Your sales team is the heart of your staffing firm. They are the department responsible for meeting your sales goals on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. Bottom line, they are essential to your staffing business. Ongoing sales training is imperative to keeping a top-notch staffing sales team, and there are many ways to strengthen sales performance and keeping your sales team at the top of their game, constantly learning, and staying productive. In this blog, you will find two sections for strengthening your sales team:

  • Tips for staffing sales teams to stay up-to-date on sales trends
  • Actions for leadership to take when it comes to ongoing sales training

Read on for more!

For Staffing Sales to Consider:

So, you’re in staffing sales. Your goal is to sell people, more specifically candidates, their dream job. It’s a rewarding occupation that requires great communication and technical skills. Below are some tips and strategies to improve your sales game.

Create Your Goals, Then Take Action
When it comes to sales, there’s much to learn at every stage. It’s important to create goals, or a personal development plan, and implement it into your daily work life. Define the skills you want to improve and the goals you want to meet and discuss with your manager how these goals can be met within your chosen timeframe. Requesting a sales training plan from your manager is a great idea to stay productive, improve your skills, and continuously learn new tactics that can improve your overall sales performance.

Make Customer/Candidate Experience Your Top Priority
Recruiters play a huge role in sales performance, but none of that is possible without candidates. More specifically, happy candidates. Consider yourself a partner with candidates and make their hiring experience your priority. Build a relationship and fully understand their wants and needs. A candidate that gets exactly what they want and need out of a staffing firm is almost guaranteed to return for more once their contract is up or when they are interested in different opportunities. Make the candidate experience your top priority and you will see an increase in your sales performance.

Master Your Cold Calling Script and Pitch
One of the greatest downfalls of cold calling is wasted time, energy, and resources. So, our tip for you: Make smarter cold calls. Better said than done, right? Start with a plan and a script before you approach potential leads. In your plan, you should research prospects before picking up the phone and create a script with a fast and clear objective, avoiding wasting anyone’s time. Along with this, you should really nail down your sales pitch. You are going to say that you don’t need a script. You are even likely to say that the script is what comes out of your mouth. We agree. Welllllllll, we almost agree. If you are simply talking without a cohesive script and plan, then who knows what you are saying and if it can be better. Record yourself, just for your own sake. Listen back to it. You will realize that every call has lost opportunities, moments that could have made a difference in getting in the door. Some salespeople think that scripts are for new people, but we are talking about two different types of scripts. The script we are discussing is the one that shows the path that you take and lets you identify areas for improvement.

Take Advantage of Email and Automationstaffing firm market research tools
Emails are a great addition to every sales strategy, specifically automated emails. Many CRMs offer this feature, and you should be taking full advantage of it. What’s better than a personalized email to leads? Or even better, a personalized email that can be sent to thousands of leads at the click of a button? Take advantage of email automation to save time and increase engagement with your contacts.

Consider a Consultive Sales Technique
A consultive sales technique heavily focuses on understanding candidate’s and prospects needs and evaluating what is best for them when it comes to a job role. This technique allows you to consider how to approach candidates and understand their needs at length. This not only considers you a thought leader and subject matter expert, but your staffing firm as well. Have a trusted peer listen to your approach and let you know if it is truly consultative.

For Staffing Organizations and Management on a Broader Scale:

Embrace New Technology
Technology is always evolving and improving, so don’t miss out and be left at a disadvantage. Stay up-to-date with the latest staffing technology trends and encourage company digital transformation. This allows your staffing firm to maintain accurate data that is accessible by your sales team. These insights are here to improve your overall sales performance and allows your recruiters to flourish in their positions.

Drive Higher Sales Performance Through Incentives
As management at a staffing firm, you should consider incentives when it comes to your ongoing sales training and performance. Establish company goals with your staffing sales team and provide an incentive to maximize productivity. Using this tactic to motivate your team to reach their goals and to improve their performance is a great way to increase business for your staffing firm.

Acquire the Right CRM Software for Your Staffing Firm
A great CRM that’s right for your staffing firm helps to organize your sales process. It allows you to keep track of your leads and candidates, generate analytic reports to understand current sales performance, and to always keep all of your recruiters in the loop. Organization is key when it comes to sales, and the right CRM software will get you there.

Hold Consistent Team Meetings with Your Recruiters/Salespeople
Consistency is key. So is ongoing meetings and sales training. Meetings with your staffing sales team should primarily be focused on providing information, responsibility, goals, and encouragement. This keeps your sales team focused on goals and objectives and allows a conversation among team members on best practices and what needs improvement.

Positively Encourage and Inspire Your Staffing Sales Team
Positive encouragement and inspiration is a great way to keep a positive and healthy workplace while driving maximum performance among your sales team. If people are connected to the mission and purpose of your business, then salespeople are motivated to accomplish their goals. Encourage and challenge your sales teams by creating a positive space, accepting and giving feedback, and training for both individual and group success.

Strengthening your staffing sales team requires effort from both the salespeople and management. With the individual and team advice listed above, your staffing firm is sure to see an increase in performance.

About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations. www.sjhemleymarketing.com