This week I was sent an email asking if I could help someone stand out from the crowd during a recession, and I replied with the message below.
I’ve copied it in with the original question for those who may have the same concerns.
Hope it helps.
From the post bag
Hi there
I work in the recruitment sector.
The industry is tough at the moment – fewer clients are recruiting, there are therefore 100’s of competitor recruiters fighting over the scraps out there.
I believe that clients are becoming exhausted by the number of cold calls and ‘e-shots’ they receive on a daily basis from recruiters trying to generate new business leads.
My question therefore is what other more intelligent methods are there for generating new business with new clients? Whilst I believe in the quality of the work I am doing, I feel many attempts are falling at the first hurdle, as I do not stand out from the crowd with my approach.
Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance
Rob
My Reply
Hi Rob
I feel your pain; however I’m a firm believer that – with regards to your competition – around 80% of most professionals approach their jobs with little more than 20% effort, particularly when it comes to business development – as a large percentage of that group remain under skilled and simply “fell into” the job.
Elevating yourself above the hundreds fighting for the scraps is the main hurdle – the air’s sweeter and the pickings richer.
Zig Ziglar in his book “Secrets of Closing the Sale” tells a story about the insurance industry during the recession in the early ‘80’s.
50% of insurance people felt business was down and consequently (mostly because of their viewpoint) reduced their efforts.
Business was down a little, but half of the competition stopped working to expand their business.
Since there was 90% as much business available and only 50% as much competition, his friend – who approached the situation with the right attitude and appropriate ability – increased his business substantially.
Over the past 20 years selling has changed a great deal, particularly due to the ease that people can get hold of what they want on the internet – and a number of years ago Faith Popcorn wrote a book called The Popcorn Report.
She said the trend in the 1990′s was ‘Cocooning’ – which boiled down to the fact that people just don’t like to be bothered anymore.
Therefore sales training had to move into helping people understand buying motives – and how we help them to reach a great buying decision – as well as all the other “tricks of the trade” such as handling objections and closing techniques.
If you’ve read any of my stuff before you’ll know that one my favourite little bits of wisdom is this:
“When a customer walks into a DIY store to buy a drill, they don’t want a drill, they want a hole!
Good sales people discover exactly what kind of hole the customer needs, the bad ones just talk about drills.”
To extend that to answer your question, your prospects aren’t out there looking for a partner in recruitment; they’re looking for the next great employee.
My solution below may seem to be time consuming, but once done, it will bring real, qualified leads straight to your door.
Earlier, I asked you to have a think about these points;
- What is the best thing that your product or service does for those who buy into it?
- What are potential customers missing out on?
- What would the end result and benefit to them be if they “bought in”?
- Will their life improve or not? If it will, how?
Try and make a list of as many different advantages and benefits (real ones not just dressed up features) delivered by that end result – and then work out how those benefits are achieved.
What are your customers asking? What are they searching for on Google?
Whatever it is, write a 5 page report on “The Twenty things you need to understand about X before you X” (or something along those lines)
You will have already listed the solutions and I’ve given you a headline – so writing a five to ten line paragraph about achieving each “thing” shouldn’t be hard.
And don’t worry about giving away too much info – what are they going to do, start up their own recruitment agency? Bring it all in house?
If so, they probably weren’t your ideal prospect in the first place.
Another phrase I like is this;
“Gurus don’t walk down mountains; people climb up mountains to find them!”
If you want to stand out from the crowd the trick is to become the trusted advisor, the one with all the answers, who gives information freely because you actually care about helping the prospect rather than just hounding them for their business with endless phone calls.
Once you’ve created your helpful report – useful to them remember, not impressive to your mother in law – send the link to a few of your prospects with the heading “Thought You Should be One of the First to See this New Free Report on how to….” – no sales message, just sharing some useful info.
If you need one, Mail Chimp is a free email marketing service – it’ll help you set up sign up forms and organise auto-responders so that people can request the report while you’re doing other things – and stops everything from being impersonal and cold.
You can mention your report in the promotions section of the customer orientated groups you’ve joined on Linked In – You could even start your own Linked In Group, I’ve written an article on how to do that successfully here – and then surround yourself with prospects continuously.
People will then start having conversations with you regarding solving their problem, rather than you calling them to try and get them to purchase your service.
This may never completely replace other, traditional selling tasks and techniques – but your prospects want answers and solutions – they also want an intelligent, trustworthy expert to help them achieve their goals
Hope that helps
Chris
PS – My new book The Extremely Successful Salesman’s Club is getting rave reviews – including one from Best Selling Author Lee B Salz – if you click on the book title above you can download the first 4 chapters for free
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This year, I want to help you and your sales team become more successful than they’ve ever been before – call my office now on 0844 293 9777 or request a call back by going to our Contact Page HERE.
You and I can work out a sales training programme that suits your requirements perfectly – foundation level sales training, field sales training, account management training, selling value over price, FMCG sales training, customer service training, whatever it might be – but it’s a big old world out there and if you don’t take two minutes to invite me over, I may never know you need me.
We create bespoke sales training days from as little as £228 per person, so give my office a call today and we can get a date in the diary to start working on tailoring something just for you.
Chris Murray
0844 293 9777
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