Client Marketing Scripts
The Next Level Exchange Library contains client marketing scripts for a number of situations recruiters commonly face.
Client Marketing Voicemail Scripts
The Next Level Exchange Library contains client marketing voicemail scripts for a number of situations recruiters commonly face.
Client Marketing Recorded Phone Calls
The Next Level Exchange Library contains client marketing recorded phone calls for a number of situations recruiters commonly face.
Client Marketing Emails
The Next Level Exchange Library contains client marketing emails for a number of situations recruiters commonly face.
Client Marketing Articles
The Next Level Exchange Library contains examples of client marketing articles for a number of situations recruiters commonly face.
Client Marketing Forms
The Next Level Exchange Library contains examples of client marketing forms for a number of situations recruiters commonly face.
Types of Marketing
Rainmaking is crucial to long-term survival in the search business. Your ability to generate new collaborative relationships with clients who will pay your fee is what distinguishes a marginal biller from a big one. This section covers the twelve common, and not so common, approaches to developing new clients.
Market Mastery
Your challenge as a recruiter is to bridge the gap between the professional fees you charge and the value or perceived value that you provide for companies. One of the best ways to bridge the value gap with both clients and candidates is to develop true expertise in a very specific industry or niche: this is called Market Mastery. By gaining in-depth industry insight beyond the obvious, you position yourself to bring unique knowledge to the marketplace – knowledge worthy of your professional fees.
MPC Approach
The MPC Approach works very well not only for a brand new recruiter (because of lack of market knowledge), but also for the veteran recruiter (because of excellent market knowledge). The presentation itself should cover three things – current/past responsibilities, specific notable achievements that will demonstrate the credibility of the candidate, and (most importantly) the benefit to the prospective employer for bringing this individual on board.
Recruiting Flipped to Marketing
Flipping a recruiting call to a marketing call can be one of the most comfortable ways to ease into a marketing presentation, especially for those who are just learning how to market. The key to this approach is to flip the call when you have identified that you are speaking with a decision maker; otherwise, you are qualifying someone who ultimately cannot move the process forward.
Reference Check Approach
Reference checking is a great way to make a warm call into a new company. The process begins as a reference check call but with a dual purpose to ‘flip’ into either a recruiting or marketing call for new business. The call itself is one that is easily executed, because you will not encounter much resistance when you are calling to facilitate a reference check. You then build credibility because this prospective client now knows the caliber of both candidates and opportunities that you represent.
Assumptive Approach
You surely have heard the phrase “act as if”. Act as if you are a leader, and you will become one. Act as if you cannot fail, and you will not fail. This same principle can be adopted from a marketing perspective as well and is called the Assumptive Approach. Act as if there are open positions, and you will bypass the typical smokescreen resistance that other recruiters will encounter.
Consultant Approach
In essence, the second angle to approaching calls as a consultant allows you to operate as a true mid-management consulting firm. There is no better organization to provide your clients real-time market intelligence, whether it pertains to salary surveys, business development, or strategic organizational development. By means of leveraging your current search, you are able to gain additional insight and information that you can provide value back to the client – all through the course of executing your normal recruiting and marketing calls.
Indirect Approach
An indirect approach when recruiting a candidate, we can use this same approach when pursuing new client development. This approach can be used to demonstrate market mastery and consultative questioning, as well as allows the opportunity for a client to volunteer themselves or their own needs. This is a great approach to use when you have a specific client in mind that you would like to target and partner with.
Follow-up Approach
The Follow-Up Marketing Approach is truly a two-step process. The heavy lifting is done on the first call, setting the stage for any follow-up calls to be targeted and value-added. If you’ve ever called a client just to ‘check in’ or ‘touch base’, you have done a poor job of creating a value proposition for your subsequent calls. You must ask the client sophisticated questions to solicit specific answers regarding what information will get them wanting to answer your calls in the future. When they tell you they are interested in new business development ventures, and you call back two months later with a prospective introduction for business, the call will surely be returned.
Branding and Advertising
No different than Jell-O is synonymous with gelatin, and Kleenex with tissue, you want your name to be synonymous with recruiter. This is a long term strategy that is tied in to the in-bound marketing approach. This effort can range from hiring a third party PR firm to constantly keep you in front of major media outlets, to simply creating a stellar website that truly encompasses the caliber of recruiter that you are. Your marketing outreach should not be limited to only a phone call once every few months, but staying in front of your audience through newsletters, participating in industry associations, and penning articles in trade publications. This section will give you a variety of ideas from big to small to allow you to create a consistent branding effort.
Mergers and Acquisitions
The merger and acquisition marketing approach is one that delivers strategic growth solutions to firms who are interested in gaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace through M&A services to grow their market share. Instead of placing a single candidate, you can facilitate an introduction for an entire organization to integrate their business into that of your client. Your fee is based on a percentage of the overall sale of the firm. Not only does this approach lend itself to large fees, but it also provides a platform for some high-level strategic business conversations with the ultimate owners and decision makers.
Inbound Marketing Approach
You would love the phone to ring with inbound job orders. You can will the phone to ring. You can pray the phone will ring. How else can you ensure that you are allowing for the highest number of inbound calls?
Marketing Objections
There are three areas to overcoming resistance – knowing when an objection has been raised, knowing how to deliver your response, and knowing what specifically to say in your response. Remember that your audience is hip to the game – they can sometimes predict your rebuttal even before you have a chance to deliver it. Therefore, you overlook this tremendous opportunity to explain to them that they are indeed right – they should brush off nearly every other recruiter who calls – but that you are different. If you are saying the same thing that all other recruiters are saying, you will miss this incredible opportunity to set yourself apart.
No Openings
"We have no openings/on a hiring freeze." It is possible that this is a valid concern. The company may have all the employees it needs and may not be able to justify any more hiring at this time. Generally though, no company has enough top quality employees. Good managers are always looking for someone who can do a job better than is currently being done, or are considering the addition of a top-notch individual.
Call HR
Human Resources typically lacks the technical competence necessary to answer specific questions relevant to this type of position. A good way to drive this home is to have a few very specific, technical questions that you can ask the hiring authority and get his/her opinion as to if HR is able to answer such questions. This will not only drive your point home, but further establish yourself as an expert in your market.
We Don’t Use Recruiters
"We Don't Use Recruiters." "Don’t” in the first statement is a very strong term – and it behooves you to clarify what the actual objection is. It is possible that the company cannot afford to pay a fee, however, more often than not, the company has not fully considered the benefits of using a search firm. This presents an opportunity to capture the account by overcoming the concern through selling the benefits of partnering with a firm like yours.
Using Other Firm
"We are using another firm." The great news is that you’ve found a company that recognizes the value of using a recruiter! The bad news is that it’s just not you – YET. This is an opportunity for you to get an understanding of how they found that firm and why they are using them. No firm is perfect – so there’s a good chance that you can probe to find some areas of pain – and those areas could be ones that you are able to alleviate.
Send a Resume
"Send me a resume and if I'm interested, we'll talk about an agreement." The ‘Send me a resume’ concern is often incorrectly viewed as an expression of interest on the client’s part by new, inexperienced recruiters. More often than not, the request for a resume is simply a client’s way of saying “no” without having to handle rebuttals to his or her other concerns. At the very least, clients have found it to be an effective method of postponing a decision.
Using Postings and Ads
"We have posted an ad and are getting tons of resumes from there." Obviously, as recruiters we know that passive candidates versus active candidates are two completely different candidate pools. Most reports show that about 15% of candidates read ads as a means of finding new career opportunities. If you are a market master and know your industry, you could very easily explain the metrics to your hiring authority.
Other Objections
Other common objections recruiters need to be prepared to overcome.
