In conjunction with RecruitersConnection, I’ll be conducting a free one-hour webinar tomorrow (Wednesday, May 26) on perm fee negotiations. It is scheduled for 1:30pm-2:30pm Eastern.

You have probably seen this in your free training, but this will be live! So join us to refresh what you know, or to ask questions or share with your team. This fast-paced session will bring you back to the basics — let’s face it, everyone in the industry is often faced with having to lower their fees or go head-to-head with free resources, such as job boards and ads.

If you hear, “Your fees are too high,” or “We are going to see what we can get for free first,” this session can save your desk.

The method can be implemented on your very first call after this session; the concept lies in getting back to the point of understanding what the word contingency means and how you can better sell this to the client. In essence, you can never be overpriced when it will always be the customer who will decide if they want to pay the price. The best part about this technique is that you don’t have to change the things that have worked for you in the past.

Be sure to register here.

Leadership is a winning combination of personal traits and the ability to think and act as a leader, often having to make the difficult decisions!

Your members are looking TO YOU for leadership and guidance, especially after what most of them have recently experienced.

The following are the five key strategies followed by the most successful leaders in the staffing and recruiting profession.

KEY #1 – A LEADER PLANS
Effective leaders PLAN in order to elevate their level of success as well as the success of their members. The core of leadership is being proactive rather than reactive.

Last year MANY conferences experienced very low participation. That does NOT mean you will experience the same results THIS year! If you put together a program targeting the greatest challenges of your members, they WILL come!

KEY #2 – A LEADER HAS VISION
Vision is essential to strong leadership. If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t get there and neither will your members!

KEY #3 – A LEADER SHARES THEIR VISION
When I spoke with many owners who lost their companies during 2009, one commonality was they had NO IDEA what they were attempting to build. Sharing your leadership vision will significantly help your Association or Network Grow. They need to understand and prepare for new trends that will occur during this coming year.

KEY #4 – A LEADER MAKES DIFFICULT DECISIONS
A true leader makes difficult decisions on a timely basis. If you wrote down the characteristics of a great leader, “procrastination” would never be included on the list!

Study what your association did right last year – do more of the same. Also, study what wasted your time last year and stop those activities today. Determine the greatest NEEDS of your members and provide them with the information and services they need to thrive.

KEY #5 – A LEADER INSPIRES THROUGH EXAMPLE
As a state leader, it is important that you attend educational events and bring your staff; your membership will follow your lead!

Another trait of leadership is staying ahead of trends. Since some associations have decided to CANCEL events this year, market your event to those owners! Education IS power and your members need to be empowered after last year.

Editor’s note: Gary Stauble’s “2 Minute Coaching” gives you quick, easy-to-implement ideas on various subjects. Here he offers advice on using an egg timer for personal productivity, orchestrating a “yes” within 24 hours, and how to streamline client meetings.

Topic #1: The Power of the Egg Timer

Some of the best ideas are also the most simple, low-tech, and easy-to-implement. With all the advice out there on personal productivity and time-management, it’s easy to overlook this simple tool: the egg timer.

One of the best ways I know to boost my productivity on workdays is to use a countdown timer during golden hours.

I define “golden hours” as my most important personal productivity time when I want to work without interruptions. It is that sacred time that gives me the freedom to focus on the critical activities that generate revenue and demand my intense focus.

A prime-time segment for me is 50 minutes in duration. I turn off my phone, shut down my email, and lock my office door to prevent all disruptions. I set my countdown timer to 50 minutes and then I get busy.

It’s important that the timer counts down (not up) so that there is a set deadline. This creates an intensity to the activity that you cannot get without the artificial deadline. Also, it is a “self-management” technique that high performers who want leverage on their own habits can use.

Here are some activities to focus on if you decide to set aside prime-time hours:

• Marketing calls
• Article writing
• Recruiting calls
• Planning
• Critical thinking
• Sourcing and name gathering
• Mind mapping and strategizing

Topic #2: How to get a “Yes” within 24 hours of the offer

It is critical that you pre-close how much time a candidate has to decide on an offer long before it is extended.

The time to do this is during your initial interview with the candidate. It is your job to orchestrate the offer and acceptance for both parties and to set expectations well in advance.

You might say something like this to your candidates:

“At the time that the offer is generated by the company, which is usually after several weeks of conversations, I’m going to ask you to make a decision on that offer within 24 hours. What I’m asking you to do here is to start your decision making at the very beginning of the process, rather than at the very end. It’s my job to make sure you have all of the information you need and all of your questions answered prior to receiving the offer. However, once you get it, I’m going to ask you to be decisive. Is this workable for you?”

Topic #3: Three Ideas for Starting a Client Meeting

1. Rehearse your presentation.

Rehearse a verbal and mental presentation of your meeting. Get to the point where you have memorized the key points that you want to cover. Nothing will add to your self-confidence like preparation and rehearsal.

2. Set the framework for the meeting.

Say something like this to your client:

“I’d like to ask you some specific questions to see if we can be of service, then I can answer any questions you have about us. We’re probably looking at about 30 minutes, does this work for you?”

3. Use intense listening.

The great thing about client meetings is that what the client really wants is simply to be heard and understood. You must be an intense listener, so follow this simple guideline: they talk 80% of the time.

I constantly hear the lament of “Why don’t my new hires get it? Why won’t they do the work?”

They often feel they have hired the wrong person.

Frankly, sometimes they have.

In reality, the recruiting firm owners hire some VERY talented people. But what happens next is that they ignore them, they do not give them the proper attention, and they do not set the right expectations in the training process. Ultimately, the owner then says, “They do not get it” and they fire them or the new hire quits.

Like the old shampoo commercial, “Wash, rinse, repeat.”

We move on to the next hire often with the same or similar results. This lack of an internal, specific definition of onboarding success cripples the recruiting industry and has doomed it to an industry with very small firms and very high turnover.

“What does your training program look like?”

Most stumble through their answer. The training programs are often fragmented, not formalized, and most often, not in writing. In a majority of the situations, there are no formal benchmarks. There are no expectations of when the new hire should be getting their first job order or first interview. There are no formal definitions of how many presentations a new recruiter should do.

Some owners do set expectations on daily call count, which is not bad, but it is still not the best solution that will lead to the most predictive results in the ultimate success of your new hire.

The worst definition of onboarding success I have seen is using a defined date to when a placement should be made. For example, I have heard owners/managers say, “If someone comes in my office and they do not make a placement in two months I fire them!”

With all due respect, that is INSANE!

Quick Pop Quiz

Which recruiter would you rather have based strictly on the following criteria, nothing else?

You can have recruiter A who makes a placement in week three and arranges two interviews over an eight-week timeframe.

Or, you get to keep recruiter B, who makes no placements in eight weeks, but arranges 25 first-time interviews in that time frame.
Which recruiter do you keep? Remember, you only have one choice based ONLY on the above criteria.

I will take “recruiter B” 10 out of 10 times! Recruiter B is showing that he or she has what it takes to be successful. Recruiter A just happened to get their placement early in the numerical cycle that drives each desk whether you track it or not. I am not saying that recruiter A is going to fail — I am just saying given the choice, based solely on the evidence given, I would take recruiter B.

While most owners/managers are not so drastic, the mistake most of them do make is that they instruct their new hires as well as their existing team to focus on the one thing they can not control. The one thing we can not control is the placement.

Yet all we talk about is making placements! We talk about placements incessantly. “What is the next deal? Where’s the next deal coming from? You need to make a placement soooon!” This is this is a huge blind spot with many recruiting firm owners.

Ultimately, we have a product — the candidate — who is fickle and can change his or her mind. Here is what I train people on in my office and my clients’ offices. I ask them, “Do you know what a placement is?” (Pause for effect) “A placement is an emotional nightmare … an emotional nightmare!”

When we ask recruiters to focus on something that they can not control and that something, the placement, blows up for reasons beyond the control of the recruiter, it is natural for that recruiter to become incredibly frustrated. We unknowingly put them in a position to question their own abilities because we create the illusion that we can control placements. Sure, a good recruiter can heavily influence the outcome, but control it? Absolutely not!

This focus on placements is one of the routes of the turnover issue and productivity issue in the recruiting industry. Without explaining and tracking the defined metrics of what LEADS to a placement (i.e., calls, presentations, job orders, first-time interviews), a new recruiter will feel they can not make placements.

On the other hand, if you can tell them that historically in your office, it takes eight first-time interviews to make a placement and they currently have arranged 10-15, it is up to you as the owner/manager to reinforce that the new hire is “due” for their first deal!

The only worse thing than not setting defined expectations is setting defined unrealistic expectations. Some owners/managers who do measure first-time interviews have had new recruiters come on board and say to them, “I want five to eight first-time interviews each week starting week three, four, five, and six.”

I ask these owners, “Is anyone in your office doing five interviews?” And they almost always respond, “Well, no.” I then continue, “Then why would you expect it of a new hire?” Response: “Well, you have got to set the benchmark high.”
In our office, we do not have an expectation for any sendouts weeks one and two. Depending on the desk, sometimes it is one, sometimes it is none. We just want to get one interview a week with some of these people. And we back into what specific activity it is going to take to get that.

We make the same mistake with job orders, we give an expectation that not even our tenured people are hitting sometimes. Then, since the goal is so far out of reach, it becomes unachievable and nobody will focus the least bit on it.

Avoid These Mistakes

Define in writing a successful first day, first week, first month, first quarter in realistic numbers. These are numerical targets that your average new hire can hit, not your superstar new hire.

Make sure they are minimum numbers, not “shoot for the stars” goals. Then, tie those targets into the activities that create the revenue numbers. Show them how presentations are tied to first-time interviews, which are tied to placements.

What is your minimum activity number you will accept? What does it look like exactly? I challenge you to uncover this into and engineer them into your expectations for both your new hires and existing recruiters.

The benefits are two-fold. One, you will drastically increase your success rates and decrease the amount of time to their first placement. Two, if they consistently fail to hit realistic ACTIVITY targets, you can cut them loose much sooner, saving you thousands in draw/salary and hours of time for you to focus more productively on your business.

>>2 Salary Scripts for Candidates

I recently led a class called, “End Game: the final critical stage in getting your candidates hired.” One of the things I discussed was providing your candidates with exact scripts for their interview process. The topic where this is most relevant is the question of salary. You want to be sure that your candidates memorize their answer to this employer question, “What are you looking for in terms of salary?”

Here are two possible answers (the first one I heard from Peter Leffkowitz):

• “Yes, money is one reason I’m here today, but more importantly, I am here about the opportunity. If you have an interest in me, I would like to entertain your strongest offer.”
• “I’m currently making ______; I would be in the market for a fair and reasonable increase on my salary.”

It is well worth your time to role-play this with your candidates. Before you offer them a script, ask how they were planning to answer that question. Chances are that their answer, and their delivery, will make you very nervous. Spend a few minutes with them so that their answer to this important question will sound crisp and confident.

>>You Don’t Have to Do “Your Best”

I once read a quote somewhere that went something like this:

“The axiom that says ‘Nothing avails but perfection’ can be spelled p-a-r-a-l-y-s-i-s.’ ”

Something we’ve all been bred to believe is that you must always “do your best.” In theory it sounds like a good thing to say to a child, but I’m not so sure it is always useful.

For instance, in my work with recruiters and owners, I have found that they spend way too much time beating up on themselves about all of the things they are not doing correctly on a regular basis. If this led to positive change, that would be fine. But this tendency often leads to “phone fear” and procrastination.

I’d like to suggest that you don’t have to always do “your best.” If you did your best every day, that would mean that you would need to make more calls today than ever before — and you would have to make even more tomorrow. These would need to be your “best” marketing calls ever and of course tomorrow, they would need to be even better.

You don’t have to make your “best” marketing call ever — just make the damn call. Then make another one. And another. Better to keep an even keel and do consistently good work than to get stressed out and hung up on always doing “your best.”

Have you ever planted dandelions? Do you have a special garden for them? No? Then why do they show up? Why does any weed end up in your garden if it is not planted?

Weeds, like negative thoughts, spread quickly. The people we talk to, both clients and peers, spread them to us. We then spread them to our team. They are watered every day by more negative thoughts and conversations. Just like invasive plants need to be pulled from a garden, negative thoughts need to be manually removed from your mind.

I was reminded about this when I had the privilege of speaking with over 30 owners of recruiting firms in a 30-minute strategy session about setting a vision in their business.

With the exception of one person, the good news is they are all seeing nice increases in their businesses. Some even saying they are getting a consistent flow of call-in job orders for the first time in months!

Despite this uptick in the business, a few of the folks were a bit “beat up” by the economy over the past year. This is quite understandable. However, I challenged them and I challenge you to “tend to your mind.”

Let me explain with a real example from a client conversation last week.

He was weary of making calls to hiring managers because “almost no one is hiring.” I asked if he held that thought in his head when the hiring manager picked up the phone to which he responded, “well, yeah.” What he didn’t realize is that he had set a negative expectation for the outcome of the call.

Why is this bad? Well, unless someone is desperate to hire, you will probably get what you expected, which is “no opening”. Additionally, with a negative expectation, your energy is probably low and you will probably ask weak follow-up questions. You are more likely to be unattractive and unsophisticated as a potential service provider. You are very likely to make even fewer calls because “why bother if no one is hiring!”

As Napoleon Hill says in Think and Grow Rich, “Thoughts are things!”

Continuing with our analogy, thoughts can be like the weeds described above. They can be transferred to us effortlessly by others, by the market, etc. They take root and grow without any conscious effort on our part.

On the other hand, if we want good fruit, good vegetables, and the GOOD thoughts, we need to MANUALLY plant them in the garden that is our minds.

Why Did YOU Get Into This Business?

You see, in this economy, holding positive expectations and manually planting them can be a sizable effort. I speak to so many people who have lost their purpose and vision, who are living placement-to-placement.

Frankly, many are bored and burnt out. When I ask why they are in the business, they are not sure.

When I ask why they got into the business in the first place, they paint vivid and exciting pictures of what they wanted for themselves and their families.

You see the good fruit, the good thought is still there, but it is buried in the weeds!

• First, remember why you got into the business in the first place. Go to a quiet and calm place where you can reflect on your motivations that got you into the business. What was this business to allow for you in your life? More than likely, the outcome is still there. It just needs the weeds removed around from it. It just needs some water.
• Second, end the “pity party” and get back on the phone. The recruiting industry will still generate BILLIONS of dollars in fees this year. You heard me right. The recruiting industry will generate BILLIONS of dollars in fees this year. What insignificant piece of that number do you need to hit your goals?
• Third, track your numbers to create predictability and consistency in your revenue streams. Focusing on placements is insane because we can not control placements, but we CAN control activity, as well as call and presentation count. Ironically, 80%-90% of the industry does NOT track presentation count even though it is the most accurate predictor of future revenues. If you are not tracking marketing and recruiting presentations along with first time interviews you choose to make your job VERY difficult.
• Fourth, invest in yourself. If you look at going to seminars or buying training as an expense and not an investment, shift your mindset. I remember hiring a coach when I could least afford it. I needed someone to guide me and see things I could not see. It wasn’t cheap and I had to sacrifice other things short term, but it paid for itself at least ten-fold.

Times are different — but get over it! Rediscover why you chose this career in the first place. Help your recruiters rediscover why they entered the business. Set some specific goals around that and then execute your plan and invest in the areas you need help.

Aren’t you worth it?