Welcome to the last installment of The Art of Marketing and Business Development series. Last week, we discussed the first five business development scripts that are working today:
This article continues with highlighting the additional five marketing scripts, 6-1 0. Keep in mind: different selling situations will call for different scripts. As a recruiter, it is important to have as many options (clubs) in your recruiting bag as possible. Master them all, so you will be prepared for any selling situation and have the ability to pull them out when that shot is needed. Don’t forget, the goal is to achieve a large quantity of job orders coming in so you have the ability to continually ‘top grade’ the work you have on your desk. Until you get a large number of “A” search assignments (job orders), keep marketing every day. That’s right – every day.
Additional marketing scripts:
Most recruiters are very familiar with searching and viewing the postings on the job aggregators (Indeed, Jobster, and Simplyhired) as well as the main job boards. These postings can be great sources for marketing opportunities if the appropriate approach is utilized. We don’t want to look like an ambulance-chasing attorney trying to make an extra buck. You have to be honest and upfront. It is most important to get the hiring manager’s name before the call. Calling into HR will do you little to no good. Get on LinkedIn or the company website and find out who the hiring manager is, then make the call as follows:
“Hi, Mr. Prospect, This is Jon Bartos from JSI. We haven’t talked before, but I need your help. Do you have a second? Great! We work with many of your competitors and focus exclusively on [name industry] Mobility Software. Here’s where I need your help: I had an email sent to me about a position your organization posted for a [position name] Mobile Software Systems Engineer. I recently concluded that same search for a competitor and have been working with a few “A” players that may be exactly what you are looking for now. If anything, it could certainly save you a significant amount of time in filling the position. Whom would I speak with at your organization to help you fill these openings?”
If you get any resistance – you can try this:
“I was just trying to call to make your job easier. It’s proven that “A” players can be as much as 10x more effective than a “B” player. As you can imagine most of the “A” players are invisible to your job ads due to fact they are not actively looking; they are happy and knocking the cover off the ball with a competitor. The only real way to get hold of these impact players is through real relationships like I have with these individuals. Does it make sense to get a few of these “A” players in the mix and explore the possibilities?”
Reference checks are an excellent way to get additional job orders and search assignments. By doing a very thorough and professional job conducting the reference check, you will have established enough rapport to ask for their help. Every reference check with a hiring manager should be flipped to see if there are opportunities to do business with their firm. At the end of the reference check, mention something like the following:
“Thank you for the time and the reference for [candidate’s name.] One quick question, since we work in the same industry as you do, who would I work with at your organization to help find great talent?”
You could also add in a few questions before this statement:
“How difficult is it for [organization] to find true “A”Players?”
“How are you finding your talent today?”
“How long does it take you to fill a position?”
“Really, what’s that costing your organization?”
“How are the current recruiting efforts working from your perspective?”
It is always good to find the pain in recruiting and maximize it – to open the door to the solutions you can provide.
8. Flip Recruiting Call and Strike a Deal
Recruiting calls are typically our biggest source of leads for job orders and search assignments. When talking to candidates daily about possible opportunities for them, it’s time to turn every one of those calls into marketing opportunities or at least a lead source for potential job openings. At the end of the call, the flip can be as easy as this:
“ I look forward to working with you on your job search and will do everything I can on your behalf to make sure you can be as successful as possible in finding the next step in your career. There is a favor you can do for me since we are working together. I have wanted to work with your organization for quite some time. Who would I need to talk to at your firm to initiate discussions on the possibility of helping them find the talent they need?”
Or to strike a deal:
“ Let’s do each other a favor. I will look forward to helping you find another opportunity and do whatever I can do to help you be successful in your next career move. In return, can I ask that you help me with contacts at your existing organization to help them find the talent they are looking for?”
If it’s a hiring manager you are talking to, use the previous questions in flipping a reference check to gather further insight into the organization’s recruiting strategies and success.
Being exclusive is imperative if you want to guarantee that if the candidates you bring the table match, you will make a placement. Getting exclusivity can be a challenge however, as there are many myths that hiring managers have about recruiting. Some hiring managers think that recruiters just have access to those limited people in their databases and that’s it. They think the more recruiters they have working on a search, the more candidates they will receive. The theory is correct, they will receive more resumes initially, however they will find themselves with very few after the first week or so. The reason being that when contingency recruiters find out they are not exclusive, the search turns into a race and every participant tries to throw stuff against the wall just to see if it will stick. The client will get a lot of volume (quantity) but very little quality. The perception of getting many candidates initially can be attractive, but most contingent recruiters will not place a priority on a non-exclusive search and will spend minimal time on it. Typically this results in only the low hanging fruit, which are individuals out of a job or desperately looking for a job. To combat this belief that many hiring managers have and to get exclusive searches, try this approach:
“Mr Prospect, how many recruiters currently do you have working on your search(es)? … Three recruiting firms…Interesting… Can I share with you what happens in the mind of recruiters when they find out that they’re not working exclusive on a particular search? Recruiters are typically commission-based and tend to spend their time on the searches that will yield results the fastest. Once a recruiter finds out that they are not the only firm working on a search, it becomes a race. All firms involved rush through a search to find as many candidates that are close fits as possible and send them over as quickly as possible. These candidates are from internal databases as well as job board candidates. You will get an initial run of resumes, but then you will receive none. That’s because all the recruiters are not doing an “active” search on your positions to actually go after the “A” players who are gainfully employed and working for a competitor. They don’t have the time. It’s a race, remember. Unfortunately no quality control and close matching and selling happens due to time constraints. You, the client, end up being the quality control person and not the recruiting firms. That’s a lot of work. The end result is that you get to choose best player out of the poor to average talent you were given, choosing the best of the worst, so to speak.”
“My strong suggestion is to let our firm take this search exclusively. This will allow us to directly call in to the marketplace and go after the gainfully employed “A” players, who are over- achieving with your competitors. This will also put the quality control back into the search so you are not doing all the work and we can deliver 3-5 of the best players in the market place within about three weeks. The big advantage to you is that you get a chance to select the best individual out of the best players in your industry, instead of choosing the best of the potentially the worst. Make sense?”
The Question-Based Approach is a method that uncovers realized and unrealized needs. One must first establish credibility and then ask questions to uncover the needs. It’s a fun approach and takes a detective-question-asking mentality to be successful at it. The process is to:
For example:
“Hi, Mr. Prospect, My name is Jon Bartos with JSI. How are you today? Great. Mr. Prospect, we are one of the leading recruiting firms in the Mobility Computing space. We have helped these [name three organization]) in your industry build their teams with “A” players to help them achieve their goals. I don’t know if we can help your organization or not, but I would like to ask a couple of questions if you have a minute? Wonderful…”
“Mr. Prospect… As you may know, Game Changers are individuals at organizations that can make a major positive difference in their organization to help them quickly attain their objectives. How do you find Game Changers at your organization? What methods are you using?”
“How are your current methods working for you? How long does it take to locate the talent you are bringing to the table? How long does it take you to fill an open position in your area? How do you know for sure you have a Game Changer when you hire one? If you could change one thing about the process you are using, what would it be? What positions do you have now in which you could use a few Game Changers?“
“So it takes you about four months to fill a position? Who is doing the job in the meantime? Really? How much is that costing the organization? What happens if you don’t fill the position – what would that mean to the organization? That’s a lot of time and a lot of money.”
“What if I could show you a way to reduce the time to fill each position as well as to reduce that $400,000 profit number that you are losing due to inefficient sourcing and hiring methods. Would that be justification for us to do business? Good.
“Here is what we have done for some of your competitors…. (Explain value proposition – why use you opposed to all alternatives.)
“I propose we work together this way, to solve your sourcing and hiring problems. (Explain the way to work together to solve their problems.)”
“Don’t take my word for it, Mr. Prospect. We have worked with ABC organization for the last twelve months. We have brought their hiring time to fill from three months to just over six weeks – which saved the organization over $250,000 in hard costs, not including the soft costs. I would like to give you their number as a reference to call and to verify the results they have experienced.”
We are now well in to the second quarter of 2011 but there is still time to implement the three key principles (the Quantity/Quality/Starving Man Principle, the 7 Selling Situations Principle, and the Insight Principle) in to your marketing approach and to give these scripts a try based on what is applicable to your situation. Start now; you may be surprised at the positive results they yield.
But as most successful recruiters know, it’s really not about “how great your script is” or “how good you sound” on the phone. The key is making the calls!! Just pick an approach, pick up the phone and make the calls! Make 20 calls a day minimum – but make them every day. Most people who are unsuccessful in this business fail simply because they do not make the calls. They are unable to obtain enough assignments to even apply the quantity/quality principle. Don’t let this happen to you. The reality is that “quantity” solves all your quality job order problems. As a matter of fact, it will most likely solve all of your money problems, too!
