We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible, look set to capture the most value.

—Pete Cashmore, founder of mashable.com

When it comes to prospecting, there is one overriding objective: Be as efficient and effective as possible. In other words, do as much prospecting activity as possible, in the least amount of time possible, while generating the best outcomes possible.

Efficiency is a product of time discipline. It requires blocking your time, eliminating distractions, planning in advance, and concentrating your focus.

Effectiveness increases with:

• Targeting
• Better lists
• Balancing prospecting across multiple channels (telephone, face-to-face, text, e-mail, social)
• The quality of your prospecting skills
• How effectively you leverage prospecting frameworks
• Your ability to manage your disruptive emotions
• Honing your message
• Gaining clarity on the prospecting objective

Knowing your objective for each call makes you more efficient because you are able to build prospecting blocks and group your prospecting activity around those objectives. This allows you to move faster and make more prospecting touches in less time.

Developing a defined objective makes you effective because on each prospecting phone call, face-to-face approach, text message, e-mail, social media touch, event, or referral request, you know exactly what to ask for and how to give your prospect a compelling reason to accept your request.

The objective is the primary outcome you expect from your prospecting touch. There are three core prospecting objectives:

1. Set an appointment for an interview
2. Gather qualifying information
3. Build familiarity

Set an Appointment

The most valuable activity in the recruiting process is setting an appointment for an interview. The one commonality among ultra-high-performing recruiters is that they conduct far more interviews than average recruiters.

Gather Information and Qualify

Prospecting conversations are the most effective way to gather information about potential recruits and filter out prospects who have no chance of joining your branch of the service. But be careful: Mediocre recruiters default to qualifying, while ultra-high performing recruiters default to conducting the interview.

Build Familiarity

Familiarity plays an important role in getting prospects to engage. Familiarity breeds liking. The more familiar a prospect is with you, your branch, and military career opportunities in general, the more likely they will be willing to accept and return your calls, reply to your e-mails, accept a social media connection request, respond to a text message, and engage when you are at events and prospecting in person.

Building familiarity is a secondary objective of a prospecting touch. Familiarity as a prospecting objective requires a long-term focus, because it is developed through the cumulative impact of ongoing prospecting activity. This is why savvy recruiting professionals cross-leverage prospecting channels to systematically build familiarity.

• Each time your phone number pops up on your prospect’s phone screen, it creates familiarity.
• Each time you leave a voice mail and they hear your voice and name, familiarity increases.
• Each time you send an e-mail or message, they read your name and see your e-mail address and service branch, and their familiarity with you increases.
• When you connect with them on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media sites, familiarity increases.
• When you like, comment on, or share something they post on a social media channel, familiarity increases.
• When you meet them at a school event or career fair and put a face with a name, familiarity increases.
• Your community and school marketing efforts increase familiarity.

Prospecting Is Not Pitching

Prospecting is not an opportunity for a kitchen-sink data dump of everything about you and your branch. It is not the time when you pitch, tell your story, or spend an hour chatting it up with a prospect. That’s what face-to-face interviews are for. Instead, your primary objective is to get an appointment for an interview.

Prospecting shuns the nuance, art, and finesse of moving a prospect through the recruiting funnel from prospect, to applicant, to the floor, to shipped. To be effective, you’ve got to know what you want and ask for it. To be efficient, you must get in as many prospecting touches as possible during each prospecting block.

Prospecting is for rapid qualifying and asking for time. You don’t need brilliant scripts. You don’t need complex strategies. You don’t need to overcomplicate it. You’ve got to get to the point, ask for what you want, and move on to the next touch.

Adopt a Balanced Prospecting Methodology

“But Jeb, I’m so much better in person!”

“But Jeb, Facebook works better than the phone.”

“But Jeb, I do most of my prospecting via text.”

But Jeb, but Jeb, but Jeb. I’ve heard the same refrain from hundreds of recruiters who are quick to tell me that they are so much better at one type of prospecting or another.

The “I’m so much better at . . .” excuse is just that: an excuse to avoid the other prospecting techniques that those recruiters find unpalatable. More often than not, it’s an excuse to avoid phone prospecting.

The size of the funnel always reveals the truth. Recruiters who gravitate to a single prospecting methodology deliver suboptimal performance.

I can guarantee that when the words “But you don’t understand, I’m so much better at . . .” come out of a recruiter’s mouth in response to a prospecting technique I’ve just introduced, that recruiter is underperforming against mission.

So instead of making excuses about how you are so much better at one type of prospecting or another, you should be actively focused on balancing prospecting across the various prospecting channels to give yourself the highest probability of engaging the highest qualified prospects in the crowded, hyper-competitive marketplace.

The Fallacy of Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket

Imagine that a friend comes to you seeking advice on investing for retirement. They explain that they went to a financial seminar where an investment “guru” presented a “sure-thing stock.” The guru advised everyone to immediately move their entire nest egg into this stock. What would you say?

If you were a good friend, you would be incredulous. “Putting your money into a single stock is stupid. You’ll lose your retirement money!” you’d admonish.

“But the guru says this investment is a sure thing,” your friend responds emphatically. “He says I can make a ton of money!”

You grab him by the collar and shake him. “Are you kidding me? Are you a moron? There are no sure things in investing. That’s why sane people diversify—they spread their money out across multiple investments to reduce risk. This guy is feeding you a line of bull. If you follow his advice, you’re courting financial disaster.”

In recruiting, consistently relying on a single prospecting methodology (usually the one you feel generates the least amount of resistance and rejection), at the expense of others, consistently generates mediocre results. However, balancing your prospecting regimen across multiple channels gives you a statistical advantage that almost always leads to higher performance over the long term.

Avoid the Lunacy of One Size Fits All

The foundation of a winning prospecting strategy is balance. Think of me as your friend, grabbing you by the collar and shaking you into reality. Putting all your prospecting eggs into a single basket is stupid. It’s mission suicide. Using the “I’m better at . . .” excuse to run from prospecting techniques you don’t like is short-sighted.

Ultra-high performers have mastered balanced prospecting in the same manner that wealthy people have mastered balance in their investment portfolios. Balancing prospecting across multiple channels gives you the greatest statistical probability of engaging the right prospecting, at the right time, with the right message.

Your prospecting routine should include a mixture of:

• Telephone
• Face-to-face
• E-mail
• Social Media
• Text Messaging
• Referrals
• Networking
• Inbound “Hot” Leads
• Direct Mail
• School and Community Events

The relative distribution of your time investment in each prospecting methodology should be based on your unique situation.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula for balanced prospecting. Every territory, mission directive, and prospect base is different, as are the cycles of the school and calendar year. The demands of mission change over time, as will your prospecting routine. It’s also important to have a clear understanding of where you are against mission target because that may also determine the appropriate mix of prospecting channels.

The key is designing your prospecting regimen based on what works best in your market or geographic area. Likewise, tenure in your territory matters. If you are new to recruiting, or have just taken over a new territory, your balance of prospecting techniques will likely be different than that of a tenured recruiter who has been working the same territory for a year or two.

Striking a balanced approach with prospecting, however, is the most effective means of filling your recruiting funnel. With few exceptions, the combination of multiple techniques and channels is the most effective path to reaching qualified prospects and consistently making mission.