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A positive update from Bob Marshall:

I know many of you are still struggling in this sluggish economy and so I wanted to send you some recent positive news (in case you hadn’t read it yet) and remind you how to deal in this economy.

But first a basic, essential, recommendation…

From the second you wake up in the morning, until you make your first call, don’t listen to, read or watch the News.  Always remember that News, by its very nature, is negative and will affect your subconscious, which makes up 90% of your brain, and controls your mental attitude.

 If you don’t believe me about the nature of the News, here are the lead stories from the MSNBC website for this morning, Thursday, March 25, 2010:

“Slump hammers Social Security”

“House Dems threatened”

“GOP forces new House vote on health overhaul”

“NYT:  Pope failed to defrock sex abuse priest”

“Video:  To fight seizures, girl loses half a brain”

…what a cheery start to the day!  Do you catch my drift?

And now, second, some good news that I just read about yesterday, buried on the last page of a business periodical:

Executive Search More Upbeat About 2010

“Ninety-one percent of executive search consultants worldwide hold a neutral or positive outlook for the search business in 2010, according to the Association of Executive Search Consultants member outlook survey.  Seventy-seven percent expect revenue to increase in 2010.”

“Respondents to the survey predicted the healthcare/life sciences and the energy/natural resources industries will see the most growth in 2010.  And they predicted China would see the greatest demand for talent, followed by India.”

“The survey included 268 responses from search consultants around the world.”

And finally, here follows some business-making reminders from my January “Adaptability” article:

How to deal in this economy

So, what do you do?  Some trainers will tell you to work smarter, not harder.  Others will tell you to work harder and not to worry about better technique.  Well, I am here to tell you to do everything you can to survive.  It’s important to work harder and to work smarter.  It’s important to be in your marketplace every day and to be there correctly.  Following are six proven methods that will insure your success in this, or any, economy.  These are not intended to be some sort of medieval torture, just suggestions and real techniques that really work…especially when dealing in a sluggish economy.

1.  Focus on activities that lead to money

To paraphrase the chorus in a rap song, “If It Don’t Make Dollars, It Don’t Make Sense”.

Robocruiter (my favorite top-producing recruiter) used to say it another way, “When I come into the office in the morning, I say to myself, ‘What is the first thing that I must do to make money, not the first thing I must do.  There is a difference.  Who do I have to call to get my first Send Out?  And after I arrange that first Send Out, where is my second Send Out coming from?  After I accomplish those two tasks, I can concentrate on the rest of my daily business.’”  Another top-producing manager always wanted his recruiters to have a “Hot Sheet” of at least 5 ‘fulls’ or 10 ‘splits’ in order to be assured of a placement.  He was after a quota of one to two Send Outs per day.  He knew, as Robocruiter knew, that Send Outs, above any of our other activities, lead to money.  I remember years ago when I filled the position of Critical Care Trainer for a large recruitment franchise organization, that I would always find the same things in failing offices; namely, the best filled out Job Orders in the history of Western Civilization—typed, spell-checked, indexed, etc.—and no Send Outs.  And I felt bad about this, because those franchisees, who were now facing six-figure losses, thought that they were in the business of writing Job Orders—and they weren’t!  As teachers, I felt that we had failed in getting this one critical piece of information across correctly to these students.  And that information is that we are in the business of arranging Send Outs and everything else is ancillary.  Send Outs are King.

2.  My value to my firm is my ability to pick up the phone and speak into it.

We live in the Information Age.  We are faced with an overburdening amount of data that lays a mere mouse click away.  And when we attempt to access this information, it is like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hose.  The computer itself is a compulsive tool.  It beckons to us as soon as we enter the office.  One of our first daily activities is to turn the infernal thing on (if we even turned it off the night before!).  And yet, all the top producers know that their value to their firms and organizations is their ability to communicate with other living human beings either face-to-face or over the phone—to establish rapport.  As the great sales trainer Cavett Roberts used to say, “In order for people to buy from us we must establish rapport.  We must have people like us, believe us, trust us and understand us.  You can’t heat an oven with snowballs.”  Those elements of rapport are only possible to create with personal interaction.  You can’t create rapport through keystrokes.

3.  Make Scintillating Presentations

I am a great believer in making scintillating presentations.  I suggest using a FAB (Feature-Accomplishment-Benefit) format.  Now, if you use a candidate as an MPC (Most Placeable Candidate), you can very easily apply this FAB principle.  The Feature is what the Candidate does.  The Accomplishment is how well he did what he does (these are spelled out in ‘concrete’ terms).  And the Benefit is how those Accomplishments will benefit a new company—a company to which you are going to take the Candidate.  Now you are armed to make a scintillating presentation.  You will be able to answer the prospective Hiring Manager’s ‘nonverbalized’ WIIFM question (“What can this Candidate do for me?”) and you can easily avoid the “No Openings” box.  The FAB presentation also allows you to get excited about the Candidate and that excitement will be contagious.  To reinforce this last point remember Cavett Roberts’ perhaps most insightful quote, that “people are more moved by the depth of your conviction, than by the height of your logic.”  FAB an MPC and you’ll see what I mean.

4.  --And make a lot of them.

If you haven’t done this yet, now is the time to “delimit” your marketplace so that you have the ability to make enough daily marketing presentations to sustain you in any economy.  On average, we look for you to make 25 marketing presentations (connects) per day.  That would equal 125 per week, 500 per month or 1500 per quarter.  So, try to establish yourself in a marketplace of 1500 company contacts.  Now, if you are calling a large company, each different Hiring Manager will count as a separate “contact”, so it will be easier to come up with the 1500.  Then concentrate on recycling these contacts once per quarter—some more frequently/some less frequently—depending on need and urgency.  Exposing yourself to the marketplace is critical.  I always tell my recruiter-students that I can’t guarantee you many things in this business, but I can guarantee you one thing.  That you will never place with a company you don’t call.

Think of the 1500 company contacts this way.  It is generally accepted by top producing recruiters that they will place with 4% of their marketplace.  So, if your marketplace contains 1500 contacts, then 4% of that marketplace equals 60 companies that you will place with.  Multiply those 60 placements times an average fee of $10,000 and you have a $600,000 desk.  Multiply those 60 placements by an average fee of $20,000 and you have your $1,200,000 operation.  And that is how, my friends, recruiters, by themselves, bill over $1,000,000 per year.

Now, I am not trying to scare anyone off, but during recessions it is not uncommon for top recruiters to double or triple their call volume.  So 75 connects a day (no matter how you envision a connect call—direct contact or scintillating voice mail message on your part) is acceptable production.

5.  All Job Orders are not created equal

Be constantly aware that not all Job Orders (JOs) are of Search Assignment quality.  The way I teach this is that out of 15 JOs that an experienced recruiter writes, only 0-1 will be of Search Assignment quality.  4-5 will be of Matching quality.  And about 10, or 2/3rds, of all of those written JOs will be of the Can’t Help variety.  All 15 are JOs--they are just different in regards to quality.  If you were never taught this principle, you’ll end up going through your recruitment life bemoaning the fact that all of your placements take forever.  Or that no one seems capable of making a decision.  Or that Hiring Manager’s have changed and are now looking for the proverbial ‘needle in the haystack’.  Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your problem lies in what you are working, not in any fundamental paradigm shift, as some would have you believe.  Qualify those Job Orders and you will see that what I am saying is right.

6.  Inspect what you expect

Our business is a difficult one to monitor, but monitoring is critical to your success.  I like the 100 Point Sheet that I learned about years ago.  In that format, you assign point values to each of your activities dependent on the ‘centralness’ of the activity to making a placement.  For example:  each Marketing Attempt is awarded 1 point; each Marketing Presentation is awarded 1 point; each Job Order is awarded 10 points; each Send Out is awarded 15 points, etc.  Then, at the end of the day, you add up your points and if you are over 100 points, you are going to make placements.  If your total is less than 100 points, you are not going to make placements.  It’s really pretty simple

Here’s an interesting story regarding this 100-point format.  When I was in charge of training for a firm with offices in London, I introduced this concept there.  The manager liked the idea, but told me to introduce it as a 200 Point Sheet, with the requirement to get 200 points per day.  I did as he asked and sure enough the recruiters in London achieved 200 points a day.  They also became our biggest producing office—both overseas and here in the United States.  Another of my scary messages…a 200 point per day plan is not unreasonable during a recession.  It will work for you if you let it.

So let me leave you with a few words of wisdom.  Try to be noted for your flexibility.  I know it’s hard, but change when you need to change.  And if you haven’t yet, make a commitment to treat this New Year 2010 as the year you emphasize Adaptability.  Then when the winds change dramatically, your ship of commerce will not capsize.  You’ll just trim your sails and continue to move forward—maybe even a little faster.

I bid you all Godspeed!

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BIOGRAPHY

Bob Marshall began his recruiting career in 1980 when he joined MR Reno, NV.  In 1986 he founded The Bob Marshall Group, International, training recruiters across the nation as well as in the United Kingdom, Malta and Cyprus.  In 1996, he returned to working a desk full-time, while continuing to train recruiters.  Just recently he began marketing the ‘unplugged’ version of his acclaimed 2009 43-session Classic Teleconference Series.  To learn more about his activities and descriptions of his products (including The Executive Edition Daily Planner) and services (including the ‘Double Production-guaranteed’ program), contact him directly at: 770-898-5550, www.TheMarshallPlan.org,or bob@themarshallplan.org.

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