Failure to adequately resource our [military] with the required number and quality of personnel can have far reaching and strategic implications and threaten our nation’s ability to defend its national interests at home and abroad.

—Colonel Michael Matthews, United States Army

Shortly after my book Fanatical Prospecting was published, we began to get calls from military recruiting commands. They were ordering as many as 50 books at a time. At first we thought it was an anomaly, but the orders kept coming.

Then, I began getting e-mail and notes on social media from military recruiters and leaders telling me how they were using the techniques in Fanatical Prospecting to fill the recruiting funnel. Entire companies and battalions were reading the book. I couldn’t make sense of why there was so much interest from the military in a prospecting book that was written primarily for business-to-business sales professionals.

A Conundrum

Sales Gravy, the company I founded in 2006, is a global training, development, and consulting company with a focus on business-to-business sales acceleration. We’re known for helping our clients make sales productivity and performance improvements, fast. We’ve built our reputation on shaping and customizing training curriculum around our clients’ unique situations and cultures.

We believe, at the core, that delivering training content in our clients’ language is the most effective way to speed the pace of the assimilation and actualization of concepts and skills in the real world.

So, when the requests started pouring in from military recruiting leaders for Fanatical Prospecting training, we found ourselves in a conundrum—we knew nothing about the military recruiting process and had no foundational knowledge on how the military worked.

We know exactly what we’re doing when civilian companies call us for help. We know the language of business. We speak sales and the sales process. It’s in our DNA. We aren’t starting from scratch.

The US military, though, was a complete unknown. Suddenly we were out of our comfort zone. We didn’t know the language of the United States Armed Forces.

I grew up in Augusta, Georgia, near Fort Gordon. Many of my childhood friends were from military families. One of my best friends joined the Marines right out of high school. Another joined the Navy. My wife’s dad was in the US Army Special Forces. She was an Army brat who was born on base. My dad was a Marine. He used the GI Bill to pay for college and became a lawyer.

Even with these connections, the military might as well have been a foreign country. I was ignorant, and this caused a level of stress and anxiety that I never experience with my civilian clients. Honestly, it is embarrassing to admit how little I knew about how the military worked—especially recruiting.

I was certain, though, that should we attempt to shove civilian sales techniques down the throats of military recruiters, we’d lose all credibility and make little impact. We’d be dismissed as just another group of civilians who “didn’t get it.”

Learning the Language

My “basic training” began at Fort Harrison in Helena, Montana, when Command Sergeant Major Rick Haerter took me under his wing. He spent hours getting me up to speed and changed my entire view of military recruiting.

Over the ensuing months I continued my education. I met dozens of officers and NCOs who were eager to help me learn. Captain Liz Alberton allowed me access to her entire company of recruiters and arranged a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to jump with the Golden Knights. Command Sergeant Major Shawn Lewis guided my learning and gave me an opportunity to hone the FMR message with his battalion.

I have a stack of napkins filled with notes that I took while learning about military recruiting over beers with leaders like First Sergeant Michael Downing and First Sergeant Christopher Llewellyn, who graciously helped me understand the life of a military recruiter.

I also had the privilege of visiting the US Army Recruiting and Retention College at Fort Knox with Sergeant First Class James Beaty, where I was able to meet the instructors and observe and participate in classes. Sergeant First Class Beaty invested hours, patiently teaching me how recruiting works and how to speak military language.

It was following a Fanatical Military Recruiting Boot Camp in Nashville, Tennessee, when the battalion commander exclaimed, “If I didn’t know the truth, I’d have believed that you’d been a career recruiter” that I knew I’d passed the first test. With the help of many kind people, I was learning the language and battle rhythm of military recruiting.

Military Recruiting versus Civilian Sales

Through my “basic training” I developed a new appreciation for the role the military recruiter plays in building and maintaining strength of force. I gained deep respect for the price they and their families pay for mission. I was also confronted with the unique challenges recruiters and their leaders face. I learned:

1. Military recruiting is among the most difficult tours. The stress and pressure to perform is unrelenting.
2. Most military recruiters and their leaders adhere to an NCO Creed, take their mission seriously, and are eager to learn, grow, develop, and become better at their craft.
3. The various branches of the military invest heavily in training new recruiters. This foundational training helps green recruiters gain basic competencies for recruiting.
4. Despite the upfront training investment, most military recruiters begin their new role unprepared for the demands of the job and are far outside of their comfort zone.
5. Almost nothing in the military prepares recruiters for the emotional rigors, interpersonal skills, time management, and prospecting discipline required for high performance. No one “joins” the military to be a recruiter.
6. Military recruiters and their leaders recognize that they need more than basic recruiting training to perform at a high level. They see the need to consistently build on and improve recruiting skills. For this reason, they gravitate toward civilian sales books like my book Fanatical Prospecting.
7. Commercial sales and military recruiting are not the same. Although there are parallel skill sets between military recruiting and civilian sales, recruiting is a specialized endeavor that requires a specific set of competencies. Therefore, civilian sales processes don’t necessarily translate and thus are difficult for military recruiters to assimilate.
8. Yet, outside of formal military recruiting school, there are few advanced, high-quality training resources designed specifically for the unique needs of military recruiters.
9. More is being demanded of recruiters than ever before. At the same time, the available pool of qualified prospects has decreased significantly,¹ and the competition in the marketplace for top talent, from all sectors, has accelerated.
10. Therefore, to win the War for Talent, today’s military recruiters must operate at a level of excellence beyond anything asked of them in the past.

The more I interacted with military recruiters, the more my mind-set about their role in our democracy shifted. With the entirety of America’s military strength resting on the strong shoulders of military recruiters, I found it abhorrent that the advanced training resources required for recruiters to grow, develop, and excel either didn’t exist or were not readily available.

So, my mission changed. I became obsessed with developing advanced military recruiting–specific training that honors the special and important role played by military recruiters in keeping our armed forces strong and our country safe.

This book, Fanatical Military Recruiting, is the result of that mission shift. It is the first book in a three-book series that will include Military Recruiting EQ and Coaching Military Recruiting.

• Fanatical Military Recruiting focuses on top of the funnel activity—primarily prospecting.
• Military Recruiting EQ focuses on emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, and the human influence frameworks required to engage highly qualified applicants and successfully move them through the recruiting process.
• Coaching Military Recruiting is a field guide for NCOICs that arms field level leaders with the unique tools, techniques, skills, and competencies for leading, developing, and coaching high-performance military recruiting teams.

I believe the timing is right for these new resources because military recruiting is facing a perfect storm. In this new paradigm, recruiters must quickly up-skill and gain new competencies to win the War for Talent.