8 Battle-Tested Rules for Poaching Great Teammates from Competitors

Scaling a Service Business Demands You Learn to Poach

Winning companies are a collection of great teammates.  They are the single most important success ingredient.

Finding them, as we all know, is difficult. Winners in any market are not the norm. They are always in the minority.

Most often, they are not looking for you. So, building a great team demands poaching.

Poaching is Essential for Growth

One of my businesses is a fast scaling family law firm — SterlingLawyers.com. We only hire experienced, passionate attorneys. This limitation demands that we regularly poach attorneys from competitors.  We cannot meet our client demand hiring newbie lawyers.

We have poached many of our most effective attorneys from other law firms. Of my four law partners, for example, we poached three of them from competitors.

Another of my businesses is a fast-growing digital ad agency — RocketClicks.com. Digital marketers are in demand in every market. There are way more job openings than competent applicants.

Here again, poaching is a central component of our growth strategy.

Poaching Defined

I am defining the term “poach” as engaging a target who is not currently looking. They did not apply to us. We reached out to them.

Also, this posting is not a “how to get the target’s attention” experience dump. These are my personal battle-tested poaching guidelines that have worked for me.

I have also been on the losing side of many a poach. I get the rejected feeling. And I deserved it every time I lost someone I wanted to keep.

If you lose someone to a poacher, it is almost always your fault. Look in the mirror before you blame.

Here are my Poaching Rules:

1) Be a Servant Leader in Your Business

Companies led by servant leaders create the most attractive workplace for teammates to grow and prosper.  Servant leadership conveys a huge cultural advantage.  Success truly starts here.

Cultures eventually harmonize with the leadership. Your job as the leader is to serve by removing obstacles and empowering teammates.

Your company culture will follow the leaders’ examples. Ultimately, it must embody the philosophy that your business exists to help teammates get what they want. If this is your culture’s truth, nothing can stop your team.

Culture beats strategy every time.

If you desire to serve first, this conviction will manifest in your recruiting. You will earn a reputation for serving your team. People will know and talk about this.

Targets gravitate to leaders who want them to win. If their current leader is a “me first” person, it will be much easier to entice that target away.

The converse is also true. If your personal agenda rules your actions, you will lose–and deservedly so.

2) Never Betray Confidences or Take Advantage of Someone

There is much “gray” in this guideline. I recognize that. This rule’s application is very situational.

Your moral compass is your guide here.  Listen to your gut.

My personal test is that I want to finish everything I do with integrity and tell the whole story. I don’t want to ever be tempted to omit or change the facts of my story because I am ashamed or want to hide the truth.

If I have a positive personal relationship with another business owner and want to poach someone on their team, I will go to them first and ask. I then accept their answer.

If I don’t respect their leadership, I will poach aggressively.

3) Understand Money Expectations Early in the Process

I once had three phone conversations with a target that I really liked.  I then drove three hours to meet with her before I probed on financial expectations. That was a mistake.

She was beyond our financial reach.

It was embarrassing. We could not get anywhere near her current compensation. I had wasted everyone’s time and was careless with emotions.

If situationally appropriate, ask about financial expectations early in the courtship.

As a poacher, you will almost always have to offer more money than the candidate is making. It’s good to know the number sooner rather than later.

4) Go “Over the Top” for Bell Cow Candidates

“Bell Cows” are those candidates that have tremendous influence and respect among their peers. Other potential candidates perk up and notice them leaving and are more likely to follow.

When you get a chance at one of these Bell Cows, go “over the top” on your offer. Don’t quibble. Make the money and the total compensation package a no-brainer.

Attracting influencers will boost your poaching efforts as you grow and seek to attract other high performers. They become your showpiece and lead argument in poaching discussions.

5) Never Poach to Get Competitive Intel

Poaching to get competitive intelligence is a dumb idea for many reasons.

For starters, poaching for intel sends a horrible message to the new teammate. You are telling them that the information in their head is more valuable than they are as a teammate.  So, the foundation of that relationship is a disaster.

You are also telegraphing to your team that it can’t win without taking the low road. You don’t have confidence in them. Now, you’ve damaged trust, the foundation of your leadership.

The whole practice will rot your culture.

Finally, as if the reasons above aren’t enough, you can’t act on the info you extract anyway. It will likely be stale. The intel won’t be complete. And your business dynamics, culture, strengths and weaknesses are all different anyway.

6) Never Poach to Get Specific Customers

For many of the same reasons as #5, I don’t like poaching to bring a specific customer into your business.

Protecting your culture is a delicate and vital task. This practice seems to always make the leader’s job more difficult.

Also, you can’t be sure the desired customer will come. So, now you have added an expense that may stress your business.

7) If You Follow these Rules, Be Remorseless When You Get Blowback

Here’s the deal.

If you are serving your teammates, you will want them to leave if they have a better opportunity elsewhere.

Likewise, if you offer a better opportunity to a poaching target, it is a wonderful thing when they join your team. You are adding value to them. Your team makes their life better.

So, when the criticism comes, relish it. You are doing a good thing for others. The hater is suffering from a loser mentality anyway.

A very close, long-time friend of mine recently tried to poach our receptionist. At first, I was instinctively annoyed.

Then, as I quickly realized he was offering her a promotional opportunity, I was happy for my teammate. He was going to make her life better.

She is a valuable teammate. So, we fought to keep her and offered her a comparable opportunity that bettered her life.

She chose to stay on our team.

The truth is that when someone leaves a team, they most often do it for valid reasons. Perhaps their own leadership capacity outgrew their supervisor?

Maybe the financial upside was stronger at the new company? Or they would have more flexibility? Or the culture at their current company was toxic?

Or they left for the most common reason — their supervisor held them back in some way. (I have found that this is most often unintentional on the part of the supervisor.)

These rules have worked well for me.  What do you think?  What are your rules?