Jeb Blount - Fanatical Military Recruiting: The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging High-Impact Prospecting to Engage Qualified Applicants, Win the War for Talent, and Make Mission Fast

Jeb Blount

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Copyright 2019 by Jeb Blount. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Blount, Jeb, author.

Title: Fanatical military recruiting : the ultimate guide to leveraging

high-impact prospecting to engage qualified applicants win the war for

talent, and make mission fast / Jeb Blount.

Description: Hoboken : Wiley, 2019. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018042080 (print) | LCCN 2018055283 (ebook) | ISBN

9781119473633 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119473626 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119473640

(hardback) | ISBN 9781119473633 (ePDF)

Subjects: LCSH: United StatesArmed ForcesRecruiting, enlistment, etc. |

BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Training. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS /

Development / General. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Organizational Development.

Classification: LCC UB323 (ebook) | LCC UB323 .B596 2019 (print) | DDC

355.2/230973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018042080

For the men and women who work tirelessly to win the War for Talent for the United States Armed Forces. We are forever in your debt. Without you, there is no military, there is no freedom, there is no beacon on the hill, there is no American dreameverything we have, love, and hold dear. Our way of life, freedom to be, do, believe, and say anything we choose, is because of you.

Failure to adequately resource our [military] with the required number and quality of personnel can have far reaching and strategic implications and threaten our nations 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 couldnt 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.

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. Were known for helping our clients make sales productivity and performance improvements, fast. Weve 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 conundrumwe knew nothing about the military recruiting process and had no foundational knowledge on how the military worked.

We know exactly what were doing when civilian companies call us for help. We know the language of business. We speak sales and the sales process. Its in our DNA. We arent starting from scratch.

The US military, though, was a complete unknown. Suddenly we were out of our comfort zone. We didnt 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 wifes 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 workedespecially recruiting.

I was certain, though, that should we attempt to shove civilian sales techniques down the throats of military recruiters, wed lose all credibility and make little impact. Wed be dismissed as just another group of civilians who didnt get it.

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.