You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it’ll go.

—Yogi Berra, baseball great

If we were to walk down a crowded street in New York City during rush hour and ask people to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” while we captured it on video, we’d get a lot of nos (see Figure 11.1) and more than a few FUs along the way.

Someone, though, would eventually say yes. It’s just basic statistics. If you ask enough people, someone will do it. In recruiting, the more people you talk to, the more people you will enlist. That’s how statistics work. It’s just math. No matter what you are asking for, if you ask enough times, eventually you’ll get a yes.

Yes has a number. The “Mary-Had-a-Little-Lamb” number, by the way, is eleven. On average, over several experiments, it took eleven requests to get one person to sing for me.

Keeping it real, though, the same can be said of playing the lottery. The statistics reveal that if you play enough times or scratch enough tickets, you will eventually win. It’s just a stupid way to get rich, which is why, statistically speaking, rich people don’t play the lottery. Instead, they invest their money where the odds are more in their favor.

Understanding probability is how ultra-high performing military recruiters play the game of recruiting. They work relentlessly to bend the yes number in their favor. In recruiting, the formula for making mission fast is simple:

• Reduce the chance of getting a no, while increasing the probability of getting a yes, without decreasing the number of times you ask.

This formula is the real secret to accelerating performance and crushing mission. But, and this is very important, you will never reach this level of optimization until you know your numbers.

Recruiting Is Governed by Numbers

Take a moment and think of your favorite professional athletes. If we were to ask them to tell us about their latest stats, what’s the probability that they’d be able to recite a litany of detailed statistics on their performance?

I’ll guarantee it would be 100 percent. Elite athletes know their numbers because their entire focus as competitors is on reaching peak performance. Knowing their numbers gives them the data they need to evaluate how they are doing at any given time and, most importantly, where to make adjustments to improve outcomes and performance.

It is no different in recruiting. Whereas connecting emotionally with other human beings, influencing them, and helping them make positive career choices is the art of recruiting, numbers are the science.

Elite recruiters, like elite athletes, track everything—as do elite recruiting teams. You will never reach peak performance until you know your numbers and leverage that data to analyze performance and make directional corrections.

Your yes number must be tracked all the way through the conversion funnel:

• Outbound prospecting attempts (by channel)
• Contacts
• Interviews set
• Interviews conducted
• Packets created
• Applicants to MEPS
• Enlistments
• Shipped

Let’s be clear. This isn’t anything you don’t already know. If you’ve been in military recruiting for more than five minutes, you know that numbers matter. You know that it is stupid not to know your numbers. You know that ultra-high-performing recruiters, like elite athletes, are obsessed with numbers.

Yet despite a nearly universal understanding of conversion funnels and ratios among recruiters, many recruiters don’t consistently track their numbers and use that information to make adjustments. If this is you, then you are abdicating your responsibility to your team, yourself, and your country.

You should be able to look down at your desk, on a simple piece of paper, and know exactly where you stand at any given moment, so you can quickly adjust to improve performance.

But it’s easier not to keep track, because delusion is more comfortable than the cold edge of reality. But as you’ve already learned, in recruiting, you cannot be delusional and successful at the same time.

Develop the courage to face the truth—even when the truth tells you that you are not performing at your best. Be honest with yourself about where you really stand against your targets and what you need to do or sacrifice to get back on track if you are missing mission.

Yes has a number, but that number is not static. You can change it. But you cannot change what you cannot see. This is why you must know exactly what your yes number is at each step of the recruiting funnel. This awareness changes everything.

It’s All About the Ratios

When you first dive into your numbers, there is also the human tendency to overanalyze, make too many assumptions (especially when the data isn’t giving you a pretty story), or get caught up in the human confirmation bias and arrange the data to tell the story that matches your rose-colored (and delusional) view of the situation.

When it comes to recruiting numbers, your confirmation bias is especially dangerous and the enemy of the truth. You’ll tell yourself that “the reason my recruiting results are so bad is that I can’t find anyone to pass the test.” Instead of the real truth: “I’m barely prospecting and when I am, I’m fishing in the wrong pond.”

The key to awareness is letting go of your ego and getting real about where you really stand and the activities that are leading to mission failure.

A ratio measures how much of one thing there is compared to another thing.¹ For example, for every five nos you hear, you get one yes (see Figure 11.2).

The mission acceleration process begins with analyzing your ratios top to bottom, across the entire recruiting funnel or MAP (Mission Accomplish Plan). Then shifting from the big-picture conversion funnel and looking more closely at your micro-ratios. This helps you focus on the nuances of performance. At the micro level, you make small tweaks in your activity or techniques that, in aggregate, deliver massive performance improvements—often doubling or tripling productivity.

It all begins with gaining a clear picture of the ratios in your unique conversion formula. For example:

• Prospecting attempts to contacts
• Contacts to interviews set
• Interviews set to conducts
• Lead sources to test passes
• Conducts to packets
• Packets to MEPS
• MEPS to enlistments
• Enlistments to shipped

Once you are tracking your numbers consistently, the door is opened to an honest assessment of both the efficiency and the effectiveness of your recruiting activities.

• Efficiency is how many attempts you are making to get a yes.
• Effectiveness is the ratio between the amount of activity and the number of yeses (positive outcomes) you get.

As you gain a deeper understanding of the ratio of total attempts to yeses and successful outcomes at each level of your conversion funnel, you may then begin addressing the variables that impact performance.

The key is pulling the right levers, at the right time, to improve the right ratios that have the greatest impact on performance, while minimizing negative consequences to other ratios.

For example: Perhaps you see an opportunity to improve the contact-to-interview ratio at the top of the conversion funnel, but you’ll need to pull this lever without compromising the call-to-contact ratio. Otherwise the improved contact-to-interview ratio may be offset by a precipitous decrease in call volume that cancels out the entire effort.

This exercise of gaining a clear and honest picture of your ratios is crucial to wiping away the fog of delusion and false positives.

Changing Your Yes Number

To change your yes number, you must focus on optimizing the ratio between the two Es—efficiency and effectiveness. You must continue adjusting until the balance between the number of yes attempts and the number of positive outcomes maximizes your recruiting efforts and allows you to consistently make mission.

Once you know your numbers, you gain the power to consider objectively the variables that impact productivity. With this information, you’ll make small adjustments that bend the probability of a win in your favor and increase or even double your yes number.