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This is Sharon Newey from Superfast Recruitment and in the last couple of videos, I’ve been talking about the importance of building a sales pipeline of consistent client and candidate leads.
And of course, it is massively important if you want to smash those targets this year. What we need to remember though, is, as salespeople, that as your consultants start to work that pipeline, you need to think about follow-up. Because the Sales Executive Association in America published some data that many of you will have come across; some of which you’ll remember and maybe other figures that you’ll have forgotten.
Don’t Forget the Follow-Up
Did you remember that 48% of salespeople – and this is going to be inclusive of your consultants – never follow up a lead. That’s 48% never follow up, which is quite staggering, isn’t it?
So think about it: you, as a business owner, have invested an awful lot of money building different ways of feeding that pipeline for your recruitment consultants with both clients and candidates, and yet they’re being lost quite quickly because so many people don’t follow-up.
Now, only 2% of sales are made on the first call or the first contact, which is so tiny, isn’t it? So, what we need to remember, as salespeople, is that we need to really work that pipeline and follow all these individuals up, time and time again.
Interestingly, 12% of your consultants will be following contacts and leads up to three times, okay?
The thing to remember though is if we are going to smash targets this year, 82% of those sales and conversions are going to come between five and 12 points of contact. Now, there’s also some data that says 80% of sales, are going to come between five and 12 points of contact.
But yet, the most recent data does suggest that if, let’s say, the leads are completely cold, we can be looking at 30 plus contacts.
Working Your Pipeline
You’re probably wondering, “How on earth are we going to do that?”
Well, think about all the different mediums that we’ve got and the various ways we can communicate with people today. So yes, we can pick-up the phone, that’s the obvious one, although there does seem to be some phone reluctance and I think we need to get over that.
We also need to blend in things like WhatsApp Messenger, all different ways that we can text message people; we can do emails, of course, can’t we?
Now, think about some of the video software that you guys are using for interviewing candidates and sharing those interviews with clients to speed up your recruiting process. How about using some of those video platforms for sending prospects, clients and candidates some sales or follow-up videos?
The Personal Touch
How about getting back to some traditional methods? Picking up a pen, picking up a card or a note, and writing a client or a candidate a personal note? Nowadays, when you receive something through the letterbox, and it’s not your birthday, and it’s not Christmas; how good is it to receive something that’s handwritten?
It stands out, doesn’t it?
It’s something that I’ve been doing a lot and one of our sales team, Andy, he’s been doing this too. And we’ve had some incredibly positive feedback from people because it is different and it helps you to stand out.
So there are lots of different ways that you can blend, whether you’ve got 12 or 30 points of contact, using all these different mediums, to keep following people up. Add into that some reports that you might have and you could drip-feed those at different points in your follow-up cycle as well.
The important thing is, if you’re going to invest all that time and trouble in building a pipeline, please also invest a little bit more time building up what your follow-up process is, so your consultants know exactly what they can be doing to make sure that you convert those people in your sales pipeline.
That’s Sharon Newey from Superfast Recruitment.
P.S. would you like help with your marketing strategy this year? Then get in contact here.
