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Hi, this is Sharon Newey from Superfast Recruitment, and today’s video is about sales.
Now, we’re at a point where the furlough scheme is going to be coming to a close late October, and more business owners will be thinking about bringing consultants back from furlough.
They’re coming back into a market where clients and candidates are in a very different place compared to where they were when perhaps consultants previously had contact and conversations with them.
And let’s just be honest. If you haven’t been doing your job day in and day out for the last four, five, six months, you’re going to be rusty, and some of your team are going to be quite rusty, particularly when it comes to their selling skills.
BD in a Post-Covid World
Now, as they start to make contact with people, including picking up the phone to check in with existing clients and then looking at doing some BD calls, it’s very likely that some of the responses they will get, particularly from clients and prospective clients, will be responses such as, “We’re not recruiting right now. I haven’t got time to talk to you,” and variations of those things in terms of the words that they use.
It might be, “We’re looking at doing our own recruiting at the moment because, yes, we do need some staff, but we’re going to do it ourselves.”
Now, how are consultants going to handle some of those automatic knee-jerk responses?
Because it is possible, even when somebody says, “I’m not interested. We’re not recruiting. We’re thinking of doing our own internal recruitment.” There’s a couple of choices here.
One is the consultant can say, “Ah, right, okay,” put the phone down, “I’ll get back in touch in however long.”
Or two, they can look at using their skills, their questioning skills, to probe, to understand, to open up a broader conversation, even if that conversation is about understanding, well, know what kind of recruitment process are they going to use internally.
Demonstrating Your Value
Because, you know as well as I do, that sometimes clients just don’t appreciate the detail of the service that you offer.
They don’t understand that value. They don’t understand that you go through 25, 30, sometimes 30-plus steps in your process.
Now, if you can’t get your consultants to open up some of these conversations, they are going to be very short, and the opportunities just aren’t going to be there.
So what can you do?
Well, one of the things is as you have the team getting back on the phones, re–engaging with people, get them together and brainstorm what are some of the responses that they are getting.
And then take some time to map out how we’re going to handle those emotional knee-jerk responses.
Because it will be so easy for clients and prospects to be giving you the brush–off, or the team the brush–off, with those knee-jerk responses.
And don’t assume that, well, we’ve always been dealing with these responses; we’ll just use what we’ve always used.
New Skills for a New Environment
The context is different. The environment is different, and it needs a slightly different response and conversation.
So take the time, understand what these responses are, and plan and role-play with your consultants.
Yes, I did use that word ‘role play’. Practise how are they going to handle these quite emotional responses that they’ll be coming across because it will make them feel more confident and more capable.
To find out how to get real results for your recruitment business in a post-Covid world, plus all aspects of marketing your recruitment business, click here to read our latest blog posts, or head to our downloads page here to get your hands on our free recruitment marketing guides.
That’s Sharon Newey from Superfast Recruitment.
