As a general rule of thumb if you are a recruitment business owner your business will be successful if you or your marketing company help generate a consistent supply of qualified clients and candidates that you then ‘convert’ so that you become their recruitment company of choice.
Ideally they might find you online, connect on LinkedIn sign up for your ‘freebie’ or respond to your emails or other marketing activities. In essence as a marketing company that is our main function;that is one of the reasons we love working with recruiters because they can convert the leads we deliver….most of the time 🙂
Sounds logical. Surprisingly the ball can get dropped and the reasons will shock you I am sure. Nicky Coffin from Centred excellence has a great article that I have shared here.
Nicky shares stats that are hard to believe. Yes; sometimes, though things are handed to us on a plate we choose not to eat!
let me share an example. A few months ago we were looking for a new writer for the team. We were approached by a writer through our contact form. On the surface he looked good. A well constructed offer with a call to action.He emailed me, so I emailed back with a few questions. Guess what the response was ? You guessed it nothing ! Not even an acknowledgement. Yet here I was happy to have a conversation about working for us ??!!**
As you read Nicky’s article it all starts to make sense.
Enjoy!………….
One of the major challenges for most recruitment consultants is converting your sales call activity into actual sales. I hope this article will give you some leading edge ways to increase your conversion rates easily…
If you’re smart, you’ll spend at least 90 minutes each day – probably more, making, chasing and following up on leads – either by phone, Internet or post. The difference between success and not getting the results you want with this is not the number of calls you make, it’s down to the quality of the leads and also constant, relentless follow-up.
In case you’re in any doubt about how effective follow-up is, or how costly it is NOT to follow up, let me share with you some interesting statistics:
- 48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect
- 25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
- 12% of sales people only make three contacts and stop
- ……………………………………crikeyOK, so what does this mean, then? Well, it means that they’re losing a small fortune…. The reason being:
- 2% of sales are made on the first contact
- 3% of sales are made on the second contact
- 5% of sales are made on the third contact
- 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
- 80% sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact
So if you are like most recruiters and make no more than one follow-up to your potential clients or candidates…. then you’re leaving 98% of your income for one of your competitors to come and pick up.
So, what can you do to follow up?
No 1: Have a Follow Up System in Place
This will record and map out your follow process with prospects. So that you know you are contacting prospects between 5 to 12 times.
One of the recruiters that I work with was just cold calling. When he analysed what had given him the best success in the past it was that he sent a short email with relevant reasons for the people to want to network with him. He then had a system in place where he followed that up the next day with a phone call, then 2 days later another phone call and then another email to make sure they were the right person to be contacted.
You can record this on your database or on something like an excel spreadsheet.
No 2: Send an Email
Emailing is cheap, fast and very effective. You’ll do better with your email if it has something that your prospect needs, but even regular weekly or twice monthly emails with nothing more than interesting, engaging or informative content are still going to give you more sales.
Why? Because whenever your prospect need a “specialist skill”, then you’re the go-to specialist skill person they’ll think of. It’s a bit like”brand awareness” only this actually works.
No 3: Send a Mailshot
When writing mail shots, it really makes a difference if you put yourself in your clients shoes. Think about what would be interesting for them? What do they want to see or hear that would catch their attention? Why would they want to read it?
If you’re selling in a candidate, it’s easier to read and more compelling if you use bullet points and benefits rather than features. i.e. for a candidate, a short summary of what they can do for the client and then benefits for the client, i.e. £500k of client contacts or specific skills and experience that will give the prospect more free time
No 4: Send a Newsletter
The question I ask recruiters is “ how many of your competitors are sending information that is not sales focused that adds value to their clients?” The answer is very few. A page newsletter with interesting information and articles in it, or answers to questions they might have costs virtually nothing. And… because you can virtually guarantee that non of your competitors are doing it, this is going to mean you are one of the people your clients think of when they need the services or a recruiter.
What do you put in it? Well, anything you like as long as it’s interesting and engaing. An easy way to find content is to look out for news or articles and any time something interesting comes up, no matter how tenuous the connection, that’s an opportunity for you to write something about it or send the article on.
No 5: Send a top tip
We take for granted how valuable the information that we hold in our heads is. Clients would really benefit from things like:
- Interview questions that make a difference
- Salary surveys
- Competitor analysis
- How to ensure the candidates you want takes your job.
For candidates – you might send them:
- tips to ensure your best prepared for the interview
- 3 questions to ask at interview
- 5 things to avoid when looking for your ideal job.
By writing tips helps to create the Expert status – making you a go-to person in that field – a knowledge leader
No 6: Automate Your System
When you know what you want to send, the quicker you can automate your emails, newsletters or top tips the better. If you have a database that will send out pre-written and pre-scheduled emails – great news. If you don’t, then you could use free auto responder software like mail chimp or aweber where you can pre-write and schedule emails to go out on set times.
There you go – 6 techniques to increase your sales call conversion.
Tweetables:
Click To Tweet: [inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]Though things are handed to us on a plate we choose not to eat! – Denise Oyston[/inlinetweet]
Click To Tweet: [inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]One of the major challenges for most recruitment consultants is converting your sales call activity into actual sales. – Nicky Coffin[/inlinetweet]
Important
As an ambitious recruitment organisation, THE marketing strategy to master is email marketing. It will consistently deliver both candidates and clients.
In a special complimentary training Webinar, we give you the template for writing emails we use for our clients and the exact 4 campaigns that are working now.
You can register here.
