QUESTION: While I am having conversations with potential new clients that may have openings in January, I need engagements and cash yet this year. How would you handle the conversation with clients to get upfront money this year? I know it is possible, but evidently, I am not using the correct verbiage and perhaps am coming across as pushy.
Understanding What Clients Really Buy When Paying Upfront
When I have been in live forums or in-person meetings, I say, when a company gives you money upfront, what are they really buying? I am going to pause for a second. For those of you who do not know or have not been involved with me before, think about the answer. Usually, I get they are buying my expertise or buying my time. Those are the two big ones. They are not.
You have done something in the conversation that has led them to believe you are going to fill the search. There is always some doubt, but for the most part, there is a way you conducted the call where they felt that by sending you money, you would be the one to fill the search.
How to Position Yourself as the Solution Through Diagnostics
How do we get there? I know a lot of people who sell retainers who sell why they need money upfront, and the buyer, the client, really does not care why you need the money upfront. The client does not care that you need cash this year. All they care about is themselves and filling the position. That is all they should care about. It is our job, then, as recruiters, to get them to understand that it is in their best interest to send you money upfront. How do we get there? Diagnostics. Questions, 80% question mode.
Leveraging the Challenger Sale Approach in Recruiting
We train our clients on this in depth. The main thing is the quality of the questions you ask. This is from the book, I believe, The Challenger Sale. When they studied buyers across multiple industries, the results were that the salesperson who understood the client’s problem the best in the client’s or prospect’s mind was also then deemed to be the one who could probably solve it before a solution was presented.
How do we understand the problem the best? Asking a ton of really good questions, questions that go beyond, what’s the background you are looking for? What are the duties and responsibilities? What are your company’s four keystone points? What’s the salary range? If we find somebody exceptional, can you pay more? There is nothing wrong with those questions. It is just a question that every contingency recruiter asks, and quite frankly, they are not good enough. There is nothing wrong with them. They are just not good enough.
Going Beyond Surface-Level Questions: Digging Deeper for Real Insights
Instead of opening with, “What’s the background you are looking for?” where you are probably going to hear three to five years of something and strong written and verbal communication skills, why don’t you lead with a question that goes to the point of assessing what the problem is?
I want you to imagine you have hired this person. It is a year from now, and they have met and exceeded all of your expectations. Tell me, Mr. or Ms. Hiring Manager, precisely what did they accomplish? Then you say: How so? Say more. Why is that important? And they give you a very robust three-dimensional answer to that question, which is really a substitute for, what are the duties and responsibilities? You do not have to ask, what are the duties and responsibilities? You just go deeper within the context of that question.
When you take the search, re-engineer all of your questions about going deeper, especially questions about how you get money upfront. What are the consequences if this position remains open? If you hear somebody go, it is more important that we find the right person than we fill this quickly. That is a yellow or red flag, depending on whether I can blow that up a little bit.
Identifying Red Flags and Handling Client Hesitations
Early in my career, I would get stuck on those. They would work with six other recruiters. I remember one guy interviewing 42 candidates, and I was like, “They have not hired me yet. I’m going to work on this.” He interviewed four people from me, which brought him from 42 to 46. I think the position is still open 30 years later. It is asking excellent questions: not only: what are the consequences for every week or every month this position remains unfilled, but what is the economic cost to you and your company for this position remaining open? Every position has an economic cost to it.
Here is the other thing you need to know about your niche. I promise you, most hiring managers need to learn the answer to that. The fact that you ask them a question that they need clarification on the answer to, which is also important for them to know to fill the position, puts you in a higher status as a trusted advisor and as a consultant.
If they go, I really can’t think of an economic consequence; I have said this in the past to clients or future clients, so why don’t you just close the position? You just have an overhead, and not filling it has no economic consequence. When you say something like that, sometimes they go, no, no, we can’t do that because if we fill it, this doesn’t happen, this doesn’t happen, this doesn’t happen. Alright. What’s the cost of that?
The Key to Securing Upfront Payments: Patience and Deep Discovery
The whole thing about getting money upfront is being patient, staying with them a long time, and digging deep. When you say you might be pushy, this is just an educated guess on my part; you want the money so badly upfront that you are not spending the time to go deep. Energetically, when someone needs money, and it comes through in a conversation, it is a turnoff to the other person on this side—needy energy. If you think about it from a dating perspective, from a financial perspective, is an unattractive energy.
One of the things we always teach our clients is to go into the call committed to getting a decision disconnected from the outcome, meaning I want to know if they want to work with me or not and whether they will send me money upfront or not.
Yes or no? Yes or no, but I am not pushing for a yes.
When I push for a yes, I am more likely to get a no. I have to pull the yes out of them by uncovering in depth their pain, the consequences for the position remaining open, what else they have done to solve this problem, and then a strong prescription on why my solution is best. The prescription only comes in after you have done that in-depth diagnostic questioning.
P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you grow your recruitment business:
1. Grab a free copy of my Retainer Blueprint
It’s the exact, step-by-step process of getting clients to give you money upfront. https://get.therecruiteru.com/lm
2. Join the Recruiter Think Tank and connect with firm owners who are scaling, too. It’s our Facebook community where smart recruiters learn to make more money and get more freedom. https://www.facebook.com/groups/there…
3. Join me at our next event
3x a year, I run a 3-day virtual intensive, sharing the 9 key areas that drive a 7-figure search firm. Click here to check out the dates of our upcoming event. https://get.therecruiteru.com/blueprint
4. Work with me and my team privately
And if you ever want to get some 1:1 help, we can jump on the phone for a quick call and brainstorm how to get you more leads, more placements, and more time. https://get.therecruiteru.com/scale-now
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