Hopefully, you had the opportunity
to read Part 1 of this discussion. I
thought Dave did a great job of explaining how gaining momentum in the
recruiting process requires a focus on completing small tasks over time. If you’re not a football fan—hang in there:
We’re almost done with the football analogies.
For the Seahawks, the “small task” that kept them out of the end zone (a week ago Monday) was a failure to convert on 3rd down.
Likewise, if you’re experiencing a lack of hires, the source of the problem is always earlier in the hiring process. If you identify and fix the upstream problems, the hires will come.
After reading Dave’s post, I spent some time studying the source article in the Seattle Times, and I was surprised what I discovered. There was a short quote by one of Seattle’s receivers that caught my attention:
"Every week Pete Carroll (the Seahawk’s Head Coach) asks his team a rhetorical question, in which the answer never changes.
Said receiver Sidney Rice, ‘He always asks us…what do we have to do to win in third and 10-plus? And the answer is always: Stay out of that situation.'
The Seahawks have not done a good job avoiding third-and-long situations. The Seahawks have had 29 third downs this season and 21 of them have been 3rd-and-6 or longer. Of those 21, 14 have been 3rd-and-10 or longer.
Seattle has converted on 38 percent of those third downs, which ranks 18th in the league, but it’s not a sustainable way to operate. Rice said facing 3rd-and-long allows defenses to play Seattle differently than they normally have to because the threat to run the ball is gone. "
I think there are two applications from this part of the article:
1. Professionals use metrics. Considering these guys are a bunch of dumb football jocks, they sure do use math a lot! Why? Because they’re professionals, and professionals use metrics. You should know and track the recruiting metrics that lead to your hiring success—that’s what professionals do.
2. Don’t do all of your recruiting on 3rd down. Our staff works with hundreds of real estate hiring managers in different parts of the country. At least once a week, we hear one or more of these hiring managers try to convince themselves they don’t want to meet with “new to real estate” candidates until they are already licensed or actively enrolled in real estate school.
In recruiting, this is equivalent to gaining no yardage on 1st and 2nd down and facing 3rd down and long yardage on every interview. At this point in the recruiting game, your competitors know exactly what you’re going to do and will easily key upon your weaknesses.
We have one client who insists on conducting only late stage interviews. They regularly lose 50% of their recruiting opportunities to competitors—even though they are the best company in their market.
This happens because they wait too long to engage the candidates. At this point in the hiring process, the candidates have no relationship with the hiring manager. They are very susceptible to being fooled by lower splits, accepting gimmicky promotions, and believing promises that will never be kept.
In contrast, we regularly see clients who engage candidates early in the process that have “lost to competitor” rates of 10% or less. Why? The candidates tend to sign with the person they trust. When objections are raised late in the hiring process, they can be thoughtfully discussed and handled with the candidate’s best interest in mind.
Getting the hire under these conditions is often a small nudge at the end of the process instead of lobbing a pass into a crowded group of competitors and hoping for the best.
How did the Seahawks do last Sunday? They had a huge come-from-behind win in overtime against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. While there were definitely some miraculous plays that helped them win, there was a small stat buried in the box score that many people will overlook:
"The Seahawks converted eight of 12 third-down situations, for a season-high percentage (.667), including their final six. The Seahawks finished with 415 yards, their third-highest total of the season. Their 26 first downs were the second-highest total."
The Seahawks learned their lesson and put themselves in a position to win. Hopefully, you will do the same.
Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.
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