Big billers do it, and so should you!

It is always inspiring to watch young recruitment consultants developing in their careers. They often start with an overwhelming struggle of conflicting priorities – calls, e-mails, meetings, registrations, interviews, excitement, disappointment, processes, service level expectations etc.

A year passes and all that initial flurry of confusion and activity seems to settle into methodical, strategic activity. By the third year, if they are worth their salt, the consultant is now running with skill, influence, and a strong billing capacity. They are high value employees!

I have noticed that these consultants have learnt to work with the same number of hours in a day as they did before, however with far more attention to the following areas:

They understand the fundamentals:

1. Great recruiters know they are in sales: Being able to source talent, confirm availability and someone’s aspirations is only part of equation. To move beyond that to a place where you can competently and succinctly convince a supervisor or hiring authority to act on your talent, to read that resume, to interview in a timely manner, even to trust you, is what separates the best recruiters from the rest. It takes sales skills to see your hard work become a reality. Getting candidates to listen to you and accept your offers is a special skill that must be developed at all costs, and big billers do it beautifully.
2. Great recruiters know what matters most: We all have the same hours in a day to make good. However, great recruiters know that they don’t have enough time to do it all. What the best know is how to prioritise. Often that looks like a strict focus on high performance activities (As discussed in metrics below), and also the ability to focus on sourcing top-performing candidates – often the ones that are currently employed. Although they are more difficult to place, they are the greatest way to build your reputation and future success. It is also appropriate to focus on relationships with top performing leaders within the business – find out how you can help them. Learning from and supporting the best will help you become the best.
3. Great recruiters work leads. Things are constantly changing around you. There is no way to stay abreast of everything so don’t try to do it all on your own. Great recruiters use leads as an instrumental means of finding opportunities – whether that be available candidates, imminent vacancies, or industry news. No amount of websites, databases, or seminars will surpass the value gained from your network of leads.

They also want to grow:

1. Great recruiters have a mentor. There are great recruiters within many businesses. Great consultants have great mentors, often more than one! The industry is so much more than technical competence; it is also through networking and sharing of ideas that great consultants achieve their greatest results.
2. Great recruiters use metrics. Big billers are all about measurement. They know their sales, they know their candidate sources, they know their success ratios, they know their interview count, their visits and they know their referrals. They measure the numbers so they can continually improve. To know what works for you is one of the best ways to realise you fullest potential.
3. Great recruiters read. Take every opportunity to source great material and digest as much relevant recruitment, industry specific and HR related material as you possibly can. It not only makes for great conversation with candidates and colleagues, it helps transition you from the mainstream transactional service offering to an organisational recruitment advisor – someone who can help them learn, and learning breeds loyalty.

What you need to know when told “You’re too expensive!”

How valuable is your time? How valuable is your customer’s time? What is it that you do that makes your time so valuable? What is it that your customer does that makes their time so valuable? Understanding what you do and why you do it will help you appreciate your value to your customers and why you charge what you do. Knowing this will allow you to combat the price objection “you’re too expensive”.

Knowing your price that runs your business or desk is critical for success and longevity and is fundamental to your understanding of why you do what you do. Once costs and competency are understood, you will be far better equipped to deal with any price objections.

To overcome any price objections you also need know what your customer wants. As ever customer is different, you need to consider and know where you stand on the following:

1. Are you offering a service or a product? The answer to this question is very important and sets the framework for your entire business solution.
2. Do you charge a fee for your service or your product? The answer to this determines if your terms are best structured with a retained model or contingent model. Your return on investment is far greater under a retained model and therefore your fee structure should be adjusted accordingly. However if a contingent model is accepted, your fees should rise to reflect the uncertainty of success.
3. Does your guarantee cover the quality of your service or the quality of your product? What are the criteria upon which your offer a guarantee and how will it be measured?
4. Do you differ from your competitors? Why? How? Although it might be common place for you to carry out face to face interviews, reference checks, WPA’s, OH&S training, skills tests etc, it is not so common for a majority of your competition. A competitors rate might be cheaper than yours, however it is for something far less than what you are offering.
5. How do you compare on price to your competitors? Where do you sit in the scheme of things… are you uptown or are your low town? Why are you there? Is it speed over service, is it unique over numbers, is it sponsored over local? How you address these questions should then determine who you are targeting.

Once you are settled on these questions, you are in a much better position to counter a customer’s price objection.

The Slippery Side of Sales

When I was an engineer, my day was spent solving finite element problems of models with 10’s of thousands of elements. When I programmed the software to run analyses, each one of those elements did what it was suppose to do and as long as I had established the correct constraints and loads, the information I received in return was accurate, consistent and could be relied upon.

However we all know that in the world of recruitment, what you give is not always what you get! You are told your client needs to source a candidate, you find out later that they were merely salary benchmarking the industry. You are promised your candidate wants to change jobs, however when you get them an offer, they joyfully accept a counter offer. You are told ‘We have 15 immediate requirements’, so drop your rate, only to find that really only 2 roles exist, and now the new rate is expected to be the norm. Too often referees provided aren’t genuine; CV’s from the same candidate are drastically different from 3 years ago; job titles and responsibilities are not supported by previous employers, and many requirements you toil over in good faith are not even formally approved….. in the people business, what you hear is not always what is real, what you read is not always what is accurate and what you give is not always what you get!

Unfortunately due to the slippery nature of some people, too many recruitment consultants have been lured into murky waters where tactics and strategy have been exchanged for compromise and lies.

It can be as simple as…. You know the role is going to be a 3 month contract, but advise the candidate leaving a perm position that there very likely will be a contract extension..…….

It can be as subtle as…. You know the candidate will move when they receive a better offer, but put them forward anyway……….

It can be as sinister as… You know the referee was not favourable, however choose to do another referee and only present the positive one…….

As you have probably already realised, dealing with people is not always straight forward. What you give is not always what you get. Sales can be a slippery saga and compromise all too alluring.

The bottom line is – If you are not in the sales business with a commitment to build relationships founded on integrity and trust, ultimately your long term sustainability is uncertain. Trust takes a career to build however a word, action or click to lose! Despite all that is slippery around us, we need to be better than what we’ve been given and most critically we need to be trustworthy!

Here are some suggestions to build and maintain trust:

1. Do what you say.

This is foundational. Small or big, important or not, failing to follow though not only erodes trust, it diminishes your prospects of further promotion and increased opportunity. A CEO once advised me that in reflection his key to arriving at the top job was to keep his promises and do the things he said he would do.

2. Share information.

When tempted to be vague with information, don’t take it. By sharing openly, your listener quickly realises you have nothing to hide.
For example a breakdown of trust might unfold like: “How did the meeting with your boss go?” “It was fine.”
However when building trust it might look like: “How did the meeting with our boss go?” “It went fine. Leading up to the discussion was actually quite stressful, you know getting everything together and presentable, but in the end I completed my review and we were both happy to agree to goals and a direction going forward.”

By sharing willingly, you are proving that you have nothing to hide.

3. Protect confidences.

No gossip allowed! Never share someone else’s personal story without their permission. If someone is telling you something about someone else, you can rest assured they are telling someone else about you. One day I was sharing with an important client some updates on their competitor.. I then asked how are you guys going….. he said I don’t want to tell you because you just told me everything about everyone else! You can only trust people who are discreet and keep confidences.

4. Don’t lie-ish.

‘White lies’, the ones that don’t sit well with your conscious but can still be ‘technically qualified’ are very alluring in the sales world. But telling the truth even when it’s not perfectly pleasant will make your trustworthy! What a challenge this is when it feels like placement fees are on the line – sadly many don’t realise it is really their career that is on the line!

If you do have something you don’t want to disclose, let that be known. You shouldn’t be forced to give up your most personal feelings and secrets just to be trustworthy. Everyone is entitled to privacy; the key is in being able to make your boundaries clear.

5. If you do lie, admit it.

Sometimes it feels unavoidable to lie. It is best to confess to your lie as soon as possible and explain your motives. If you get caught, don’t deny it. That is simply another lie and unfortunately one your reputation is tarnished as a liar, you will never redeem it!

6. Be consistent.

Be the same person irrespective of your surroundings and associates. When you are consistent, people realise that what they see is what they get. This builds trust and credibility, and gives others the confidence that you will protect them when you are with them and most importantly in their absence.

Trust is the foundation for high performance and it means just that: trust comes first. When we try to make plans before trust issues are resolved, we deal with symptoms rather than causes and repeating problems just change names.

Taking the chill out of cold calls

Having been in sales now for a number of years, there are a few lessons I have learnt along the way regarding ‘cold calling’ that have made a real difference.

1. Patience. Prospecting calls don’t materialise into customers overnight. Turning a conversation into a client rarely happens quickly, even for the most seasoned of callers. It’s unrealistic to think you’ll make a sale on a cold call in professional services. Aside from the prospect not knowing you, or how good you are, they don’t yet trust you! Taking the time to ‘invest’ in relationships and ‘partner’ with them is a journey – so take one step at a time, and keep taking those steps.

2. Qualify The Buyer. Knowing who to call is as critical as why and how to call. Calling someone who can’t ultimately ‘call’ the shots is inefficient and ineffective. Finding out and focusing on decision makers is key to fruitful cold calling. Calling the decision maker who has a current need for your services is the icing on top.
If you can’t define what the client’s market is, the networks they move in, the associations they are involved with and the remuneration of their industry, then you need to continue doing your homework.

3. Don’t mix words. You are an expert, specialist and professional. Get that message across early in the call. Be compelling and demonstrate how you’re different to the thousands of competitors in the market.
Don’t hesitate to leave a voice message. Make it meaningful and such that it alerts interest. Know however that less the 3% of cold call voice messages are returned. Therefore take confidence in the fact that this is a low percentage game.

4. Add Value. Each call should be coupled with the opportunity to add value. “I just called to touch base” or “see how business was going” won’t do much for building your relationships or keeping your customer interested.
By drawing on experiences of how you helped other employers, or published industy articles, as well as finding ways to extend leads or arrange introductions will build your credibility, make you a person of interest and add value.

Get customers talking…. Have tailored questions ready to get them excited about sharing and opening up. This will highlight opportunities where you could offer services and increase your value add.

5. Consistency. If you are going to make a call cold, remember the concepts of Frequency and Recencey. You develop credibility by consistency following up at regular intervals and remaining the most recent person in contact with that customer. Then when they are ready to take action, you are the one they call. In addition to the telephone and face to face meetings, explore communicating to your customers through direct mail, newsletters, industry events and social media etc.

It is important to remember to focus on building a relationship, not a sale.