Articles - Business / Client Dev & Marketing

John A. Byrne in his book, “The Headhunters”, 1986, had the following quote about marketing from one of the fathers of the search business, Sidney Boyden:

“Boyden was, like all of the most successful headhunters, a savvy salesman, too.  ‘When I employed an associate I was interested in a man who could be a business getter and a merchandiser,’ he says with refreshing candor.  ‘I was looking for widely acquainted top sales executives.  Because the ability to go out and promote business and get business is more important than finding the men.  I was least interested in somebody who would know how to track down a man and find him.’

OK, OK, you have read all of the articles.  You know the motivational quotes by heart.  You have commiserated with your fellow colleagues.  You have had the “soul searching” internal conversations.  You know what you have to do to succeed in these turbulent times.  Yes, you have to market.  You know it.  You feel it.  You tell yourself you must do something that you haven’t done in years—or maybe never.  But then you find yourself in a cold sweat.  Can you remember how?  Did you ever know how?  HOW DO YOU DO IT?

Choosing Your Vehicle

A marketing or sales call is really a rapport building call.  Many of the top networks have established, over time, that by using a “Best Candidate” as a vehicle, you can open doors that would otherwise remain shut.  Or, at the very least exhibit to your potential hiring authorities, the caliber of talent that you can present when called on to do so.  You can also avoid the “No Openings” box that so many of us face when we ask the ubiquitous question “Do you have any needs or anything I can help you with today?”  So, this approach allows you to:

1. Start the rapport building process;
2. Fashion optimum length conversations;
3. Avoid the “No Openings” box;
4. Obtain alternate Job Orders.

In my mind, the main goal of the call is not, I repeat not, to arrange a send out for the candidate/vehicle.  Recruitment systems, recruiters and even so-called expert trainers all fall into the same trap when they lament that recruiters who employ a candidate-based marketing presentation are attempting to arrange send outs for their candidates when they don’t even know what positions the potential client company might have open for search.  That would be ludicrous and not too bright.  This candidate/vehicle merely serves as a way to help the recruiter engage the hiring manager in conversation and to start the rapport building process.  You want your hiring managers to like, believe, trust and understand you.  All four of these elements must be operative in order for these people to buy from you.  In reality, you offer the finest, most affordable service in the United States of America.  You will agree to keep all of your hiring managers apprised of the top talent available in their specialty area and near their geographical location and you will do that forever and you will do that for free.  You are only wagering that someday they will like someone that you present so much that they will bring that individual in for an interview, make them an offer, the candidate will accept and will start to work.  Only then will your service charge come in to play--the best service available anywhere.

You are also attempting, on each call, to get between the 2 to 5 minute conversation mark.  Under 2 minutes and the call is not long enough for rapport building.  Over 5 minutes and you run the risk of not being able to call all of the companies you need to call to ensure your “low risk operation” success.  Of course, the companies who give you job orders and who exhibit one of the three requisites that we talked about in last month’s Top Echelon article, (i.e., companies who have a sense of urgency; companies who have particularly difficult positions to fill; and companies who want to be kept apprised of top notch talent as that talent surfaces) and who are serious, will receive more and longer phone calls from you.  The other job order givers will not. 

Your “Best Candidate” Vehicle

Finding your “Best Candidate” vehicle can be a challenge.  Even in this day and age of a plethora of good candidates, your best candidates can still be elusive.  You are basically looking for the following five qualities:

1. A candidate who has a marketable skill.  This is not a wonderful skill as much as it is a skill that will get the attention of the potential hiring manager.  A brain surgeon has a great skill, but it is not necessarily a “door opening” skill.

2. A candidate who is realistic about everything—job title, job compensation, commute, office location, etc.  We want a candidate who lives in the real world.  We want them to know that an average increase for a working person in the US who makes a change is in the neighborhood of 5-8%--not 50%, or even 20%.  That just doesn’t happen in the real world.  And, if you are unemployed, you will be lucky to find a job with a lateral compensation, and to go lower is not out of the question.

3. A candidate who has the ability to interview when you say—within reason—during normal working hours (not just on the weekends).  Also, this candidate has the ability, should the match be right, to start within two weeks.  A two weeks notice is reasonable—not four, not eight, but two. 

4. A candidate who is reference checkable.  Yes, we do professional business reference checks and the degree confirmations whether the client company wants to do them or not.  Everyone has at least three professional references.  The degree checks are a given—and a must!

5. A candidate who gives us respect as a professional.  This candidate needs to understand that we know our job and we expect them to know theirs.  They are not allowed to tell us how to perform, just as we don’t tell them how to conduct their profession.

There is also a secondary list:

6. Currently working—i.e., happy, well-appreciated, well-compensated, but can be motivated, by you, to move for a better opportunity;

7. At a mid-level position so that your hiring managers understand that you can recruit above and below their position;

8. Agree to call you every day at a pre-arranged time;

9. Agree not to compete with you by trying to place themselves (or work with other recruiters) during the period of time that you are going to be presenting their accomplishments and benefits to your marketplace.

13 Questions To Qualify Your “Best Candidates”

If you qualify hard on the front-end, those same answers will be there on the back-end.

1. What is going to happen in 2 months if you don’t have a new position?
2. How long have you been looking?
3. How many interviews have you had?
4. How many offers and turndowns have you had?  Why?
5. What other opportunities are you considering?  Why haven’t you acted on these yet?
6. What is your deadline?
7. When in the next 3-5 days can you interview?
8. Is there anyone in your family who will resist this move?
9. Have you given notice?  Is it verbal or written?  If verbal, will you type up a notice to hand to your institution/company when you have a position—or even before then?  When is your last day?
10. Have you really made the decision to take a new position?  Why?  Are you serious?
11. Have you had the “family meeting” and made the “family decision”?
12. What if we find what you want and you then get a counteroffer?  Will you consider it?  Why?
13. If I can find what you want, you get an interview and get an offer, when can you make a decision?

Once we identify the candidate who exhibits these qualities, we are ready to develop our FAB presentation.

The FAB Presentation

Now that we have identified our “Best Candidate”, we want to develop our Feature-Accomplishment-Benefit Presentation.  Keeping in mind that the expenditure of time is critical to us, we want to have our candidates do these FABs for us.  This is what you say to your targeted candidate:

“When we present your background and experience to an employer, we want to show how your employment will benefit both the organization and the employer as an individual.  We want to demonstrate how you can help improve profits, reduce costs and just make things run better.  We have learned that resumes, more often that not, result in rejection rather than interviews.  Because of this we seldom send a resume to a prospective employer.”

“We have, instead, developed the Feature-Accomplishment-Benefit Presentation—FAB for short—to use in presenting your background and experience to an employer.  Take a piece of paper and make three columns.  Features are listed in the left column, Accomplishments in the center and Benefits in the right column.  The FAB presentation does several important things.  It shows, specifically, what you can do for the employer—how you will benefit him or her and the organization.  It details what you have accomplished in your current and previous positions.  Finally, it highlights your unique features and experiences.  How do you prepare a FAB presentation?  Let’s start by defining some terms:”

 FEATURES—These are facts about yourself.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS—Significant “measurable” results you obtained for your current and past employers.  These are concrete—numbers, fractions, dollars and percentages.

BENEFITS—Educated guesses of what you can do for a new employer based on your accomplishments.

“Next, prepare a chronology of your work history.  Make sure you have included all of the positions you have held.  Don’t forget the promotions!  After you have prepared the chronology, list all of your significant accomplishments for each of the positions.  Go ahead and list them all.  This is not the time to be humble.  The accomplishments should be very specific and contain quantitative measures where appropriate.”

“After your lists of features and accomplishments have been completed, study them over.  Now identify what you can do for a NEW employer.  How you can benefit him or her.  What are the most compelling reasons for a new employer to want to hire you over someone else?  Put these answers in the benefit column.”

“After you have completed your FAB presentation, go over it.  Study it carefully.  Have you forgotten anything?  Where can you include additional quantitative measures?  Numbers tell!  Can a benefit be rephrased so you will look more attractive to an employer?  Is there an accomplishment from early in your career that is particularly significant that should be included?”

“And finally, when you go to your interviews take your FAB sheet with you.  Be sure to answer questions by relying on your FAB information—especially stressing how you can BENEFIT the new company.”

12 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Completing Your FAB Presentation

1. Did you help to increase sales, productivity or efficiency?
2. Did you save your company money?
3. Did you institute a new system or procedure in your company?
4. Did you identify a problem in your company that had been overlooked?
5. Were you ever promoted?
6. Did you train anyone?
7. Did you suggest any new programs for your company that were put into effect?
8. Did you help to establish any new goals or objectives for your company?
9. Did you change, in any way, the nature of your job?
10. Did you ever undertake an assignment or project that wasn’t part of your job just because you were intrigued with the problem?
11. Did you ever do anything simply to make your own job easier?
12. What would you say would be the most important qualities of the “ideal candidate” for the position you seek?

Generic Benefits

Here are some of the ways you can best paraphrase your candidate’s benefits:

1. He can take the load off of you.
2. Can come up to speed right away.  No training.
3. Such a whiz at _____, she can help others.
4. Such a breadth of _____.  She can pick up any new technologies.
5. Good people person.  You can rely on him to help you with:  non-technical issues; user community relations; supervisory roles.
6. Hard worker.  He will meet your deadlines and budget.  Saves you money.
7. Start to finish, she can be completely responsible for your projects.
8. Thorough.  His systems work.  You won’t need to rewrite them.
9. Motivator.  She can bring that spirit to your team.
10. Such breadth.  Can bring his all-around expertise to your advantage.  The system will be comprehensive.
11. Well-educated.  Takes classes, seminars, reads.  Someone on staff who is state-of-the-art.
12. Stable record.  You will have less turnover and a good role model.
13. Fast tracker.  Gets it done.  He’ll make you look good.
14. Team player.  Improves synergy in the group.
15. She’s so good.  You can get home at a decent hour.

When your FAB is complete, you will need to role-play your presentation until it is smooth and you are comfortable with it.  Finally, you are ready to go to your marketplace.

Entering the Marketplace

Multi-tasking is the ability to have more than one objective on each phone call.  Top recruiters have learned this principle very well and always multi-task.  Multi-tasking concerns these five objectives.  I’ve attached verbiage for your benefit:

1. Direct Marketing:  “I have just uncovered a top talent who (FAB) and I HAVE ARRANGED for him/her to be available to talk to interested parties next Monday or Tuesday and, if you are interested, which day would be best for you?”
2. Indirect Marketing:  “What companies do you know of who would benefit by having a person like this onboard?”
3. Direct Recruiting:  “Let me ask, what would interest you about a future position?”
4. Indirect Recruiting:  “Who do you know who is qualified for this position?”
5. Information Gathering (The Lost Sale Close):  “Let me ask you one last question and I’ll let you go.  What kind of person would you like to hear about should I uncover that person in a subsequent search?”

Now, the beauty of understanding multi-tasking for marketing is that you can use the one objective that you are most comfortable with to enter the call and then transition to the others as the opportunity presents itself.  For instance, let’s say that you feel very comfortable making indirect recruit calls.  So, you start your “marketing” call this way and then, before you hang up, you say, “You know, John, I hate to waste a good call, I have just recruited a candidate who (FAB + close)” and you enter into a Direct Marketing call.  Now you have accomplished two missions on that call.  You have doubled your numbers, and will reap the benefits of two critical activities, without calling any more than you usually do. 

The “Triplicate-Triplicate” Marketing Approach

OK, you now have your “Best Candidate” and your FAB presentation.  Now it’s getting down to H-Hour time.  Time to dial that phone.  The cold sweat starts again.  Aren’t there any other activities I can do first?  Maybe more planning?  Maybe more time to do research on the Internet?  Maybe, maybe?  No, no more “maybes”, IT’S TIME TO MARKET.

Every “gatekeeper” is eventually going to ask you the same three questions:

1. “What’s your name or who are you?”
2. “What company are you with?”
3. “What is the nature of your call?”

So, you might as well address this first Triplicate, by answering these three questions before they are asked.

1. “My name is Bob Marshall.”
2. “I am with ESPro International in Atlanta, Georgia.”
3. “And I am actually calling for three reasons.”

Now you go into your second Triplicate.

1. “First, I am calling to introduce myself to the CEO.”
2. “Second, I have something of a confidential nature to discuss with him/her.”
3. “And finally, I have just recruited a top-notch candidate who … (go into your FAB).”

At this point you can get your first objection from the gatekeeper who might say, “Oh, you are a recruiter.  You need to talk to Tom in Personnel or Sally, our Technical Recruiter”.

You, say, “OK, I will.  What is that extension?  Now can you pass me through to the CEO, because, you see, I still want to introduce myself to him/her and I still have something of a confidential nature to discuss with him/her.”  By the way, these confidential items can include the name of the “Best Candidate” and, of course, your fee/guarantee agreement.

Now, don’t be surprised if this takes the gatekeeper by surprise.  You will be the first recruiter who agrees with the objection, yet still asks to be put through to the person you were calling in the first place.  This will be confusing to the gatekeeper.  But after she collects herself, she just might put you through.

Entering at the Highest Level

I am often asked how “contingency” recruiters can act more like “retained” recruiters.  I always answer the same way, “Act more like retained recruiters”.  Retained recruiters always “enter” a company at the highest level.  This means, if you want to be treated like a CEO, you need to call at the President/CEO level.  A critical rule of thumb to remember is:  YOU WILL ALWAYS BE TREATED AT THE LEVEL YOU PENETRATE A COMPANY.  If you penetrate at the CEO level, you will be treated like a CEO and will receive JOs at the VP level and below.  If you penetrate at the VP level, you will be treated like a VP and will receive JOs at the Director level and below.  If you penetrate at the Director level, you will be treated like a Director and will receive JOs at the Manager level and below.  If you penetrate at the Manager level, you will be treated like a Manager and will receive JOs at the “Worker Bee” level and below.  And if you penetrate at the HR level, you will be treated like a clerk.  When you complain that you are being treated like a clerk, it is because you are acting like a clerk.  Sorry, these are just the “facts of life”.

A Sample Marketing Presentation

“Hello, is this John Hopkins?  John, you are the CEO of IGT, aren’t you?  Terrific!  John, my name is Bob Marshall.  I am a recruiter in the Atlanta area and I called you for a couple of reasons.  First, I wanted to meet you over the phone.  And second, by way of introduction, mention to you that I have just recently surfaced a top notch sales talent (feature) who last year developed a brand new territory into one of the top 5 producing territories out of 200 in the country for his current company (accomplishment) and there is no reason why he can’t bring that talent to bear with a new company like yours (benefit).  This candidate wants to stay, if possible, in the Atlanta area, and so I am calling local companies to determine interest and also to introduce my recruiting service. John, if you would like to talk to my candidate, I have arranged for him to be available next Monday morning or Tuesday afternoon.  Which one of those days be good for you or would you like more information about him (close)?”  (60 seconds)

(We have no openings)

“Oh, I guess I didn’t make myself clear.  I am a recruiter.  I would venture a guess that 90% of the companies I place with don’t have openings when I call, but do want to be kept apprised of top notch talent as that talent surfaces.  One of the reasons for my call was to see if you wanted to provide yourself and your company with this unusual service.”  (20 seconds)

(Well that’s fine, Bob, but we just don’t have any openings)

“OK, but let me ask you two more questions and then I will let you go.  First, which companies do you suggest I call with this sales talent in mind (indirect marketing call)?”  (10 seconds)

(John answers)

“And second, what kind of person would you like to hear about should I uncover that person in a subsequent search.  Remember, I am a ‘contingency’ recruiter, so that means that it costs you nothing to look at my candidates.  Only if you make them an offer and they accept and they start to work does my service charge come into play.”  (20 seconds)

(John answers)

John, it was a pleasure speaking with you!  (2 seconds)

(John says, “Thank You”)

Marketing Opening Statements

Since I think that verbiage is important, here are a couple of other “tried and true" ways to enter into your FAB presentations:

#1 “I present people who are happy, well-appreciated, making good money, currently working and I motivate them (through my great talent & expertise) to change for a better position (i.e., yours, if I can get a complete JO from you & it does fall into that category).  These people are not Job Hoppers, Job Shoppers or Rejects.  These people are not “looking” for work.  And these people only surface for a short period of time before they re-submerge & disappear from the marketplace.”

#2 “John, I’ll put it differently.  Evaluating your staff on a scale from 1 to 10, how many honestly would you score 8, 9, or 10; my candidate will score that high and he/she costs you nothing to interview.”

The “Exit” from your Marketing Presentation

After you have made your Triplicate/Triplicate approach, and then made your FAB presentation with no effect, you now have to have a graceful, profitable exit from your marketing call.  So, let’s say this call is going nowhere and you are ready to get out of this presentation and on to your next presentation.  Before you leave this hiring manager, say this, “OK, I understand that you have no openings right now, but let me ask you one last question.  What kind of person would you like to hear about should I uncover that person in a subsequent search?”  We call this the “Lost Sale” approach.  You are not selling anymore.  You have given up.  You’re waving the White Flag.  But, before you go, you are going to ask for information to help you sell this hiring manager on your next marketing call to him.  Your next call can now be more precise, more targeted and more successful.

How To Evaluate Your Success Rate

Ideally you are looking for a 10% return rate on your marketing presentation.  So, out of 10 presentations, one should result in a JO or a JO lead or something positive.  If not, there are five problems that you could face:

1. You have a faulty presentation—no benefit selling with supporting accomplishments—no FAB  presentations;
2. You have a faulty candidate—lacks a marketable skill;
3. You have a faulty marketplace—e.g., the oil and gas industry in 1982;
4. You need work on rapport building—people may not like, believe, trust or understand you in a  professional manner;
5. You are presenting to the wrong person—a “non” hiring manager.

I can tell you, from over 20 years of experience in evaluating recruiters at the desk level, that the usual problem is #1.  Most recruiters lack the knowledge to make a quality FAB presentation.

The Man In The Arena

And so, the time is here.  It’s time to market.  Don’t let fear control your actions—embrace it.  As Eddie Rickenbacker said,

“Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do.  There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”

Each call will be easier than the last.  It will take some time, but “steel” yourself to do it.  Think of it this way:  If your marketing presentation numbers are low now, then doubling or tripling them will be a snap—it is just a function of committing to the numbers necessary and then doing them.  Remember, you are trying to establish new, good marketing habits and we know that your actions will become your habits.  And, not only will this make you more profitable, but it will also make you proud of yourself for doing it.

In the words of Teddy Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, as quoted in Citizen in a Republic, April 23, 1910, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

BIOGRAPHY

Bob Marshall, CPC, CIPC started in the search business in 1980 and became Western Regional Manager for over 60 Management Recruiters Intl. offices in 1984.  In 1986 he founded The Bob Marshall Group, International, training recruiters across the nation as well as the United Kingdom, Malta, and Cyprus.  In 1996, he returned to working a desk full time and continues to train recruiters. 

To learn more about his activities and descriptions of his products and services, contact him directly at:  770-898-5550 or @ espro@bellsouth.net.  His website is located at www.TheMarshallPlan.org..

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