it’s not surprising that most recruiting units are staring down the barrel at 50 percent or more of their recruiters consistently missing mission.

This perfect storm of obstacles creates an existential threat to the strength and readiness of the greatest fighting force ever assembled on earth and may weaken its ability to protect our democracy.

If we’ve lost the benefit of historical family ties to military service, if our education system is a hindrance, if the gap between civilian society and the military is growing, and if young people have more options, feel less inclined to serve, and are ill informed on the benefits of military service—then our only hope lies with our military recruiters and their ability to close the gap.

This is why it is imperative that we arm our recruiters and NCOICs with the skills they need to win the war for talent in this challenging environment.

Notes

¹http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2012/02/02/large-military-civilian-gap-among-young-americans/. ²http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-warrior-main-20150524-story.html. ³http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/13/6-facts-about-the-u-s-military-and-its-changing-demographics/. ⁴https://www.cfr.org/article/demographics-us-military. ⁵http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-warrior-main-20150524-story.html. ⁶http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/23/the-military-civilian-gap-fewer-family-connections/. ⁷Pew Research Center 2012. ⁸http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/18/most-americans-trust-the-military-and-scientists-to-act-in-the- publics-interest/.

2
Nothing Prepared You for This War

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

—General George S. Patton

Recruiting is a war. Just a different kind of war than the one you prepared for and trained to fight. Recruiting is a War for Talent—for the hearts and minds of the next generation of talent that will protect and defend our country and way of life.

Rather than bullets and bombs, this War for Talent is won through disciplined use of time, intellectual agility, emotional intelligence, mastering your own disruptive emotions, leveraging human influence frameworks, and massive prospecting activity.

But make no mistake: The War for Talent is real. All organizations in America—businesses, health care, nonprofit groups, sports, education, and the military—are in an outright and never-ending battle to recruit and retain the brightest and most talented people.

Smart, competent, and capable people are rare and in high demand. You are competing with every other organization and your fellow recruiters from other armed services branches to gain the attention of and engage this talent. It’s winner takes all. There is no good enough. There is no prize for second place. Once you lose prospects to your competition, the probability that you will ever get them back plunges.

On this highly competitive, ever-changing, asymmetric battlefield you must be at your best—always. If you:

• Allow your discipline to slip, y...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Fanatical Military Recruiting
• Copyright
• I Go to Basic
• Part I Mission Critical
• Part II The Ask
• Part III On the Move
• Part IV Part IV Battle Rhythm
• Part V Targeting
• Part VI Pick Up the Phone!
• Part VII Objections
• Part VIII Face-to-Face and Digital Prospecting
• Part IX Charlie Mike
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• End User License Agreement