Goal Setting for 2023
–A Seven Part Series–
Part Seven
by
Bob Marshall
November 1st, 2022
Revisiting The Yearly 6 Essentials
These are the six main activities you need to implement, on a daily basis, to be successful recruiters. When goal setting, you need to remember these gems that were handed down to you from your Big Billing predecessors.
1. Focus on activities that lead to money
Robocruiter (my favorite top-producing recruiter) used to say it this way, “When I come into the office in the morning, I say to myself, ‘What is the first thing that I must do to make money, not the first thing I must do. There is a difference. Who do I have to call to get my first Send Out? And after I arrange that first Send Out, where is my second Send Out coming from. After I accomplish those two tasks, I can concentrate on the rest of my daily business.’” Robocruiter knew that Send Outs, above any of our other activities, lead to money.
I remember years ago when I filled the position of Critical Care Trainer for a large franchise organization, that I would always find the same things in failing offices; namely, the best filled out Job Orders in the history of Western Civilization—typed, spell-checked, indexed, etc.—and no Send Outs. And I felt bad about this, because those franchisees, who were now facing six-figure losses, thought that they were in the business of writing Job Orders—and they weren’t! As teachers, I felt that we had failed in getting this one critical piece of information across correctly to these students. And that information is that we are in the business of arranging Send Outs and everything else is ancillary. Send Outs are King.
2. My value to my firm is my ability to pick up the phone and speak into it.
We live in the Information Age where data acquisition is easy and yet not all of it will be useful. We are faced with an overburdening amount of facts and statistics that lay a mere mouse click away. The computer itself is a compulsive tool. It beckons us as soon as we enter the office. One of our first daily activities is to open our home page and check our emails. And that’s where our journey into distraction begins. In the words of Robert Heinlein, “In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”
All top producers know that their value to their firms is their ability to communicate with other living human beings either face-to-face or over the phone—to establish rapport. As the great sales trainer Cavett Roberts used to say, “In order for people to buy from us we must establish rapport. We must have people like us, believe us, trust us and understand us.” Those elements of rapport are only possible to create with personal interaction. You can’t create rapport through keystrokes.
3. Make Scintillating Presentations
I am a great believer in making scintillating presentations. I suggest using a FAB (Feature-Accomplishment-Benefit) format. Now, if you introduce a candidate in your presentation, as an MPC (Most Placeable Candidate), you can very easily apply this FAB principle. The Feature is what the Candidate does or has done. The Accomplishment is how well he did that Feature (these are spelled out in ‘concrete’ number terms). And the Benefit is how those Accomplishments will benefit a new company—a company to which you are going to take the Candidate.
Now you are armed to make a scintillating presentation. You will be able to answer the prospective Hiring Manager’s non-verbalized question (“What can this Candidate do for me?”) and you can easily avoid the “No Openings” box. The FAB presentation also allows you to get excited about the Candidate and your excitement will be contagious. To reinforce this last point, remember Cavett Roberts perhaps most insightful quote, that “people are more moved by the depth of your conviction, than by the height of your logic.” FAB an MPC and you’ll see.
4. –And make a lot of them.
If you haven’t spent the time on this yet, now is the time to ‘delimit’ your marketplace so that you have the ability to make enough daily marketing presentations to sustain you in any economy. On average, I look for you to make 10-25 marketing presentations (connects) per day. If you were able to talk with 25 people per day, that would equal 125 per week, 500 per month or 1500 per quarter. So, try to establish yourself in a marketplace of 1500 company contacts. Now, if you are calling a large company (500+ employees), each different Hiring Manager within that large company will count as a separate “contact”, so it will be easier to come up with the 1500 contacts. Then concentrate on recycling these contacts once per quarter—some more frequently/some less frequently—depending on need and urgency. Exposing yourself to the marketplace is critical. By so doing, you will ‘brand’ yourself. In order to do that, I coach that you have to make the call. I can’t guarantee you many things in this business, but I can guarantee you one thing. That you will never place with a company you don’t call.
5. All Job Orders are not created equal
Be constantly aware that not all Job Orders (JOs) are of Search Assignment quality. The way its best taught is that out of 15 JOs that an experienced recruiter writes, only 0-1 will be of Search Assignment quality. 4-5 will be of Matching quality. And about 10 or 2/3rds of all of those written JOs will be of the Can’t Help variety. All 15 are JOs–they are just all different. If you were never taught this principle, you’ll end up going through your recruitment life bemoaning the fact that all of your placements take forever. Or that no one seems capable of making a decision. Or that Hiring Managers have changed and are now looking for the proverbial ‘needle in the haystack’. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your problem lies in what you are working, not in any fundamental paradigm shift, as some would have you believe. Qualify those Job Orders and you will see that what I am saying is right.
6. Inspect what you expect
Our business is a difficult one to monitor, but monitoring is critical to your success. As I mentioned above, I like the 100 Point Sheet that I learned about years ago. At the end of the day, you add up your points and if you are over 100 points, you are going to make placements. If your total is less than 100 points, you are not going to make placements. Pretty straightforward.
Here’s an interesting story regarding this 100-point format. When I was in charge of training for a firm with offices in London, I introduced this concept there. The manager liked the idea but told me to introduce it as a 200 Point Sheet, with the requirement to get 200 points per day. I did as he asked and sure enough the recruiters in London achieved 200 points a day. They also became our most successful producing office—both overseas and here in the United States.
So, there you have it…the six basics to remember when planning for 2020. It is my opinion that if you implement these basics when you set your goals, you can’t help but be successful.
Stephen Covey
I’ll leave you today with a powerful quote from Stephen Covey…
“We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.”
Next week: Stay Tuned for New Series Release Dates in 2022/23
*TBMG Training Note: For those of you who would like direct help/assistance when establishing your goals for 2023, or have other recruitment questions, please reach out to me directly. Remember, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I am ready. Are you?
You can call me at 770-898-5550 or email me at bob@themarshallplan.org.
Bob Marshall began his recruiting career in 1980 when he joined MR Reno, NV. In 1986 he founded The Bob Marshall Group, International, training recruiters across the nation as well as in the United Kingdom, Malta and Cyprus. In 2019 Bob celebrates his 40th year in recruitment and continues to offer his proven training systems throughout the US and in selected international territories. To learn more about his activities and descriptions of his products and services, contact him directly @ 770-898-5550; bob@themarshallplan.org; or visit his website @ www.TheMarshallPlan.org.