What if mastering your mindset, discipline, and consistency could transform your recruitment game? This episode of Confessions of a Recruiter promises to reveal the secrets behind XRecruiter's 90-day induction training program. From the critical elements of business development to effective sales techniques, we'll explore how understanding client personas, honing your pitching strategies, and speaking the language of leaders can set you apart in this competitive industry.
Join us as we delve into the core elements that drive business growth, including prospecting, cold calls, and nurturing client relationships. Hear real-life success stories, such as a recruiter who turned ad chasing into a powerful resilience-building tool. We'll also discuss the essential strategies behind maintaining subtle and consistent client engagement, and why having a structured business development strategy is key to targeting the right technical niches and industry sectors.
Finally, we dive into the stark differences between a proactive salesperson and an order taker, and the importance of building trust-based relationships with clients. Learn from personal anecdotes and success stories on how over-delivering can lead to exceptional outcomes. Whether it's through strategic sales approaches, leveraging regulatory changes, or mastering the art of preparation, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you excel in your recruitment career. Tune in for a wealth of knowledge that promises to elevate your recruitment strategies and business acumen.
ยท Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
What if mastering your mindset, discipline, and consistency could transform your recruitment game? This episode of Confessions of a Recruiter promises to reveal the secrets behind XRecruiter's 90-day induction training program. From the critical elements of business development to effective sales techniques, we'll explore how understanding client personas, honing your pitching strategies, and speaking the language of leaders can set you apart in this competitive industry.
Join us as we delve into the core elements that drive business growth, including prospecting, cold calls, and nurturing client relationships. Hear real-life success stories, such as a recruiter who turned ad chasing into a powerful resilience-building tool. We'll also discuss the essential strategies behind maintaining subtle and consistent client engagement, and why having a structured business development strategy is key to targeting the right technical niches and industry sectors.
Finally, we dive into the stark differences between a proactive salesperson and an order taker, and the importance of building trust-based relationships with clients. Learn from personal anecdotes and success stories on how over-delivering can lead to exceptional outcomes. Whether it's through strategic sales approaches, leveraging regulatory changes, or mastering the art of preparation, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you excel in your recruitment career. Tune in for a wealth of knowledge that promises to elevate your recruitment strategies and business acumen.
ยท Our Website is: xrecruiter.io
All right, welcome back to another episode of Confessions of a Recruiter. We're going to unveil the curtains on what some of our sales training and mentorship is. Here at XRecruiter, we do a 90-day induction for anyone that starts their recruitment agency and we get them sharpened on all of the sales strategies that you need to build your desk. This has been an absolute game changer for many of our new partners. Being able to learn and implement it in their own agencies has really helped them level up. If you think that having a long training session uncut, unfiltered gives you value, make sure you let us know, because if we get some good feedback, we'll start to release more of it. If we don't get any feedback, we'll just keep on trucking on with a normal podcast. So make sure you give us a shout and give us your thoughts. We look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker 2:So we're here for our 90-day induction. So I wanted to give kind of a quick overview around kind of what we're going to cover in the 90 days. So this is kind of foundational training for us today. So we're going to go through the sales success masterclass, which is really about setting up a foundation of how we go from 500k to a mil. So we're not going to get deep in the weeds today. We'll get into a level of depth. But as we go through the 90 days we're going to build on the first two sessions so today and the next class, which make up your workbook. They set the foundation. We then have three follow-up sessions from there for us to kind of build on that and then post that 90 days.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm happy to do kind of a half an hour session with each of you guys kind of individually If you want to deep dive into any of the content, if you want to deep dive into a different business challenge you're having or just to help out, right. So don't feel like we have to stay on script. Obviously, when you're in the room we can have heaps more engagement. So feel free to kind of interrupt me as we go along. I'm going to put some of you in the hot seat. I'm not going to remember everyone's name, I might just point.
Speaker 2:But it's all about interacting today, because no one wants to hear me talk for two hours. I don't want to hear myself talk for two hours, so but that's what the 90 days is about we're really looking at. So a big part of today is going to be looking at mindset. So I'm a huge believer If we grow you as a person, that grows you as a recruiter, that grows your business right. So how you turn up to work is the big game changer. Of course, we're going to get into skills, that's a given but we want to focus on that, on that growth of you as a person. Um what?
Speaker 2:we're not going to do today is there's not a 10 steps to to being rich. Right, it's not a, a fast track, it's. I don't have the secret sauce. Of course we're going to give you tips and tricks that are going to work and help you kind of you can implement now and see change, but there is no fast track and recruitment to go from a to b. Right, there's no kind of get rich quick.
Speaker 2:So today is really going to be talking about discipline, consistency, how do you build in excellence over this 90 days that's going to get you there as you put more reps in.
Speaker 2:So if you're coming today hoping that, hey, we've got 10 steps to get there and we're all good, if it was that easy, none of us would be sitting here, everyone would be doing it and everyone would be their own business owner. So I just wanted to kind of give you that to start off with. But we are going to cover very much today how we pitch to different people, what's the language of leaders, what are different client personas. So I think, regardless of what sector you play in, these things are really important and we're going to get deep into that kind of at the back end of the session today um, around how you pitch different clients to really cut through and resonate, because I think if you can get that right, that's an absolute game changer and I think a lot of the recruiters I've worked with over the years in that step to good, good to great. The thing that holds them back is not understanding their client personas, not understanding how to pitch up the food chain, um, and not understanding how to sell to people differently.
Speaker 1:So that's what we want to get into today and over the 90 days, so we'll jump straight in, go for it I think it would be awesome for everyone to get some more, a new set of context on who you are, where you've come, ah background yeah, cool.
Speaker 2:Uh, all right. So for those of you who don't know me, because maybe you don't, that's a good point, let's skip that. Uh so matt cosson. So I've been in recruitment for two decades. Um, all of that has been within tech.
Speaker 2:Uh, I was a million dollar biller coming into year three. So I did 54 deals in my first year. Uh was kind of top five in my company year one. By year two I was doing 750. By year three I was doing a mil and I haven't done less than a mil for the rest of my career. My biggest number was 2.35 or 2.35 and some change. We won't really worry about the change. It was a good number and I've typically done both large scale temp. Uh so contracting. So I've had contracting books kind of over 100 personally and I do a lot of retained uh, permanent business. So I tend to not do much contingent or or any contingent in the last kind of couple of years, because if you're a good recruiter you should be able to push back on that and we'll get into that kind of over the 90 days as well as how you push people from contingent to retained to exclusive.
Speaker 2:I met these boys through a mutual contact in Sydney who I coach. I won't say his name, but he's probably the best tech recruiter in Sydney. He kind of does over two every year. I think his best year was 3 million or just under 3 million, which is pretty phenomenal. They kind of hooked me up with the boys. That's how I got into doing some coaching, loved everything X Recruiter was doing, and I've joined the team this week as Chief Growth Officer. So it's so good to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:So my role, just in brief, it's really about you guys. So it's about growth of your businesses. The better your results are, the better everyone is. So it's about growth of your businesses. The better your results are, the better everyone is. So it's about winning together. So my role is really just about making you guys even more awesome than you already are. So you're already great. You wouldn't have made this step. You can't make this step if you're shit. That's just a given. These boys wouldn't let you through the door and you wouldn't make that decision if you're a bad recruiter. So now the step is how do we go from great to unbelievable? Um, and that's the part that I'm most excited about.
Speaker 2:So if I look at my value as a leader and what I've been, what I've done really well over those two decades, is, outside of personally billing, I've led teams of you know national teams of kind of 35. Um, if I look at, you know the 10 years I had at auric which was the bulk of my career, we exited that business to Randstad for high eight figures. The top 15 in that business were all million-dollar billers. So we had 35. The top 15 were all over email. Our number one guy was 3.1, contract guy in Canberra doing some government stuff and some TSPV and MV1, mv2. So that's kind of my journey. But I think as a leader I've done really well taking people from that first step, 500 to six to seven to a mil and beyond. And I just feel with X Recruiter I've got the opportunity to do that, but 10X the outcome Because you add 500,000 to a recruiter in an agency maybe you're taking 100 of that, 100, 150. You take another 500 as a business owner, you're taking 4, 450 of that. So I'm like, yeah, that's, that's, that's life-changing and that for me is what kind of excites me awesome, good intro, cool, all right. So let's just jump straight in.
Speaker 2:So, um, you've got a workbook to to kind of work along. I don't know how how many of you guys had a chance to kind of read through it. There's two things. Yeah, if you haven't got one, dex sorted us out. So two things. I recommend highly that you take notes as we go in the boxes. I'll give you as many answers as I can, but also as you go through things, if you catch a theme and this is in the front of the book if you catch a theme, I'm a big believer in kind of the apply, change, teach model. So if there's a theme that catches your eye and you've got the answer, just put like an A against it for apply, c for change where it might be. Hey, I'm doing something, but I really need to change that and totally do it different. Or if you're leading a team, t is for teach and just note them down and then you can capture them in your workbook as we go along, right. So that's where the value is.
Speaker 2:There's no point in coming here today listening to me for two hours or listening to me for the 90 days, having an empty workbook and being like shit what did he say, you know? And then trying to squeeze it all into a half an hour session with me in follow-up. Some of this stuff you'll know, some of this stuff we'll be covering old ground. If it is great, it's a refresher for you. But, as I said, ask questions as we kind of jump along. So we're going to start off with the core elements of BD. I said put it in the chat box for those who are online, but for you guys here, what are the core elements of business development? And I've got a list. There's no right or wrong answers, just shoot them out at me. What do you think are the core elements of business development? Yeah, good, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, prospecting, definitely Cold calls, Yep. What else Yep? Good.
Speaker 1:How do you mean? Yeah, yeah, Just the guys online when someone says something. Would you be able?
Speaker 2:to repeat it yeah cool. So I've had cold calls, client meetings, solution selling Floating candidates.
Speaker 1:Floating candidates yep, reverse marketing Industry research. Yeah industry research or white papers. I think is good. What else?
Speaker 2:yep relationships is really good. Knowledge sharing is good. What do you mean by knowledge sharing?
Speaker 5:so you know, sharing articles and making clients prospects to events and those sorts of things yep, so sharing articles or events, really good.
Speaker 2:What else? What else? There's a few we're missing ad chasing, yes, yes, yes. So I want to tell you, I want to touch on, so I'm gonna think about that. So let's, let's touch on ad chasing. Who here, ad chases? Yeah, cool, okay, a few of you cool.
Speaker 2:Um, so ad chasing, I don't do a lot of it personally, right, but I I know many recruiters who that's all they do. Uh, my two, I see, at auric in melbourne, when I left, did 1.3 mil. All he did was ad chase. Literally all he did was ad chase. So he played in dev, uh, dev in tech. There was not a dev ad in Melbourne that he did not call and all he did was call them the day the ad went out, knowing he's going to get a bugger off, diarise the call a week later, a week later just did that for every single customer. He's all putting that out and that's literally how he built his client base.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, and his pitch was literally the same and I and uh and I'll I'll give you his pitch, right, because it's quite funny. Um, so he'd ring me like I'm statio paleo logos from orec, I specialize in it recruitment. What the did he do? And, like, I laugh right, I love staff. So if he ever sees this recording, I love the man. He knows that.
Speaker 2:But I think he just bamboozled people with his name and then they're like, what did he just say? And then he'd be into his spiel. How we? You know, I'm I'm an ex, you know, ex-developer. This is my value. This is what I can bring to the table. Where are you at with your role? Direct to the point, brief, million dollar biller. Yeah, so there's multiple ways to skin a cat. I'm not saying everyone should go and do that, but it has a place, right. So for people who aren't ad chasing it, 100 a place. It's good to get your name out there, it's good to build resilience and it's good to just build that BD muscle. So I go into an ad chase expecting to get rejected, enjoying the fact I'm going to get rejected.
Speaker 1:Is ad chasing, essentially just really transactional recruitment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, super transactional.
Speaker 1:Yeah, could you turn that transactional method of recruitment and try and build a relationship for long term?
Speaker 2:Definitely, and I think over time you can do that. And when we talk about how we pitch to different personalities today, we'll get into some of that. But I think at its outset it is transactional. But if you can add value, create a really good hook that can lead to a relationship. So I never look at an ad chase like I'm trying to pick up a job, I'm just trying to get a meeting. You know, I want to sit down in front of you and show how I add value right, so I just want to hook there and we'll get on that later today. What else have we got? A couple of other things that I think are important what's the question again?
Speaker 2:core elements of bd really hit list yep Hit list. Yep hit list. Dropping into centres like just dropping in. Yeah, I love a drop-in. Yeah, I love a drop-in, especially for the guys in logistics land. They love a drop-in. We track it. Well, you can do that as well. Yeah, I don't know if I could just walk into Google and be like hey, no, we don't.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll give you two. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, depends how good looking you are Cool. So I'm going to give you a couple of others Reference checks. Anyone who's using a reference check tool, in my opinion, should be shot. That is one of the easiest places to prospect. Take a reference check tool, in my opinion, should be shot. That is one of the easiest places to prospect. Take a reference, have a conversation, add value. You're talking to a hiring manager. You're talking to someone senior. I hate reference checks. Every recruiter hates reference checks. You've got to learn to love that and go. This is the path to a deal. This is the path to a new relationship. Just change your mindset on that. But so many people use a referrer or whatever, but so many people use a referee or whatever. Hopefully we're not partnered with a referee.
Speaker 2:They'll be like, oh God, damn it, he's been here, one week and he's killing it.
Speaker 2:One week and he's killing it. Yeah, for me you should be ringing referees. Of course, if it's just a second one and it's transactional, it's low level, don't worry. But if it's a hiring manager, you should be making that phone call. Huge, huge, huge, important piece of BD. A couple of others.
Speaker 2:I've got trigger events and we're going to get onto trigger events today. What is a trigger event? How do you monitor them? So I'll leave you in a little bit of suspense for that one. What else do we have?
Speaker 2:Contractor and candidate care huge, huge way to win business. I've won accounts, I've won new hiring managers just by being different from a contractor care point of view. So a simple method there and a quick story, because I'm conscious we've got a lot of slides to go through it. I'm going to talk too much on the first one, but I had a really good customer, gemina. They're in the utility space in Melbourne. I got a little pocket into their team with 10 contractors and I just made sure I was out there at least every month, meeting a different contractor and walking the floor, walking their project floor. Then I was doing gifts for Easter, gifts for Christmas yeah, just easy stuff. Right by the second Easter, my contractor base had grown from 10 to 25. I took out 25 easter eggs. They were taking photos and sending it to the other agencies.
Speaker 2:Why aren't you looking after your people? All right, in that second year I went from 25 contractors to 65. All right, why? Because I sat down with the program director. She's like matt, I see you here all the time. Like yeah, and she had a few challenges on her program. She's like would you be here half a day and just help us with HR? We're going to scale from 150 in the project team to 250. I was like yeah, of course, and she's like but we'll have you in the resource meeting so you'll find out about everything first. So I was on a panel with five suppliers and I was getting roles exclusively three days before they got released, to the point where the other agencies thought I was paying them off because I was filling every role. It's like no, and they said no, matt's just on site all the time, like he's here every week. Right, but it started with contractor care, so never underestimate the power of looking after your temps. I think everyone can get lazy in that space.
Speaker 1:Is there like soft benefits, like yeah, how case goes so far?
Speaker 2:Is it just actually spending time with the team that's out there? Yeah, so you've got to get to know them, right. So I look and go, you need to build into your process, like what you know. If you're a temper of mind deck, it's like what's important to declan? You know? What do I know about his family? I just have a couple of tidbits that you remember.
Speaker 2:Okay, he's got x many kids you know this is important to him. Um, you want to test me? You've got four, yeah, four, three. All right, I've been in your house once. Come on, show me some love. Archie's a beast, that's what I know.
Speaker 2:Um, but I think those things are really important. But then those little gifts, right, like, no one's gonna get offended by easter eggs, right? Um, now, if that's not a thing for you, fine, but like, find those just little things that get you on the floor, give you a touch point, get you walking. You know walking your clients who you've seen, right, because then it's soft, right, it's not a hard sell and let's go shit, he's here all the time. He or she's here all the time. He's walking the floor, he cares, such a subtle reminder, and then what you can do is build that in.
Speaker 2:So then your client meetings, right? So if I've been seen by someone two or three times and maybe I've just waved the next time I have a meeting with them and they're like, oh, I've seen you around a couple times, I was like don't all your agencies do that? No, why not? I was because you plant that seeded down, you plant that, you're different, right, and it's such a subtle, easy way. You're not picking on the other agency, you're not demeaning them. You're just like, oh, don't they do that? Right, of course I'm gonna say, no, we never see them. Okay, well, yeah, we take this really important. This is why contract care is important. Easy way to sell the differentiator um, so a big one to to be aware of same thing yeah, so, okay.
Speaker 2:So post placement on and and we're gonna, we're gonna bounce around a few slides, but post placement from a perm perspective, I treat them like a contractor, all right. So I'm calling them week one, month one, you know, not just a probation, because I want to have that conversation with the person. I've placed perm not only around the culture and make sure they get to that three or six-month mark, but also around what are you delivering? You know what value are you adding? You're not a bum on a seat because I want the story to sell to the client around what they've done. So I've been here six months, I've delivered this project and I've saved them 100 grand because I want to put that in my marketing collateral. Not I place really good people who do X, I place really good people who do X and the outcome of that is they saved 100 grand. The more of those stories you can collect around success that are outcome driven for your client. Not I've put a bum on a seat. That's what's going to resonate with the client. That's what separates you from everyone else, because anyone can put a bum on a seat, um, but if you want to position yourself as someone of value, of credibility. That's the difference maker. So I'll give you an example. So I have a really good retained customer. They've been with me for six years 2.8 billion dollar acquisition of a super fund of a government entity. I was with them from day one so I placed, I think, 30 people with them.
Speaker 2:Year one, permanent, all retained, retained, retained project. Year two the HR lady who I actually placed the HR director was like I can't believe how much we spent with your business last year. Right, we spent $500,000 or $600,000. We need a discount. I was like do you, do you really? And she's like, yeah, we just think that'd be right. We want to sign you to another year the year, but you need to sharpen the pencil.
Speaker 2:Um, the chief transformation officer was a guy who I did the deal with. I rang arnie and said arnie, what impact has those 30 people had on the business this year? He's like you've saved us 10.2 million dollars, all right. So I rang back. I was like maybe we should have a chat to arnie before we didn't negotiate our fee, because I think it should go up. And she's like what do you mean? I was like we saved you 10.2 million dollars and we're talking about half a mil. So, like matt, let's just sign you too. Same same, same same right. And of course that's moved over time and and whatever.
Speaker 2:But having those stories is really powerful because otherwise you get, you know people have that fear of, okay, I need to race to the bottom, no, you don't. Um, yeah, and that deal was done at 15 and 18 based on service 15 under 150, 18 over 150 um, and they've been a client for six years, only retained. So, um, but a lot of that comes back to getting that. You know you want to have those perm things right. You want to have those perm stories right. Anyways, we digress. That's a good list, uh, and the only other thing bd strategy. So we haven't talked about that.
Speaker 2:So I know we kind of got into the tactical things. You need to have a BD strategy. That's a huge, huge element of setting up your business, huge element of setting yourself up for success. I get early days. There's a.
Speaker 2:You know you might want to just jump in and jump here, there and everywhere. You want to define a strategy. Where are we playing? Why are we playing there? What are the technical niches we're playing in? What are the industry sectors we're playing in? Build it out that way so you can start to plan the reason why you want to break it down like that is.
Speaker 2:You might find within 10 phone calls okay, that industry is not not hiring at the moment. Park them, move on to the next one, don't waste time. Whereas if you scatter gun, you never get those, those kind of learnings. So I'm very big on this is the niche from a technical skill point of view, this is a niche from an industry. And then break that down and maybe spend a day or two in each or a week in each. Learn very quickly who's buying, who's not, who's.
Speaker 2:Kind of plateauing Doesn't mean you don't inspect those buckets all the time, but not having a strategy, you're just setting yourself up for a lot of heartache and a lot more rejection than you should have. Cool, awesome. So, based on that list, where do you think you can improve? Maybe take some quick notes on your piece of paper and then from there, I think it's really about knowing your stats. So does anyone here, and I know you know you're all starting out, but you've all come from places where you are. Does anyone know their stats off the top of their head? Cv to placement. Average placement fee.
Speaker 1:My average interview. What candidate submission to interview ratio is usually two to three Yep. Two candidates get an interview for every three. I submit Yep, and generally three interviews and a deal Yep, and generally three interviews and a deal Yep. So you just generally must start. So if I look at three interviews and a client, I'm almost down to a deal.
Speaker 2:Yep Awesome Average fee 16. Yep Term Yep, cool, awesome. Does anyone else know those stats off the top of your head, whether that's temp or burn?
Speaker 4:Yeah, roughly. And whether that's Templeburn yeah, roughly, and maybe average about five candidates per job and three interviews and average fees around $18,000 to $19,000.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome. So these are really, really important stats to know. So if you don't know them, jot them down, work them out. You should be tracking these stats monthly, not because I'm a stats or a stat police guy, but that's how you reverse engineer, how you're going to be successful, right?
Speaker 1:so also just to add to that you guys don't have to record anything, you got loxo yeah yeah, the reports will give you all of this information straight away. So if you're using submissions, um, send outs and everything in Boxo, then the reports will just happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a lot of people don't spend time here. It's super important because you can literally backwards plan how you're going to be successful. So, if you know your CV to interview, you know your average placement, how much money do I want to make? How many deals do I need to do? A month, break it down, make it really really simple and start to build a plan. So you're going to work out over the 90 days. I'm very big on plan. You know plan, plan, plan, plan and execute, plan and execute. But a lot of people don't have that data or don't use that data. And then, once you know that, you can then look at the levers. Okay, so is my cv to interview ratio off? You know quality of candidate problem. Is it an interview to placement problem? Uh, is it an average fee problem? Can I get my average fee up? Um, all of those things.
Speaker 2:You can then look at the levers if you actually understand them. But the best place to start is to understand the basics. I'm not going to go too too crazy on them at the moment, um, but there's there's probably two or three outcomes that I think are really important and there's a shit ton of noise for any recruiter, so I don't really care about a lot of things in terms of recruitment. I make it really really simple. So I care about jobs on. Do you have a job on? For me, that's. You know, if we're looking at the power of outcomes, that is outcome number one. If you don't have a job on, you can't fill it. Yes, you can reverse market, get that, but you know then that probably leads to a job on it. Then phil, but you should be tracking how many jobs am I getting on? Right, qualified, good jobs, not half-assed average leads, um.
Speaker 2:The second one is interviews. All right, if you don't have an interview can't make a placement pretty simple. So client interview, so I go jobs on, uh, interviews and then placement. That's they're the only three thing. How many placements do I do? They're the only three metrics I really care about. You need to understand your stats and backwards plan when you get past that. They're probably the three that I think are the most important um in terms of tracking and I'm going to put a little bonus one in there because most people don't like it prospecting calls, number of prospecting calls right, every recruiter I know when, especially when they're starting out um peaks and troughs.
Speaker 2:Right, I've got a job. I have to, and I was having a conversation with one of the partners, um, earlier in this. I've got a job. I've got to drop everything for the next four days just to fill that job. Why is it going to take you four days? Firstly, like your process is probably a bit flawed if you need four days to find, find candidates. Secondly, if you're not prospecting, what are you gonna do next week? All right, so bd calls are really, really important and I I think I shared this, I shared this on the podcast. It's about to come out. Um, people think they're working hard, right? So let's, let's just do a quick, and this is not to catch anyone. How many bd calls would would most people in the room? Let's just have it like five, ten, how many a day?
Speaker 1:I wouldn't even do it daily. I might, might do like a blast. Yep for 120 bd calls for two days for the month and then the rest of china, yeah well, anyone else?
Speaker 2:is there anyone above that 120 a month? So what's that? 40 a week, 30 a week, 30 a week? Anyone above 30?
Speaker 5:we are at the moment yeah, awesome yeah 20 each a day, just because we that we've just started, yeah but then that's our chance yeah, yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2:I don't care how you're prospecting, yeah, yeah, just the connected calls is what's important, right? So you want to be at least five a day. If you're and five a day, I don't think I would actually say at least 10 connected, connected, you get to 10 a day, 50 a week, actually say at least 10 connected, you get to 10 a day, 50 a week, 200 a year. And again, if you're tracking that number on calls, you'll work out how many meetings you can get a bit more data. So many people, so many recruiters go. I can't do 200 calls a month. I shared this on the podcast. A particular individual I coached did 90 meetings in January alone 90 client meetings he booked. So you can imagine the number of calls he had to make to get 90 client meetings right. He backed it up in february with a very similar number. He does two million a year in tech. Yeah, but it doesn't matter what industry you're in, it's just the number, right, it's just a the volume.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, um, yes, yep yeah, yeah yeah, yeah and and yeah and he apologized because I'm at, some of them might have flowed into the first week of february. I was like if you're doing 15, 20 meetings a week, like that's okay, or more than that a week, you're doing all right. Hey, yep, yep. So he has a part-time resourcer Two days a week. Two days a week, oh, that's the key. Jeez, we should just cross him off, damn. $2 million bill is no good. But my story is like that you've got more in the tank, right, and we're going to get into habits, discipline, routine, how you time block, how you get that into your daily, what you do. But if you're not getting to five or ten connected calls a day, either not planning well enough or you're just not putting in the work in the nicest way possible and it's holding back your growth. You know he's an extreme example and I like giving extreme examples because it shows the room between where you are and what's possible. You know his pipeline.
Speaker 2:We had a conversation last week. He's like Matt, my pipeline for April is 500. He's like that's probably 500 now. He's like I'll probably close 200 this month, maybe the remainder in the next month, and he's like but I feel like I'm a bit light to start the quarter. He's got 500 in for the quarter. He reckons he's got 500. He's like I feel it's a bit light, but he's got 500 in for the quarter. He reckons he's got 500. He's like I feel it's a bit light but he's like it's really paying dividends all those meetings. So just important. But in the start the need for noise is important. So I might talk about five or 10, but the noise at the start is really important.
Speaker 1:Do you think that email marketing has got a place in this? Because, like with an email, you can kind of pitch a little bit better of what you're offering rather than just getting the rejection straight away from a phone call?
Speaker 2:Yeah, really good question. So the question for those online is email marketing. You know, does it have a place? If I paraphrase, I think email marketing is really good and we'll get on this later today. I wouldn't use it necessarily as a first thing for me, but it's different for different sectors. I'm one who prefers to do phone call, so I'm phone, text, email, right, and I'm usually phoned multiple times. You know then a text and email kind of in quick succession, and then I'll ring off the back of that email. But email marketing campaigns certainly have a place.
Speaker 1:I think you've just got. You signed a book the last week, yep, so we're just seeing what sort of icons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you've just got to balance right and look at the kind of click-through rates and how many people are opening it. How much engagement are you getting there? How good is your like a hundred percent marketing funnels and all that has a place. I'm a little old school and like, just like, the biggest thing is to make people return your phone call. Um, I've never bought through an email marketing marketing place where a premium service. You know you're charging 10, 15, 20 grand. How many people are doing that off the back of an email, unless it's tight, right, and we are going to get into scripts later today that are of value, because I'm a big believer in that, but I tend to use scripts more to win a customer as opposed to win a role. And we'll get into the language of leaders and how you position yourself, um, so that they they, you know do that more often. Cool, let's move on to the next one. All right, that is working, cool.
Speaker 2:Salesperson versus order taker One of my favourite things to talk about. What's the difference between a salesperson and an order taker? So let's talk about an order taker. What does an order taker do? Dec.
Speaker 1:Or George, did you want to ask a question? The?
Speaker 5:order taker takes the order, takes the order, never, pushes back.
Speaker 2:Yep awesome.
Speaker 5:Never says no.
Speaker 2:Never pushes back, never says no, no control. No control, love it, what else? Hunter versus gatherer. Yep awesome.
Speaker 1:Hunter versus gatherer. Yep, yep, yeah versus gatherer Yep, yep.
Speaker 2:Hunter versus farmer yeah, gatherer farmer Yep, I agree, they're a farmer and order taker generally. Yep Huge difference in billings. Huge difference in billings, yep Night and day difference. What else? Different in their ceiling. Yep, yep, love that.
Speaker 1:They don't take their job serious. They're just doing recruitment for a bit of a time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah.
Speaker 1:Salesperson or lack confidence.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do lack confidence.
Speaker 1:The order taker lacks confidence. Yep, the salesperson is at the top of the page the order taker just.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah. So I'd say the order taker sits and waits. Yeah, they wait for the phone to ring. The yeah. So I'd say the order taker sits and waits. All right, they wait for the phone to ring. You know, a salesperson picks up the phone like makes shit happen versus sit and wait. Very reactive, only qualifies the order.
Speaker 2:So most order takers when they take a job brief and we get into job briefs later in the 90 days they take the most placid. You know, like, tell me the top five skills, tell me this, tell me that I don't push back on anything, I don't try and open up the brief. They literally just go give me the ABC and off they go. I love being up against an auto taker because I'm going to kill them. Right, I'm going to get into what a good brief looks like Because they just have no idea. They don't actually know what they're looking for, right? They literally just go oh, that client's told me this is their shopping list. I'm going to go and get the shopping list. No client ever buys the shopping list. There's something behind that shopping list. There's an outcome they want them to achieve. That's what I get to and that's what I coach my candidates to get to so they win.
Speaker 2:Autotaker doesn't do that. I think they're commoditized. Lower fees, I think we talked about dollars. They can make a living. They're not going to be in the top one percent, right? Everyone in this room, you know my goal for you over the next 12 months. The reason why I'm here is I want all of you in the top one percent, all right. So there's not a reason why everyone in this room can't be making more than a surgeon, a doctor, a lawyer, and that's why you do recruitment, right, that's 100% why you do recruitment. Uh, and the thing I used to love, you know, when I was, when I had those 15, over a million bucks, we'd literally sit down and they'd do top 20 professions every year. It'd be like heart surgeon, 300 grand, and we're like the top guy makes a million. Right.
Speaker 2:So you know that's why we do what we do. I was saying to the boys yesterday recruitment at 100, 150 grand sucks. Go and do something easier. Stack some shelves, do some shift work, kind of above 150, you know. Maybe 250 it starts to get fun, 250 plus it's like life-changing right, absolutely life-changing so. But the order taker is never seeing that. What about the salesperson? What else does the salesperson do? And don't just say the flip side. Give me a couple of real examples. Yeah, love that trusted advisor consultant is good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, depth of relationship is huge yeah, because I don't think many people look at what they do now. It's like a compounding effect, like we're five, six years into business and like the relationships you get are insane. Like yeah on the phone, you, their wife, their kids, and it's like you go to their house and see them and that compounding and then people telling that story to their friends. It just sort of spreads.
Speaker 1:If you just stay in that order-taking mentality, you can be there for years. And that's when you talk about, like the guys that don't, oh, recruitment sucks. We'll do that for a bit, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, bang on what else?
Speaker 5:Getting to a point where your client it's just like the trust factor. I'll have a client call me and be like can you headhunt Billy Bob for me? Like they're giving you the person to call because they completely trust your capability and they know you can get that person across the line. They're the only person to do that for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's huge.
Speaker 2:I think that's that trusted advisor kind of consultant. I'd take that one step further. If you can get a client who brings you in while they're planning like we're going to build out a new team, we're doing X, y, z, what would you do? What's in the market? That's where you want that you're in the room when they're actually shaping the brief and we'll talk about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that number one customer I talked about, serv, that I do a lot of work with. I sit in on every one of their interviews, right. And at first I was like why? A couple of their technical guys were like why Matt's not a technical guy and I'm clearly not technical. When I sat in on a few of their interviews right, they were mind-bogglingly technical. I'm like guys, the reason I'm there is not to validate the technical part. I can't do that. I can do it to a point and you do it well beyond my level of capability. But I'm there to help close the Canada, do a debrief with you straight away and help you sell the role and help you be a better interviewer.
Speaker 2:So what I find is most customers don't interview well. They actually interview really, really badly, if you've seen it on their interviews right, and that's that one hour. That's the difference between winning and losing. So if you can get in that room and it's not about ratting them out and going that's a bad interview. It's about going. This is how you should pitch yourself as a customer. This is how you should pitch yourself as a leader. Here's how you could get better at interviewing technique.
Speaker 1:Here's they can get better out of, not just my candidate, but every candidate you interview. Is that the difference? Sometimes you send the same candidate to two different interviews and they both have a different reason why they don't like them?
Speaker 2:because they both don't know how to interview. They don't know how to interview right. And then what happens then is people tend to buy the people who are just like them, not the person who can do the job. You're more likely to have more fallouts and your life just becomes hard, hard. So your job is to create certainty. Your job is to make life easier for everyone. Um, and most people miss that craft right. But if you can get yourself into interviews with your customers, absolute game changer. Absolute game changer, um, recession proof.
Speaker 2:I think a salesperson is recession proof and I think we've seen that through covid. A good recruiter or a great recruiter makes money, whether the market's up, down or sideways. So I've done over a million pretty much from the day I got there. That was the benchmark. I don't do anything less. I went through GFC grew, went through COVID grew, because a good recruiter finds a way, a salesperson finds a way. And for anyone who dipped some people dipped through COVID, for most people I think it was they were working from home, they lost the energy, they switched off, they just didn't do the activity. I can tell you the teams I led through COVID. There was not an ad in. Everything was ad-chased Every customer's call. We found out very quickly what industries were buying and we pivoted straight into them aggressively, and that's how we made more money.
Speaker 2:So if you're a salesperson, you're certainly recession-proof. So when you're thinking about that, I think the question here and it's the second question on the slide is we took away your current clients, right? So if none of you could sell to the customers you have now, could you be successful? Maybe a show of hands who thinks they could be successful? Maybe a show of hands who thinks they could be successful? Yeah, awesome, hopefully, because that's why you're here, right, but I think that's an important question to always be asking yourself. You know, I've led big teams. I'd ask them that every six months, and a few people would be like yeah, I can do that. Okay, great, you know, we're going to track your billings. Then, outside of those clients for the next six months, we quickly found out that the bottom 20%, bottom 30% couldn't do it, absolutely couldn't do it. Now, that's not necessarily the end of the world, but it means you're not a salesperson. So if you're a salesperson, you need to have a mindset that I'm continually growing, continually prospecting, continually prospecting, building outside of my space. If you're spending, if you've got a customer that is more than 30 of your revenue 30, 35 you've got a problem right. You're one decision away from being bankrupt, all right. So I've seen so many customers, so many companies where they're like I've got 70 spend here and some dribs and drabs. All right, if they outsource, they change supplier, you have a falling out. It's absolute game over.
Speaker 2:So a personal example I picked up what is now energy australia, true energy, in 2007. Biggest customer I'd picked up at the time was one of my big kind of flagship ones. I won them on a voicemail um story for. But later today, maybe, um, we picked them up. I got very quickly, 35 contractors in. I was like this is easy, these are like the greatest customer on the world. I was very connected with their exec very quickly. We were winning everything new site, new cio comes in on a year, just past year, one decision to outsource the whole thing. So I got I literally got a phone call matt. Every contractor finishes in one month. 35 of them gone, right.
Speaker 2:If they were my number one customer and the only place I had contractors for me as a consultant, that would have been game over. Thankfully I was well-connected in the sector they're playing so I could redeploy 20 of them pretty quickly. I did a deal with the outsource provider to move, shuffle a few of them across as well. But I had a client base outside of that that I knew I was going to do a mill anyway. But you know, for a lot of people that could be game over and stuff like that can happen. You get a new exec. They want to drive change, doesn't matter what sector you're playing. You know they could turn off the lights tomorrow or they come in and go. I only buy from h people, right, it's a good. You know good. If you're that, you're that person. But if you're an incumbent and the new exec comes in and that's all they do, you're stuffed right and people buy from people. So just keep that in mind. You don't want to be too wrapped up in kind of one customer, um, and I said how, but you all said you could do it, um.
Speaker 2:So the other two points I want to make on a salesperson which we didn't pick up, um, I think the biggest difference for a salesperson is their ability to influence. So we kind of we've talked around that, but I think, if you're taking notes, that's the most important thing your ability to influence a decision, both with your candidate and with your client. So you're influencing your client to open up the brief, you're influencing your candidate to make that decision, to change jobs, to change roles, to whatever. Never underestimate that. So if you look at, I think, the two most important decisions you're going to have, what job you're going to do, who you're going to marry, right, so never let that not be a thing in your head. So your ability to influence that is actually really huge. And that's the biggest difference I see between a salesperson and an order taker. An order taker doesn't influence anything. They take a brief, they flick a names over that that look like the brief and they hope. They literally hope all right now. It doesn't mean you can't get to a level of success doing that, but you can't get to unbelievable status. Yeah, 100, and they're the people we want. We will, like I say, we want as many of them in the industry as we can because we look good.
Speaker 2:It's very easy to separate yourself against crap, right? Um? So I don't mind that, like I always want to know who who my competitors are. If I know I'm up against the doubt. I'm like send the invoice, right. Uh, I'd be way more worried if it's someone who I know is in my space, who's really good, right. And then it's like I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna pull a late night, I'm gonna stay all friday because that person might actually beat me, um, but there's so many people in our industry that are bad that it's really easy to look good, cool, we'll move on. Oh, sorry, I want to go to other things. I just looked at my notes Over-delivery.
Speaker 2:So the other important thing as a salesperson over an order taker, is over-delivery. So everyone has this stupid cliche what is it? That's what I'm looking for Under, over deliver. Why the hell would you, as a salesperson, or a professional or consultant, trusted advisor, under promise, all right, I'm just gonna be a little bit shit, um, and then actually I was average, right, like. That's literally like and I I've heard it in so many recruitment firms all right, we're gonna under promise and over deliver. Why the hell would you do that? I'm gonna set the bar so freaking high that the competition doesn't want to get near it and I'm not gonna over deliver it. Super, super, super important as a salesperson, I think everywhere in life people do that. They, under you, know you get what you expect, or worse. You go to a cafe you get what you expect, or worse. I'm very rarely wowed these days and I'll share an example. I think I shared this in the first 90 days.
Speaker 2:So I came up here for my honeymoon to the Gold Coast, stayed at two hotels, so I spent my first four days at Versace, which is no longer Versace. It was a bit sad. It's probably a bit dated anyway now, but at the time it was a beautiful hotel. Spent my first four days there, most unbelievable service. You didn't even know they were there. Anything they knew you wanted was just there. The coffee you had and you ordered it day one, it just turned up. Day two, they were just on point. Everything was amazing.
Speaker 2:The very last day I said, oh, we're just going to go to your restaurant for lunch, then we're going to head over to the Sheridan, which is over the road on the beach, and we're spending a week there. We sent some postcards and did some stuff. Nothing was charged, everything was lovely. I got to the end of the lunch and they're like, oh, can you just head back? Because I said can you send my bags over to Sheridan. They're like oh, can you just head back to Concierge? You know, if you're going over to Sheridan now, the Concierge wants to see you before you head right. It's like cool, like that's setting a pretty freaking high bar right Just across the bridge. Yeah, right, which is funny because he's like, yeah, well, you know, he's like we'll limo you there, but he's like you want to go around town. So you know, we went on a little limo trip and then ended up at the Sheridan, excuse me.
Speaker 2:I then went to the Sheridan, beautiful, five star, good service. I went to send a couple of postcards. They asked for my room number. They charged me for two 50 cent stamps. I was staying in a suite, right, whatever the price was back then four or 500 a night they charged me for a dollar of stamps. All right, you can imagine, you know, how I felt moving forward.
Speaker 2:It's like when I come back to the Gold Coast, am I staying at the Sheraton or staying at Versace? Bang, staying at the Sheridan or staying at Versace, bang on, yeah, bang on. And they're those little things you know. So you want to over-deliver always, yeah, yeah. And I literally said I put a review into their GM.
Speaker 2:I was like you charged me for a 50-cent stamp. Like what the he rings me. He's like, oh, I'm really sorry. I was like you need to be more than sorry. Like, like you need to be more than sorry. All right, like I was like I stayed at versace. They limoed me to your hotel. You charged me for a 50 cent stamp where the do you think I'm staying? All right, oh, we'd love to give you a free night. I was like I'd love to never come back, all right. Um, yeah, and actually, like, I think the sheridan is a is a lovely hotel, right, don't get me wrong, but I think it's good for the story. Um, because there's no different to the parallels here, right? So what are you doing where you're just giving the standard or below the standard, or where are you giving that 50 cent moment? Right?
Speaker 2:We are not okay with being okay, yeah, cool, awesome, yeah, so we can live that. That's awesome, but I'd say, set the bar freaking high and then overachieve that bar. So as we go through the process, we're going to do excellence in the recruitment process towards the end of the 90 days. Everything about excellence in the process is about setting an expectation that is high and over-delivering and being memorable in each part of the process. So how are you memorable in absolutely every step, blake.
Speaker 1:Just to clarify when you say, set the bar really high, are we saying I'll get you candidates in 24 hours. I'll get you candidates in 24 hours, I'll get you an A-grade candidate. Like when we're seeing the bar really high. What are we saying to our client? Who goes. Wow, these guys are really packing themselves to fill this job.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for me, it's about delivering on your promise, right, whatever that looks like for you. So I don't think it has to be this huge level of urgency. So it's not about being like I'll find your candidates in 24 hours. I don't care how fast you find me, the candidate Like, of course I want. You know our clients want speed and quality, right, like they want speed, quality and a guaranteed outcome. I think they're the three things they want. But it's not about okay, matt, you can send it to me, you know, you send it to me in 12 hours, you win, right. It might be different in some sectors, maybe that, but I think ultimately, it's delivering on your promise and building trust, and that's in every part of the process.
Speaker 2:This is how we do candidate care. Do something that wows them. This is how we interview. Do something that wows them. And it's so easy for people to break that. And you know an example you don't meet a candidate, right, you send them forward.
Speaker 2:I'm a huge believer. If you don't meet a candidate, you're not doing your job. All right, someone's paying you 20 grand and you haven't even eyeballed the person on teams, like come on, like that's under delivery, um, and so many people do that. So many people do that. And then they're like, oh, the candidate fell off, he's a dickhead. She's a dickhead, right. It's like, no, they're not. You didn't do a good job, you didn't build a relationship, all right.
Speaker 2:So the over delivery part is understanding that all of your success comes down to relationships. Candidates become clients. You're all in this room because this is your career or your craft. It's not a job. No one here is an order taker. So if it's your career or your craft, every, every interaction is about being successful. Every action or every interaction is you on the stage. People are forming a view on you in absolutely every interaction. So I'm always like never burn a bridge right, Never burn a bridge. Treat people with respect. You don't know who they know or who might know, or what intro is around the corner. So I don't know if that answers your question directly enough. And then the third one we've touched on, which is constantly prospecting.
Speaker 1:Okay. So if there are any recruiters out there that are interested to find out what it's like to have a va, support them in their role whether that be to bill more, reduce tasks that they don't enjoy doing or be a more effective recruiter in their niche then we definitely recommend reaching out to the outsource people or top. Reach out to them, inquire on how they can implement a VA in your agency and to support you. And if you mention ex-recruiter or confessions of a recruiter, they will give you a 13% discount off your bill per month on this VA. That will allow you to scale your business, scale your desk and to bill more and make more money. So go reach out to the outsource people, say Confession, sent you, get your discount and see what is possible let's go into into the tools of recruitment.
Speaker 2:So we've touched on cold calling. I'm not going to spend too much here. It is not dead. It is your number one tool.
Speaker 1:Um that even more, so, more important than you don't think it's dead yeah correct correct you bang on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, 100 that's become the norm in an order taker role is that I don't have to call you. You're going to come to me, yeah, but on the flip side it's like I'll call you if you're a salesperson.
Speaker 2:It's just what you do. That's who you are. I think recruitment's fallen out of being a salesperson. Yeah.
Speaker 1:All COVID recruiters just are used to inbound leads.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for those online Declan saying you know COVID, people are just used to inbound leads. They're quiet, they're lazy. I've walked heaps of recruitment sales floors and it's like a freaking graveyard. If I'm not hearing noise, call me old school. We're not selling Like. A sales floor should be vibrant, should have energy, there should be a buzz. So many people are like, oh, I emailed this client and I'm waiting. I sent them a LinkedIn message Pick up the damn, get on Lucia, get on Signal Hub, find the freaking number, call the freaking switch, right. Like maybe I'm old school, I'm not past calling the switch. And actually calling the switch these days is easy because they just put you through to the mobile. You know, I no longer need to woo the receptionist and take her a box of chocolates to get a phone number or a name right. It's so much easier.
Speaker 2:So one of the biggest tools is obviously the phone, and that doesn't mean socials and email and white white papers and all those things. 100 have a place, uh, and you should have them and they should be at your disposal, um, but the phone is the number one thing, right, the phone and what I and I stole this from tony hughes is a good sales trainer. He wrote a book called Combo Prospecting. So he talks about if you can do 30 combos a week, you can't not be successful, right? So his combo is phone, text, email exactly what I talked about earlier, right? And he's like you should be getting at least 30 combos out for each and every week and that's how you connect, right? It's just bang, bang, bang.
Speaker 1:Is that all for the same person? It's like email, then follow up on the email that you send.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, and then get back on the phone and then put them in a phone. You know a recurring phone cycle from there. Yeah, and it's not rocket science, right? Yeah, and, and and I hate saying it's a numbers game, but at the start it's a numbers game till you build out your client base. Um, but what other tools do we have at our disposal that are really important?
Speaker 5:I think in our space I really like dropping in unannounced, dropping in Yep, because I think when you're on a you know email can be dismissed Like how many emails do you get and you make the you know? Some of them don't even say my name. They're like hi, blah, blah, blah. I'm like you need to have any effort there, but I think if you're dropping it in person, you're, in their face, a much better person. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in your space it's so powerful, right, and that face-to-face interaction, and this is really really important.
Speaker 2:If you get a job off a phone call, if you get a job off an ad chase, unless that person's willing to eyeball, you don't have a job, right, there's so much like that's just. You know that means they're giving it to every. Either they're giving it to everyone or they're just getting you off the phone, right, they're not really that committed, um, and if someone says to me I don't have 30 minutes to to meet with you for a job brief, it's like, well then you don't want to fill the role and I literally just push back on them okay, so this is the difference between you getting someone good or great and you don't have 30 minutes. So you'd rather me waste three hours of your time in an interview than 30 minutes to get the brief right. Pause. And if they say, no, great, I'm not the recruiter for you because that's not how I work, so don't be afraid to push back. So many people just get excited oh, I've picked up this new job.
Speaker 1:I'm like I know in my head you've got like a 10 chance of filling that damn thing. Um, yeah, the big thing that most people need is client education. Yeah, clients just know how recruitment works. Yeah, but really they've got no idea, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're just talking about client education for those online um. So client I, most clients even and I always think about that meme. You know, like what does my mom think I do? Like making clients, I'm making all this money and and what I actually do is like cry into my Weet-Bix. But I think clients think recruitment's easy. Most clients think, oh, they just put an ad on Seek, they send a LinkedIn message. That's absolute bollocks, right, and it's your job to educate them. And if you're not, you should be doing that on every interaction.
Speaker 2:So if a client says, well, what am I going to do? This is how I headhunt. Their view of headhunting is literally, we get a list on LinkedIn and we send them a message. And if you don't say that and I literally use that as a differentiator I was like you know, I map the market out. I then headhunt everyone and the client, you know nods and smiles and I'm like now, what you might think, you know what you know they'll say they headhunt. All they do is send a message on linkedin, but my job as a salesperson is get that person on the phone and influence them to a decision for you, right, that's headhunting. I map the market. I get those people on the phone. I get their phone number. I call their switchboard. I get a referral, I get a reference. I go to my network.
Speaker 1:All right, make it real for them yeah, other tools like that I've used as well. Voice notes written letters lumpy mail.
Speaker 2:Yep, what is lumpy mail?
Speaker 1:No, you put like a book in. You know when you get a package and you're like, oh, look at this bit.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a surprise package Lumpy. Okay yeah, yeah, yeah, so so okay sure tailoring our business.
Speaker 5:You know what is it? We will tailor our business to fit yours, like a glove or something. It was a sale, three-step sale thing years ago and we sent them.
Speaker 2:Cool. So for those online Enwida sending rubber gloves, it doesn't sound as awkward as it is. It's not as awkward as it was. It's a lot of passion.
Speaker 1:Possibly. The more work we do, the more expensive it will get.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so have some fun, right, you can all use those. So, in terms of the tools, right. In terms of the tools right in terms of the tools, you've got your sales story. You've got networking, social email, phone, voicemail is a big one, right, so you should be leaving voice. I'm team voicemail.
Speaker 2:As I said, one of my biggest customers early in my career, true Energy, I won via voicemail and I'll share the story. So the very first phone call I put in, she went spastic at me. I rang her. She's like I don't want to hear from a recruiter who's not on our panel. You can f off. So cool, I quite like an f off right, like means I'm. I just get more excited. Like now I'm going to win you even more. Like now I want to be have so much spend there that you know you don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:Um, so I put her in a call list for a month later, got her voicemail left this long win and and so the reason I I'm team voicemail is they've got to make a decision not to call you back, right, and at least you're, at least they're hearing you, they're hearing a name, they're hearing a company. Uh, you got nothing to lose, right? The worst case is they're not going to call you back. They weren't going to call you back if you didn't leave a voicemail anyway. So I left a message and I was like matt, you know, matt, from fromcd, you know I specialize in, you know, filling requirements in that space.
Speaker 2:This is the value I've added. I'd love to have a conversation. All right, same lady who told me to f off a month earlier brings me back. Well, tell me more about those projects you're doing with a couple of the direct competitors. Are we doing this, this, this, this, this? Oh, we're really struggling with these kind of two requirements. When you come in and meet the manager, take a brief. You know, if you win, I'll put you on the panel all right so we filled the two roles.
Speaker 2:Obviously we got on the panel. You know, build out 30 contractors pretty quickly. She's like, oh, I think we should go to lunch. I was like cool, took the whole recruitment team to lunch. She's like, matt, your first call to me was so good. You're amazing. That voicemail was just on point. Like I just had to call you back and of course my boss knows I got told to fuck off. So he's sitting there and he's laughing and she's like hey, what are you laughing at? He's like, matt, do you want to tell her the story? I'll tell you the story. It's like the first time I called, you told me to fuck off and she's like I must have been having a bad, like a really bad day. She's like you're amazing and rah, rah, rah. So voicemail, I think, is really important. I don't leave a voicemail on the first call. Make two or three calls first, right? Yeah, I love the LinkedIn voice memo.
Speaker 1:I always like a bit of friction to start a way better relationship. Yeah. One of my clients at ABK. He was like mate. I said oh, mate, you gave me your word you'd pay the fees. I'm not paying it, blah blah blah, I'll pay the fees, and then it became a retained assignment and we went around. Australia together.
Speaker 2:Love it.
Speaker 1:And then they had their first proper review in 10 years, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you're best, for I think the best relationships are forged through a bit of heartache, yes, forged through a bit of conflict. Right, and we'll get onto that more as we go on the 90 days. A couple of other things that we haven't mentioned um k, we've done case studies, references, referrals, um. But if you think about those tools, what ones do you need to change? Which ones are you neglecting? That's the big question. So I just want you to spend a couple of minutes there having to think about what are you neglecting? And there's one big one that we haven't mentioned um, probably one of, I think, the the biggest tool at your disposal. Does anyone want to have a?
Speaker 1:guess Storytelling.
Speaker 2:Storytelling is good, but no referrals. Referrals is the easiest way to be there If you're winning with someone, and the very first thing you should be doing with any of your customers you're winning with is looking at their list of you know, looking at their connections on LinkedIn. Who are they connected to? Maybe they don't know them all. Ask for the referral. You should be asking for referrals all the time. Who else do you know? Who else is hiring, who else plays in your space, you know? So one of the very easy ways I picked up the whole utility sector in terms of transmission and distribution. It sounds big. There was four of them.
Speaker 2:I was doing a lot of work with United Energy. I placed their CIO, alistair Legg non-confrontational, pretty quiet guy placed pretty much his whole team and his whole project team and we got a few months in and I was like Alistair, like I'm working with you, I'm working with the guys at Gemini, but like I can't get get more than like, uh, you know a one placement at power core and I'm not getting where I want to be with osnet. You know how can you help? I see you connected to all the cios, uh, and he's like matt, I made all the cios for breakfast once a month. He's like awesome, how do I get to that breakfast? He's like you don't. He's like you're a recruiter, maddie, you don't get to that. I was like, awesome, great. He's like, but what I can do is I'll send them all an email and I'll copy you in today doing a referral and he's like all of them will meet with you. He's like you can't get to the breakfast. He's like that's just us talking shop, right, but he's like all of them will meet with you.
Speaker 2:And literally that one conversation and asking for the referral opened up that whole sector to always be asked and I always be asked. And I find most recruiters never ask for referrals like you talk to them about. You know how's your year gone? You know yeah, good, you know, this is this. How many referrals have you done? Have you got this year? None, very common for me to get, none when I'm running a training course I'm ready to ask for referrals for people that you've not done business with yes, that's the whole point not placed in wasn't.
Speaker 5:A client was just in. I'd meet and coffee with him every couple of months and I said, can you? Introduce me to the HR manager at STEM. He was like absolutely Got to meet him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So have a think about also the people in your industry who are kind of like the go-to people, right, the visible people. How do you get in front of them? Ever buy for you. Some of my best customers I say best customers have never bought from me, right, but they're the go-to person, everyone knows me and they've referred me, put on the business. So is that, hey, a put on, a put on? So what are the putons?
Speaker 2:so yeah, yeah, so good. So there's one particular guy on my network. He's he's an executive. He's moved three or four times. I've never placed him, I've never recruited for him, but anyone who is in his network and moves into an executive role, he gets me a meeting Nine times out of ten. I transact and T's a good friend of mine, but he's always in weird innovation roles where he doesn't do a lot of hiring but he's like mate, I'll just help you out. So who are those people in your network that maybe you're not talking to? That is that kind of go-to person or that connector. Build a relationship with that connector.
Speaker 2:And then the only other thing I want to talk about on the tools and I'm a huge believer in this, as you bring a customer on board and you've done a bit of business with them and I'm not a wine and dine type of person but if you haven't broke bread with your client, they're not your client. So you need to get them out to lunch. You need to get them out to dinner. It doesn't have to be anything swanky and actually I don't really like taking people to dinner on lunch. Truth be told, it's not my style. Most of my customers are similar, but there's a handful of customers that I know want me to win and I take them out all the time for every year for Christmas dinner. But any new customer, as soon as I've transacted and done a handful of deals with them, I want to get them out to lunch. I want to get to know them, their family, their story be memorable.
Speaker 2:Share a few stories about myself and this storytelling part, which we'll get onto later. You really need to think about what sets you apart. What is that story that that person is going to walk away and be like geez, like I want to talk to that guy again, or girl again. Um, really, really, really important, cool. So have a think about what you're neglecting. Have a think about what you need to change and we'll build that in as we go. I'm pressing the button, but we've got nothing happening here. Serge, save me. Save me, serge. I don't know, mate, any questions while Serge is helping us out? Or is it just me? Okay?
Speaker 1:On sales story.
Speaker 2:You want me to talk a bit more on sales story? Yeah, cool. Um, so the other tool, that's really really important. We've kind of danced around it a bit this afternoon. The sales story is really important, so what? That that's what I was talking about earlier. When it's the actual outcomes your people have achieved, that is so, so, so powerful, so, so powerful.
Speaker 2:So, yes, you want your stats on. You know, here's our interview to placement, here's our retention rate, here's our. You know all those lovely little data points you can put on a page to win a customer. But you want to have more. You want to have the outcomes that are important to that customer and how that person won, because you want to build out a sales story. So a sales story is going to resonate with an exec I placed a bum on a seat might resonate with a team leader, a line manager. You want the sales story that's going to get you up the top of the food chain. And we're going to get into the language of leaders in a moment, but their language isn't. I put a bum on a seat. They're like what's the actual outcome? Like why would I use you? So we can get onto that in a minute, can you just flick me onto the next slide, or you're there anyway, mate.
Speaker 1:Just maybe press the spacebar yeah, yeah, do you want to just press?
Speaker 2:spacebar or you serve your frozenness. We'll just die oh weird. All right, so we'll just move on to the next part art or science because I think the slide gives you the answer anyway. Is recruitment an art or a science? Who wants to be brave and give an answer and then explain their answer? Uh, yep, cool, that's fine, I'll play with this. Then we'll flip back to the other one. So is recruitment an art or science? Does anyone want to be brave?
Speaker 1:there's no right or wrong answer I would say it's more of an art um, because different things work for different clients and something that works for one person might not necessarily work for the other. Yeah, so you have to take of the approach.
Speaker 2:Yep, Okay cool. Anyone else want to play the science card? Yeah, science. Yeah go for it why?
Speaker 4:I'd say science because it's you know, if everyone with science, you've got a pretty set protocol how to achieve something. It's not going to happen every time, but it's pretty documented process and things like the phone calls feels like the prospecting. Prospecting if you do have those set things that you actually do and you do well, then the results are there. So I think it's more of a science, but it has its art in it cool dan um, yeah, I think it's maybe a balance between the two.
Speaker 3:So there's a lot of art in it the selling, the story, you know, the relationships part, and then the science behind it. You know you talked about in the numbers game. You know how many calls you make, how many meetings you have, how many people you're placing. So I think maybe it's a mixture between both, a bit of a balance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're bang on. It's both, and you can make an argument for each side of the coin, but in my opinion it's definitely both. So for me, the science part is really clear. Right, it's kind of like gravity. You've got to do X amount. We've talked about the outcomes. We've talked about creating noise. That's the science.
Speaker 2:There's certain things you need to do that actually does work. The art of recruitment, or, taking a step further, the craft of recruitment is all those one percenters that you can get better on. You know your ability to influence how you communicate, how you close a deal, how you set things up for success. But for me, you want to bulletproof both of those. So we're through this 90 days. We're going to really nail the science. And what does excellence look like? I want you guys to be building out scripts. Not that I'm like a read from the script like a robot, but I want you to have clear processes that you don't neglect. Right, and it's easy to do that. It doesn't matter what level you're at. But if I look at the good people even if they've got dot points or a checklist having that is super, super, super important. Having that is super, super, super important. But then you also want to put time into the art, and maybe I'll ask the question in this room, because it's a favourite question of mine to ask If you're looking at the art of recruitment or the craft of recruitment and the skill set, the skills that are important. So marketing, sales, communication, psychology, influence we all know the skills of a recruiter.
Speaker 2:How much time would you spend a week learning on your own, on your craft? We'll just go around the room. Maybe we'll just go one hour. Who does one hour? Yeah, I guess that's about an hour. Two hours a week yeah, three, four, no, cool, so that's a really low number. Now, by the way, boys, I don't know what you landed on online, but yeah, but this is like this is the most important thing.
Speaker 2:If you, if all you do is recruitment right, if this is how you make money, and you're only putting an hour into your craft a week, you you're probably doing it a disservice. And don't get me wrong, we've got to build the habit, we've got to build the discipline and we're going to talk about that as we go through. But you need to be doing more than an hour a week, like I'd be. Like. Half an hour a day is a minimum, ideally an hour a day, because you've just got to think about the separation between those two things. So if you guys are doing an hour on your craft and let's say I'm doing five and I do an hour a day, right, so I'm doing 4X what you're doing.
Speaker 2:If you extrapolate that over a year, right, you're doing 50 hours of development on what makes you brilliant. Right, on what is your superpower, I'm doing 250, right, so what's that? In days? That's 30 days, so I'm 30 days ahead of you. You do that for 10 years. I'm a year ahead of you. All, right.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people say like, oh Matt, how did you get really good at sales? Right, and don't get me wrong, part of it is just the actual science and putting the reps in on the phone. But it's also that I didn't have one year 10 times over. I actually have 10 years experience. I've got better every year. My sales process has got better every year. I don't do, I don't sell now how I used to sell in 2005,. Right, it's a totally different game. Right, socials has made it different, marketing has made it different. But I've followed that curve because otherwise you're a dinosaur, right? So you've got to be putting that time into your craft and you need to be putting it into sales, marketing, communication, leadership. Think about what's important to your customers.
Speaker 2:I get in a lot of meetings with EGMs, c-suite executives. Why? Because I sound like them. Why do I sound like them? Because I've probably read more leadership books than they have, right, and I can add value in that space. So I really want to implore everyone I'm not saying you just have to read books. Content these days is easy. Find a way to consume content that works and then use that when you're talking to clients, because, again, it separates you. He's not a recruiter, he's actually a leader, right, and that's where I win business all the time, because I get in there and I don't sound the same, right, but you're going to sound like every other recruiter if you're doing what every other recruiter does.
Speaker 2:Most recruiters, when I, when I talk to them, are less than an hour, right, they might be an hour a month, um, but then they'll tell me they tick tock three hours a night. I watch netflix three hours a night, right, and it's like, well, what's gonna? What's gonna set you apart, right, if you can make some subtle changes there, um, absolute kind of game changer, so that that honoring your craft and continuing continued development super important um, tone, tone, body language and gut, that's the art of recruitment, right? So how do you, how do you put light and shade into into a meeting, into a, into an interview? I can be a really lovely interview. Doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 2:I'm usually pretty intense, right, but I know how to turn that on, right? So if I'm interviewing a senior candidate, I'll start out fairly polite and if I feel like they're BSing me, I'll get really intense, really quickly. I'll sit forward, I'll stare at them, you know I'll ask a question. I'll just pause and stare you down, right, you know what I want to say, don't you Feel that shit? But I think you know that there's an art there, right? So whether that's a candidate, whether that's a client, like you need to learn to control the room, right, and that is all just in tone and body language um, super, super, super important.
Speaker 2:Uh, and it comes back to how do you be memorable? So if I'm looking at a sales interaction and I'm meeting you for the first time, I want you to think you know and and find out, you've got to work out what your superpower is. So maybe that's your note and what your style is, but for me it's intensity. So if you rang every one of my clients, they would clearly they'd be like Matt is full on, he wants to win at everything, anything he does. He's a freaking psycho, right, but he will turn over every rock to find us the greatest candidate. All he wants us to do is win, right, and I'm okay with that right. So then when I'm intense, it's like well, now you know why I'm intense, but there's not one, but there's not one customer who's going to leave that meeting and be like, geez, I'm not sure if matt's going to get the job done, like he was a bit kind of chill, like, um, but you've got to find what works for you and then just then just feed into that, right, share stories around that um, super, super, super important, uh, and that comes into the art, and then just follow others.
Speaker 2:Success leaves clues, right? So what are other people doing from a science point of view that works? What are they doing from an art point of view that works? And then find, like I hate it when people say, oh, I've got my own style, like that's fine for the art part, it's not for the science. So the science you should be have a repeatable process for anyone, for you, for anyone who comes. Your business. The art is where you can have a bit of your own style and find what works for you. But you've got to work out what that is and then just really feed into that right. So people know I'm intense. They know I want them to win. It's not about me winning, I want them to win.
Speaker 2:The way I reinforce that all the time is when I don't fill a role I ring and ask why, why didn't I fill that role? I will have clients where I work with them contingently and I'm 70%, 80%, 90% fill rate, but they know they're getting a call from me if I don't fill the role. What did I miss? I've literally had customers like Matt. What is wrong with you? You fill nine roles out of 10. I expect to fill 10. I expect you to use no one else.
Speaker 2:Um, so what did I miss? You know who was? You know? Give me the candidate's name. What did I miss? What did they do really well? What did I not screen for? And it reinforces that this guy will do anything to find us the right person, right? So it's about going well, what is your sales story and how are you going to set yourself apart? Because if I do that every time, right then when I ask for a referral they're going to ring me like this guy guy's unhinged, he'll do anything to win, even when he loses, and he fills most of our roles. He rings and asks why no recruiters do that. So little things that you can kind of build in that I think are really important, that are in this kind of art or science bucket. But I'm going to try and get us to go back here, sergi Sergi.
Speaker 1:We're dying.
Speaker 2:We're dying okay, cool, um. So the only other thing I want to talk about in in the land of science, um, and improving your craft. So, outside of your personal development, which is super, super important, how many people role play? Yep, cool, yep. When's the last time you role played? I know Blake did it this morning because I was there. It was quite sharp, super, super, super important.
Speaker 2:So, if you look at so I love sporting and business analogies. I want to go back one, mate, if I can please. Yes, yep, that one, yep. I love analogies between sporting teams and business. What do sporting teams do really well? Practice Practice, yeah, bang on, all right. So if you're a basketball team I'm a bit of a basketball fan they run the same play over and over and over and over and over again until it's perfected hours on end, all right. I'm a huge Michael Jordan fan, kobe Bryant fan they shoot the same shot in the same position thousands of times, all right. So when it happens, when you're in the game, you're in the game. When you're on the floor, you hit the damn shot, right.
Speaker 2:Us, as recruiters, though, we don't role practice. We role practice on live clients, right Like? You need to find a way to build that into your development. So if you've got a small team, I'd be saying, hey, can I pitch you? There's no right or wrong. Right, I stuff up on live pictures all the time.
Speaker 2:Right, you're going to be rusty, you can get a bit nervous, like, if you're not getting a little bit nervous every week around a call you need to make, you're probably taking it too easy. I still, to this day and I've probably made as many BD calls as most of the people in the room, or more like I will still have call reluctance, right, and I've done it a million times and I'll still ring a call every day and butcher it because I'll get you know, get off plan, and then I'll be like, okay, cool, I need to nail the next one. That's okay. But what you want to get really good at is practicing with your colleagues, right. So you know how am I pitching? What does my pitch sound like? How can I improve it? Practice there so that you're not practicing on live clients Super important and everyone neglects it. They get past this kind of rookie. You know. You get past your rookie program, you start doing a few deals and you think I've got this nailed. But I think it's a really good skill to kind of work on Cool.
Speaker 2:Does anyone need a break? Do I have a drink break? I can give you five minutes if you need, otherwise I'll keep going. No, cool, yeah, go for it. Yeah, yeah, go for it. I'm just conscious, otherwise I'm just going to be like dung dung dung.
Speaker 1:No, everyone's going to stay here.
Speaker 2:Everyone's going to stay here, and if you need to go to the bathroom, just walk out. Like you don't, actually, I'm not I won't put that on the video. Yeah, you don't need to put your hand up. I'm not a teacher. I'm conscious. I've just thrown quite a lot at you. Does anyone want to ask some questions on kind of what we've covered thus far?
Speaker 5:either online or in person. I've got a question and a scenario.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome, I'm dealing with at the moment.
Speaker 5:So you said about over-promising yeah, I've got this client that I'm dealing with at the moment.
Speaker 5:So you said about over-promising. I've got this client that I'm trying to win terms of business with down in northern New South Wales. It's a really hard area to fill, so I don't want to over-promise by saying I'm going to find you these candidates in a couple of days and that kind of them, because they have a lot of opportunity. They've got about 10 centers, yeah so, and they've got some in queensland, so if I can fill this more than the south rails one, yeah I'm kind of like in there.
Speaker 2:So there'll be caveats where over promising is risky. I wouldn't. I just wouldn't over promise in that in that scenario, right. So I'd make sure you give yourself enough time but I'd sell them on your process. Yeah, right. So where you can kind of over-promise is walking them through the steps you take.
Speaker 2:So I do a lot of work in regional Victoria. So I've done a lot in Geelong, which is an hour out of the city, but also Ballarat, which is a couple of hours, and I just sell people on how I source people regionally, how I headhunt, how I get referrals, how I map the market. So I kind of over-prom, over promise and over deliver there. That you know this is how I'm going to run my process. This is how I source in that space. I know your competitors are abcd. I'm going to talk to everyone in that area and I make it more about that. So so I won um, a couple of retainers with a private school in ballarat, prestigious school in ballarat and I beat hayes, who were in ballarat right, I have an office literally in the thing because I had more knowledge than the Hayes consultant who lives in Ballarat and all I did was map the talent pool for CIOs and HR directors because they were filling both. I said this is how I do regional and this is what I've done in Geelong. This is what I've done in Warrnambool, which is way worse than Ballarat. This is what I've done in Bendigo. And the guy's like you've done nothing in Ballarat. I was like you're spot on. Never placed a role in Ballarat, but the process is exactly the same and I know your direct competitor is doing this, this, this, this. He's like how the hell do you know that? Because I've already done my homework.
Speaker 2:When I came to the meeting and I knew he was impressed by just the service offering. And then we got to the end and he's like okay, so you've pitched me on two retainers at 20%. If I give you both, will you get a discount? I was like no, yeah, right. And he's like what do you mean? And the current HRD knew me from a past life. She kind of smiled and he's like so you won't give me a discount if I give you both? I was like that's great, take as much time as you like. Like that's the fee, that's the fifa service. I hadn't even got home because it was a five hour drive, and they picked up the phone and they're like you've won the business.
Speaker 1:20 as long as we go to providers we can get a discount off them, but they can't even get this out of us.
Speaker 2:Yes, these boys are like what's going on? Matt negotiates everything is there any?
Speaker 1:is there any like um? If you're researching before you go to a client meeting. I don't think I've got a process of I need to know A, b, c, d before my client meeting. Is there some sort of template framework?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, these are the five things that I need to know before my client meeting so I can go on this magic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. So if I'm going into a client meeting and it's a bit of a double-edged sword here, because I hate recruiters who use research as a reason to procrastinate and not pick up the phone, so I think it's different going to a client meeting than it is researching enough to pick up the phone. So for me to pick up a phone, pretty much I need to know what your core business is, who I'm selling to, and that's about all I need to know. If I'm looking at going into a meeting, though, I want to be over-prepared, right. So there's kind of two words in my head are always present and prepared, and my prep is going to nail everyone. So I've already mapped the market, your direct competitors, who's in your geography where I would hunt talent from? And I'll openly have that conversation with you because I want to be seen as different, because every recruiter goes in with the same thing. Every client visit is the same. Tell me about your saying how long you've been here. Tell me about the same how do you recruit? What's the mix of contract, first term? When's the last time you're hired? How do you hire? What's the process? Right? Everyone can do that off the cuff, everyone in this room. If I said give me a client visit, I'm sure we could spend five minutes here and pretty much all be within. You know one or two questions of each other, um, but there's no value out there for the client, right? I want to show extreme value. I want them to know I've done my homework. I love looking at their. If they're ASX listed, I'll have a look at their annual report. I'm not reading their financials. I don't care about their financials. I care about what does their executive say they're doing? What projects are they working on? How does that maybe fit into the personal meeting? So I'm in tech.
Speaker 2:If the CEO says we're going through a big transformation and we're really interested in data and analytics so TabCorp had this scenario, I want to go to you as the data analytics manager and be like oh, I noticed in your annual report the CEO was talking about this. What does that mean for you? How the hell does this guy know it was in your annual report, right, but no other end. And it was in your annual report, right, but no other. And it can also feed into. He's like oh, I've never been asked that before. Do your other recruiters not do their homework before they come Right Like it's about. And again, you can tell I'm fairly provocative around if other people don't do it, because it's an easy way to separate, but if you do your homework it's really easy to stand out. So that Ballarat example.
Speaker 2:Coming back to your question, you know, because I could demonstrate their four or five competitors, talk to the names. And I actually knew. And I said to him I've already rang a couple of people before this phone call, knowing you're looking to do this. Uh, and I know loretto, which is the girls version of your school this was boys school. I was like I know their person's about to leave.
Speaker 2:It's this person and there's some weird relationship between them and the and someone in your business. And he was like how the hell do you know? He's like, yeah, the, the cio over there, he's friends with our deputy principal. There's a massive conflict of interest. And he's like how the hell do you know that? And I was like because I do my homework and I literally won the business on. He's like this guy's not even in bellarat, but he knew more than everyone else. So I think it is just about you know competitors, good intel and intel and looking for information. So if I also know I'm meeting someone important, I'll call people in their team. So if I'm meeting an executive, like, so say, I'm meeting a CIO, egm- or the head of a department so we make it broader than just tech.
Speaker 2:I'll call people in their team. I'll call the engineering manager. I'll call the. You know someone?
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm meeting the head of the business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, so I'll ring and be like I'm out here on Wednesday, I'm meeting X. If you're an X person, if you'd love to catch up, I'm on site. It'd be good to put a face to the name. But I'm really keen to just know what projects you're working on at the moment. And they'll be like oh, we're doing this, you might get a bugger off. I very rarely got a bugger off because I've led with it. I've led with it. I'm meeting probably your boss's boss.
Speaker 2:But while I'm out there, I'd love to meet some other people, get a feel for the culture, so I make it all nice and friendly and warm. I'd really just love to know what you guys are working on at the moment. Oh, we're working on this, this, okay, cool, tell me more about that. What are the challenges you're having? So I've kind of already got some warmth there. Now I'm not necessarily going to use that person's name when I meet the executive, but I come in already prepared. I know from the team, or I know from the market, that this, this and this is happening. How the hell do you know that? Because that's my job, right? So little things that can just separate you that are really, really to separate you that are really, really simple.
Speaker 1:It's also important to set aside time on your research. Try pre-meeting Like actually time block how long you've been spending, yeah, yeah, Like if it is 45 minutes, actually block that 45 minutes and use that 45 for a 15 and just delete whatever and use every conversation.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, time block 100% for the guys. Online Time block your time for that research. But every conversation you have should be a fact-finding exercise. Every candidate you talk to you should be stripping their CV for info. You know. Who are you working with at the moment? How big is the team? What are you working on Previous role? How many people are in the team? Who did you work for? What were the cool things they were doing? You might only go back, say, up to five years, but I use every interaction as a fact-finding mission.
Speaker 2:The best source of intel is candidates, because they want to tell you stuff. So if I'm pitching a client, one of the easiest ways will be I'll just get on Seek Talent, source a few people who are in the team, pick up the phone. They're going to take my phone call because they're looking for a work. Oh, I saw you on Seek Talent. What's happening at the moment? Right, it's such like the like. People miss these.
Speaker 2:Really simple, but I think don't be afraid to to use the tools that are your exposure at your disposal. I have I have line managers all the time like how the hell did you get my phone number? I tell them openly. I downloaded you on SeekTeller, all right, like that's a product we use. I downloaded you on SeekTeller and I got your phone number, all right, cool. Or I pulled it off Lucia. I pulled it off SignalHire. We've got tools that scrape the internet to get your phone number All right. So if I can get your phone number, imagine how hard I'm going to try to get a candidate for you. Like that's, my job is to get phone numbers. I don't send emails, I don't do messages. I pick up the damn phone Like use it to your advantage. I love it when someone gets upset that I've got their personal number. How the hell did you get my personal mobile number? Oh well, cool.
Speaker 5:What number?
Speaker 2:would you? Like me to ring you on, and this is how I got it because that's what I do, like that's what a great recruiter does. Yeah, awesome, beautiful yeah, very cool yeah, awesome, I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that builds connection. I actually pulled out their head of hr um for a few years ago for another role. Funnily enough, I do a lot of dabble in hr right, so it's a mind game. So I wanted to touch on this because this is super, super important and we're going to dig into this way more in coming weeks. So all of recruitment the biggest and most important thing in recruitment is what happens between your ears. It's all a mind game.
Speaker 2:So if you show me your routine, if you show me your schedule, I can pretty much tell whether you're going to be successful. So most recruiters live in reaction land. If I look in your calendar, it's just a dumpster of shit. It's literally just reactive. I come in, I know I've got to fill some jobs. Maybe I'll do some prospecting if I get some time and I'm going to spend my whole day hopefully putting out fires right, and ideally I want to make some money in the middle of that, like that's very common to happen.
Speaker 2:Um, you really need to get a schedule that's that's watertight. So I have time in my. I block out time in my calendar for candidates, I block a time time in my calendar for clients, for prospecting, and I block out a couple of hours for reactionary things that need to happen. So I tend to block out five to six hours a day and I have time on either end of that to deal with whatever else I need to deal with. But I time block those big rocks, those important things, and we're going to do big rocks as a separate session later on. But your schedule is so, so, so important, because that's what's going to define your success. So many recruiters go, oh, but the client told me they could only meet on Friday at nine o'clock. If your client only gives you one time, you haven't had enough, have you? Their time is not more important than yours. So you need to make sure you don't fall into this master-slave kind of relationship where that's the time now for a great client. I'll do that, I'll move stuff right. You, you know, use common sense, but, um, but a lot of people use that as a kind of day, you know, as a way out doing what they actually need to do. Oh, but the client can only do this time. If I hear that for every meeting you've got, you're probably not pushing back enough, you're probably not controlling the process, uh, you're probably not dictating the the kind of terms, um, but everything you do in recruitment is about your habits, your routines and your schedule. They are super, super, super important and that's how you build momentum.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about triggers. So I think triggers are really important. So there's triggers and trigger events. They're two totally different things. We're going to talk about trigger events later.
Speaker 2:A trigger for me is a doorframe trigger, so I use doorframe triggers all the time. And a doorframe trigger for me is it's when I walk through a certain door. I just have a little phrase I say in my head that locks me in. It sounds like crazy. You know, crazy, weird shit. Most people, when they first hear it, go. That doesn't work. So I'll give you a couple of examples. So when I walk through the door of any office I work in so now I'm with the ex-recruiter boys I walk through the door. I say in my head this is where I'm successful. That's how I start my day every day. This is where I'm successful when I go into the boardroom or any meeting room or I go into a client visit present and prepared. So it means I not in that space, present and prepared, um, when I go home. They deserve my best is the trigger I sent my car to like and can walk in and make that happen.
Speaker 2:It sounds stupid.
Speaker 2:It sounds like crazy. It sounds like it's all in your head. Um, we get so much knowledge and info thrown at us all the time. Triggers are an absolute game changer. Um, on my phone for a long time I don't probably got it here somewhere, but I used to have greatness as a choice, so every time I opened on my phone for a long time I don't probably got it here somewhere, but I used to have greatness as a choice, so every time I opened up my phone, greatness is choice. Right, why? Because it's just like lock in, lock in, lock in locking. How many times you open your phone at that? Um, so I want you guys to have a think about what are the? What is a trigger that you should have? That kind of locks you back in and we're going to get deep into in a future session around you, you know we'll use some of James Clear's atomic habits around how you lock in and how you use them for success, but a really simple thing you can implement today is just have a doorframe trigger in a place that matters. So whether that's your phone, whether that's walking through the office, it sounds crazy. I can tell you, like everyone in the guys I coach who does big numbers, they have triggers and it's surprising how it works.
Speaker 2:So I had a really good performer in my team at OREC, my number one guy in Melbourne. I tapped out at about 1.5, 1.6. And he's like Matt, I got home. He's like I'm making all the money in the world I bought the second house. I've done this, I've done that. He's like. He's like I'm just shit when I get home. Right, he's like my wife. You know my wife's not feeling it, kids aren't feeling it, I'm not locked in.
Speaker 2:I was like mate, here's my doorframe trigger at home. Just give it a go. Here's like you're crazy, it's not going to work. I won't share what his trigger was because it was personal. Um, but he put a trigger in him and with I was like mate, just give me 30 days, do it for 30 days, come back and tell me I'm crazy. Came back in 30 days. He's like man, my wife loves me so much, I'm having so much fun at home. I'm just doing this and this. I just think this thing before I go in the door. He's like absolute game changer, right? Everyone who I've taught that simple technique to it's worked. So maybe one of you guys will be the first one that doesn't work for, but I'd say, give it a try, right, because what you think and what you believe I think is what happens, right. So much of the noise in your head can be blocked out by just doing simple little things like that. So I think that trigger is really really important. Is there any process, say?
Speaker 1:you've done a trigger but you start deviating throughout the day from that mindset. Is there any process to get you back into it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I also want to. So when you're building kind of good habits, you kind of want to bring a reward in right. So if you're going to do something hard, I always find like I need to have a little reward there. Um, so a simple thing I used to do in recruitment I'm a bit of a coffee person. Blake knows I love a morning coffee. Uh, if you got me when I was a I was a recruiter be like I need to talk to X many candidates before I'm going to get the coffee.
Speaker 2:So it's like do something hard, eat the frog right, do something hard to start, make those five, you know, get five connected phone calls or whatever the number is for you. My rewards. I'm going to go and get that coffee right. So build in those kind of little things. So you've got to have little triggers throughout the day that just kind of lock you in. Or hey, to lock you in, or hey, I like that reward, or this is a habit I'm not willing to to give up because I enjoy it, but let's do something hard. That is kind of the entrance for that, for that habit that you want to do, you know, or that little reward. And then it's much easier because you're like okay, I do that and then I do this.
Speaker 2:Uh, small little tweaks that can can make a difference. We're going to spend a whole session just on on that stuff. Um, and so sales identity is huge. I don't know whether we can nail sales identity today, but what you think about yourself as a salesperson is pretty much who you are. So if I went around the room and maybe we'll just do a show of hands, who thinks they could bill $400,000? Yeah, five, six, seven. Who thinks they could? Bill 400k. Yeah, Five, six, seven a mil mil and a half, all right.
Speaker 2:So what I find is most recruiters. One of the biggest things I have is just a limiting belief around what they can achieve right because they haven't done a recruiters. One of the biggest things they have is just a limiting belief around what they can achieve right because they haven't done a backwards plan. They do everything by accident, they do everything without a schedule, without a plan, and they don't actually have a belief. Or they haven't been exposed to. Yeah, what's possible?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I saw everyone in recruitment. He worked at one company for six years. Like I thought everyone just built 300, 400k, yeah. And then, like I'm walking around Commercial Road or seeing like HP avoiding the stuff physically and he's like this was like six, seven months ago. He's like holy shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a different world, yeah, and you bang on, you can be, and they're like I'm the number one biller in my company. They kind of come in with the strut, you know like, and I'm the number one guy or girl, cool. And I had one guy I won't say his name, I should, because it's funny, but he was. There was like me, my two ic who did, did over a mil and my third guy did over a mil. He's like I'm the number one recruiter for this particular company and I'm thinking this guy's not very good. I was like okay, cool, what number did you build? I'm the number one guy, great, what's the number you built? Oh well, I did this many contract deals and this many perm Great, just tell me the number, mate. Oh, I did 420. Like 420. And he's like yeah, I did 420. I was like, okay, cool, and he's like. He's like that's really good, isn't it? I was like, mate, that would be, you would be the lowest performer in our business, right, with all due respect, you'd be, you'd literally be last right. And I was I don't mean that to offend you, because he looked a bit upset, right, and I was like I don't mean that to offend you. That's actually the opportunity, right, because you're coming in, you know. And to get to 420, you're good, right, like you're not actually a bad recruiter, you're good, 420 is a good number, right, we're making a multiple on you, that's we're profitable. We're okay if I can get 10 people doing 420 and I'm paying you 130 like that's a win every day of the week, um, but I said, that's the opportunity for you because you're now going to be joining a team where you're at the bottom. So think, think about the opportunity, like, think about that growth opportunity, because everyone in this room you can probably learn from everyone in this room has achieved a level of performance above you and that's where we want to take you.
Speaker 2:The bank director, reckon, was like I don't want to join those guys there, they're all too full on. I was like cool, right, because he just wanted to stay mediocre, and I think that's what happens with B players is and again, you see this in sport all the time you can be the fastest person in your school. You get to districts, uh, and then maybe you're number 10, right, maybe you scrape to number 10. You go to the state championships, then you're number 200 and you're like, actually I just want to be the fastest in my school, right, but the people here it's like. You know you want to be around great people, you know. So I think that's what we've got in this ecosystem is learn from the people around you. Don't be afraid to pick up the phone to Dec, blake, myself, other partners, because you've got this ecosystem of killers right and good people. You know you can learn from good people. But in terms of identity and building in an identity, you really want to think.
Speaker 2:And the starting point for identity and I want to share a video with you after this session, from Ed Milet. I don't know if any of you guys know who Ed Milet is, big American guy, tats jacked, I think. He sold a couple of businesses. He's worth a few hundred million, owns an island. He's doing all right. But he has this really cool video on impact theory where he talks about a range of different things. He talks about identity for about three or four minutes and it's probably the best three or four minute video I've ever seen on identity and I'll paraphrase a little bit of it now. But he talks about identity being like a thermostat, right, so like a thermostat in the wall. So we've got the air con on today. Let's say, the thermostat sat at, you know, say, 28 degrees, right?
Speaker 2:So if your identity as a salesperson is here, this is what I achieve. I haven't broken through that ceiling. You'll generally achieve that right. So bad shit will happen. All the worst stuff in the world can happen. You're going to achieve that number. The opposite happens. Good things happen. You're killing it. You've got momentum, everything's running your way. You'll find a way to sabotage that down back to nothing if you haven't got that identity set or you haven't got examples around you. So it's super, super important for you to start to build that identity and kind of what that looks like, um, and there's a few ways you can. You can improve your identity, um, I'll leave them for the video for him.
Speaker 2:But the starting point for you guys today, when you're starting to think about your identity and normally I'd run this as a kind of individual coaching session, but I would I would get a piece of paper in your own time. Do it with your colleagues. If you've got colleagues like the, your own time. Do it with your colleagues. If you've got colleagues, write the words I am on a piece of paper, um, and you're going to fill that piece of paper up with I am statements, I am whatever good, bad, indifferent, or I am a, so you can use a sentence if you want to do I am a. Fill that page up good, bad, whatever comes to mind. Um, I've had everything from really positive stuff to I want to kill myself, like I am a person who wants to kill myself. That one was a bit full-on and I was like maybe you need some help. I can't. Can't help with that. Um, but that's your starting point to start thinking about your identity. Then. Then, from there, if you've got colleagues, I get them to write two or three positive things about you, because they might see you slightly different. And from there, in terms of identity, I'd look at what's the best version of you, try and get it down to three words and how do you show up for others and get that down to three words. That's how you start to think about identity.
Speaker 2:All right, the second part you could do in your own time is write down your core values. If that's hard for you, you can always chat GPT. Get a list of 100 and circle the ones that are you Good. Hack pt. Get a list of 100 and circle the ones that are you, uh, good, hack, um, but the more you get to know yourself, the more you get to understand your superpower, the more you can sell that. I talk to people that about that all the time. I'm talking to senior candidates.
Speaker 2:I talk about identity. I talk about how that's important, how you position an interview, how you sell yourself, um, so to to give you an example, uh, you know my, my best version driven, fearless, successful. I'll talk to people about that opening. It's like what those three things mean for me. So driven is obvious. I think you've all worked out. I'm a bit full on. Fearless is not that I don't feel fear, but if I feel that I know to step into it. And successful kind of speaks for itself. But knowing those things, again, that ties me into an identity and that ties me into how I work Right, and you want to build those things in different layers of your life. So we don't have time today to go through a goal setting and that in further detail. We'll try and get more into that in the 90 days.
Speaker 2:But in each area of your life I'm a big believer in you build out an identity around what that looks like. So another quick example, just to try and kind of help you guys with that is so if I look at a fitness fitness point of view, um, my identity from a fitness point of view is I'm. I'm an athlete at any age and that looks very different at 22. You know to where I am now at 42, um, but I have that as an identity. Then I have goals off the back of that and I have habits off the back of that, um, but if I have that identity, that's strong.
Speaker 2:The way your brain works and I won't bore you with the neuroscience is we'll go and try and find proof for that right. And when we get into atomic habits from from james clear, you'll get into some of that science. But it's like every every day. Then when I go to the gym, that's reinforcing, I'm an athlete. Every time I go on box on a monday night, I'm boxing with us half my age. That reinforces, i'm'm an athlete. I wake up in the morning I look a certain way because I'm an athlete. But you want to build those things in. But today I really just want you to think about what is that for you from a sales perspective? Because it's super, super powerful, cool. Any questions on that?
Speaker 5:No Cool.
Speaker 2:All right, trigger events. Let's talk about trigger events, and I'm conscious of our time, but we're doing all right. So what is a trigger event? So a trigger event is anything that happens that would cause a customer to buy either cause them to buy or cause them to change their mind in some way, shape or form. So does anyone want to throw at me some trigger events?
Speaker 1:Resignation of a staff member.
Speaker 2:Yep Bang on Beautiful Love it. Acquisition Yep New acquisition, good trigger event. Say it again Brain's not working for the online. Resignation of a staff member. Thanks, winning a new project? Yeah, winning a new project. Winning a new project? Yeah, winning a new project.
Speaker 1:Awesome. What about on the reverse? If there's like a GP done, then see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, massive trigger event. Yeah, particularly for candidates. Good place to pick up some great candidates. The account manager leaves. Yes, the account manager leaves. That is one of the easiest and best trigger events. If you know your competitors and you know their competitors have left or gone internal, internal, great reason to pick up the phone and be like, hey, yeah, what else? Hey dead did someone say dead, okay, so I'm going to share. I'll share story. I don't know if it's funny, an inappropriate story on death. So dead is a trigger event.
Speaker 1:I didn't say dead, but it came out like that. It definitely came out like that I was about to say dead boss resigns. Yes, definitely.
Speaker 2:Any resignations is a trigger event Death is not dead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it definitely sounded like dead and dead is a trigger event. Yeah, it definitely sounded like dead and dead is a trigger event and I'm gonna I'm gonna be careful here. There was a particular guy at grayson this is way back in the day one of our customers billing system company um their, their cio, died right. And there was a particular guy he'll remain nameless aussie guy but spoke with an english accent that didn't make any. He literally put on an English accent. Thankfully this doesn't go out broader because he didn't know who he is. He's a bit of a douche. He literally rang them the day after he found out the news and said I've heard your CIO died. Can we fill the replacement?
Speaker 1:Oh, you know what I've got? A client I placed this happened to me, but I put it on the other side. I placed a candidate in South Wales for a medical company. Yeah, One of my best clients and the guy that I placed. He was there seven months. He OD'd. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And she called me two days later. She's like Blake. I'm really torn between this conversation and I don't want to say it's sensitive, but the candidate in place has passed away and his territory is vacant and I feel like a massive bitch for asking you about this, but we need to replace this role. I was like when have you gone, that's for long.
Speaker 2:So please don't pitch someone the day after. I can tell you what happened with that story. They were actually one of the biggest customers. This was back in. Sorry was it a guaranteed news Outside the guaranteed news?
Speaker 5:No, it was a good day. It was a deadly time.
Speaker 2:So in my particular story this is 05-06, so this is going way back in the day. But this particular idiot rang and pitched the day after they found the news. They happen to be a family-run business and they're privately owned and the guy had been there 15 years and he pitched the CEO and the CEO was like he's like a brother to me, I'm going to his funeral again, Don't ever call me, your relationship is done. And that went from a half a million dollar account to nothing overnight.
Speaker 2:So don't ever use that as a trigger event, but blake said it, so the cat was out of the bag. Yeah, if client contacts you, different game, different game, what else? There's a few that we're missing that are big ones. Um well, for me, yeah, awesome olymp. Yeah, big project, big change.
Speaker 1:Seacat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Seacat is a good one.
Speaker 5:Yeah, bang on. I have there's like an evolution of like boomers retiring.
Speaker 2:Yeah, awesome Market change. Yeah, yeah, market change. Yeah, all the boomers are retiring, All the old people, all the old people, Blake are retiring.
Speaker 5:I'm selling their businesses yeah and that's.
Speaker 2:I have that. All the old people, all the old people. Blake are retiring, yeah, and I have that. Quite. A few of my customers in the next five years will be in a similar space News article AFR is good, yeah, a couple of big ones. Regulatory change huge. So if you're in sectors that have regulatory change or have a regulatory overlay, any change will drive, will drive projects always. I love regulated industries because you're guaranteed to make money, like if you can work in those spaces. They have to spend. Government says do x, they have to jump um yeah, so are you.
Speaker 1:What are you doing here to figure out these treatments we got alerts on?
Speaker 2:is there a Like every day when I wake up and have my coffee, I quickly read yeah, so you need to build them in right Like find. Wow, wow, that's all Blake does. That's all Blake does. Wow, that's it. You do what works for you, no, no, I think.
Speaker 2:I think what's important there is you should have a trusted news source for your sector, or trusted news sources. You should be talking to candidates, because I still think candidates are the best source of information. Um, yeah, industry magazines are good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of that stuff is really really good. But regulatory change is huge. If you play in sectors that have any kind of regulation, you should be all over those changes and again, it's a really easy reason for a cold call. You know, we know, in the industry this is happening. What does that mean for you? Nice, broad, open question. You know?
Speaker 2:Know, a relevant example for me over the last couple of years, cyber security's gone through the roof. The government changed all the cyber regulations. They said anyone who's in the asx top 200, if you don't have a particular level of cyber resilience, we're going to give you a one percent fine. You're a multi-billion dollar company. A one percent fine is a big old number. All right, so they're all like. Well, the, the executive teams, just given us 100 million for cyber, cyber security. Of course they have right, because the fine is way bigger than that. Um, so it just meant you could make calls and then if you had customers in that space, while we're working with customer a, b and c, they're all doing the same thing we can help you. Um, so that regulatory change is huge.
Speaker 2:Government change is a big one. Um, that always stimulates. You know, some form of change is not always positive, but but government change is a big one. Um, yeah, white papers, conferences, candidates, changing roles, um, and a change of office location is a big one. That's one people often miss. You know, they were in the city, they've gone out to the burbs, they're in the burbs, they've moved to the city.
Speaker 2:Great reason for a phone call, because generally, if you work outside of the city, you don't want to be in the city. If you work in the city, you probably don't want to be out in the burbs. So whenever I hear someone's moving, I'm like cool, I need to be on the phone. I know that's a trigger event. So you want to be monitoring all those things because they're your different angles to have conversations, they're different ways to have a conversation. So maybe note that down and we'll move on to the next page. All right, language of leaders. I'm conscious of our time. Do we want to do language of leaders today, boys, or do you want me to push it into the next session? Give Q&A.
Speaker 1:Explain it and then maybe start on the next one, all right, awesome.
Speaker 2:So language leaders and leading with insights yeah, let's get through this part. This is the secret sauce to getting up the food chain and if I look at the difference between good to great recruiters, the biggest one is most of them don't speak the language of leaders, so you will get delegated down to whoever you sound like. So if you're ringing and you're asking about how do you hire X kind of candidates, you're going to get delegated down to a line manager. There's no EGM GM generally, unless they're a really small company that is having that level of conversation. So whoever you sound like, that's where you're going to get delegated to. You want to get up as high up the food chain as you can, because if you get the person here, you get everyone else by default, right, and I'm not saying just do that, no-transcript, going to use them as a general rule. So how do you do that? The big thing is language of leaders. So my question to you guys is what is the language of leaders? What's important to a leader?
Speaker 2:A little bit. That's borderline Industry knowledge. Yeah, yeah, I'll give you that. Yeah, so results, yeah, results is a good one, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, market share.
Speaker 2:Yeah, market share is good. Yeah, so for me there's two really really big ones.
Speaker 3:Sorry, Do they put money inside of their budget for our service? Do they have that in there?
Speaker 2:No, maybe that's line manager land Risk, yes, bang on. So the two biggest ones are return on investment right, or return on investment or reward or results. And risk right, that's what's most important to an executive. They're not going to sleep at night thinking I need to put this bum on a seat, right. If I'm a senior exec, say I'm in manufacturing and logistics, I'm thinking about risk. I'm probably thinking about safety, right. I'm thinking what's going to expose me to a fine, a bill, a death, something that's bad? Or how am I going to make more money? So you've got to think every executive is paid on the number they reserve. So what is the KPI or the SLA of the top dog? Because whatever it is for him, it cascades down and it's always going to be around two things reducing risk, bigger return on investment or bigger just return in general. So that's the language you want to be talking about. Outside of that, you want to be talking about efficiency, better efficiency and effectiveness. Why Drives return on investment? You want to be talking about productivity. Why Return on investment?
Speaker 2:No one spends money in a company for the reason to spend money, and I think this gets lost on people. I know, certainly for the guys in tech land. They get lost them all the time. No company goes I'm going to spend $100 million on an IT project if there's not a return. It's a $100 million hole. They spend $100 million because we're going to automate A, b, c, d and we've worked out in five years we're going to save $200 million and we've worked out in five years we're going to save 200 million. Right, so we? So we, so we've made 100 million.
Speaker 2:It's no different for an executive in any space. They're all playing the game on how do I maximize my return and reduce my risk? It's always linked to their kpis and it's specific to their industry, and that's why, when you're pitching to these people, it's about the outcome you've achieved. It's not about we've placed five candidate profiles X. It's about the results candidates five profiles X are, and we'll get into that again as we go over the 90 days and we talk about the you know.
Speaker 2:So, if I was going to draw the bell curve of talent, your job as a recruiter is to get them somewhere in the top 15, 20% and have the story there. That goes if we get you someone here, this is what it means for your business and this is what our success looks like. So when I'm talking about or even when I'm putting together like a one-page marketing deck, you know I want to capture everyone, so there'll be an element of around. Here's some ratios that are important. Here's some diversity ratios, because that's a big one now. That's huge on everyone's radar. So I'll have gender diversity ratios. I'll have ratios around CV to placement. You know offer close, and if your offer close should be above 95%, we'll get that. It gets that in another day.
Speaker 2:But I also have data around how long someone stays with a business at that place, right? So I don't talk about how many fall-offs I've had I have very little but I talk about, like how long someone stays with a business. I have very little, but I talk about like how long someone stays with the business. I capture that data point. Right, so they've been there three years. I capture data points like how many times have they been promoted? So, on average, the people I place within the first 12 months get promoted. Right, because they only get promoted if they're achieving results and here's the results they achieved. They're the things that are going to start kind of capturing the attention of people who are more senior.
Speaker 2:Right, because it's about return on investment. It's about de-risking things and we're going to jump more into that and client personas next time. So I want us to workshop together a client persona example, kind of go through that and go how do we build that out? And that's kind of part two of the masterclass. Today it's a good place to kind of stop. But where we're going to get to with with the second class is we'll start on the client persona. I'll show you what's important to them. I'll show you where to find the data that's important to them, how you build out that sales story, and then I want us to look at personality types and how we sell to different personality types, because that's super, super important. Um, but we'll get onto that into in the next session, so I might hand over to you guys for any questions. It's now your time.
Speaker 5:Thanks. Do you say you have what makes your proof of support pitch deck? We call a capability statement. So you've had a meeting with a client and they they want to see your capability statement or your pitch deck. Yeah, would you have that type of information in your pitch deck? How long people have stayed in the business? Yeah, who've been promoted? 100 yeah rather than, just, like we feel, abcd jobs yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I want like out, like outcomes. It's like here's the story, here's the example. It's fucking real, right. So it's like, because so many, so many recruiters are self-love, oh, we place this many candidates, like that's not, yeah, and maybe it is real, but it feels inauthentic, whereas if you can go here's, here's the story, here's the example, here's the hard data point, right, people believe that and there's a bunch of stuff around psychology and I've found this in a really weird book.
Speaker 2:Uh, there's a book called the psychology of totalitarianism by matthias desmond. It's kind of on uh, you know how you manipulate, you know people can be manipulated with data, right? Uh, and there's actually a hack in the brain that if someone sees it on a graph and I think the percentage is, they're 65% more likely to believe it. So when I do a capability statement, I have graphs everywhere, right, and literally they've studied that and it's a real thing, right, as stupid as that is. But if you have these little graphics, people go, oh, that's real and it's been proven. And they used actually COVID as an example with a bunch of the data that was thrown out and how they made people kind of believe stuff just by putting it in graphs, because people don't actually read it. They just go oh, we've told you that's the data point. Oh, cool, it's in a pretty picture. It's insane, but I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:A capability statement isn't going to win you business, so I like business. Um, so I like it as a follow-up. If someone says to me, though and objection handling is another day if someone says to me send me your marketing material, send me your capability statement, I push back on that straight away. But, like, there is nothing in our capability statement that is more valuable than 30 minutes with me, pause, all right. Like, yeah, I can send you the fluffy brochure, or you can just have 30 minutes with me. Who's an expert in your field? What would you like to do? Pause. No one's going to say actually, the capability statement's better than you. So it's about using that psychology. Right and it's. I find that works for me. Again, I have a particular style, but no one's going to say actually I'd prefer the document, right. So your language, your tone, how you ask questions that's going to be in our excellence of recruitment, about how you have these little tips or tricks that are going to get you in front of more people. So you're getting more in front of more people, you win more. Simple as that, um, you know.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I want to touch on and I kind of skipped over it quickly, I think I think it was, I think edwina, you threw me off with the glove comment um, but it's quite clever, right? So one big thing you can do old school marketing, your lumpy what do we call it? Lumpy pages, lumpy posts.
Speaker 2:One of the best things I've done and I've done it for many, many years now is old school handwritten cards. So I turned 40 a couple of years ago, uh, giving away my age, and I wrote 40 cards to 40 people who made an impact in my life. A bunch of them were, were clients, absolute game changer. All right, it was just a little note of thank you, all right, this is, you know, as I'm 40, I'm running to 40 people. This is what you know. Thank you for this. All right now, like, oh my god, just come out and be like dude, fucking amazing, I didn't know, didn't know I'd done that. That's fucking amazing. Come out and see me, or whatever it might be. Or even just at Christmas, right, handwritten card, so much more powerful than here's our e-card, here's something fluffy. Make it personal, take the time Again, find out what your differentiator is, and I write horribly.
Speaker 1:Like you boys have seen, me didn't be able to read it. It was like he's written something pretty cool.
Speaker 4:Um, could you just do that as a bb tool like yes, I'm turning 32 and I just couldn't write to my 32 best clients yeah they're ready to go.
Speaker 2:I want to be one, so I think you've got to do what works Like. You've got to be authentic, right? So it's got to be a thing that's a thing for you. Now I feel like I'm pretty good with words, generally speaking, like in written form, and it was just a super powerful thing to do and I had probably of that, 40 people, you know, 20 were friends and family and there was probably 15 to 20 clients there. 20 were friends and family and there was probably 15 to 20 clients there. And I know it was powerful because three or four of them used it as a bookmark or they still have it in their office and they'll point that out. Matt, your card's still on the thing, so don't underestimate how such a simple thing and it was obviously not inauthentic, it was genuine, but it might have just been hey, thanks, you've helped me over that the last 10 years with A, b and C. Again, just giving them an example. Make it real, make it honest.
Speaker 1:Even like a PS at the end, like I've got a PS and then you write something really personal, yeah, yeah. Or I've got a statement at the book yeah, because I've got Sky News, jury Mail my news through email, channel 7, all from him and letters. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think it's an underestimated thing. Yeah, and we'll talk about how you differentiate yourself and how you stand out in a crowded market as we get on further, but when you talked about the gloves, it made me think about that.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to another Confessions of a Recruiter podcast with Blake and Declan. We hope you enjoyed and got a lot of value and insights out of this episode. If you do have any questions or you would like to recommend someone to come on the Confessions Podcast, we would love any introductions and remember the rule of the podcast, like share and recommend it to a friend. Until next time.