Transcript
Speaker: Well, here we are, episode 20. It's exciting times. When we started at Staffing Made Simple, we really didn't know what to expect. But 19 episodes later, we're proud of what the show's become and excited about where it's going. So for this one, we're looking back at the biggest things we've learned so far.
Speaker: What did the sales experts keep telling us? What did the buyer say that they actually want? And what have we learned about AI, technology, and where Staffing's headed next? So no guests today, just Rob and I, and we're connecting the dots, revisiting a few great moments, having some fun with episode 20. So let's get into it.
Speaker: Welcome to Staffing Made Simple, a podcast series powered by Simple VMS.
Speaker: Welcome back to Staffing Made Simple, brought to you by Simple VMS. As Casey said, today's a special episode. It's our 20th. Over the first 19 episodes, we had a chance to sit down with a bunch of great people from across the industry.
Speaker: Really, the whole idea behind this for Casey and I was to have our friends that we see at conferences and on the road on a podcast, and little did we know It was going to be a lot more work than we actually thought.
Speaker: thought it was just going to be me, Casey and Mark Winner chatting it up. But we've had on buyers, sales leaders, staffing executives, tech experts, and hopefully we brought something to the listeners that they can take back to their own business.
Speaker: Also, we do want to thank all the people who have listened and do listen. We've been shocked at how many people have actually downloaded episodes. Thousands of people, which for a niche podcast about staffing is pretty daggone good.
Speaker: I do want to mention our biggest listener, Jamie Reynolds. We got to give her a shout out for sure. And also a big thank you to Susanna Arroyo, our producer who helps with everything and keeps us in line. We've got Lauren Wilber.
Speaker: on our marketing team that's been a huge help and can't forget Sarah Clifton who's kind of helped us get it all together. There's also another 20th worth recognizing we were just at Aviante Connect and they were celebrating 20 years in business so congratulations to them and the entire Aviante team on that milestone and thanks for joining us. As always my co-host Casey Wagonfield.
Speaker: Thanks Rob, you're right. We just thought we'd just have some buddies on here from the conferences. Thought it was just our moms listening at night, keeping those numbers up. But here we are looking into it as thousands of listeners later. It's pretty crazy.
Speaker: All this time we spent talking to really smart people. And when you go back, the conversations we've had with all of our guests, you start to notice how completely different guests were telling us versions of the exact same thing, whether that was buyers saying what they need or the sales experts and consultants saying what the buyers want.
Speaker: We were able to really line those up. And when we were able to go through those 19 episodes and of course, using AI to find the common themes and whatnot, which we'll talk about today on some of the findings about AI, but Hey, I was really able to nail down like, Hey, here's what all of the buyers said. This is what they all said they need or want.
Speaker: Here's what all the staffing sales consultants, experts were all saying. So we're going kind of line those up and link them together today. Connect the dots, have some fun as well. So I think that a lot of the listeners probably want to know a little bit more about us. We don't get to talk about anything about us really during our episodes, but maybe we could just stop with some fun things that they might not know about us just to give them a better understanding of who we are.
Speaker: you want me to start yeah what do you got well i've been doing this for 15 years worked with our president and founder jason oswald in staffing before we did this and it's been a wild ride it's really cool that i got to be a part of building something and see my fingerprints and dna on it throughout the years and then now have this big team of people that are kind of doing what I did for so many years. We've got 12 outside salespeople. We've got people in partnerships. I've got operations people working for me. So that's been super cool.
Speaker: What do I like to do outside of this? I love to travel. Over the last couple months, I've been to Seattle, New York City. I've been swimming with manatees down in Florida.
Speaker: I love scuba diving. I started doing that. i love my family. Life's nothing without your family. What about you, Case? Yeah, just so everybody knows, Rob is going to retire a hippie in the Keys and he's going to scuba dive every day.
Speaker: So the things people already already know, yeah, it's been in staffing for 16 years. I think I mentioned that every episode, but through running sales teams and with Simple now for two and a half years, but as a partner of Simple. So you are staffing. We need to do need to talk about that. But the fun stuff, I would say lot of things people don't know about me is I'm actually an ordained officiant for marrying people. So I've just actually officiated my second wedding couple weekends ago. So I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker: Yeah, hit Casey up on LinkedIn if you need somebody to officiate your wedding. Yeah, you need a budget pastor and somebody, hey, I can even do your DJing too. Two-in-one package. I drink it all.
Speaker: Love Skyline Chili. that Some people might throw up in their mouth a little bit. I spend way too much money on it. One thing people don't know about me is I'm a pretty good cornhole player. i used to travel around and play professional cornhole players. So pretty good at at cornhole. that You're good at something that you can drink beer while you're doing it. Any sports that don't require running and standing in one spot, I'm really good at, especially if it requires a beer in a hand.
Speaker: But as you know, was probably throughout the past 19 episodes. If you know us at all from talking to us, whether it be at conferences or just know us from the past, we're a fun group here at Simple VMS. And we try to bring that same vibe and same energy onto this podcast when we're talking with people. So we just want to make sure people know that we're we're the same as everybody we're talking to and listening. We put our pants on the same way. Sometimes Rob puts his on backwards, but we do put our pants on the same way.
Speaker: If you want to see the pictures of my pants on backwards, text me. That was a complete accident. But I will tell that story real quick. I'm not what you would call a morning person. And one day i had a demo that I had to get into the office for in the morning. And I didn't sleep that well the night before. So I jump up. I find a pair of jeans on the ground and I just pull them up straight on. come and crush it on my demo. That prospect is still a client to this day.
Speaker: I get up to walk around the office and our accounting person is like, Rob, do you have your pants on backwards? And I was like, oh my God, I do. So I had these stretchy jeans and they just pulled right up. My wallet was in my back pocket, which was really in my front pocket at the time. And I had to make a decision.
Speaker: Do I act like this never happened or do I just lean into it and laugh with everybody? So I took the latter and those pictures will live in infamy. Great story. And and for all that don't know, Rob, the joke at Simple VMS is Rob knows a little bit about a lot, right? If you go on a car ride with Rob, you're going on a car ride with an encyclopedia. because you're gonna drive by something and say, hey, look at that.
Speaker: he know He'll tell you a story about it or something that he's found out about it. It's very entertaining, but let's get on with it Enough about us. Let's talk about what we've found over the last 19 episodes, how we've kind of combined that into this episode. We're gonna talk about The biggest trends and themes that we saw over the last 19. So sales, which is the biggest topic right now when it comes to staffing is bringing in new clients.
Speaker: What the salespeople said, what the buyers are telling us. That's something obviously every staffing person wants to know, right? What are the buyers wanting? What do they need? And then AI and technology, because that is a theme that's not going to go away anytime soon.
Speaker: So we'll jump into all those. The first one though, that I wanted to jump into Rob was just the sales theme. Cause it is just a huge topic always has been in staffing, but I think even more now companies just need new clients and need new strategies and sales. And I think that was where we had a lot of these great guests that we mentioned the Mark Winter, the Tom Herbs of the world, Dan Morey. I forget the staffing shark. The staffing shark.
Speaker: And they all have different styles, but fundamentals matched up surprisingly well. Like a lot of the things they were telling us. What were some of the themes that you heard some of them talking about as far as when it comes to sales and messages to the staffing firms listening?
Speaker: Yeah, it's a tale as old as time. Everybody sounds the same. There's not a lot of differentiators that people focus in on. And it's just the same thing that was going on back when I was in staffing.
Speaker: Love it that people are focusing on the service and delivery aspect and really making sure that the candidates are taking care of. You got to understand the buyer's business. Which industry do we see right now that everybody's focusing on?
Speaker: The data center business, right? It's a business that everybody wants to go after. So I'd say half the staffing firms I talk to right now, they're basically have a strategy on how to go attack data center business.
Speaker: So you got do your homework. It's also a balance. How do you reach out to enough people and also do your homework on those companies and those people as a salesperson.
Speaker: You've got to bring the value. You've got to be able to discover what your value is for clients. And these are all things that Dale Dupree, Kendrick Cato, the staffing shard, Mark Winner, Tom Irb, Dan Mori, they all echo these same sentiments as we've spoke to them. So us, Casey and I being in salespeople,
Speaker: Obviously, there's a big interest in doing sales related topic. But and what that Casey's great at? Being memorable. I love your cold call. ah You got to tell them what you do sometimes when you go out in cold call. So Casey, Justin started with Simple.
Speaker: We were doing some driving around in Columbus. We walk into a facility and we're trying to find out if they use temps so we can go pitch them Simple VMS. And Casey, go ahead and tell them what you do.
Speaker: We're dependent on who the person is sitting at the desk. I get a good vibe as soon as I walk in the door. So if it's somebody that looks like they got a good personality, I walk in. speed is Somebody ordered Chippendales and it gets a laugh every single time. It breaks the ice and it breaks the silence, right? All of these people are getting hit up with five different agencies a day, especially if that company uses a volume amount of staffing people. So being able to come in and immediately break the ice, right? And that's funny because I clearly don't work for Chippendales nor would I be hired by Chippendales, right? If I came in with a six pack and six foot two and looked good, yeah, she might think I'm actually with Chippendales, but it's about being memorable, right? Clearly I worked for the B team or the day crew team for Chippendales. So it really gets their guards down and then I can have those conversations with them. And I think that's really what it's about, especially when you talk about just being different.
Speaker: People are walking in there all the time saying the same boring thing. So if you can come them in there and make, especially the gatekeeper laugh, they might be the deciding factor whether your marketing material goes into the trash or to the person that's supposed to receive it in all of these things that we talked about including case's icebreakers it helps you build credibility and my philosophy in sales over the last 15 years here at simple has always been play the long game right you treat every interaction like it could turn into a deal and guess what your phone rings when you least expected two years down the road so i'm a big long game person and that's why I've always kept ethics. It's such a big part of what we do. I want to treat people like I want to be treated. And then guess what? At the end of the day, they end up wanting to work with us. Well, it's a relationship business. No different than the staffing firms with their clients.
Speaker: It's all relationship driven, right? And just so you all know, the Chippendales reference, there's probably going to be a lot of young people don't even know what that is. Just Google S&L Chris Farley Chippendale you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about.
Speaker: Well, I think the biggest theme from all of our sales consultants, experts, staffing executives that came on were value propositions, your unique value propositions. Everybody's saying the same thing.
Speaker: We have great service. We have great candidates and great relationships, and we're quick to respond. That's just not quantifiable things you can tell a prospect, especially when five people are walking in the door today, they're getting hit up on LinkedIn twice today. They're getting four emails. three cold calls.
Speaker: Most of those people all sound the same. So finding that unique value proposition that's actually making your company different, not that you have great service, but what is different about your company that not every company can come in and say that's really going to catch somebody's attention.
Speaker: You know, I've sat with clients who spend tens of millions of dollars in staffing spend on numerous occasions. And somebody at that conference table said, everybody does the same thing in staffing. They're not doing anything different.
Speaker: That to me was a light bulb moment when I was like, man, these people need to be able to figure out what their differentiators are and really sell that to people. And it can't be some nebulous, ambiguous thing. It's got to be real things. Just like you said, Casey, quantifiable.
Speaker: And that's one thing that we actually heard Dan Morey and Tom Irr both hit on pretty hard on their episodes where how similar most staffing companies sound. Dan really had a simple way of testing whether your value proposition actually different, right? Let's take a listen to what Dan said here real quick.
Speaker: One of my most fun exercises that I do with salespeople is I first ask them, hey, tell me all about your agency and why i should work with you. And it's going to sound just like what you just said. And frankly, if I go to their websites, it's going to repeat just that. Very generic, full of platitudes, superlatives, that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And I say, okay, let's pretend for a second that you got back to the office today and you got fired. And then you got hired by a competitor. And then tomorrow I run into you at a networking event. Tell me why I should work with you.
Speaker: And it's gonna sound exactly the same. And once they realize that they're like, holy cow, we're all sounding the same out there. It's no wonder that the only distinguishable point that the prospect has to just choose which one is better is price.
Speaker: So basically if everybody says great service, great people and great relationships, really what does make an agency different today? Another thing I noticed a lot of people were talking about, Tomer, Mark Winner, Kendrick Cato, Staffing Shark, was do your homework and make your outreach relevant.
Speaker: If you're sending a book that's an email, it's getting deleted. So do a little bit of research, make it intriguing, make them curious, make them want to reach back out to you and use different methods. you Send a video instead of an email, send a personalized written note instead of an email, do something that's different and unique.
Speaker: Something else, Rob, that I think this actually lines up with what the buyer said. So these were all things that our sales consultant said, but as we continue our podcast today and talk about the buyers, you'll see them link up.
Speaker: But it's understanding the buyer's business. This is something all of our buyers told us that was important to them. Understanding their business and not just their staffing needs. But that's something that Mark Winner and Tom and Casey Jaycox all mentioned was you got to understand their business and loved when Mark Winner talked about, especially with sales and staffing.
Speaker: Everybody talks about being consultative in staffing and being a consultant, not just checking boxes when you go into a meeting. And Mark Winner said it best. when You want to be a sales consultant in the staffing industry.
Speaker: You have to find the problems your clients have that they didn't know that they have and then provide a solution for them. That's truly being a consultant. They know people are late and not showing up. Find those real problems that are affecting their business, know their business and find the solutions for them they didn't know existed.
Speaker: And it's so funny, Casey, because every salesperson says they don't want to be a transactional seller. And that's exactly what you're talking about. It's how do you not become a transactional seller? But people, I think, get lazy and end up going back into what's quick and easy.
Speaker: And the whole Kendra Cato piece about building your personal brand, it takes work. All this stuff is hard and people think salespeople just because they have a good smile and they can talk to people and they are good at taking people out to lunch.
Speaker: If they only knew how much prep work and behind the scenes and everything everybody had to do to actually be a successful salesperson, I think it would shock people. Oh, a hundred percent. I love that episode too, Kendrick Cato, because I think that's such a huge aspect of selling now is your online brand.
Speaker: You can build that online brand and have credibility and respect before you ever reach out to somebody. If you have that type of brand online and people respect you. One thing do want to touch on before we move into what the buyers are talking about is I think there's one common thing that hasn't changed. And I'd love to hear your thought on this, Rob. So 15 years ago, 17 years ago now, I guess, when you were on staffing, I think there's some things that haven't changed and it leads into just outreach and prospecting is the relationship aspect.
Speaker: There's so many companies that are still just driven on sending an email and hoping somebody responds versus trying to get in front of somebody. And I remember you saying this, and I tell people this all the time too, is the staffing firms that I talk to is the quickest way to speed up the sales process is pulling door handles, getting in front of people, especially in the industrial staffing sector where I came from. The best way is to get in front of people. with Again, they're getting called a million times a day. If you can get in front of them and actually talk to them and be different,
Speaker: That is the quickest way. And I think it all comes back to just being relationship driven. This whole industry is relationship driven. And I think that's one thing in sales that will never change, but I think people are getting farther away from.
Speaker: I couldn't agree more. And and we say it all the time that staffing is the most relationship driven industry out there and industrial staffing, even more so because it is so transactional and because of the sheer volume that people need. Staffing firms need feedback from their clients to continue to give them what they want. And that's the hard thing about staffing a lot of times is you're only as good as the last candidate that you've sent or the last worker that you've sent over.
Speaker: So if you have a good relationship and you're not afraid to admit that, ah yeah, Hey, guess what? That wasn't the best person. Let's correct that. and Let's do it. You know, I always say when you mess up, you fess up and you don't just ignore the fact that you made a mistake, you call it out.
Speaker: And that all leads into setting the expectations properly. Yeah. just always come naturally to me. It's just seems like the way that you do business. And I've always done that because that's the way I would want to be treated. So, but yeah, couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker: The sales cycle speeds up so much if you get face to face with somebody and break down those walls. It's more time consuming to go pull doors. But if you think about how it speeds up the sales cycle, I think it's actually a quicker path to revenue sometimes. So it's worth the effort and time.
Speaker: And before we move on to buyers, one thing I will mention from our Dale Dupree episode is, and this is something that I've used in the past, people at Simple have used, and we still continue to use it and and it gets some attention, is trash can method. So you get 25 trash cans from Dollar Tree, you create your note that you're going put in that little trash can. And we're going to pre-crumble that and put it in the trash can and mail it to them or drop it off to them. So when they pull out the note, it's, you know, we've pre-crumble this so you can go in the trash with the rest of the sales garbage.
Speaker: that you receive and then you have your call to actions and why you're actually giving this to them so it's your core message but the idea is when you call them back they're going to remember you're the trash can person they'll remember that experience and it's going to make them curious versus just receiving an email or a business card and a pen that was dropped off so something different that's going to set you apart from the rest is it going to close the business no will it potentially get you to the table maybe All right, so let's move on. We talked about what the core themes of our sales experts and consultants, what they said on their episodes. And want to jump into what the buyers are saying because we've had some awesome buyers on our podcast. Daniel Kalman, a game changer for staffing industry analysts. Mia Evans-Cone was also on our podcast from Siva Logistics as well as Eduardo Gonzalez, one of our beloved clients here at Simple VMS who works for Arvato, Bertelsman as well.
Speaker: All three gave a lot of great insight on a lot of really just different types of topics on their episodes, but we were able to pull in the common themes of what they were saying. So we thought we'd love to share that with our staffing listeners who are thinking, what do buyers want? What are they thinking? What gets them to respond?
Speaker: What keeps me in the door once I'm there and gets me more market share? So With those guests in mind, and we've got more buyer guests lined up actually scheduled to come onto the show. We've heard that from our listeners that they want to hear from more buyers too. But with that said, with some of the buyers that we've had on Rob, what were some of the common themes that you got out of their conversations?
Speaker: Well, just like we were just talking about, Casey, Eduardo said, I know when an email is in a sequence and just being sent to me, personalize things, try to figure out something about that company and get their attention.
Speaker: Just all the things that you have to do to be creative as a salesperson. All that outreach, it needs to be customized at some level. And here's what I tell my team. It's like, get the volume in on the front end. And then once we realize somebody's qualified, then let's go and tailor and customize that outreach to them. Because you've got to also get that volume in.
Speaker: So it's quantity. And then you have to get to the quality after you qualify votes. That's a great point, especially when it comes to outreach too. And I think that's a good lead in. We had Eduardo Gonzalez on from Arvado Bertelsmann, a client of Simple VMS. and And this actually reinforces what Tom Herb said, what Mark Winner said, what Kendra Cato said, and others were telling sellers to research people and be relevant.
Speaker: But we also asked Eduardo who gets hammered by staffing companies. What actually gets his attention? Let's hear that here. I do get inundated with a lot of emails and phone calls on a daily basis. And I don't read all the emails. a lot of them are scripted. They do have some type of template that just, it's generic. or They send it out. They hope to receive some type of response. They're not going get a response.
Speaker: If they make it personal, they will receive a response. So an example, there is this one email that was sent recently, actually. This is exactly verbatim. There's a running joke internally here that we do our actual jobs for free and that we're really paid to do as follow-ups. So that grabbed my attention. Something so simple, right? Or if they see something in a press release saying they're opening up new facilities at this location, that location, we're here, we have two brick and mortars. This is how we can help support.
Speaker: Things like that. That does stand out as well because we know that they're doing their homework. So they can be different. If they can stand out, then they're going to grab my attention and I'm going to give them an opportunity to tell me about their company and what they have to offer.
Speaker: And one of the other things that I love that Eduardo said about getting attention and outreach, if you remember this, Rob, was we asked him about what's something different that an agency's done that's really gotten your attention.
Speaker: And an agency had brought in a full sheet size cake that was their business card on the top. So the whole cake was basically their business card. He was like, that was so unique. He's like, I fed the whole HR team. I did give them a meeting.
Speaker: I don't recall that he ever worked with them, but it got them to the table. And we all know in staffing, that's half the battle is just getting to the table. So I thought that was pretty unique, something different that somebody had done to get his attention.
Speaker: And I think some of the things I heard reinforced what the sales experts said. So we talked about what they said in theme, but it's going to line up with what you hear our buyers talk about. The sales experts were saying, do your homework right.
Speaker: Understand the customer's business. Be relevant when you reach out. Don't immediately pitch. Build that trust and credibility because they can smell that commission breath, right? So build that trust and credibility. I think all of those things were being said by the buyers, but they were also being told to us by the staffing consultants and the sellers.
Speaker: One thing that Daniel Kalman and Mia Evans mentioned was just be honest and don't overpromise. I remember a time where a salesperson that I worked with went out to pitch a company, told them, oh yeah, we've got a hundred forklift drivers ready to go. This was actually a simple client at one point. We did not have a hundred forklift drivers ready to go, but the contract was signed and they were expecting that. So that was an immediate bad first start. So don't over promise, be honest and be transparent when you're talking with buyers.
Speaker: It's setting expectations properly, right? We get excited as salespeople and we want to tell everyone yes, but that doesn't always end up doing the best for you at the end of the day. So as long as you set expectations properly, you own it.
Speaker: And you explain to people how the process is going to work best. How in my mind, you build loyal clients. And speaking of loyal clients, you go back to Eduardo Adarvado. He's been a reference for us for so many clients. He's been nice enough to come on the podcast.
Speaker: We were just getting listed in the SIA landscape of the VMS and I had to send him a form over to give us a rating and he gave us top scores. It's just, if you treat people like you want to be treated and you set expectations properly, own it when you make mistakes.
Speaker: That in my mind is how you build loyal clients. And I think one of the common things we heard too from Eduardo, Mia and Daniel, all three of them were bring ideas and bring useful information. They want partners, like Rob said, not transactions. They want true partners that are going to come be the consultant, find the problems that they have and find a solution for them, but bring different ideas. One thing that Eduardo mentioned was he had a company that offered, Hey, we're going to start busing people, right? That was something that they'd never done before. They were having a hard time bringing people into this specific facility. So this agency went out. found a solution for for them and was able to bring it in. Those were the companies and the types of things that he mentioned that builds market a share for those clients. The ones that are doing things differently, bringing ideas. And then of course, the ones that are actually performing, that's the biggest metric is you still got to perform.
Speaker: Yeah, I was out doing a business review with a client in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and I was asking how the staffing partners were doing. And they said they're doing fine. But the one thing they said to me that they wish they had from some of the staffing firms who supported them was relationships with people. other than just the recruiter that they were working with. They wanted somebody in leadership who could come up with some creative ideas and get strategic with them instead of just filling their orders like a transaction. So I went, talked to all the staffing firms that was supporting them, asked them, I said, Hey, do you have a contact in leadership that's got a relationship with them? If not, you need to have them on your regular calls because that's what they're looking for. And that's, what's going to get you more market share within this client. And they're 20, $30 million user. There was plenty of business to be had.
Speaker: Then they just go back to everything we've been talking about, about relationships. It's like out of sight, out of mind. I used to work with a company it was a global company, hundreds of millions in temp labor span, had quite a bit of market share with them. and Once our person who was the customer service rep for that client left, a lot of the communication stopped and then a lot of the order stopped coming in. And then when we finally got back in front of them, it was this person was gone and nobody was communicating. So the jobs went elsewhere or we were rewarding the people that showed that communication and and wanted to work with us. so Yeah, I think that's huge.
Speaker: And one thing I thought was interesting, Rob, was how important, and it shouldn't be interesting, I mean, this should be common sense, is how important the employees are being treated by their staffing firms and what staffing firms are going to make sure that their employees have a good workplace.
Speaker: Nia Evans-Kohn was really big on that, making sure that they're working with agencies that treat their employees well. If you remember the story about Eduardo? Yeah, he's a Spanish speaker.
Speaker: So he would go to staffing firms and apply as Spanish speaking person and see how they were treated at that staffing firm because a lot of the people that went into his facilities were Spanish speakers. I thought that was an awesome thing for him to do, kind of a secret shop of the firms that he was working with.
Speaker: I've seen a huge shift in the last 15 years. People called them temps back in the day. They're not even using that word anymore because they want these people to feel like associates at these facilities. Because at the end of the day, a lot of them might transition onto the payroll of the client. So you got to treat them well in like important parts of the program.
Speaker: Yeah. And i don't know why I was surprised that that was so important to Daniel and Eduardo and me. And sometimes I think when you're staffing, you don't really look that deep into it, but that is a huge part of it. They all touched on it and Mia really connected it back to business performance. Let's take a listen here.
Speaker: I'd love to hear what a supplier does to retain and recruit their employees. And I love to hear how that impacts not only the worker, but the business, because that's critical. You have no business without that employee.
Speaker: And that goes back to everything we've been talking about, about retention and all the things, right? You have to treat people well. At the end of the day, how they're being treated is paramount because a job is a job, but the differentiator is the environment.
Speaker: And, you know, another important thing I think, too, is when we talk about being a partner and partnerships, it's not something you get right away. And that was something that Mia Evans-Cohn talked about was partnerships are earned. You just don't walk in and become a partner. You have to earn it.
Speaker: And that just comes to a lot of different things. It comes from the communication that comes from you filling the jobs on time and filling those metrics or thresholds that you need to meet and bringing different ideas to the table, bringing different market intelligence, bringing different things to the table that's going to make their life easier and help their contingent workforce program.
Speaker: Our good friend, Bob Bear, he always says, you gotta make deposits before you make withdrawals from relationships. And I think that is exactly the spirit of what you're talking about right there. 100%, shout out to Bob. Yeah. As salespeople, we all want to make withdrawals. Hey, can I meet with you? Can I get this? Can I do that? But very little people actually send deposits. Send them that article that's going to help them. Send them a wage analysis on the jobs that they always hire for to see if they're in the market with everybody else that's in there. That's something that's going to set you apart.
Speaker: Cause I guarantee a lot of their clients probably don't know what their wages are in line with what the market trends are. If you have access to that data, send it without them asking. That's just another way to send a deposit and be that consultant and be that salesperson that can bring value to the clients.
Speaker: I'm glad you brought Bob up. Before we jump into AI technology, I think that was one of my favorite episodes, obviously because we've got to plug ourselves. And working with Bob at a regional staffing firm for many, many years and being a partner of Simple's VMSs and leveraging Simple VMS tool to gain market share within my own clients, to use it to prospect and get my foot in the door, which I have real life stories that I could share with people on how I leveraged it to get my foot in the door with new clients, as well as gain market share with additional or current clients, and then take advantage of the revenue share program. And that was huge for us is from a sales perspective, especially as we talked about value propositions, where
Speaker: It's hard to sound different and and offer different things. It's a great thing to have in your back pocket. So when you walked into a company and they say, well, we're using 13 agencies, we're not adding anymore.
Speaker: Most salespeople are gonna tuck their tail and run because they don't know what to say to that, right? But what they can say is, wow, how do you manage 13 different agencies? Do you have a hard time reconciling all your job racks and figuring out who's sending who or who works for who? What about timekeeping? Is that all over the place?
Speaker: Or do you have issues with invoicing and things like that or reporting? What does that look like? Do you need reports that you don't have access to or the reports you wish you had? So we were able to use it as another talking point.
Speaker: And I think that's just something i wanted to touch on because most companies and staffing agencies, your clients, They're not waking up this morning saying, I need a VMS because they don't know what it is. They're saying, I need better processes around my job racks and timekeeping and invoicing and reporting. And you can be the one that actually brings that to them. You're the thought leader, staying in front of the conversation and solving problems and putting you on a different level than your competitors. You know, talk about it all the time, how staffing for so long was such a non-technical industry and how all these staffing firms and the staffing firms who are excelling and exceeding expectations and what we had those tough times that we've just passed.
Speaker: are the ones who are embracing technology. They're looking for partners to differentiate themselves and they're willing to look at something that in the past was something they wouldn't look at, which is like a VMS partner.
Speaker: We had David Falwell on with staffing referrals. It's like there's all these things out there that people need to do in order to make these incremental differences in their business. And having a VMS partner for when your client needs it is one of those things. like As a salesperson, I want to have a bunch of tools in my Swiss Army knife.
Speaker: I never want my client to ask me for a referral to something and not have anything to say to them. So that's the whole VMS argument right there in a nutshell. And somebody that's been there, I used to tell the sales team all the time, don't get VMS. I don't want them bringing in some VMS at 3% and get no support. I want to control the conversation, be ahead of it. And that's where simple VMS comes into play.
Speaker: I think that leads in perfectly to our last topic here. I think we'd be crazy not to mention AI. It's Rob's favorite topic. And we're not going to hear any less of it, guys. A year ago, ai was nothing like it is today. And then a year from now, when we do another AI episode, it's going to be a hundred times different. And stick around for the next couple episodes. You're going to see another AI episode coming out with one of the leading AI experts in the staffing industry, Lauren Jones. So that's going tonna be coming out here in a few months as well. So look for that to come out.
Speaker: I think a lot of our guests, Rob, that we had on to talk about AI and talk technology weren't really saying automate everything. It was more use the technology to remove the repetitive work so people can spend more time on the work that actually requires people and the recruiting and all the things behind the scenes where they should be spending their time.
Speaker: Yeah, like our good buddy Will Scavara said, you gotta meet people where they're at, right? So you need to meet the candidates where they're at. So if there are younger, more tech savvy people who wanna interview at 2 a.m. with an AI agent, you've gotta do that.
Speaker: If your clients want some AI and tech into it, you've gotta meet them where they're at. I think it's very important to have it. And Casey, you've shown me some of the value in AI from the sales side. it amazes me the things that you do with that, besides making up funny pictures of me, the old girls wearing my pearl necklace, you help the whole team come up with the ability to find qualified prospects in geographic locations with the right prompts. I mean, that's like the shortcut we've been looking for, for the last 15 years.
Speaker: Yeah. And he think about that too. ah For years, people were paying tens of thousands of dollars for lists of an HR manager in Cincinnati. You don't need any of that anymore. If you've got a license to chat GPT, to Claude, to Gemini, to any of these things, you can run all that. And yeah, it did take a lot of time to compile those lists and probably a lot of tokens, but nobody's told me that yet.
Speaker: But that's something now that they can all use. And that's something I share with staffing firms too, right? You guys are going after the same type of clients that Simple VMS is going after. We're just going after volume clients. So anybody that is interested during staffing sales, you're looking for a list of qualified staffing users, hit me up. I got 9,000 of them that are verified with Intel. So we're going to see who's really listening to this episode if I get hit up for that list.
Speaker: I'll be glad to send you that list and just keep us in mind when those companies need a VMS. But yeah, that's just one of the little things I think you can do. And i think sometimes people think, well, yeah, I use AI and really they're just using it to write their emails and their emails are dead giveaways that AI has written it.
Speaker: That's one thing that I can't stand by the way is the big long hyphens in the messages and all the emojis. It's a dead giveaway. If you're going to use AI to write things, put your own touch on it at least. Yes, you can use AI to give you themes and different ideas of things to talk about, but use your own judgment and your own words as well. Use it as a framework, not as the message.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong. I couldn't put together things for this podcast without AI, but it's just to help us get the conversation started versus tell us what to say. And I think too, one thing that gets lost around AI that we heard from Mickey Pelletier, Jody Branstetter from Kirsten Buck at SIA is the human judgment still matters. You still have to have that human touch.
Speaker: And again, goes back to the relationship aspect of the staffing industry, not just relationships with your clients, but relationship with candidates too, when you're using AI to recruit and to source and screen for people. You still have to have that human touch because that's what's going to get quality candidates to stick around, not the AI. I think Mickey had a good line about AI too around no algorithm or anything is going to fix broken trust. Let's take a listen.
Speaker: You could have the fanciest AI suite of tools, no algorithm or anything is going to fix broken trust. So I think someone has to really walk the floors, build credibility and be able to, again, have that relationship, which ultimately builds to that trust.
Speaker: So just to theme up what we heard from the sales experts is understand your customers, be relevant and differentiated. you use on your values propositions, be credible and build relationships.
Speaker: When we sum up what the buyers told us is know their business. They all said that. Communicate and be honest. Bring ideas and prove that you can perform.
Speaker: Treat your workers well. Then when we look at AI, when we sum up what all of them were telling us about AI is automate the repetitive work and keep people focused on relationships, judgment, and problem solving.
Speaker: If you're new to staffing made simple, just a quick recap of what you can expect. We've had a lot of people on Eduardo Gonzalez from Arvado talking about what buyers really want staffing shark talking about personal branding and social selling Dan Mori talking about building your staffing sales strategy for your company.
Speaker: Daniel Kalman, who was a buyer on managing a global contingent workforce. Will Scavera, who talked about platform staffing within the industry. Jody Brandstetter, who mentioned human design thinking and AI.
Speaker: David Falwell has been a guest a couple of times to talk about his state of the staffing report with Great Beta. Tom Kosnick from Vices Group came on and broke down what compensation plans should look like for your internal staff.
Speaker: Bob Baer, a partner of Simple VMS, came on and talked about what agency partnerships and VMS can look like. Tom Erb talked about what winning the staffing sales game looks like.
Speaker: Casey Jaycox was a great guest talking about winning the relationship, not the deal. Kirsten Buck was on talking about SIA staffing and buyer trends. Leah Elliott and Joanna Monroe from Staffing GC giving us a breakdown on staffing law.
Speaker: Our boy Mark Winner on consultative staffing sales. Mia Evans-Cohn on changing the contingent workforce. Great insight from a buyer there. Mickey Pelletier on AI and RFPs and what buyers want.
Speaker: Dale Dupree on creating wonder and staffing sales. And finally, Kendra Cato, who's an awesome episode on personal branding that drives sales. And hopefully this episode will encourage and excite some people to go back to listen to some of those other episodes that might give them some ideas. Hey, we're really, really bullish on what's going on in the industry right now. The people that we're talking to are excited. They're getting more deals. They're seeing staffing come back to where it was.
Speaker: Got some really exciting things in the hopper for episodes to come, and we really can't wait to continue this on and see where it takes us. And to all of our guests from the first 19 episodes, thank you so much for listening and for supporting us. We'd never knew this is what this podcast would turn out to be. So we appreciate all of you and thank you to anybody who's shared an episode or commented or given us five stars. We love you too. Keep them coming.
Speaker: That's really what makes this so great is we can keep continuing from the support that we've had from all of our listeners. We've had a lot of fun with the first 20. We're looking forward to the next 20 and a lot more great conversations.
Speaker: So thanks for joining us again for this special episode of Staffing Made Simple, and we'll see you next time. This has been an episode of Staffing Made Simple, powered by Simple VMS, the vendor-friendly VMS.
