…Recruitment Leaders Agree… This is the Problem With BD
Last week I spoke to over 50 recruiters. The one thing they all agreed was this:
Their BD efforts are wild and varied. There is no focus in their effort.
So today we look at the second layer in the Resonant Sales Accelerator.
PRECISION
What do you need to focus on? And how do you get results?
Want to win more New Business confidently and consistently?
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THE PRECISION LAYER
OK, you’re here because you get it. Your BD is too wild, unfocused and you want it to be more precise.
But where do you start?
Well first let’s define what we mean by precision here.
- Your core sales story: What exactly do you solve and how.
- Your target market: Who specifically do you sell to.
TIME AND EFFORT
You’re not lazy.
I maintain that I’ve never worked with – or met – a lazy recruiter. But… precision takes time and effort and most people would rather get on with “the job” than send time defining their sales story and target market.
Big mistake.
Time spent refining your list and getting clarity over what it is you’re selling is essential to sales effectiveness.
Investing time and effort saying the wrong thing to the wrong people is sheer stupidity.
Get your copy of the State of BD 2025, a free report covering data from 500 recruitment businesses complete with insight from 5 leading industry experts.
YOUR CORE SALES STORY
This is the basis for everything you do and if you get it wrong you will no win new business – other than the occasional inbound or word of mouth referral.
Inbound and word of mouth are great when you have a great sales story but when you don’t they’ll often lack a fit with your ideal client persona.
Your Sales Story consists of:
- The specific set of problems you solve
- The way you solve them
- Why
So, what you need to do is identify how your clients would measure the success of their hiring strategy. You might as “if in 12 months time your hiring process was working as well as you could dream, how would it be different from today?”
You then need to work out the specific steps you take in your process to make that happen.
It also helps to have some kind of story as to why you do it this specific way and why you believe these problems are so worth solving.
WHO TO CALL
I want you to think about building a sales campaign based on just 50 contacts. Those 50 people will receive 10+ touch points from you over the next three weeks.
But to go to those lengths those people must be very carefully selected.
It’s a two part process:
- They Strategic Decision Makers at target clients who hire 4+ times per year, with average fees at a level you want to work. Their roles are fillable. They work with agencies.
- You then need to group them based on key attributes. This could be their career path / trajectory; their key priority, goal or objective; the style of organisation they work for; their position (job title, team size, etc…) and their place (the market they serve, location, etc).
At the end of this task you should be able to select a list of 20-30 people who all look broadly the same on paper. And crucially, who all care about the same thing.
SOUNDS LIKE A LOT
It is…. But here’s the rub.
The average recruiter makes £1.5 – £2k per job on.
But with better precision, working the right jobs in the right way, you can more than 10X your BD results.
First, you increase your fees. Second you up your fill rate. Then you work more jobs per client.
This client acquisition process takes more work. Maybe three times more.
But the results are ten times more valuable.
The good news is that we cover all this – including a full multi-media outreach strategy – in our flagship program; The 90k in 90 Days Blueprint.
Check it out here:
Best regards,
Ben
P.S. Check out the Blueprint.
P.P.S. Grab yourself a copy of the State of BD Report. Worth it for Neil Carberry OBE ‘s commentary alone.
