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Welcome to podcast episode #231 please excuse any typing transcription errors. This is an A.I. transcription for your benefit.
Well, hi there everyone. This is Denise.
Welcome to The Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast. Today, it’s all about batching. Before I get into it, if you’re new here welcome, great to have you, there will be a transcription of this podcast over on Superfast Recruitment website, on the blog, so head over there. In the time in which we are all living currently, marketing will be pivotal to your success. It’s always important.
However, when things change and move in the market often that is reflected everywhere else, and people start looking for new suppliers, and particularly in service-based businesses that happens because you always remember the people that have been good to you through the tough times. It may be that some of your competitors are going to lose out to you because people will change which recruiter they work with. Fingers crossed that happens, and that’s why it’s imperative to make sure you’re in front of your customers.
I wanted to talk about batching today. In the meantime, make sure that once you’ve listened to this podcast you head over to Superfast Recruitment, have a look at all the content that’s there, join our new Facebook group which is Recruitment Marketing Mastery on Facebook. You can search for it in the Facebook search bar, and then I will add you personally to the group. There’s lots of content there. There are going to be videos, there’s tidbits, we will share all the podcast there for you too.
Anyhow, let me get into batching. I’m a bit of a batcher. I do like cooking, and I do like batch cooking. Cottage pies, casseroles, and a friend of mine who is in lockdown, I dropped some lasagna off for her because she can’t go out shopping. My lasagna is a legend too, so just saying. Batching is a technique that many of you may have heard of in the past, and yet you might not necessarily use in the same way, particularly when it comes to working in the business.
You might sit down and say, “Right. I’m going to do all my money stuff today.” You can use this technique in different areas as well. I’m going to hold my hand up and say that I’m not always perfect in this department. However, in the weird world in which we’re living in, I have reinstated this process because I want to really focus on things. For me, when there’s lots of stuff going around in my head, the more focused I can be, and I have a task list, then the better I am.
I can really whip through things quite quickly, and it stops me from worrying because yes, I know it might surprise you because I’m a very upbeat person, but occasionally, even I have a little bit of a meltdown and a panic about what’s going on in the world. Anyway, batching. It’s well worth giving it a go because the brain really does like repetitive tasks, and it’s a double whammy for you because our current mental state can make us quite distracted.
The ability to be able to really focus and to be productive on the back end of that is incredibly useful. Now, I have developed– I’m not saying developed, but over the years I’ve worked out how batching works best for me. I have three areas, three elements of it.
The first is being prepared, and I’ll come and explain that. I’m just going to share today’s plan and how that all works. The next thing is execution, and the third is off-ramping. Have you ever had that situation when you come back from holiday, and you don’t quite unpack all your bag, and it gets left in the bedroom, and then four weeks later you keep looking at it?
That just fills, if I call it, fills up your psychic RAM, so is always good to off-ramp. Have you noticed, if you get all your suitcases away when you come back from holiday, everything . It’s a really good feeling. Well, it’s exactly the same when it comes to batching. If you have a process, we’ve talked about SOPs before, and I’ll actually drop a link to the article and podcast that I did on standard operating procedures because I think that will help. Off-ramping is key too.
Preparation
Let me talk about each of these in context, and I’ll just share this week, a week in view with SFR. What we tend to do is we plan out the week. Obviously, we plan out the month initially. I’m recording this at the end of April, so I’ve been planning out May, but we plan out the week and not every week is exactly the same. We are human, and we know that sometimes certain clients come and speak to us on a certain day, so we can be flexible around that. However, what we do do is we have an SFR day.
An SFR day means we get to focus on our marketing. For instance, I’m recording this on a Tuesday. Yesterday was about fiscal things. Monday straight into accounts, looking at different things that needed to happen, and it’s a coaching day as well because we run one of our Superfast Circle calls. Also, I finished the day with a bit of preparation for today. Today is SFR day. Tomorrow for me, we’ll be writing day. It’s client writing day on a Wednesday.
Thursday, we’re actually running our virtual Superfast Circle event, because of obviously what’s happening at the moment, we can’t do it physically, so we’re doing it virtually. That day will be taken up with that, and then in the afternoon, there’s actually more content creation for me, and then Friday, we’ve got a meeting Sharon and I to look at some plans as we move forward into May, but let me talk about today. Today’s list of tasks. This is one of them. Today, I am recording two podcasts.
One of which is with a client that’s happening a little bit later on this morning, and I’m recording this quite early, and then there’s this podcast around batching because I think it’s a useful technique that can really help people at the moment. We’ve got two podcasts that I will record today. I’ve prepared ahead. I guess I’m quite lucky in the sense that I’ve done this a lot over time. I can just write a brief outline of the key points that I want to cover and then I can cover them.
The other podcast is an interview podcast, and that started last week. I was on the phone with one of our clients, and we’re having a bit of a blether, and also, we then mapped out this podcast. We looked at the questions so he could go away and prepare on what he felt most comfortable answering, I felt most comfortable asking, and what we thought without the biggest value out into the market as well. He’s had time to prepare for that.
Implement
Today, I’m recording two podcasts, one of which is with Mark and the next one is this one that I’m recording with you. In addition to this, I have some other things to do, and that is to record some introduction videos for our product, which is part of Superfast Circle. We’re updating all of our blueprints. We’re increasing the number of videos, I think the original program had something like 49 videos in it. This has got closer to 90, and so we’re recording these as a step by step marketing training program.
If you want to know more, obviously, drop us a line, and we can share more information with you about that. Now part of that is to actually create some introduction videos, and some of these will be face to camera, and we do have a videographer that works with us, he tends to come and video our events.
However, part of something we do here is we do our own videoing. We will be doing a number of intro videos now, I will do some and Sharon will do some, and what we’ve done already is we’ve mapped out what we’re going to say on these particular videos that will be recording.
One of the challenges people have is that they don’t script things. Now when it comes to content. It’s a little bit easier for me, but I still have a flow. I still have– Today I have a number of key points that I want to cover when it comes to preparation, execution, and off ramping, that are important for you to hear so that you can implement them. I’ve got them written down.
I would always strongly encourage you before you start something, just prepare, because it’s nothing worth if you said, “Oh, let’s record some videos,” or “What should we talk about?” Much better to say, “These are the key areas that are important for our clients at the moment. Let’s record X, Y, Z, or A, B, C. These are the key communication points that we need to get across.” Some of this is preparation.
When I finish this particular podcast, and I’ll explain about off ramping and everything else. Then I’ve got in my head what we’re going to say on these introduction videos, but I will map them out, so both Sharon and I are really, really clear when we actually start recording them this afternoon, and we have a slot [chuckles], what is it? Time is a mental construct. That’s what I say.
We know that often we can do an awful lot more in a time period than we think we can, but the cameras all charged up. This is part of the preparation. All the batteries are charged up. We know where everything is, we know where the tripod is. I just need to put it all together in the room where I’m working currently because I’m currently working from home. Now, when it comes to preparations, there’s that mental preparation too. I know today I will be using my voice a lot, and my voice needs to be on top form. It’s not exactly that I do some voice exercises, though, I guess I could do.
Last night, I went to bed early and had a good night’s sleep and had no alcohol whatsoever, that’s because alcohol can affect your voice. I didn’t do a lot of talking last night either to save my voice, so it sounds okay, it sounds good, and you can hear what I’m saying. Preparation, and also that mental preparation, “I’m going to get all this done today.”
That’s the preparation phase, prepare in advance, and it speeds up the process.
Have you ever noticed if you plan everything when you go away on holiday, I think I must have holidays on the brain at the moment?
I think that’s because we’ve had to cancel some– Haven’t we all? To get that preparation really dialled in. The next thing is execution, so do the work, no messing around [chuckles]. Get your notifications switched off. You’ll notice I didn’t a couple of times as we– Your notifications switched off, switch off your mobile phone, so it’s not constantly pinging and switch off e-mail.
Then just say, “Okay, I’ve got this amount of time. This is what I’m going to do.” I talk to myself. Yes, I know. As a friend of mine used to say, “It’s the only way I can get an intelligent answer, Denise, when I speak to myself.”
I talk to myself and I give myself an instruction. “We’re going to do this. It’s going to take 20 minutes.” Execution. Don’t, “I don’t want to do this. Oh, it doesn’t feel right.” Just screw the note, stop being a whiner, and get it done.
Offramping
The final thing about batching that is very important is off ramping. It’s a term and I’m just trying to think about where did this come from? I’m sure it came from the amazing Mr Dan Sullivan about off ramping. What we do is when we run one of our physical– This is giving you an example, when we run one of our physical events, what we do is we come back to the office and if we don’t do it that night, first thing in the morning, everything gets put away because you imagine when you’re running an event for 20-odd people or more, there are extra books all over the place.
There are pens, there are highlighter pens, there’s paper, there are things that people maybe have forgotten to take away with them that they should have done like additional laminates, all of these are put away or put into piles to post to people. It’s the same with everything as well. When I finish this podcast, I know exactly what is meant to happen. It gets saved and then Ana, the amazing Ana on our team, she is the editing ninja, knows exactly what to do with it.
She will edit the podcast, create the podcast, she creates the link, and this is a process that we have mapped out. It will all happen like clockwork. The recording, Han then sends off to be transcribed through a transcription service that we use. It’s then edited so probably Colette will edit it afterwards, and then literally everything is there, created, ready. An appropriate image is found, Han will create specific images so we can share it, and this is part of our process, and it’s shared on the blog. It’s exactly the same with all the videos.
We know exactly what happens because it’s very easy to think, “Oh, I’ve recorded all these videos; what do I do with them now?” I would strongly suggest setting up a process. We have a particular piece of project management software. It works really well for us. I guess it depends on your organisation and how you work. It’s called Monday, I think it used to be called Dapulse, but we use it and every– We have particular workflows in it.
We have clients under a certain tab. We have ourselves. We have all the things we do for Superfast Circle. We have all the things that we do for our content clients, all the things that we do for our coaching clients, and they’re all mapped out there. It just helps things happen and happens fast in a way that supports everyone. That was a quick whistle-stop tour around batching, and I strongly suggest that you think about it as you’re planning out.
I’m recording this at the end of April; May is coming up for people. May could be your marketing month, wouldn’t that be good? And you actually make a decision, “Okay, this is what I’m going to do. If I batch these things, will I get more done?” Whenever we record videos, we always know that we can get through an awful lot more. I think our top day ever was when Sharon recorded seven videos in a day and that took some time beforehand. However, that happened.
It is about preparation. It is about execution, and then it is about making it all happen too. Give batching a go if you haven’t already. Remember, if you want any help with your recruitment marketing, then jump into our new Facebook group called Recruitment Marketing Mastery. Just go along, ask to be added and I’ll add you straight away.
This is Denise from Superfast Recruitment saying start batching and bye for now.
Thanks,
Denise
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