QUESTION: What are the top recruiters now doing to find new clients and job orders? Can you be specific, walking us through step by step? What I am doing is no longer working. I get no reply to emails. I get no reply from my MPC presentations, 90% of which are left as voicemail, and no reply from my canned sales pitch. Matt, Cleveland, OH
ANSWER: So Matt, since I do not know what any of these are, I can tell you what works, and I cannot walk you through step by step because that too expensive to do here, but I can give you some steps to start. You may want to look at our program designed for solo operators and teaches all of this in detail (www.therecruiteru.com/solo). You can also join us for one of our two-day Intensives that we hold several times per year (www.therecruiteru.com/intensive). If you are interested, just send a note to info@therecruiteru.com I will have somebody call you.
I find that leaving MPC voicemails is almost completely ineffective now. It used to work really well when I started. Actually, when I first started half the companies did not have voicemail. That is how old I am. You had to leave messages that they put on little pink pages. But you have to do a very compelling MPC presentation via email that leads with a huge accomplishment or a huge benefit. When I have read ineffective emails, they usually start with –
Dear Joe,
I am an executive recruiter who specializes in the XYZ left-handed widget industry, and we have been in business for 10, 20, 30 years.
If I am a reader of that, I am already hitting delete. I ran a sales desk, so I might say –
Dear Matt,
In a recent engaged search I uncovered an individual who is at 287% of quota.
Boom. Right in the face instantly. If they have a need or are intrigued by a salesperson they are going to keep reading. The email should be very short. An intro line with that huge benefit, 1 or 2 other key benefits, and the closing line should be something to the effect of –
Look at your calendar. What is a good time for you in the next 2 days to speak about this individual in greater detail to discover if he or she is a fit?
NOT if you are interested email me back. There is an instruction and a call to action.
Look at your calendar. What is a good time to talk?
Are you going to get 100% replies? No. Are you going to get 50%? No, but 10%, 20%, or 30% depending on how effective the email is. So that is one technique.
A canned sales pitch is what the entire recruiting industry does. When I read the word “pitch” I shudder. The way to get clients is not a canned sales pitch. It is a phenomenal process of discovery.
The process of discovery uncovers what their challenges and issues are, why the opening exists, what specifically they have done to fill it, what is working, what is not working, if they could hand carve an ideal relationship with a recruiter what does that look like? Really changing the entire nature of all the questions you ask. Again, teaching that takes more than a blog post.
What I want to do is to give you some ideas. Instead of pitch, ask questions. Most recruiters, if they find an opening they will ask this question – Tell me about the background you are looking for – in one way, shape or form. Nothing wrong with that question except 80,000 people are asking it.
I want you to imagine if you had an opening, Matt. I would say, “I want you to imagine that you filled the position, and it is a year from now, a year from when they started and you are thrilled with their performance. I want you to imagine (key word imagine) you are walking down the hall with them, getting ready to do their first year review, and you are thinking, “Wow, Mary, Steve, you have had an outstanding first year. You have met and exceeded all my expectations”. Tell me about that first year that that person had.
Now that is a dialogue for what are the duties and responsibilities. I like starting with duties and responsibilities, not background requirements. So that is the beginning of the process. If that is something that sounds like you and that kind of style would work with me, send us a note at Info@TheRecruiterU.com to talk about Double Your Placements because that is where we teach this stuff, step by step, and in depth.
But thank you so much for the question.
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