The best ‘Crisis Business Development’ idea I have seen!

Without a doubt, the most significant issue facing recruiters is winning new business.

Job flow is dire. Revenue has crashed.

How do you win business in a pandemic?

Especially when you are working from home? And there are no ‘IRL meetings’? When clients are weary and zoom’ed out?

What is the motivation for them to speak to you at all?

Well, there is a generic tactic which I call ‘continuous quality outbound engagement’. Read about it here.

And there is a methodology which I call ‘Flipping the dynamic’ (That is, contacting the client with something of interest to offer them. Not asking for something from them).

And in reality, the one thing we have that clients might value right now is insights.

Opinion based on data. Information. Updates. You need to be the clients (or prospects) ‘market eye’.

However, can this be left to the recruiter alone?

No! An excellent recruitment business will support their recruiters by producing tools that give them a reason to talk to clients.

So I love this brilliant tactic by one of my best and longest-standing clients.

Here is the summary. It’s simple. And genius;

• The recruitment company surveyed a large group of their clients.
• They then produced a comprehensive ‘report’ based on the research and other data.
• Topics included data on vacancies, wage growth, staff workload, regional trends, WFH, impacts of flexible working, cultural issues, job search issues, the hiring landscape, staff safety considerations, mental health initiatives, workplace design, technology, salary increases, performance management, and salary tables.
• The Report was produced in PDF format and hard copy.
• On the day the report was released, the company had a national BD day. (Wednesday last week).
• About 70 recruiters on the phone at once. All with set goals to call clients and prospects to announce the Report and arrange a 15-minute Zoom meeting to go through the findings.
• In some parts of the country, face-to-face visits are possible too, and they were set up where appropriate.
• Extra $ incentives were offered for overperformance on setting up meetings.
• The consultants were trained to highlight the findings, and lead the meeting to general hiring plans and obviously, recruitment opportunities.
• Meetings have already started, and not a single one has lasted less than 30 minutes.
• One recruiter lined up 25 meetings by lunchtime on the first day. I know this for a fact because I was in his office and I grilled him on this stat. It’s true.  (You will remember this James. I threw in a taunt about Spurs losing their first game, as you do)

Anyway, the next day I emailed the CEO. “How did the day go? What was the visit total”, I asked?

He replied by simply ‘copy and pasting’ the message he had sent to the entire company that morning. It is self-explanatory;

Good morning everyone!

What an outstanding effort yesterday. We booked 705 visits! If you think there are 480 minutes in an 8-hour day that’s a visit every 41 seconds! This is our best visit surge on record, and we should be proud. The $ incentive seems also to have worked and at first estimate, I will be adding a bonus to your payslips totalling just under $11,000 in October!

The winner of the branch marketing day trophy has been determined by the number of visits per person. It was close. The winner is….

XXXXXXXXX

Well done, everyone!

I happen to know that just calling clients and prospects to arrange those visits resulted in 17 new job orders on Wednesday alone.

The lessons are;

• Calls generate meetings.
• The definition of a ‘meeting’ is now an ‘extended business conversation‘. IRL or via video conference.
• Meetings generate work.
• In other words, two-way business conversations generate recruitment opportunities.
• Give your teams a tool to set up meetings
• Flip the dynamic. What’s in it for them (the client), not you
• Structured activity and goal-driven BD as a team, works

I am writing this blog on Friday, to be published on Tuesday.

If I can get some updated data from my client on Monday night, I will post it below.

What a great story. 705 client visits arranged in a day!

In a pandemic.

Aim high, my recruiting friends.

* UPDATE: Monday Night. The total visits arranged is now 884. No extra jobs as yet. Still 17  *

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Photo by Frank Vessia on Unsplash