SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey Craig, let's reach deep into the mailbag right now. Yeah, let's dig deep. All right. The first question. I'm having difficulty with hiring in general. Let's have that conversation. Sure. You know, we don't have coffee. We used to do co what was it? Uh Coffee Talk. Coffee Talk. But now it's now it's the mailbag.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Sponsored by Monster Ultra, Zero Ultra.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Free shout out. Yeah, big shout out to our sponsor. We already lost half the listeners. To our sponsor. All right. So we're gonna we're gonna go through the five steps of creating a rock solid hiring process. Yep. And if you wait to the end, you will learn how to spend the least amount of time hiring and getting the most amount out of it, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Well that's the key.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

I think that's the key. It is. Hiring's a nightmare. It is. Remember we used to hire like one-on-one, just like every like so you would um, you know, if you interviewed five people, three of them wouldn't show, but you would save that time and waiting for them. Two of the people would show individually, and then the amount of time that went by, and then you're like, oh, they kind of both suck because I only got two people in here. And then you hired someone that you kind of knew sucked, and guess what? Guess what? Yes. They they didn't last. Oh, yeah. They become even worse, right? Because however they start, it's it's not like they get better. Right? They're on their best behavior at first. Sometimes they get better. If they're eager, if they come in eager, they can get better. Sure. They can.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Because I think that we were hired looking at the wrong thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

In my case, it was I was it was need-based hiring, right? Desperation. So the person comes, I need somebody, they have a license, and they can breathe, they're hired. Right. And everything it within you knows, don't don't hire them. At least wait. At least wait 24 hours or 48 hours. But what would happen? You just do it. Yeah. You know what? I normally don't do this.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

But I think you're a great fit. Easy. And you would hire them because they had what? An insurance license.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

So it's such a stupid reason to hire someone.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yep. And that was the last thing they did great in insurance was get that license. Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

So first on the five steps is paid. Paid traffic. Why do we use paid traffic? Well, specifically indeed. Because it's it's measurable, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

You know you put an input, cash, and you get an output, you know you're going to get candidates.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Right. They're on Indeed, right? They are. There's people on Indeed. And if you put money in, you get a lot of people in return, right? And if it's anything you and I know, it's like you got to have a lot of leads. Yeah. That's the bottom line. Because otherwise, you're just going to ask people, hey, do you know anyone? You know, like those are the best people. It's like referrals are the best, but referrals, unless you can fill your office with quotes all day long from referrals, you need the controllables to fill the quotes all day long. So it's like the same thing with the hiring process. Like, yes, ask your team and interview those people, but it's not going to fill the calendar to get enough people, the calendar, to get enough people to find the golden. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yeah. So I think paid indeed is the best.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

It is, right? And if you look at, I think we we talked about it with the math guy that we had on the show, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago. And the math guy. Just the math guy. The math guy. I can't remember his name.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

And it's okay because you're older, so you're allowed to forget things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

I'm like Mr. Magoo. So the great thing is, or the thing that we need to do is identify, okay, what are all the variables right involved in this process? You know, there's there's all these different things, and we want to remove the unknowns. The unknowns. Oh, I I hope that works out. It's like, well, if I could fill top of funnel for the hiring with as many candidates as possible by paying some set dollar amount, a couple hundred bucks. Yeah. And I'm going to get a whole bunch of people. Now I've just knocked out one of the unknowns.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Problem number one solved. And you know that you're going to be able to hire someone quickly if you have enough people through.

unknown 4:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

It's easy.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

If I get a hundred people, I'm going to find one that's good.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Right. Which you can get a hundred people in a week if you want with fade.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Yeah. And I and I think this is an important thing to wrap your head around, is that if somebody told me old Craig that was in there and running around and doing all the things and trying to save money in every little bucket was like a hundred? Wait, I got to talk to a hundred people to get one. I would have been able to wrap my head around that. But but now it's, I mean, I know that. Like you have to talk to a whole lot of people in order to find one that's going to work out and it's worth it, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Now you said old Craig. And I would argue that right now I'm talking to old Craig. Different use of the word old. Okay. This is going to be fun. This mailbag thing is going to be fun. All right. We're we're only on step number one. So now we got a ton of people coming through the virtual. We'll say virtual or through the doors, depending on whatever you, you know, however you like it. So what's number two? Number two is assessments. Okay. Okay. So you're saying that it's hard. Maybe you're saying it's hard to figure out on a first interview if they're good or what, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

I mean, yeah, let I mean, let's let's take it, let's let's just break it down for what it is. We're insurance dudes. We like everybody. We like to talk to everybody. We find the best of everybody until we're pissed off. But but at this point, it's some new person. They come in, they're on their A game. They're the best they will ever be right now. Right. Right? Because they want the job. Right. Unless they're just going to the job because they're collecting unemployment. There's that whole thing. But they probably won't even show up at the interviews. What we're looking for is we got to see through that. And again, here's another bucket. Let's eliminate an unknown. Because somebody could tell you all day long. I don't know if you remember, I don't know if I could say his name about the air, but I will. Wolfgang Van Helsing, who came in and worked for me, he told me he was the best salesperson of the world. I can't believe that's his real name, dude. Maybe I'm making it up. But you're not. Ron Belsing. So best salesman in the world. But he wouldn't make any he and he was making calls. There was 500 dials every day. This is back when we made them dial. And then we started, we're like, how it, how do you have no contacts? 500 dials. Like that doesn't make sense. Literally impossible. Right. Impossible. That we know. It is impossible. He's gonna have 50 to 100. You have to. Well, he was hanging up on them when they answered the phone. So I'm just it's like, why, why do you number one? How can you how can you assert that you're the best salesperson in the world? Number two, why even be here if you don't want to talk to anybody?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

But in the interview, he was awesome, right? He was uh it was his A game. He did his best sale, his best sales performance ever was in that interview.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yep. So we're almost at 10 minutes and we're not even through two. So we'll we'll speed this. Don't worry, everyone, we'll speed this up. So number two is assessments. What assessments do we use? There's two main assessments that we use, right, Craig? The first one is there's the first one is the disc profile. Anyone can use the disk profile. If you want to use it for free, go to understand.me. And if you tell people to go to understand.me, take the disc profile test. They can take the test and then give it to you, which which I've done. And then the other one is the sales strength identifier, which is proprietary.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, it is. Which might be available to the public or might not ever. We don't know.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

It's one of these things.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

It's one of these things we're working on. It's like but but regardless, they're kind of both b based after after the disc profile. The disc profile, now Tony Robbins uses this, the disc profile, for every company he owns, right? And I think he does tw all of his companies do I heard this number recently, 20 billion a year.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

I thought it's easy. I'm sorry, 20 million. No, 20 billion. Yeah, I think it's 32 billion. I remember Neil always talking about it being 32 billion. Well, that was back in the day. Or maybe I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

I thought it was seven and went to 12.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

I don't know. It's a lot. Anyways. But way less than Elon.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

My man. Based on what you've said earlier. To generate that kind of revenue and have that kind of the that kind of staff and all these companies that he owns, the one thing that he does to hire everybody is he uses the disc profile, right? Why? You know a little bit about the disc. What so the disc will tell you where their strengths are. It'll also tell you what they value within there, right? The D stands for what? Uh it's like how determined. Dominance. Yeah, dominance. Right? Yeah. I is influence. So dominance is that's gonna be that strong salesperson, right? Right. I is influence, so that's gonna be like the more bubbly outgoing. Like I'm a high I, my wife is like zero I, which is hilarious. So she has no problem telling me anything that I won't like to hear.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Well, you know what they say about opposites.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Right. S is steady, so it shows how steady that they are, right? Yep. And then steady stability is compliance. Compliance, yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

It's like stuff around compliance and you know, being like that.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Yeah. So steady and compliance, which is funny because Craig and I are both negative.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

We have negative numbers on S and C. It's very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

But you can see, like, we know where they fall on those scales, where how they'll be in the office, right? Yeah, yeah. Whether or not they say that they can do something, that will show. So what do we do? If they take these tests, run these tests through Chat GPT, right? Tell Chat GPT exactly what the job requires. I'm an agency owner at this agency. This position is remote. They have to do this, that, and the other thing. These are the list of requirements. This is what their daily work will look like. Based on this disk profile, how well would they be in our agency? If you have values of your agency, you can add those kind of things in there too to give it more. The more context you get it, the better answer you get.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

And so you have to think. Yeah. And that that will give you the most accurate version of them that you will never be able to detect without doing it. Like that will because of the human element, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:02

And it's it's imperative to really be honest too. Like if you're, you know, how you manage, how you lead, what you know, are you there? Are you not there? Doesn't really matter. Like there's no judgment. It's just like be, you know, garbage in, garbage out, or you know, real data in. It's gonna, it's gonna be pretty damn accurate. And yes, holy bitch.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Your tongue.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

I'm passionate over that. I know, I know. But one of the things I think that we that we caught after a while was it's not all about being this high D, high I. That isn't what makes the salesperson, especially in our world, right, where they're doing a lot of the repetitive stuff.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Well, let's, you know what? Let's go. We'll do another mailbag of that one because I actually see a question in the in the bag right now about what makes a good, what's valuable in a producer. Uh-huh. So let's just go through the the rest of the steps of the process and then we'll do that. So if you are listening to this, gotta you gotta listen to the next one.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

You and you could tell by the way that he's he's controlling the conversation there that he's a high D. See?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Yeah. Look at you, Craig. I too am a high D.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

All right. So we run them through the assessments. If they pass and they seem like a good fit, A in personality, but B also through the assessments, then we send them to a group interview. So that's step number three. Group interview. My group interview, Craig.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Uh, it's another, it's another thing that that's been proven is you're gonna see how they behave in the wild, right? If you have them, you have them in your typical one-on-one interview. Yeah, they may be uncomfortable, but they're gonna get really push. It's kind of a nice little social experiment to have them show up or over Zoom, same thing happens on Zoom, and watch their body language because yeah, it's like, wait, what? Why are all these what? You know, this is a big there are 20 people in here. So the people who are timid, you're gonna know. Right. And it's not like we want people fighting, but at the same time, you're gonna see are they competitive? I mean, you need a little competitiveness.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

You want to know some of my favorite questions. Of course, you get them to try to quote and stuff like that, right? In front of each other to make each other nervous. Even more nervous. To see if they can do it. But some here's some of my favorite questions is I'll ask Chat GPD what they suck at, and then I will tell them the assessment said you suck at this in front of everybody. Wow. Well, then they have to defend it. I'm all tell me why this is true or not true. Yeah. You know, I can't tell you that it's not true because it is. And I tell them that this is just what the assessment says. Well, I don't think the assessment's right. Like everybody says the same thing. Yeah, totally. It's so good. Actually, it's a 93%. So it's my fun.

unknown 13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Then then another question I say say is um, why do you think you're better than everybody else in this interview? Ooh, get everybody else angry. But so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Yeah, yeah. And you'll see, I mean, you'll know fairly quickly the two or three people out of the group who are better candidates just from how they interact in the, you know, they'll take charge. And then maybe they're they take too much charge and you don't want that kind of energy in your place.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Right. Yeah. It's good. It's just good to kind of change it up. It's good to push buttons or, you know, it's like you got to get things a little uncomfortable. And if you're uncomfortable getting things uncomfortable, then it's time for some leadership courses, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Yeah. Or get somebody in there that'll do it. Yeah, get a high D. Get a ID. I thought you should get a big now.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

We got number three, the group interview. So now we're whittling down. Let's say we got 20 people on that group interview. Now we we found maybe three candidates. What's what what do we do with them? We want to invite them back for another interview, but this one's one-on-one.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Finally, a one-on-one. I know. We just saved a lot of time, I feel. I we did. And the great thing is there's a heck of a lot high, a heck of a lot higher show rate, right? I'd say close closer to one per or to a hundred percent on that than if you just schedule some rando and hope they show up, right? Right. Once you've gotten the and I don't know, what's the percentage of people that show up to the group? What would you say now for you?

SPEAKER_00 15:22

I'd say anything, any I'd probably say right around 70%. Okay. Six sixty to seventy, probably seventy percent. It's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

It's interesting. It's like the uh transfer ratio.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Look at everything numbers all just sort of anyway, statistics all kind of work out the same. But yeah, I I don't own that process in the agency anymore. So Right. Yeah. I'm sure that it's very similar.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

No, 70%.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

So so what do we do here? We sell, unsell. Sell this is where we kind of sell them, but would then we unsell them and see if they can hang. You gotta tell them the bad stuff too.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah. Try to scare them away a little bit, a little takeaway, make them fight for it, uh, make it uncomfortable still, right? You just want to see if they can handle it. Okay, and and you want to also get get them to be real.

unknown 16:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

See what they do when they're flustered. Now that's that's why I love the sales strengths, is because it actually ranks and it tells you what like you know, out of 60 things.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the part where you have those assessments and everything, and you can go deeper in the in the crevasses, if you will, of what might be alerts, yeah, red flags.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Any color flag, really. It doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Well, and with the disc tests, it tells you their communication style, right? So you know what things you say are gonna push the buttons, you know what things like how they like to be talked to. And that's really helpful after the hiring, too. It's not something you just throw in the trash. I mean, you know, once they're on, you want to make sure that they have a really good experience. You want to make sure that they they want to be there.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Yep. Okay, now we got we got onboarding.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Before that final, just just real quick, uh, whether you whether the solo is in person is is a little bit different than if you're doing it on Zoom. But if you have a location and you're doing it in person and you have, depending on how it's set up, but when we have a whole lot of salespeople in here and there's energy and it's really going, like you, it you kind of make a show out of it, right? You you want them to see the hum of the sales floor. You want them to see what's going on and how excited and fun everybody's having, right? Right. So I think it, you know, that's another leverage point. They they see that it's it's cool, especially if they're coming from a call center or they're coming from um a lot a lot of agencies are like a mausoleum when you go in there. Right. And it's definitely not like that here.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

So and if your agency is like that, maybe don't show them that part.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah, that might be something to uh just do it over Zoom.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

All right, all right. So now we're on step five. We we started with the paid, uh, the paid ads indeed. We're we went on to the assessments, we went to the group interview, the solo interview, and now we're onboarding this person. What are the key ingredients at this point? Are you mixing up? I'm mixing, if you could see. I don't know if you'd notice, but like, do I look a little bigger? Yeah. I mean, look at that.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

I think you're flexing, aren't you? Dude, I've been working out a lot. Yeah, I know. I was gonna say. It's harder when you're older, though, to to make things. I mean, it feels like my muscles are bleeding after I work out now.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

So don't tell me. I'm trying to get like I want to gain 20 pounds of muscle so I can do some WWE wrestling when I'm 50. I'll go. That's that's a side, that's a side tangent. You try to do tyco drumming. That's true. Onboarding. Okay, onboarding. So, what are the key ingredients? One of the ingredients when you bring someone on is to give them the path of what success looks like and what failure looks like. Like, be very, very clear. I used to, and we've talked about this before, but I used to just hire people on and like have Sally just say, hey, shadow Sally for a while, and then you can jump on the phones and like I have no idea at that point when this person is ever going to do anything, let alone make money for the agency. Like, I have no idea at that point. Yeah, right. And they don't either. Right. Because they don't know what the hell's going on. And they're looking to you. Like, like, what what what should I do? And you're saying this is shadow somebody. So then their pace is all slow, and they're like, ah, this is great. I eat donuts and watch Sally. Yeah. Let this is great.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Let's detract from the energy of the person that needs that already knows what they're doing and needs to be doing what their job. Right. Let's distract them while at the same time not really trade very well the person that's that's coming on. There, there obviously is a benefit to shadowing, but it's not in the beginning, right? That's not right now. And they don't have to sit next to them anyway. They could sit off in the corner. Can I give you some of my threes?

SPEAKER_00 20:02

That's true. Can I give you my threes? Do it. So so my threes with this is the first three months. What does their first month look like, second month look like, and third month look like? And third month should be they are on track to be like everything's filled, pipeline's filled, everything, they're they're rocking it at full, full steam ahead, right? So for your agency, I would recommend do that. What does the first month look like? Like, like exactly, like what do you expect? And then break it into three. So, what I do in our agency is we have an extensive list of below minimum. So there's basically on a piece of paper, there's two lines there's minimums and standard. So, standard is what we expect everyone to be at at full steam, right? And this is daily standards, weekly standards, and monthly standards. Okay. Another, another set of threes. And then we have our lower tier, which is between standard and minimum, which is this is where you have to be at least be to be on the team. And then you have your below your minimums, which is you are fired. No, it's like it's so simple, right? And it and it and it's showing the daily, weekly, and monthly activities as well as results. So it's not just results, but it's activities as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

I mean, results is the last thing that I'm even concerned about in the beginning. Right. I mean, I'm concerned with the results of the like the the result is what was what did you do in activity? Right. Right? Not what did the activity lead to. Like if they do the activity, the rest will happen.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yep, 100%. And then so you you color code them. We color code them as red below minimums. Minimums are yellow, and then standard is green? Green. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Just like a traffic light.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Just like a traffic light. And you can when you score them every day, every week, and every month, you You can color code it. Right. It makes it really easy. But but basically it's like there is no question of what it takes to be on the team. And then when you you have to write the performance improvement plans when they're don't hit them. Yep. And it's simple. Especially if you're in California. Yeah, especially if you're in California. So if you do this and just write it out, this takes a little bit of time, but it's it's pretty easy. But if you write this out, this person that comes onto your agency knows exactly where they should be in month one, two, and three. They know exactly what their daily, weekly, and monthly standards are. I mean, you couldn't set them up for more success. Right. And they know what success looks like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

And they tell them it's going to be hard. It's like that that clarity is the key to everything because if you're wishy-washy about it, then they don't know. I mean, everybody does the least amount they need to do to get what they want. I mean, that's just the way that it operates. I'm not, you know, most people aren't jumping to sit in the first row and answer every question. And, you know, like most people are gonna, hey, he said do this, that's that's where I'm gonna land, right here. Or did it say it? Well, I didn't know, right? So don't give them any room for excuses. It's like this is it. If you don't do this, you don't have a job. And I mean, this is stuff you bring up even in the interview. It's a foreshadowing, right? You want it, you want it to be clear and say, hey, look, if you don't do the 100 dials, you won't have a job. And you won't have a job quickly. But if you do them and you exceed, I mean, you probably can't do much more than 100 because you're gonna have enough quotes throughout the rest of the day where you you can't. So you know you're gonna be doing eight to ten households a day, and and that's also non-negotiable. You have to. So I'm gonna buy the leads, I've got to, you know, have the people transfer to you. All of those things are gonna happen. So these have to happen. Like you're part of the equation. It's a known, right? Like it's be it's being worked into the whole thing. It's not happening.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Huh? It's so much easier managing behaviors when the behaviors are set in like quantifiable numbers than it is to manage Sally that she feels like she's gonna have sales, she's feels like she's got seven sales lined up. So she might have had a rough day, but she feels like it.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

It's like then it's like, oh, it's how many people did she quote? Did she well she quoted three, but she has a bunch lined up? No, you don't know. If she didn't if she quoted three, then she's not gonna get seven sales. I mean, I don't know what math you're using over there.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

I don't know. Yeah. Craziness. All right. I think that's pretty uh comprehensive. We got the the paid indeed leads coming through. Oh, we got a lot of them. We got a lot of assessments flying out, which is weeding out the duds, right? Yeah. We have the group interview. That's only one day a week. We're doing that one day a week, right? Yep. I failed to say that the first time. Then we have our solo interviews, right? Maybe a couple of those a week if they made it. And then we got the onboarding and success path. Yeah. That's it. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

It's that easy. It is that easy. And just staying consistent with it. It's not like, oh, this week I don't feel like it. Well, okay. But guess what happens? You have a dead pipeline all of a sudden. It works just the same as leads. You don't take the you don't take the week off of quoting because in two or three weeks there's no sales.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

And so I think we answered the first question in the mailbag.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Yeah. Well, let's put the mailbag down. Yeah. Put it down. Give it a rest.