Five Tips & Examples For Consultative Selling

In my last blog, 5 Indicators That You’re a Transactional Sales Professional, I discussed some of the common characteristics and pitfalls of transactional selling.  In this article I will share with you a few ideas and examples of consultative selling.    

Example Number One-Adjust Your Mindset

The first thing to understand about applying a consultative sales approach is that it is as much (and maybe more) about adjusting your mindset than it is about applying new sales skills.  Consultative selling is a TWO-WAY conversation, it’s not a monologue, it’s not scripted, and the sales person certainly shouldn’t be using “tie down” questions such as “do you want to meet on Tuesday or is Wednesday better?”   There is no manipulation and there are no “steps” to complete (as you see with traditional sales methodologies).  Consultative selling is a real, open, honest and transparent conversation with your client about their challenges and how you and your product or service may be able to solve those challenges. Consultative selling is often counter-intuitive to “traditional” sales approaches and tactics. It’s an old cliché but oh so true-if you truly care about your customer’s business and they know it, good things will happen.

Example Number Two-Identify, Diagnose and Co-Create

As mentioned in my previous blog, consultative selling is not about leading with or talking about your products and services and internal processes.  It’s about identifying the critical business issues your customer’s face and diagnosing those challenges through the effective use of probing questions while simultaneously expressing empathy for their situation so that they feel understood.   After you identify and diagnose their challenges the next step is to understand the impact of the problem and then collaborate with the customer and co-create a solution. Keep in mind, to do this you must first establish credibility and trust with the customer so that they feel comfortable in sharing this information with you.

Example Number Three-Building Credibility

How do you build credibility and earn the trust of executive stakeholders you ask? This is not an all-inclusive list, but here are a few things that you must do. Executives EXPECT you to know this…

1. Situational Knowledge-You must be able to demonstrate that you understand what is going on in your customers business. This is the ticket to admission.

2. Functional Knowledge- You must be able to demonstrate that you understand what is going on in your customers industry and functional role they serve.

3. Technical Competency-You must bring some technical competency to the conversation

4. Fresh Ideas & Insight-You need to bring some ideas to the table that your customer would benefit from

5. Benchmarking Data-Executives love benchmarking data. You should know what kind of data they would be interested in and share it with them

Example Number Four-Understand What Your Customers Think About & How They Think

You need to understand how your customers think and what they think about.  Selling becomes so much easier when you understand these two things.  As a general rule, all business executives are thinking about their “current state” and their “desired future state.”  Your job is to uncover what those are and what gap or pitfalls lie between their “current state” and their “desired future state.”  This is accomplished through the use of effective probing questions. The gap you identify between the two is your sales opportunity.

Example Number Five-Impactful Story Sharing

All customers love to hear good, impactful success stories, especially those that are related to their desired future state.  It’s the job of the sales professional to understand all of the success stories their company has to offer.  More importantly, when the sales person is engaged in a conversation with a prospect it is their job to recognize which success story should be shared with the client based on their knowledge of that prospects “current state” and “desired future state.”  Lastly, an impactful success story should detail the specific challenge(s) the client faced, the solution your company offered and the business benefits (quantitative preferred) the client achieved as a result from your solution.

Again, these are just a few examples of consultative selling.  There are certainly numerous others but hopefully this can provide a few new “tools” for your tool box.

Happy Selling!

 

5 Indicators That You’re a Transactional Sales Professional

Over the past several years we have been hearing how our industry continues to become more and more commoditized.  There are a number of reasons for this including low barriers to entry, the proliferation of the job boards and VMS systems and the rise of the CPO.  But another reason why the industry has become commoditized-one that is hardly ever mentioned-is how sales professionals in the IT staffing industry sell.  Part of the reason why the industry has become so commoditized is in large part can be attributed to the way in which sales professionals sell IT staffing services.  Below are 5 classic signs of the transactional sales professional. 

Indicator One

This classic transactional sales tactic is by far the most common and most deadly.  “Hi Mr. customer, it’s Dan Fisher from ABC Company, I was calling to check in.  Do you have any needs?”

This transactional statement (and close ended question) kills a conversation in seconds.  I could go on and on about all of the reasons why you need to avoid this.  If this is part of your MO, do everything in your power to stop it ASAP.

Indicator Two

Sales Reps who push for face to face meetings on cold calls (and/or before they have earned the right for a meeting) is another classic example of transactional selling.  I get it; we all want and need face to face meetings in order to build relationships.  But you can’t ask for a face to face meeting before you have earned the right to that meeting..  When sales reps push and push for that meeting they inadvertently make the prospect uncomfortable.   And that makes selling to that prospect even more challenging because you set the expectation that you’re a transactional sales rep.   Sales is about establishing credibility and building trust. 

Indicator Three

 “Mr. Customer, I saw on Indeed/Monster/Dice that you’re currently looking to hire a….”  This approach (along with all of the others) tells the customer you know nothing about their business and that you have no interest in learning about their business.  It also demonstrates that you’re lazy and invested zero time into the sales call.  Worse of all, you sound like all of your competitors.  What this approach does tell your prospect however is that you are interested in only one thing, making the transaction.  Ask yourself, are you out to make the “one-time transaction,” or are you out to build a long term relationship?  I suspect you want long term relationships.  Assuming so, make sure your sales behavior reflects that.

Indicator Four

Accepting a job description via email (or without actually talking with the client about the requirements) as a QUALIFIED job requirement.  A job description is simply the launching point for having a conversation with your customer about their project goals, objectives and challenges they face.  If you’re relying on matching buzzwords with a job description and buzzwords on a resume, you’re a transactional sales professional.  Taking a client requirement is actually one of only a few opportunities to differentiate yourself from your competition, take advantage of it

Indicator Five

Leading with and/or talking about a “broadcast message” is another classic example of transactional selling.  A “broadcast message” is when the sales professional goes on and on about their products and services, or their “unique value proposition” and their explanation of why they think they are so different from their competitors.  Let’s get one thing straight, (sorry if this sounds harsh) but all IT staffing firms offer the same services.  And remember, all the information contained in a broadcast message can be found on your web site.  If your customer has questions they will go to your web site or they will ask you. You don’t need to tell this information until they ask. 

The worse thing of all about transactional selling is the message it sends to your prospects.  Customers need to hear and feel that you actually care about them and their business.  You can’t do that when you sell transactionally.

Menemsha Group 2012 Update

Greetings and happy 2012 to all!  Hopefully you all finished the year strong and hit your annual goals. For Menemsha Group It was a crazy-busy end to 2011.  And 2012 has been no different.  That aside, we have a few updates to share with you regarding our IT staffing sales training programs and our IT staffing sales methodology.  We’re also embarking upon a new project to build out a training library where we can provide “on-demand” training.  We’re welcome your ideas and suggestions as we take on this initiative.

 

In 2011 Menemsha Group saw a dramatic increase in demand from IT staffing and consulting firms seeking web-based sales training.  We also saw a big increase in demand for technology training-for both sales and recruiting.  To meet those demands we began the build out of a catalog of sales training webinars and technology training webinars in which IT staffing firms/professionals can choose from.  We have hosted hundreds of live webinar training sessions.  In the coming months we expect to build out an entire storefront where you can download training podcasts and consume “training on demand.”  This will provide employers and employees a much more flexible training model where they can consume the content and training when they want, where they want and how they want it.  We’re very excited about this opportunity and look forward to building out the online storefront and overall program.  As always, we welcome your thoughts, ideas and feedback as we take on this initiative.

Many of you are familiar with our proprietary sales methodology, IT Staffing Sales Plan.  The methodology continues to evolve as we add new sales scripts, job aides and various sales tools to meet the ever-changing demands and challenges of selling IT staffing in today’s competitive environment. We recently renamed the methodology to IT Staffing Sales Playbook.  We made this decision for two reasons.  First, the methodology truly is a playbook for IT sales professionals and therefore we feel the name more accurately reflects what it is.  Second and more importantly, we have spent a lot of time building out the situational learning tools, content, scripts and job aides that provide sales professionals with the opportunity and situation specific content they need in order to properly execute each step of the sale.  In essence, it’s a sales enablement playbook for selling IT staffing services-regardless of where you’re at in the sales cycle.  We’ve added content and re-purposed existing content to better suit the needs of the IT staffing sales professional and to better meet the challenges they face each day.  To learn more, you can check out our new white paper, Optimizing Sales Performance with IT Staffing Sales Playbooks.

Lastly, you will also notice some changes to our web site. The biggest change is evident in our home page.  Due to the significant increase in demand for web-based training and sales training workshops, we organized our content around those service offerings to make it a bit more user friendly.  In the coming months you can expect to see a new storefront for our products which will include “on demand” training where you can download podcasts and webinars (to complement our live webinars).

Here is to a happy and prosperous 2012!  We hope to hear from you.

All The best,

Dan Fisher

Founder/Owner

Menemsha Group

4 Tips For Leaving Impactful Voice Mail Messages

Let’s face it, reaching IT hiring managers and executives over the phone these days is very difficult.  Getting them to return our phone calls is even more challenging.  One thing I do know for sure however is if you are leaving a standard broadcast message in your voice mail messages, you will never get your calls returned.  Here are four tips to keep in mind for leaving effective voice mail messages.

First, begin by making your introduction brief. State your name and company name.  Do NOT talk about what you do or your product or service offering.  This is about your prospect, not you.

Second, state something specific that you know about the company and/or prospect you are calling on.  For example, “Jim, I had just read in the wall street journal….”  Or,” Jim, after reading your 10K statement I understand that critical to meeting your growth goals is your ability to quickly integrate the companies your acquire.” The key takeaway here is your research should focus on business issues or challenges that your prospect is currently dealing with. These issues must be related to your solution offering.  In other words, your service offerings should be able to have an impact on solving the issues you uncovered from your research.  In my example above, providing IT staffing is tied to helping them grow by doing their systems integration of acquired companies.

Third, briefly reference how you have helped other customers overcome this same or similar issue.  Ideally you want to reference the customer’s name, especially if they’re in the same industry as your prospect.  This will help build your credibility.

Fourth, close with a message that sounds something like this.  “Please give me a call back and I can share in further detail how we have helped others with this issue and share some additional ideas with you on how to address this challenge.  My number is.”

Notice that we close by offering information of value. Remember the old saying, what’s in it for me?  Offer them something of value.

One word of caution.  If the business issue or challenge we mention in our voice mail message is not currently a priority for the prospect than they will probably not call us back. The best way to validate if the issue is currently a top priority is to speak with a staff member prior to making the call.  Validate your research.

Good luck! 

 
  

The Importance of Targeted Messaging & Setting Expectations

I think we can all agree that getting decision makers on the phone these days has never been more challenging.  We call them early, we call them late, and we call them at lunch and everywhere in between and still no luck.  IT executives are busier than ever running from one meeting to next and putting out fires along the way.  They never seem to be in their office and when they are, the last thing they have time for is an unsolicited sales call.  Especially from an unprepared sales person!  That being said, our introduction and messaging has never been more important.  If we don’t make the most of that initial introduction the prospect will blow us off and avoid taking our calls in the future.  Below I highlight a couple of the common mistakes IT staffing sales professionals people make when making introductory and follow up sales calls to their prospects as well as a few ideas on how to avoid these pitfalls and improve the overall quality of your dialogue.

First, let’s start with the basics.  Your messaging has to be spot on and laser focused to the person you are calling on and the industry they serve.   Ideally you should know something about their current situation and/or future projects and challenges they’re trying to solve.  For example, if you’re calling on the VP of Data Warehousing and you introduce yourself as an IT generalist and/or fail to articulate your relevance and experience in the Data Warehousing space, you have failed.  Why would they want to speak with you?  Your messaging has to be so tight that the prospect doesn’t have to think or second-guess the “why” of your call.  Your message must be tied to what they do and what they are responsible for.  If, after you introduce yourself to the prospect and they ask you to explain (again) what you do/why you are calling, you need to tighten up your message.

 

Second, assuming we have a tight message and the prospect understands the relevance of our call, we now have to state the purpose of the call or the call objective (Don’t make a sales call until you know exactly what your goal of the call is).  This is where most calls go down hill real fast. 

 Typical Sales Call

 “So Mr. Prospect, the reason I’m calling today is to see if we can strike up a relationship”(there are plenty of other variations but the point is salespeople are often asking for something far too general or broad that is not clear nor can be accomplished on an initial sales call).  What does this even mean and more importantly, what are we really asking of the prospect when we make a statement like this?  Remember, this is our initial call to this prospect and it was not scheduled from a prior call or email exchange.  We need to be on point and understand that our prospect is only going to give us a few minutes.  What I often see happen at this stage of the call is the prospect starts asking questions of the sales person about his/her company and service offerings.   Why do prospects ask these questions?  Because the sales person has not clearly articulated the goal or purpose of the call.  They prospect is still struggling to see the connection.  So now the prospect has to qualify the salesperson.  Naturally, the sales person responds accordingly by answering the prospect’s questions.  But what has just happened? The prospect has just taken control of the call……and the sales person doesn’t even realize it.   The call is over before the sales person even realizes it.  The call usually ends within the next minute where the sales person has agreed to email the prospect their contact information (waste of time) with no specific action item or commitment for moving forward. 

 Does this sound familiar?  To avoid this, try following this basic framework for running any type of sales call (or meeting for that matter)

•  Purpose of the call:  What is the purpose of the call?  What are we talking about and why?  Make sure it is clear.

• Time:  How much time is this expected to take? Make sure the prospect knows how much of their time you are asking for.
• Setting & managing expectations: What do you expect from the prospect during this interaction (what information are you asking of them) and what should they expect from you in return? Do they need to do anything in advance to prepare for this call?  If so you need to let them know.
• Conclusion/Next Step:  What will happen at the conclusion of this conversation? Make sure you explain to the prospect upfront what the possible outcomes of the call will be including any potential action items.

When you set these expectations upfront with your prospects you will find that selling and having meaningful dialogue with prospects on cold calls can be so much easier and productive.    This sounds simple enough yet it is surprising how often sales people forget the little things. If you follow this guideline I assure you that you will find your sales calls to much more productive and your customers will appreciate it.

If you enjoyed this blog than you might want to check out our FREE white papers on cold calling and prospecting

Why You Must Learn To Disarm Prospects

Much of the IT Staffing sales training that I provide comes in the form of one-on-one sales coaching where I work at the desk level, "hand-in-hand" with sales reps.   We work on a number of different things but one of them is making cold calls.  Lots of them.   Most sales professionals I come across in the IT staffing industry make it their goal to either A.) secure a face-to-face meeting on their cold calls, B. ) take a job requirement or C.) give their unique value proposition (this typically equates to a broadcast message announcing features and benefits). 

Typically when they try to execute any of the above they're greeted with the response of "no thanks," or "I don't have time" or some other objection.   But why is the prospect really objecting?  The real reason is the prospect doesn't know you from a hole in the wall.  You most likely have not yet earned the right to whatever it is you are asking of your prospect.  So they object.

As both a sales professional and someone who has purchased products and services (in my professional and personal life) I have learned a few things about how prospects think.

1.) Prospects don't want to be sold, they want to buy.  Most likely you are the same way.  As soon as a prospect hears "sales talk" (broadcast message on who you are, what you do, features and benefits) they clam up and no longer want to talk because they fear the sales person is going to try to impose their product or service on them.  This is a HUGE turn off.  By the way, once you share with the typical IT hiring manager the name of your company and a five second explanation of who you are, they know what you do.  You don't need to talk about your company or explain it beyond that unless they ask. 

2.) Prospects want to feel in control and move at their own pace.  The problem is most sales people have been taught (through traditional sales methodologies) that their job is to control the purchasing process and that you put the prospect in your sales process.   How do most people react when someone else tries to exert control over them?  They resist, they put up their guard, they disengage. You have to make your prospect feel in control.  This requires both skill and confidence.

3.) Prospects are evaluating you, not your company.  They are asking themselves "is this sales person different from all the others?"  "Are they sincere?"  "Do they sound credible/bring credibility to the table?"  "Do I feel as though they can help me?"  "Do they sound valuable?"  Ask yourself this:  When you make a cold call and introduce yourself, does your introduction, approach, tone and what you say address those questions? 

At the end of the day sales professionals are like information archaeologists.  We have tons of questions for our prospects about their role, responsibilities, projects, budget, and challenges they face. The list goes on and on and on.  But prospects are never, ever,  going to share any of this information with you until you can properly disarm them and make them feel comfortable in speaking and sharing information with you.

I'll close with an exercise for you to consider. First, time how long your average cold call lasts (in duration).  If it is under a few minutes than chances are you need to work on your ability to disarm. How much time a prospect is willing to spend with you on the phone (and in person) is a good indicator.  Second, take the list of contact names you are pulling from linkedin (and calling on) and don't allow yourself to see the person's job title before you call them.  This way when you call on that person you have no idea what they are responsible for.  Your goal is to get them on the phone and make them feel comfortable in sharing with you what their job title, role and responsibilities are.  This is excellent practice for working your charm and disarming skills. 

Strategic Selling & Creating Demand With Executives

Last week I presented at the American Staffing Associations Staffing World, held in New Orleans.  Below are the highlights and key takeaways from my presentation, Strategic Selling: Building Credibility and Creating Demand with Executives.

Today's Customer....

• They're more sophisticated in how they purchase products and services and more educated on the products and services available to them
• They're inundated with sales calls...all services look alike, difficult to differentiate which is why they have "bake offs"
• Slower to say
• Result is vendor margins are being squeezed

What Your Customers Think About

• They think in terms of their "current state" and "desired future state"
• Sales people need to understand and recognize this and ask...
• "How happy is the client with their current situation?"  What business issues must be addressed?"
• "What is the end goal they are trying to accomplish and how can I help them achieve it?"

Transactional Selling	Meaningful Dialogue
Monologue or scripted	Natural conversation
Broadcast message (F&B's)	No manipulation
"Telling"	Real, open, honest dialogue
Customer's role is to ask questions	There are no steps: Customer fully engaged in conversation

 

Industry Examples of Transactional Selling

"I'm just checking in"

"Do you have any needs?"

"I saw on your web site/Indeed that you're looking to hire...."

"Our screening process consists..."

Accept job descriptions as client requirements (sales orders)

Call 1-2 contacts in an account then stop

 

Creating Demand: What Executives Are Interested In

• Industry trends & best practices
• Benchmarking data against competition
• Fresh ideas & insight on hot topics
• Speak like a thought leader
• It's the sales person's job to share this with their clients through educational based marketing

               

Become a SME to Generate Demand.  How?

• Write/repurpose content
• Tweet/re-tweet content of value: build your community online
• Gartner, Aberdeen, Forrester Research

What Executives Expect From Sales Professionals

• Functional knowledge
• Situational knowledge
• Capability knowledge
• Technical competency
• This knowledge allows sales people to build credibility

Preparing For The Executive Level Call

• 10K statement (risk factors)
• Attend client webinars
• Functional business line executives
• Slide presentations (investor conferences)
• Work this information into your dialogue to build credibility and probe for business issues you can solve

Impactful Story Telling

• Executives love to hear powerful client success stories
• Be able to explain your customer's business and their business objective
• Explain the technical/business challenge you faced
• Articulate how you approached the problem and the specific steps and tasks you completed to solve the technical/business issue
• Articulate how your client has benefitted from your solution.  How has your client increased revenue, decreased costs and/or better utilized assets as a result of your solution?

Strategic Selling

• Align around your customer's critical business issues
• Be able to connect the dots between your client's business issues and your service offerings (solutions)
• Understand how business issues flow throughout corporate America
• Identify all the executive stakeholders and understand their role and influence in the organization
• Develop and leverage account champions
• When talking value propositions talk outcomes, not processes.  Tie results to critical business issues and include metrics when possible.

Preparing Candidates For Client Interviews

I have come to discover that one of the most under-performed activities and under-valued skills in the IT staffing industry is preparing candidates for the client interview.  When I ask sales and recruiters  how they prepare their candidates for interviews I get the following responses:

• "I go over the job description with the candidate"
• "I give the candidate the client's web site address to research the customer"
• "I tell him/her who they will be interviewing with"
• "I tell the candidate what to expect (if known) in the interview"
• "I give the candidate directions and make sure they have the phone number"
• "I tell them to come prepared with questions to ask the client"

Have you noticed the theme that has emerged here?  We are constantly telling the candidate what to do. But where in there are we testing and probing the candidate to understand what he or she has done on their own time to prepare for the interview?  Where in there are we testing to see how our candidate will actually perform in the interview?  The whole purpose of preparing the candidate for the interview is to put the candidate (and ourselves) in the best possible position for success right?  Here are a few ideas and examples on how to tweak your candidate prep process so you can help your candidates increase their odds of nailing their interviews.

One Simple Examples

Instead of telling your candidates to "research the client's web site," wouldn't it be more effective if we asked the candidate "what did you learn about the client through your research and what questions have you prepared based on that research?"  Again, don't we gain much more insight into how prepared our candidate truly is by taking this approach vs. simply telling the candidate what to do?  I don't know about you but I want to hear what questions my candidate plans on asking my client.  If they're poor or inappropriate questions I want to know beforehand so that I can help my candidate develop thought provoking questions that will garner him/her credibility with my client. 

Advice Vs. Mock Interviewing

Most recruiters and sales professionals I have seen tend to offer their best advice for their candidates on how to answer interview questions.  That advice is usually pretty good.  But once our candidate goes out on that interview we wait on "pins and needles" hoping they nailed it.  That being the case, wouldn't everyone be better off if we did mock interviews to prepare our candidates before the interview instead of simply offering our advice?  Instead of "telling." try to focus your time on asking your candidates to explain to you what their plan is for handling the various scenarios a candidate faces when interviewing. Role play those scenarios out with your candidate.  Wouldn't you rather hear your candidate's response to the follow questions vs. simply telling them to prepare for the following questions?

• Tell me about a time where you had deal with a difficult customer?  How did you deal with it and what was the outcome?
• Tell me about your experience with JDBC and Oracle materialized views?
• In this role you will be responsible for producing "A, B & C."  Explain to me where you have done this in your past and what your approach was.

The questions here of course are irrelevant.  The point is we want to understand how our consultant is going to perform in the interview BEFORE the interview.  You can't accomplish this by simply telling your candidate what to do.  Conducing mock interviews and asking our candidates to practice their responses to tough interview questions with us is far more effective than simply offering them our advice and "telling them what to do." 

For every time you want to "tell" or share a piece of advice with your candidate, think of a way in which you can ask your candidate to explain to you what their plan of attack is (and what they have done to prepare) regarding the advice you have to offer.  If they are not willing to invest the time to properly prepare.....well you know the answer.  And if you need help developing interview questions to conduct mock interviews simply google "interview questions," or go to the "career advice" section of any of the major job boards and they will have plenty of sample interview questions for you to chose from. 

These are just a few ideas on how to prep your candidates for client interviews.  There are a number of other factors that also need to be covered when prepping a candidate for an interview in which case I will try to cover in my future blog posts.

Dan Fisher To Present at ASA Staffing World 2011

Dan Fisher, Founder and Managing Director of Menemsha Group, a sales training and consulting organization dedicated to serving the IT professional services industry will be presenting on strategic selling and demand creation at the American Staffing Association’s Staffing World on Friday, October, 14, 2011 in New Orleans.

Strategic Selling Creates Demand

A paradigm shift has taken hold in the way corporate America engages and procures services from professional staffing providers. The buying process has become more complicated, creating a longer sales process, and resulting in the need to sell long-term solutions.

Today’s staffing client is savvier, deploys sophisticated sourcing strategies, and rarely wants to engage sales professionals or vendors. Professional staffing firms want to move up the value chain with clients, and be seen as a strategic partner or trusted adviser. In this fast-paced hour geared to the professional sector, presenter Dan Fisher delivers need-to-know tactics for overcoming sales challenges and selling strategic business outcomes. Fisher also shows participants how to transition from being an “order fulfillment house” to creating client demand and achieving true market differentiation.

To read the full Staffing World agenda click here

How Well Do You Know Your Candidates?

Every month I speak with dozens of sales & recruiting professionals, business owners, CEO’s and industry executives. And over the past several months I have been hearing the same thing. “We lost another candidate (and sales opportunities) at the 11th hour. The candidate took another opportunity (or decided to take a perm opportunity).” When I probe to better understand the situation and why this is happening it becomes pretty clear. Candidates are taking other job opportunities-usually opportunities their sales and recruiting team we’re unaware of or lacked the ability to sell against.

What I have come to discover is most sales and recruiting professionals understand the service that they sell and offer but far fewer truly understand the product (consultant) they’re selling. How do I define the difference? The service is simply the tasks you complete internally-source, screen, interview, test, and reference check your consultants-in order to deliver your product. Your product of course is your consultant/candidate. Understanding your service-and performing those tasks are important. But this market has proven that understanding your product is far more critical to winning business. Let me explain.

When I ask probing questions to understand what went wrong and why the sales professional or business owner lost the deal “at the 11th hour” they share with me one of the following. “We knew there was another opportunity (but didn’t know any of the details of that opportunity or never asked the necessary drill-down questions on the opportunity).” “We didn’t know there was another opportunity.” “The candidate said this was his/her top choice/opportunity.” When I probe further for additional information to better understand what is happening the answers get even more vague. My point is, recruiters and sales professionals alike too often know very little about their candidates, and it’s costing them big time. They often don’t understand who their candidate is, why they’re even interested in a new project or making a career move or why they would take their opportunity. Far too often we fail to understand what motivates the consultant and how they make decisions. We often lack the details about whom else in their life (of the candidate) influences their decision-making. Uncovering and understanding these points is key to closing business.

Since about Q2 of this year I have noticed this trend taking hold among many IT staffing organizations. What’s happening is we’re simply “sourcing” candidates. Many recruiters are only spending 10-15 minutes total on the phone with their candidates. There can be many reasons for this but I suspect the primary reason ties in with the industry mantra of “more is always better.” Recruiters often want to get as many submittals out as they possibly can to increase their likelihood of closing business. But how well can you get to know someone and screen them in a 10-15 minute conversation? This behavior is analogous to the behavior associated with a VMS or MSP program. My experience is that many VMS or MSP programs place a greater value on the volume of resumes being submitted by the vendor than actually filling job orders. Now that the IT market has picked up my observation is that many recruiters (and managers often drive this behavior) are placing a greater value on the number of their submittals vs. the quality of their submittals and making placements. Anyone can source candidates but can you deliver talent? This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode “You know how to source consultants and make submittals, you just don’t know how to deliver your consultants……”

I’m not suggesting recruiters are not interested in making placements. I’m just pointing out reality. There can be a number of reasons for this. I will just point out two of the most common.

Most recruiters are losing candidates in the first five minutes (or even less) of a conversation. The heart and soul of sales is building trust. And critical to building trust is the ability of disarming people and making them feel comfortable with you to earn their trust. This is a skill that has to be taught and then practiced over and over and over again. Even some experienced sales people struggle with developing this skill. So, if we only spend 10-15 minutes on the phone and 95% of that time is focused exclusively on qualifying candidates and matching them with your opportunity and not building trust and exhibiting behaviors that build trust, then why should we expect the candidate (a total stranger) to be completely open and honest with us when it comes time to extend an offer and work out a contract? Or ween we probe about their other opportunities? We need to be spending more time upfront and throughout the sales cycle disarming and establishing that trust with our candidates in order to prevent the “11th hour surprise.”

The second reason is inexperience or lack of training. My observation is that many recruiters are often afraid to ask the “tough” questions. They’re afraid if they ask the questions they know they should be asking that they might put the candidate off and thus lose the candidate and the submittal. And when that happens their numbers (submittals) go down, and that makes a recruiter look bad to management and their peers. This of course makes no sense at all. Or, they may ask the questions but they don’t know how to ask the question in a way that will solicit an honest response from the candidate. Again, it’s the job of the recruiter to build trust and create a “safe environment” where your candidate is comfortable with 100% transparency. There is skill involved in creating this environment between you and your candidate.

Last month I pointed out that sales professionals need to focus more time on how to sell more effectively and become a better sales person. The same is true for those responsible for delivering consultants. This could be both recruiting and sales. It’s a lot easier to close a higher percentage of the deals you already have than it is to go out and find and close a new deal. If you and/or your firm are struggling with these types of challenges give us a call. This is exactly the type of problems we excel at solving.

Happy Selling!

Dan Fisher