One of the major challenges for most recruitment consultants is converting your sales call activity into actual sales. I hope this article will give you some leading edge ways to increase your conversion rates easily

If you’re smart, you’ll spend at least 90 minutes each day – probably more, making, chasing and following up on leads – either by phone, internet or post. The difference between success and not getting the results you want with this is not the number of calls you make, it’s down to having quality leads and ensuring constant, relentless follow-up.

In case you’re in any doubt about how effective follow-up is, or how costly it is for your recruitment agency to NOT to follow up on potential leads, let me share with you some interesting statistics:

  • 48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect
  • 25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
  • 12% of sales people only make three contacts and stop

OK, so what does this mean, then? Well, it means that they’re losing a small fortune…. the reason being:

  • 2% of sales are made on the first contact
  • 3% of sales are made on the second contact
  • 5% of sales are made on the third contact
  • 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
  • 80% sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

So if you are like most recruitment agencies where your recruiters make no more than one follow-up to a potential client or candidate…. then you’re leaving 98% of your income for one of your competitors to come and pick up.

So, what can you do to follow up?

 

1. Have a Follow Up System in Place

You should already have your recruitment process and lead generation strategy in place to generate leads…

It’s one thing to be generating leads but you must have a follow up system in place after that initial first contact. This will record and map out your follow process with prospects. So that you know you are contacting prospects between 5 to 12 times.

One of the recruiters that I work with was just cold calling. When he analysed what had given him the best success in the past it was that he sent a short email with relevant reasons for the people to want to network with him. He then had a system in place where he followed that up the next day with a phone call, then 2 days later another phone call and then another email to make sure they were the right person to be contacted.

You can record this on your database or on something like an excel spreadsheet.

 

2. Send an Email

Emailing done well is cheap, fast and very effective. You’ll do better with your email if it has something that your prospect needs, but even regular weekly or twice monthly emails with nothing more than interesting, engaging or informative content are still going to give you more sales.

Why? Because whenever your prospect need a “specialist skill”, then you’re the go-to specialist skill person they’ll think of. It’s a bit like ”brand awareness” only this actually works.

 

3. Send a Mailshot

When writing mailshots, it really makes a difference if you put yourself in the shoes of your target audience – your clients. Think about what would be interesting for them? What do they want to see or hear that would catch their attention? Why would they want to read it?

If you’re selling in a candidate, it’s easier to read and more compelling if you use bullet points and benefits rather than features, i.e., for a candidate, a short summary of what they can do for the client and then benefits for the client, i.e., £500k of client contacts or specific skills and experience that will give the prospect more free time.

 

4. Send a Newsletter

The question I ask recruiters is “ how many of your competitors are sending information that is not sales focused that adds value to their clients?” The answer is very few. A page newsletter with interesting information and articles in it, or answers to questions they might have, costs potential clients virtually nothing. And… because you can virtually guarantee that none of your competitors are doing it, this is going to mean you are one of the people your clients think of when they need the services or a recruiter.

What do you put in it? Well, anything you like as long as it’s interesting and engaging. An easy way to find content is to look out for news or articles and any time something interesting comes up, no matter how tenuous the connection, that’s an opportunity for you to write something about it or send the article on.

 

5. Send a top tip

We take for granted how valuable the information that we hold in our heads is. Clients would really benefit from things like:

  • Interview questions that make a difference
  • Salary surveys
  • Competitor analysis
  • How to ensure the candidates you want takes your job.

For candidates – you might send them:

  • Tips to ensure your best prepared for the interview
  • 3 questions to ask at interview
  • 5 things to avoid when looking for your ideal job

Writing tips helps to create your expert status in the recruitment industry – making you a go-to person in that field – a knowledge leader.

 

6. Automate Your System

When you know what you want to send, the quicker you can automate your emails, newsletters or top tips… the better. If you have a database that will send out pre-written and pre-scheduled emails – great news. If you don’t, then you could use free autoresponder software like Mailchimp or AWeber where you can pre-write and schedule emails to go out on set times.

 

With your solid recruitment lead generation strategies (such as networking, using social media platforms, paid advertising, search engine optimisation, referrals, etc.) in place to find more recruitment leads, you can then use these 6 techniques to increase your sales call conversion rate.

I hope you found this article useful.

 

If you’re a Recruitment or Executive Search Business Owner that wants a proven system to help your team make 5, 10 or 20 extra placements a month, reliably and predictably – then CLICK HERE for our micro training. We walk you through the 3 Machines we install into our clients’ businesses:

1. The Attraction Machine – so you get consistent quality jobs (or quality candidates).
2. The Conversion Machine – so you make a lot more placements.
3. The Delivery Machine – so you scale your team without burning yourself out.

The same is totally possible for you too – and within 30 days you could have your team making a few more placements and a bit more cash coming through the door. CLICK HERE to watch.