This is probably the most overlooked aspect of the sales process and has cost many sales people $$$$, because they have not taken the time and trouble to understand their prospective clients. I am going to be industry specific from here on and tailor posts to the Staffing Industry as this has been my specialization for twenty five years, although these techniques can be applied to any Industry.
Most ‘recruiters’ think of the Industry as a ‘matching’ one and by matching’ I mean matching company vacancies to the candidate lists that they have developed, or database. When I began in this Industry all those years ago, I was given a box of cards containing companies and another containing candidates. My job was simple – call all of the companies and find out what vacancies they have (in the day) and call all of the candidates (in the evening) to see if they are suitable for the vacancies you have found in the day. Now there were variations to the formula such as when you call the candidates, you would find out if they have any friends who were looking (networking) and also if they were currently working, was anyone in the company looking for staff.
The formula was extremely simple – make as many customer calls that you can, call as many candidates that you can and the two dovetail together and you make ‘placements’, of ‘fixes’ as they were known. I used this method successfully through my career and made huge commissions, but in the early ’90′s when I formed Dataworkforce, I had a problem which as it turned out, re-shaped my entire recruiting philosophy.
Dataworkforce, specialized in telecommunications, in the days when the GSM world was just beginning to take off and the reason I got into telecommunications was because at the time, Dataworkforce was an IT agency and we were in deep recession. I was always fascinated by the mobile industry but knew little about it when one day, I received a call from a Hungarian guy asking me if I could help find him work in the telecommunications industry. “Of course”, came my optimistic reply and within minutes I had a fax copy of his CV. My ‘office’ was the dining room of my two – bedroom apartment in South London and I had a phone/fax line for incoming calls and one for outgoing. I tool a look at his CV and started to research the companies. There was no Internet at the time and it was a long and laborious process with me phoning up the companies marketing departments, posing as an investor and asking for all and any information that could be sent. At the same time, I was talking to the candidate two to three times a day – I was honest with him about my lack of knowledge of the Industry, but telling him that I was absolutely fearless and relentless in my approach as I would call the CEO personally if needed and I would definitely find him work within two weeks!
He gave me so much information about the Industry, the main companies and more importantly, who he would work for and who he would not. I was building trust with the candidate as well as gaining exclusivity to work with him, hence my two week ‘commitment’ and also spending all of my Day’s and nights reading about Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens etc. I learned fast as I had no choice and I made a call to one of the equipment Vendors, asking to speak to the President (surprisingly, he was ‘too busy’ to take my call)! I was pushed down to the head of networks and my pitch was:
“I am Neil Franklin, the owner of a company called Dataworkforce, specializing only in the telecommunications industry. I am calling you personally because I am representing ……….. and we have created a shortlist of companies that we feel could best utilize and challenge his skills and you are on it”! After about ten of those calls, I had him interviews and he was placed. This was my new approach to selling in the staffing industry and it was proactive and not reactive in the sense of simply calling companies for vacancies.
Success depended on huge amounts of groundwork and after the pitch to the most senior executive that I could find as described above, I would further explain that I researched their company, I knew the values, goals and objectives and that I understood their ‘commercial commitments’, or what they had to deliver to their customers. I also told them their differentiators to their competition, which always went down well and I got this info by not only learning and highlighting key facts from the Chairman’s statement in the annual report, but I would call the marketing departments telling them that I was an investor in the Industry and why should I invest in the company and not in their competition. You would be surprised how simple and effective this strategy is.
Today we have the Internet and it is so much easier to do what I did manually, so there is no excuse for not doing the groundwork. I get recruiters and sales people calling me all the time and because of how I started, I will always give them a break and take their call, but it is frightening, that they no so little about me and my companies. Do the groundwork and learn everything about your Industry that you can, find out the best companies, learn about them and when you call them don’t try to outsmart your prospect with your new found knowledge, just let them know that you have taken the time and trouble to understand their business.
Groundwork is the foundation of long lasting customer relationships.
~Neil
