“Great acts are made up of small deeds.” — Lao Tzu (ancient Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism)
How true this is in our own business. Too often, we tend to focus on the end result by concentrating on the number of submits per week or the number of appointments you had this week. Don’t get me wrong — those are important KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to follow; however, you could make your weekly quota of meetings and submits week after week and still not be close to driving revenue at the end of the month.
Activity without “quality” is just a wasted exercise of time, resources, and company money. – Daniel Guelzo
Recruiter Measurement
Recruiters, If you really want to measure something, measure:
- The number of recruiting calls you make to get a passive candidate.
- The number of submittals you make to get an interview.
- The number of interviews or “send outs” you schedule to get a hire.
- The number of passive referrals you receive each week from the active candidate you interview.
- The number of relationships you make each week with place-able, source-able and Centers of Influence (COI’s) professionals that match your “recruiting and business” plan.
When you are evaluating rookie recruiters, first measure their success by evaluating how many candidates they recruit and meet face-to-face (that matched their recruiting plan) on a weekly basis. For us, the face-to-face benchmark for full desk recruiters was set at twelve to fifteen per week. If they couldn’t meet the face-to-face activity level, then I knew we had training opportunities with them on communicating their value proposition for candidates. If the recruiter could not drive face-to-face candidate traffic after remediation then the recruiter could not be successful in this industry.
If they met the 12–15 candidate face-to-face interviews per week objective, then I focused on the number of passive referrals, job leads, and references the recruiter obtained during each candidate interview. A typical 20-minute interview with a passive or active candidate should provide 8-12 leads. If the number of leads and referrals were low, then we had training opportunities specifically on creating value during the interview process for the candidate. The quicker they got to passive candidates the higher their submit-to-interview ratio climbed. The better they got at finding and presenting passive candidate the higher their interview to hire ratio climbed.
There’s a thousand ways we can measure activity metrics for recruiters however, weekly candidate traffic and leads per interview are two that I recommend that measure “quality” in the activity process.
Account Executive Measurement
Account Executives, if you really want to measure something, measure:
- The number of Appointment Action Calls you make to get a face-to-face meeting.
- The number challenges you discover each time you meet with a decision maker.
- The number of times you are invited back to continue the discovery process.
- The number of meetings it takes before you are able to provide valuable solutions.
- The number of unsolicited “referrals” you get from your existing clients.
Understanding where you can work, compete or dominate in your market is priority one, and as a manager, I made sure that new business development managers had a clear understanding of the capabilities and limitations of their recruiting teams. Working was not an option and once we defined areas in which we could compete or dominate the first priority was to see how successful they were at scheduling face-to-face appointments with prospect clients that match their recruiting / business plans. I set that benchmark at fifteen per week (three per day).
Definition of an Appointment: An agreed-upon meeting with a decision maker to discuss how flexible staffing or solutions is used to help meet company objectives.
If a new sales person could not schedule face-to-face meetings, then I knew we had training opportunities on differentiating our solutions, approach, and business processes. If they could not consistently schedule appointments then I knew this was an Account Executive that would not be successful.
If they were able to schedule appointments, I then focused on the salesperson’s ability to continue the sales process. In other words, are they invited back? Too often, sales people are not invited back because they did not differentiate themselves or their product. They did not uncover challenges or present valuable solutions to help the company grow or meet business objectives. If sales people struggled with scheduling additional meetings then I knew we had training opportunities on consultative selling specifically on challenges and solutions clients have with regard to securing and retaining talent. In other words, NO PAIN / NO SALE!
Every client has difficulty with Quality, Quantity, Productivity ,and Availability of talent. Understanding where clients (and other staffing firms) fall short in these areas is critical. Lastly, having a well-rehearsed and compelling story on how our Features and Benefits will resolve those challenges is paramount.
If you want to measure something, measure Quality of Activity.
Good hunting!
