New Business Generation for Recruiters

Advice given to people should change with the times. The answer to “How can I be a successful consultant” has changed in the last year or two and more than ever if you are serious about getting into, or staying in, the recruitment industry then you need to become brilliant at sales; specifically new business generation.

At this moment companies are being ever more careful and cautious regarding how and where to spend their money. The practical result for consultants is that there are fewer companies spending and those that are need even more reason to do business with you than before.

I was going to outline a number of different business generation routes in this article but preferring always to write detailed rather than shallow articles I have opted to focus on one area. . .

Vertical Market Specialisation

If you don’t have a vertical market that you specialise in then fast track your recruitment career and get one. One of the universal factors in every top biller I have ever seen is that they verticalise. If you this isn’t practical for you, perhaps you run a temp desk offering a certain candidate type to any industry then consider doing the below in a specific geographical area. The principles are then the same.

1) Realise this is a marathon not a sprint. It might take weeks of consistently calling to work your way through even a medium-sized industry. That’s okay because you are looking to develop long-term, consistent, business

2) Prepare before you phone. Specifically consider how you are going to introduce yourself, your company and your services. What objection handling lines and techniques will you use to the objections you can imagine coming up; the company isn’t recruiting, they have no budget, they have a preferred suppliers list etc

You might only get one shot at a decision maker within a particularly company so you want to be prepared to deliver powerful lines that will get their attention.

3) Get a list of companies in your chosen industry and call  all of them. You will find that a lot of them are too small or for other reasons unsuitable as clients. That’s okay. You can’t prejudge companies accurately without ringing them at least once. So ring everyone.

Trade associations are great sources of members lists and do remember the classic source of sales calls – the phone book. There are several online versions which can again produce a list of potential companies in a handful of mouse clicks. These days there is simply no excuse for not being able to generate a good target list for a sector.

Online business directories have a place in the world but approach with caution – of all the methods of generating lists they, particularly the free ones, tend to be the least accurate.

On that point please realise that every target list ever created had some dud companies on it. The information is always going to be out of date so expect that and prepare to have to be flexible when you ring. Companies merge, change name, shut down all the time. Your target list is simply a starting point.

Now the really important part. . .

4) Have a diary system that makes you money – After you have rung your companies ensure that you keep accurate records; who you called, what was said, contact numbers, email addresses, whether they are a potential client now or in the future etc

The really important part is to then record in your diary system when you are going to call them again. It could be as soon as tomorrow if you failed to reach the decision maker today. Equally it might be six months from now when their merger is expected to be finished. The when you ring them again I leave you to decide.

Old school professional sales people will recognise the above technique – sometimes called the day book system – every day a sales person opens his day book, see’s who they have to follow-up and call them. By continually putting the details into a diary or day book system everyone gets called back and real business gets generated on the second, third or later call back as you build up a relation with the client.

Business you find on your first call is luck; business you find on your call backs is sales!

There are certainly other things you can do to develop your vertical market but I trust the above has given you something to get started with.

Consider the benefits of apply the above – your sales manager will love your proactivity, you might find business simply waiting to be called and lastly you will definately develop a network of industry contacts, who if you call regularly, will give you business!

That’s got to be a good thing!

Until next time; be successful

Stephen

Trainer, Coach, Public Speaker

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Coming next on edenchanges.com – Fight Club!

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We would be delighted to discuss your corporate training or coaching needs so call us, or email us, today to discuss:

International: +44 1757 249 380 UK: 01757 249 390

Email: enquiries@edenchanges.com

Inspirational Dissatisfaction

Inspirational dissatisfaction was a phrase used by W. Clement Stone in his best selling book “The Success System that Never Fails.”

In a nutshell inspirational dissatisfaction is an internal dissatisfaction with how things are currently which motivates a person to change and improve things.

W. Clement Stone put forward the thought that every great achievement in the world had sprung from this. Like all sweeping statement it’s probably possible to pick fault with it and find some example of a great achievement that came about without this but that would be to belittle a very powerful concept.

In this article I would like to address sales people in particular and see how the above concept could make them better at what they do for a living.

I would think that most sales people would accept that a year from now their sales calls and meetings will be better and more effective at winning business than they are today.

If you agree with that fact then it has an interesting consequence which is this – it means that your calls and meetings today are not as good as they could be. In fact it means that you should be dissatisfied with how good they are and want to improve – which is inspirational dissatisfaction!

Assuming you want to get better as a sales person then inspirational dissatisfaction should have you analysing your calls and meetings, considering your techniques or scripts (whether written or in your head) and seeking ways to improve them.

Not doing that is like a sports person saying “I only want to be this good, I don’t want to improve.” No world class athlete ever said that!

When you are in sales you are busy. Either prospecting for new business or working hard to satisfy the client’s you already have. You don’t have a lot of time for fancy theories or pointless acronyms dreamed up by trainers. I have found that simple and quick is the way to go and for me “Inspirational Satisfaction” is a phrase that is easy to remember, widely applicable and very powerful to use. I hope you find it the same.

Until next time; be successful!

Stephen

Trainer, Coach, Public Speaker

Photo by Kotanfis with thanks.

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Coming next on edenchanges.com – The Power of Age – a blog on how you can use your age to your advantage in business!

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We would be delighted to discuss your corporate training or coaching needs so call us, or email us, today to discuss:

International: +44 1757 249 380 UK: 01757 249 390

Email: enquiries@edenchanges.com

Four Tips for Selling with Confidence

There are a number of factors that go into making a person successful at selling. One of the universal ones is having a certain level of confidence.

Quite simply the more confidence you have the more you will sell. Interestingly it is possible to have too much confidence and lose sales that way but let’s keep things simply for now and concentrate on boosting our confidence and thus our sales.

I outline some tips that are taken from the Edenchanges sales and recruitment training courses.

Believe in your product – this is one of the basic building blocks of sales confidence. Presenting a sales pitch on a product you are uncertain about is a painful experience. Find something to believe in with regards to your product. Consider the benefits of it to the purchasers. If it is a lower value, high volume item then presumably it’s priced accordingly and people need that volume.

(Yes I am making the assumption that people are doing honest business and selling an ethical product at an ethical price.)

For recruiters this is fundamental basic of the job, or should be, and it has some positive consequences peculiar to recruitment. As it is easier to be confident about a good quality candidate what you will find happens is that you will seek hard to find better quality candidates. This of course then benefits you as you are representing better people which will open more doors and result in more hires. Everyone benefits!

Preparation – being prepared for your sales meeting or phone session gives you something to base your confidence on. It is a very comfortable feeling to know that you are ready for the session. In particular prepare mentally, and use notes, relating to what you are going to say first and what you are going to say to the most likely objections.

Fail with confidence – for me Zig Ziglar summed it up perfectly when he said that in sales:

“Some you win, some you lose and some get rained out.”

You won’t win every sale and that’s okay. When you realise that your confidence never needs to take a hit from a failed pitch. Just mentally shrug it off, learn what you can from the experience and make the next call or visit.

It’s a game – sales is competitive and challenging and in every way that matters it’s just like a game or a sport – even down to having coaches and trainers like me! People who play sports or games tend to play to win. That means they take them seriously, try their best etc. It also means they enjoy the struggle and the challenge and have fun.

The more fun someone is having the less self conscious they become, the more relaxed and thus the more confident they will be.

When managing sales people (or yourself) to sell do remember to consider the game aspect. That’s one of the reasons sales incentives where people can win small prizes work so well. They are fun!

So play to win and enjoy the rollercoaster ride that is sales!

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As always there are many other things I could say regarding confidence and sales however for now I trust the above has given you a starting point.

Until next time; be successful!

Stephen Hart

Trainer, Coach, Public Speaker

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Edenchanges Recruitment Training services are outlined on this page and the Sales Training details are available here

Additionally a unique recruitment coaching program is available at www.recruitmentwithoutborders.com and is suitable for all recruitment professionals of any level, anywhere in the world.

Four Tips for Avoiding Back Door Hiring

This is the next in an ongoing series of articles presenting recruitment advice. Suitable for everyone who runs or works in a recruitment business.

Recruitment

is an Art Form

An important point to remember with all recruitment or sales advice is that both activies are art forms. As such there are lots of ways to do them.

I only offer advice that I have either used myself or presented to others and seen work well. Consider how you can adapt the advice here for your market place and your style of recruitment or sales and I truly expect it to help you be a success.

Four Tips for Avoiding Back Door Hiring

Back door hiring is that unhappy event that happens to all recruiters at some point in their career where the client hires a candidate without informing the consultant.

[Historical note - the phrases 'back door hiring'; 'being back doored' etc are not mine but ones I have heard widely in the industry - the analogue is that the candidate has been ushered quietly in through the back door of the building away from prying eyes. You might be aware of this situation via a different name.]

There are a range of reasons why clients do this is ranging from accidental oversight to criminal intent. Sometimes we do our job as recruiters so well that the temptation of what we are offering is too much for the decision maker.

From the candidate perspective they are often presented with the bleak choice of being morally upright or getting a job offer. A tough place to be in when you need a job.

For those consultants thinking this is all about forming strong relationships with their candidates let me agree and say that despite the best possible of relationships back doors will happen. People are people and sometimes that means they are less than upstanding and moral. What you need is a safety net for those occasions when people fall from grace.

I had one client who, as it turned out, had no budget to recruit but couldn’t resist the two candidates I presented to him from his direct competitor. He hired them after telling me they had failed the interview.

Fortunately his CEO was a decent chap and settled the bill immediately I brought it too his  attention. (And put an official repremand on the record of the hiring manager). So all ended well but had I not been vigilant in my recruitment practice thousands of pounds of earnings would have been stolen from me.

So I present below four tips to help you get what you deserve and what you are legally owed:

1) Have a regular checking system – ensure that you have a regular system for checking against back doors. This should be an absolute part of your recruitment processes – as a company. If for some reason you company does not want to implement a system then put your own personal one in place for your personal units.

I suspect that once you have found your first example your company will be keen to adopt a checking system.

2) Check up on every arranged interview - I’ve had quite a few consultants tell me that they check up on the interviews that they are suspicious about. In my opinion that’s like having a fire alarm and turning it off when you are fairly happy there isn’t going to be a fire. You simply can’t know when there is going to be a problem so you check all of them.

You do that and I guarantee that at some point one will come up that will totally surprise you.

3) Check to the full extent of your terms and conditions – most recruiters have terms and conditions that describe their ‘introducing of a candidate’ as lasting for twelve months. So you check right up to the end of that time frame.

I remember clearly an experienced consultant whom I was coaching and I had him start to check for back doors. Something he had never done before. When I checked I found out he had stopped at interviews he had arranged six months ago. I strongly suggested he go back the full time span and lo and behold his first back door, worth nearly £9,000 in fees, turned out to be an interview he had arranged eleven and a half months ago.

Needless to say he religiously checks all his arranged interviews right to their end date now. (Disappointingly he never did buy me that bottle of wine he promised me to say thank you!)

4) Powerful Paperwork – this could almost be a blog topic in itself however once a back door situation has arisen your chief weapon will be your paperwork. Something that really helps is having a signed ‘Declaration slip”. This is a piece of paper which the candidate has signed to confirm that your company has introduced him to the client.

Several companies that I know of have added this as a tear off and return portion to their interview confirmation letters. If anyone would like an example of one then email me and I will send one over.

Along with the declaration slip your internal paperwork regarding the candidate and the interviewer needs to be strong and well documented. Dates are important and if you have those wonderful consultants who are terrific at sales and bad at paperwork then please try to educate them. Having a strong paper trail detailing candidate and client discussions can result in an out of court and early settlement when back doors happen.

I have literally seen thousands of pounds of billings and commissions lost when poor paperwork has prevented the truth from being provable!

I truly hope the above helps.

Until next time; be successful!

Stephen Hart

Trainer, Coach, Public Speaker

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Edenchanges Recruitment Training services are outlined on this page – do have a look and consider how they might benefit you or your company

Additionally a unique recruitment coaching program is available at www.recruitmentwithoutborders.com and is suitable for all recruitment professionals of any level, anywhere in the world.

Four Tips for Dealing with Gatekeepers

This is the next in an ongoing series of articles presenting sales advice. Suitable for everyone who has to make a sales call!

Recruitment and Sales

is an Art Form

An important point to remember with all recruitment or sales advice is that both activies are art forms. As such there are lots of ways to do them.

I only offer advice that I have either used myself or presented to others and seen work well. Consider how you can adapt the advice here for your market place and your style of recruitment or sales and I truly expect it to help you be a success.

Four Tips for Dealing with Gatekeepers

A gatekeeper is anyone who is not the specific person you wanted to speak to. Very often they are a receptionist, or the secretary but they could also be a senior director who is simply not the senior director whom you wanted!

Becoming an expert at dealing with gatekeepers is a necessary task for anyone seeking to become brilliantly successful at sales. It takes effort, practice and thought.

I outline below four tips that will help but they aren’t the whole picture. If getting to the decision maker you wanted was like crossing a raging river then consider the tips that follow as stepping stones  rather than a complete bridge. They sure will help but you’d be advised to add some more stones of your own!

1) Be polite - Bang! There you go. The first rule – Be polite. Note I didn’t say be weak or accepting I said be polite. There is nothing to be gained, and everything to be lost, by being rude to the gatekeepers. First of all you should respect everyone in business regardless of their position and second not being polite will close more doors than it will open.

I have met sales people who have happily told me about the receptionists they have bullied into submission. I also know that in the cases where I have witnessed such sales people in action I have always witnessed more negatives resulting from their approach than positives.

2) Be assumptive - This is both a mind set and a verbal tip. In your head you should be expecting to reach the person you are after and if they are genuinely not available you should be expecting help regarding how to get hold of them later.

So for example when someone is not available try asking:

“When is the best time to call?” – assumes there is  best time (People usually say “Is there a best time?” which is weaker

“When will he be back?” – assumes the person will return at some time

“What’s his mobile number?” – assumes he has a mobile phone rather than “Does he have a mobile number?”

Having an assumptive mind set makes it much easier to get results when dealing with gatekeepers. It’s all about expecting them to help, provide you with information and put you through.

3) Switch target - So the person you really want isn’t available – “Who else could you speak to?” – you can ask that of the gatekeeper “Who else could I speak to about…?” – again this is an assumptive question assuming that there will be someone else.

A stronger way of thing this is by having another person in mind when you make the call and then smoothly switch to the other person – e.g. if you can’t reach the sales director then ask for the managing director etc

4) Get their names - You should always get the name of the receptionist, pa and frankly all the gatekeepers you speak to. It makes the next call that you make to that company so much easier when you are able to use their name. You can also use their name on the call in a couple of different ways.

First you can use it when speaking to them which has a positive psychological impact and secondly when forwarded through to a person you can reference the person you were just speaking to by name.

This can be especially useful when pure cold calling and you have had to ask for the right person to speak to.When you get the suggested decision maker on the phone, let’s imagine the gatekeeper had been called Sarah, you are able to mention that

“Sarah said you were the right person to speak to regarding…”

This can be a warm way into the call.

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Further sales and recruitment advice will be given later this week and over future weeks.

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Edenchanges Recruitment Training services are outlined on this page and the Sales Training details are available here – do have a look and consider how it might benefit you or your company

Additionally a unique recruitment coaching program is available at www.recruitmentwithoutborders.com and is suitable for all recruitment professionals of any level, anywhere in the world.

I truly hope the above helps.

Until next time; be successful!

Stephen Hart

Trainer, Coach, Public Speaker

Four Tips With Voice Mails

An article for anyone in business, whether recruitment, sales, management or general business who spends time talking to voicemails.

Whether you are in sales, recruitment or business generally you will frequently be trying to reach someone and instead reach their voice mail. In my experience it’s at this point a lot of people tense up and frankly lose the plot. So let me offer some guidance that might make the whole experience more relaxed and productive.

1) Always leave a message – This is very much rule 101 when it comes to voice mails. Consider this; you have spent the time ringing the company, and often in sales also finding out who you should speak to, possibly having to debate or negotiate with the receptionist to put you through – so why on earth would you then throw away all that time and effort and not leave a message?

The time you have spent getting as far as the voice mail has already be spent. You might as well try your luck and leave a message.

Otherwise it’s a bit like going to a casino, buying some chips, walking over to the roulette table. . .and then refusing to place a bet. You simply can’t win by doing that. But you might just win if you do place a bet i.e. leave a message!

(The casino example is my response to people who say it is pointless leaving message – I’m not saying you will get called back but I am saying you might and I can guarantee you won’t if you don’t leave a message – also see point three below)

2) Prepare your message in advance - People get nervous when the voice mail starts and many people I have coached over the years have told me this is because they don’t know what to say and they are desperately trying to think of something before the beep goes. The result is they sound flustered and uncertain on their message. The really simply answer, and it makes the whole experience much more relaxed, is to know what you are going to say before you make the call.

Business people are busy and it is realistic to think that you might end up talking to an answering machine or voice mail when you ring someone. So plan what you will say in that eventuality prior to making the call. It only takes a few seconds of thought.

3) Be realistic - Realistically they are not going to call you back. At least you can’t rely on them calling you back especially if you are making a cold call to them and they don’t know you. Immediately after leaving your message diariase your call back. Do not rely on them to call you. It’s nice if they do but you can’t rely on it.

4) Slowly and repeat – People speed up when they speak on voicemails so ensure that you are speaking slowly when you leave your message. Think like a news presenter and pace out your words.

Having a message prepared helps here as you can relax and simply say what you were planning to say. At the end of the message its good practice to repeat your name and phone number. At the start of the message the listener is doing just that; listening. At the end they are more ready to write down your details.

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There are a few other things I could say about voicemails however the above are the key ones and should make the whole process run a lot smoother for you!

Do feel free to pass on this article or recommend it to a friend or colleague if you feel they would benefit from it.

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Edenchanges Recruitment Training services are outlined on this page do have a look and consider how it might benefit you or your company and if you are from a company in another industry than management training and general business skills training is also available. And we’d love to hear from you!

Additionally a unique recruitment coaching program is available at www.recruitmentwithoutborders.com and is suitable for all recruitment professionals of any level, anywhere in the world.

I truly hope the above helps.

Until next time; be successful!

Stephen Hart

Trainer, Coach, Public Speaker

Four Tips When Canvassing

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles presenting recruitment advice for recruitment consultants and managers.

Recruitment is an Art Form

An important point to remember with all recruitment advice is that recruitment is an art form. As such there are lots of ways to do it.

I only offer advice that I have either used myself or presented to others and seen work well. Consider how you can adapt the advice here for your market place and your style of recruitment and I truly expect it to help you be a success.

Four Tips When Canvassing

The art of canvassing, or presenting a specific candidate to a specific target company, has many stages. One of the most critical is the moment you reach your target – the decision maker.

If that moment is fumbled then all the work that has gone into making the call is wasted. Assuming you want to be a success in recruitment then the question has to be ~ “How can you maximise your impact at that moment in the call?”

There are a number of things you can do – let me present four:

1) Have a Powerful Opening Statement (POS) prepared about your candidate- This is literally the first thing that you say to the decision maker after they have answered the phone (see point number 2) – a good POS will be short, have a couple of facts about the candidate you are representing and end in an open question.

You keep it short because you want to engage the decision maker in a two way conversation and you can’t do that if you are doing all the talking. Also it’s about talking with, not talking to, the decision maker.

The facts about your candidate are to catch the decision makers interest and getting him to think about how great your candidate is and the open question is to kick start the real conversation where you will be able to achieve all your objectives for the call.

2) Go straight into your POS – I’m not one for ‘Hi, how are you’ or ‘Have I caught you at a good time?’. I prefer to get straight into the call. For me the softer openers simply alert the decision maker that this is a sales call and lose you momentum.

3) Say it with confidence- Consider your tone very carefully. If you don’t sound confident then the call will fail. You have to believe in what you are saying and say it with a convincing level of confidence.

4) ‘Individual’ not ‘Candidate’- I don’t like the word ‘candidate’ I think it’s cold and clinical and I believe it has negative connotations for the decision makers. I much prefer to hear people use ‘individual’ – consider how these two sentences differ:

“I’m representing a senior candidate who is interested in…” or;

“I’m representing a senior individual who is interested in…”

Personally I much prefer the second one which I think sounds much more ’senior business’ like than the first. It has also been my experience that it is better received.

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There are lots of other elements that go into making a canvass call a success. Adopting the above suggestions will, I believe, be a great start towards you enjoying even greater success when doing it.

Further recruitment advice will be given later this week and over future weeks.

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Edenchanges Recruitment Training services are outlined on this page do have a look and consider how it might benefit you or your company

Additionally a unique recruitment coaching program is available at www.recruitmentwithoutborders.com and is suitable for all recruitment professionals of any level, anywhere in the world.

I truly hope the above helps.

Until next time; be successful!

Stephen Hart

Trainer, Coach, Public Speaker