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Selling Smarter: Winning the Staffing Sales Game
49 Plays15 days ago
Selling staffing today is a whole new ballgame. Decision-makers are tougher to reach, buyers are doing their homework long before you ever make contact, and differentiation has never been harder. The old playbook – impersonal cold calls, generic pitches, and canned follow-ups – just doesn’t cut it anymore.
In this episode of Staffing Made Simple, hosts Rob Geist and Casey Wagonfield dig into the realities of selling in 2025: what’s changed, what’s working, and how the best staffing pros are rethinking their approach to prospecting, positioning, and closing.
To help unpack it all, they’re joined by Tom Erb, President of Tallann Resources, national speaker, and author of Winning the Staffing Sales Game. With more than 25 years of industry experience, Tom brings proven strategies for standing out in a crowded market – sharing what top producers do to build trust faster, add real value in early conversations, and win clients who stick.
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Transcript
Challenges in Modern Staffing Sales
00:00:00
Speaker
Selling staffing today isn't the same game it was five years ago. In today's staffing market, getting the meeting isn't easy. Prospects dodge calls, buyers do their own research, and the competition starts to sound all the same.
00:00:13
Speaker
In this episode, we're breaking down what's working right now in staffing sales, how to prospect smarter, land the meeting, and create value propositions that actually stand out. If you want real strategies and expert insight, you're gonna wanna stick around for this one.
Introduction to 'Staffing Made Simple'
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to Staffing Made Simple, a podcast series powered by Simple VMS. Welcome back to another episode of Staffing Made Simple. I'm Rob Geis, co-host and Senior Vice President of Growth here at Simple.
00:00:41
Speaker
We're talking about one of the toughest challenges staffing professionals are facing today, how to sell in today's market. Things have changed. Prospects are harder to reach, decision makers are more informed, and the old ways of selling aren't cutting it anymore.
00:00:55
Speaker
So what does it take to succeed? As always, I'm joined by my co-host, Senior Sales Executive here at Simple VMS, Casey Wagonfield. Wagonfield Appreciate that, Rob.
Meet Expert Guest Tom
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm excited for today's guest too, because he's someone that I've known for more than a decade. He has over 25 years staffing and recruiting experience. He's the owner and president of Talent Resources, which offers expert consulting, training, speaking, and talent acquisition services tailored to both staffing and corporate talent acquisition sectors.
00:01:25
Speaker
He's one of the most highly sought after national speakers. presenting for the American Staffing Association, NAPS, TechServe Alliance, and countless state and regional conferences. He's also the author of Winning the Staffing Sales Game.
00:01:38
Speaker
He's a monthly columnist for ASA Staffing Success Magazine, and he served in leadership roles for both the Ohio Staffing and Search Association and Human Resources Association of Central Ohio.
00:01:49
Speaker
He currently chairs the National Association of Personnel Services and is an active member for ASA's Professional Managerial Sectional Council. That's a heck of an intro there. Tom, proceed to be coming on today.
00:02:01
Speaker
Well, thanks. And most of it's true. Thanks for having me, guys. I'm excited to have our conversation today. Well, we wanted to bring you on, obviously talk about sales. There's some i' I've respected over the past 15 years.
00:02:13
Speaker
So wanted to kind of start just with the current landscape of staffing sales. And as somebody who was in staffing sales and has seen the changes and how you approach it, you know, there are more sales tools than ever now, yet it still seems harder to come by
The Double-Edged Sword of Sales Tools
00:02:25
Speaker
wins.
00:02:25
Speaker
Why do you think that is? Well, I think the sales tools work for us and work against us. There are more ways to reach out to prospects than ever before, which means there's more ways that they're getting bombarded than ever before. And so they're being more selective.
00:02:41
Speaker
You know, one of the things that we're seeing is that sales is going back to what it's supposed to be, which is that it's hard. To me, it's the hardest job in the industry by far. And it's supposed to be hard.
00:02:53
Speaker
And from about mid 2010 until about late 2022, sales was a lot easier than it typically is. There was a real demand for our services. We went through 12 years of constant growth, which is unheard of.
00:03:10
Speaker
And of course, you know, 2021, 2022, the phone was ringing, which is unheard of. So I think we just got complacent expecting that sales was gonna be easier than it really is. And so that's what we're back to right now.
00:03:23
Speaker
I couldn't agree more. I was just talking to my team about back when I was a individual contributor for Simple, how many meetings I would set up. And I was asking why they can't set up as many meetings.
00:03:35
Speaker
The times have changed. People aren't in the office. It's not as easy to get ahold of people. It's crazy how different things are. Tom, I've heard you talk about how decision makers are shifting to informational by they're using the internet, social media, chat GPT, instead of answering
The Informed Buyer Phenomenon
00:03:53
Speaker
cold calls. Can you put some emphasis on how they're buying today and how staffing pros should adapt their approach to that?
00:04:00
Speaker
We've been in an informational buying market for years at this point. And if we think about how we all buy, you don't just go to a Best Buy and buy the TV that you look at and you like, right? You do research on it. You go online and see what the reviews are.
00:04:17
Speaker
You ask your friends on social media, what TVs that they buy. So it's the same thing with any kind of major purchase, which is that our prospects are doing their research. There's more data than ever before. They can totally vet us out.
00:04:33
Speaker
And because of that, this idea that we're going to call a prospect and they're going to give us orders, or they're going to sign a contract, or they're going to welcome us. Especially when you got maybe a couple hundred other staffing companies reaching out. it's just not realistic.
00:04:46
Speaker
So what we can do to counteract that and even benefit from it is curate that information on our own. Have the information that they're going to go out and look for and give it to them.
00:04:59
Speaker
Make it easy for them. And also understand that when somebody is vetting us out, they're going to be looking at our website. They're going to be looking at our LinkedIn profile. We need to be consistent in our messaging. If we're talking about we're different because of A, B, and C, we need to have B, and C on our website, social media, everywhere.
00:05:17
Speaker
Good points. Networking is something I've always been super passionate about. I love getting out in front of people. I think it really speeds up the sales cycle, but there's so many reps today that are just happy sitting at home, comfy behind their desks.
00:05:31
Speaker
I'd love to hear your take on networking, why it's so powerful, even in this digital world.
Networking: A Long-Term Strategy
00:05:36
Speaker
Well, I'm a huge fan of networking. As you guys know, we see each other at conferences all year round.
00:05:41
Speaker
You've got your short-term sales activities, and that's where the cold calling comes in. That's where our 10-week sales process comes in. And that's to get out and to try and engage with people that we don't know.
00:05:54
Speaker
We're cold calling and it's low percentage sales, but it's necessary until you really know everybody. The networking is really your long-term strategy to make your life easier six months from now, 12 months from now, five years, 10 years from now.
00:06:09
Speaker
and to be able to really build a presence. And so a huge fan of networking. I think there has been some complacency and there have been people I talked to if a sales rep's been around for a long time and we started to talk about networking, they'll go, oh yeah, I used to do that. I need to get back out and do that again. So they did get out of the habit during COVID, but you also have an awful lot of sales reps that started around the time of COVID and just never realized it was even an option.
00:06:35
Speaker
And I also think that in general, salespeople and sales managers are extremely impatient and networking is a long game, but it has this residual value that goes way, way beyond, you know, we call it sales equity where we're building equity.
00:06:50
Speaker
And networking is a key way to build that sales equity, but it takes time and patience and it takes doing it the right way in order to yield results. And a lot of people struggle with that, which is why you want to do it because so many of your competition just isn't patient enough or doesn't approach networking the right way to actually have the results.
00:07:10
Speaker
and Tom, I remember this is probably 10 years ago, 12 years ago when you first came in the agency I was with and did consulting workshop and you really emphasized on networking and they talked to us about at your time of Styrian when you were the top rep at the company, you built that on networking. Yes.
00:07:27
Speaker
and not just going and showing up and passing a few business cards out, which I think some people think that's what networking is. And I remember you talking about this saying, Hey, don't just go pass out a card, go ask for a committee you can volunteer at within that organization.
00:07:41
Speaker
Go ask to work the front table. So when all the HR people come in, you're the one checking them in You can put a face to a name, but getting something out of it. I remember when I learned that I joined a safety council.
00:07:52
Speaker
And that was just a member, right? Showing up to the monthly meetings. Didn't do much after that. And here we are 10 years later, on the executive board and making decisions and redoing their website and networking with hundreds of companies that are members.
00:08:05
Speaker
But that wouldn't have happened had I not volunteered, had I not put my name out there as somebody that wants to be more involved. Absolutely right. and And I think it's more valuable now than it's ever been. When I was back at a large staffing company doing a bunch of networking and going to the HR association, we'd have 150 people at lunch, but you'd have 20 staffing people there.
00:08:24
Speaker
Nowadays, you go to an event, there's 100 people there. There's not as many, and you'll have two staffing people there. And so there may be less people going there networking because others are out of the habit as well.
00:08:35
Speaker
But you also have a lot less competition now than you used to. Yeah. Rob talks about this all the time. The biggest way to speed up the sales process is getting in front of people. It's a relationship driven business staffing, especially.
00:08:48
Speaker
And I know you talked about a little bit, but like even people that got into staffing after COVID where they don't know that networking is really a thing that they can do. Where does somebody like that start when it comes to joining groups or organizations to network? What are some practical starting points?
00:09:03
Speaker
First thing is look at where your prospects are. Where your prospects go to network? Who are your prospects? Or are you reaching out to HR and talent acquisition and go to HR association events?
00:09:14
Speaker
Are you going after it directors? We'll look at IT events. so You got to take a look at where it is that your prospects are going. Look at where your clients, ask your clients where they go. So that would be the way to start out.
00:09:27
Speaker
If you're in industrial, then you're looking at manufacturing associations, warehouse, packaging associations, safety councils, all those different types things. There's tons of different things. If you're in healthcare, care then you're looking at those types of events and start out on a local level and then start to take a look and go, okay, would it make sense for us to maybe do something more statewide or regional?
00:09:48
Speaker
And you talk, Casey, about volunteering. That's your cheat code is to get involved. If you just go to events and you just show up, it could take you years to really build a presence.
00:10:00
Speaker
If you go there and say, I want to volunteer, I want to get onto a committee, I want to get onto the board, then those are your power-ups and you are accelerating that timeline and able to really get in front of people, meet more people and have more exposure.
00:10:14
Speaker
It's amazing how many people just sit at the table at a networking event, right? It's just like anything else. You're going to get out of it what you put into it. And Casey's one of the best people at a networking event or a conference, just bringing people in talking to them and getting their guard down. And you don't have to talk about work all the time either.
00:10:33
Speaker
You can get to that. It's all about the relationship, so. Let's move to technology. It's crazy how far technology has come and how fast it continues to change. When you talk about sales changing, I'm sure tech's a big reason why.
Sales Tech Evolution and Communication
00:10:47
Speaker
Can you walk us through the evolution of sales technology and what salespeople today need to know or what they need to look into? Sure. When I started in the industry in 1994, we had phone and we had our car.
00:11:00
Speaker
And that was really the technology that we had. You either were cold calling on the phone or you were getting in your car and you were stopping in in person. And that's all we had. Now we have all sorts of different technology. Obviously you've got email and texting and social media, but now you also have different sales enablement technology. We have the ability to use ZoomInfo and Apollo and Hoovers and other different avenues.
00:11:25
Speaker
to be able to get contact information. We have workflow automations. We now have AI that can help with all of those different things. So the technology is coming fast and furious.
00:11:35
Speaker
At the end of the day, at least for now, you still gotta make the calls. And it's interesting because in 31 years of being in this industry, i started out with the phone calls.
00:11:46
Speaker
Today, the most predictive activity for success is still phone calls. It's still picking up the phone and calling people. There's no replacement for it. There's no correlation between how many emails you send out and results.
00:12:00
Speaker
There's no correlation between how many LinkedIn emails you send and results. There is a direct correlation between phone calls and results still to this day. And most salespeople just don't make enough phone calls.
00:12:13
Speaker
So even with all of the technology that's gone on in the last 31 years, at the end of the day, picking up the phone and having live conversations with people is still what we need to do. I love how you break that down too, where you show, you know, in 2000, it took you six calls to get ahold of somebody, right? Where now it's going to take 25 and people give up much quicker, right? I mean, it it called five times and it just stopped.
00:12:35
Speaker
To your point with the evolution of tech, there's just so much out there. So you got to figure out where you want to be and what tech you need to get there. But, you know, I think of like video emails. I love using products like Vidyard because it's different.
00:12:48
Speaker
All of your competitors are sending text emails. Some of them sending books, but how many of them are sending a personalized video? I can say that every time I've ever received a video, I've opened it and watched at least some of it versus you get those text emails and it just goes right into the delete.
00:13:02
Speaker
Yeah, you have to think about how do you separate yourself from your competitors? You're not selling in a vacuum. In some of these markets, you have hundreds of other staffing companies that are reaching out to the same people that you are.
00:13:16
Speaker
How do you separate yourself? Everybody's sending emails. i mean, if we think about the different communication methods, And let's say that you're reaching out to a director of talent acquisition.
00:13:27
Speaker
They're getting hundreds, maybe thousands of emails in a day. So you're not going to break through that noise real easy because they're not only getting phone calls and emails from you and from other staffing salespeople, but every other kind of vendor is reaching out to them.
00:13:43
Speaker
They have all sorts of internal communications. They have candidates. They have all sorts of people. Same thing with social media. They may be getting dozens or even hundreds of requests a day on social media. So we have to think about how do we break through that? How do we have different types of communication?
00:14:00
Speaker
And one of the things I've talked about many times before is the traditional snail mail letter and about having different types of communication with that. Sending handwritten notes. Nobody sends a handwritten note anymore. It's extremely rare that we see that.
00:14:15
Speaker
And people may say, oh, that's archaic. Or you may be a Gen Z that's saying, oh, well, I don't even check my own mail. Well, it's not about you. It's about the person you're reaching out to.
00:14:26
Speaker
And the overwhelming majority of professionals still check their mail because there might be something important there. Same thing with the video is that they're getting all of this stuff that is text-based. And then all of a sudden there's a screenshot of a video in the email or they get a video introduction via LinkedIn or an audio one. Something that's different than what they're getting from everybody else. That's how you catch people's attention and separate yourself.
00:14:51
Speaker
I love getting mail. You see your handwritten name on it. Like you just don't get that anymore. But when you say being unique and getting somebody's attention, we had a buyer from one of our clients on that talked about what got his attention was ah an agency brought a sheet cake and on the sheet cake was the agency's business card.
00:15:06
Speaker
He's like, I fed the whole HR department. We met with the company. he was unique enough to
Unique Value Propositions in Staffing
00:15:10
Speaker
where they got to the table. And Tom, I've heard you talk a lot in the past about not being part of the commodity rat race and always talk about owning your market. I know this is kind of a broad question, but can you define for salespeople what that means and how a seller can get there?
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, owning your market is being known as the go-to person for the staffing industry in your market, whether that's a geographic market, whether it's a staffing vertical. You are the person that they think of, and it can be done. It can be done in the staffing industry just like anything else. When somebody is talking about, oh, you know what?
00:15:42
Speaker
We're going into peak season and we're going to need somebody, and the last three staffing companies that we worked with haven't really worked out. The person they're talking to goes, have you talked to Casey? That's what you want to happen over and over again.
00:15:56
Speaker
ah use the term omnipresent. How do we be everywhere? How do we be everywhere that they go? There's a good chance that they're going to run into something that we're doing and we're providing value.
00:16:08
Speaker
We're a thought leader. We're curating good information that our prospects would find a value. The whole concept of being omnipresent, whether that is being at networking events, whether it's being on the local news, giving feedback on the local economy and the workforce, whether that is social media, posting things on there and commenting and providing value. So that's really what owning your market is.
00:16:33
Speaker
And something we've had other guests on the show speak about, but I've also heard you speak on this topic at some of the events I've been at is unique value proposition.
00:16:44
Speaker
Do you think that staffing agencies already have a UVP and they're just not articulating it well, or this is something that they need to build and start marketing?
00:16:56
Speaker
So it's interesting because everybody talks about value prop all the time. And yet so few people spend any time developing And i think most people, when you talk to them about value prop, they would agree that they need to have a strong value prop.
00:17:08
Speaker
What we find is that when we ask staff and companies what their differentiators are, what their value prop is, it sounds very much like everybody else. And it's for a couple things.
00:17:20
Speaker
One is because the overwhelming majority of staffing companies really don't have much different. They don't focus on it. They're just kind of a me too staffing company. yeah We've got 28,000 plus staffing companies. 27 of them are kind of the me too's.
00:17:36
Speaker
And then you've got staffing companies in another category where they actually do have differentiators, but they either haven't realized that those are their differentiators or they discount that they're that much different. They don't really understand that. So very few staffing companies, when I talk to them about what makes them different, can articulate back to me something that I go, wow, you're right. You guys have nailed it.
00:17:59
Speaker
This is something that really is different. And in some cases, they do have things that make them different. They're just not focused on them. And in some cases, they really just are kind of going along with it. And they're a pretty generic staffing company. So if you can identify what really makes you different that resonates with your prospects and your clients,
00:18:20
Speaker
you've got an opportunity to have a huge competitive advantage and it makes sales a lot easier. We see it all the time where we have clients that really, really strong, compelling value props that their job is easier selling.
00:18:34
Speaker
And then we have others that kind of sound like other people and we try and strengthen that and we try and develop it, but they struggle more because their value prop is not that much different or doesn't sound that different than everybody else. so Yeah. I remember before I even met you, Tom, and first got into staffing sales, being in a lobby and somebody asked me, what makes you different? And it was the typical, well, we send quality people and we have great customer service, right?
00:19:00
Speaker
And that's not quantifiable. And the person called me, asked, well, that's what everybody says. no And I remember thinking, and I never want anybody to say that to me again. i need to figure out what really sets me apart than everybody else.
00:19:12
Speaker
Otherwise, yeah, I'm just going to sound like everybody. I was at a meeting with a buyer in Indianapolis last week and she told me five times every staffing agency is exactly the same.
00:19:23
Speaker
I had a dollar for every time she said that to me in that meeting. So I would think targeting her, if you could actually find something unique about yourself, then she'd probably meet with you. Right. I mean, it's crazy.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah. Could you give us some examples of some impressive value propositions that you've seen over the years, Tom? Yes, I can. Let me kind of start it off with, there's really four things that every buyer of staffing needs.
00:19:50
Speaker
If I need five people tomorrow, I need five people tomorrow. If I need a software developer to start a project in two weeks, I need them in two weeks. So I need the number of people I need when I need them.
00:20:03
Speaker
I need them to have the hard and soft skills that I need. So that software developer, not only do I need them to have certain types of software experience, program experience, but I also need them to have certain soft skills. I need them get up and make it to work on time.
00:20:19
Speaker
I need them to be reliable. I need them to get along with their coworkers. Right. So that's the second piece. sort The third piece is I need them as long as I need them. And so if I've got that software developer and I need them for six month project, I need them for the six month project.
00:20:35
Speaker
If I've got warehouse workers that I want to attempt to hire because I'm using the staffing firm as a recruiting avenue. Then I need them for that 90 days, 13 weeks, whatever number you use.
00:20:48
Speaker
I need them for that. And then the fourth piece is I need my staffing company to communicate well with me. We see over and over in every single satisfaction study of any kind with human beings of anything.
00:21:02
Speaker
Communication is always at the top. And so I need those four things. If I can figure out what differentiators I have that can prove to them that I can do these four things consistently, then that's going to resonate with people.
00:21:19
Speaker
But I have to be able to prove that. And that's the really important piece of it is sometimes it's not even the differentiator that is the most compelling piece. It's proof that's reinforcing that. So that being said, over and over again, specialization to me is the number one differentiator that you can have. And I'm not talking about, I specialize IT. I specialize in healthcare. care Those are huge areas. Thousands of companies do that.
00:21:43
Speaker
but can we drill down two, three, four levels into specialization? I wouldn't be on this call right now with you all on this podcast if I didn't specialize in staffing.
00:21:56
Speaker
But even more than that, if I'm talking to a healthcare staffing company, I'm talking about my specialization in healthcare, I'm talking about specific examples of healthcare staffing companies that I have worked with and helped.
00:22:07
Speaker
I'm giving them testimonials and case studies from healthcare staffing owners, not just from staffing owners. It's the same thing with staffing companies. Light industrial isn't a specialization.
00:22:20
Speaker
Warehouse isn't a specialization. I specialize in 3PLs. I specialize in this type of position for 3PLs. We keep going down layers and layers. So the more specialized we are, the more value,
00:22:32
Speaker
or perceived value that we're going to have with them. So specialization is one. Obviously, know proof of delivery. So being in the market for an extended period of time, having a specialized team that has a level of expertise that others don't have.
00:22:49
Speaker
One of the things that resonates with companies is just if you have long tenure, in staffing because the average person in the staffing industry only lasts about 12 to 24 months in a branch office.
00:23:01
Speaker
So if your branch is averaging seven years of experience, that's something that you can also leverage because there's continuity there, there's experience there. Those are the areas that we take a look at. And then we look at what's the proof.
00:23:14
Speaker
And proof is others saying that we are good. Instead of us saying our quality is better, our customer service is better. Well, don't believe us. Believe our clients with these testimonials. Believe this case study that we've put together.
00:23:29
Speaker
Believe this award that we have won, best of staffing or whatever it might be. That's the proof that reinforces it. That just made me think of a sales call I was at. I was in Allentown, Pennsylvania with a medical packaging company and the guy, as we were leaving, I told him I'd provide him with my references. And he said, do you have any medical packaging companies in the Lehigh Valley that you could give us references?
00:23:53
Speaker
I was like, well, how many of them are there? But it just goes to show your point. Everybody feels like what they do is so unique. So it's just such an important part of the sales process. It shows your laser focus too, right? like This is what I'm doing. I'm not trying to find you a kindergarten teacher and a plant manager.
00:24:09
Speaker
specialize in early childhood staffing. I'm finding teachers for you. That's right. That's all I'm focused on, not a package handler and a CEO at the same time. I have a good friend that used to work in procurement for a large, well-known retail company.
00:24:25
Speaker
And he told me one time, we like to think of ourselves as cutting edge, except when it comes to our vendors. We do not want to be the guinea pig. We want you to show us that you already know what you're doing.
00:24:37
Speaker
He told me that 25 years ago, that has always stuck with me and it's always proven to be true. If we can show them, remember those four things that I talked about, if we can show them proof over and over again,
00:24:50
Speaker
that because we have certain differentiators, we're able to do those four things better than everybody else. That's going to open more doors than just about anything else. One more thing on that, the value proposition is because it's such a core foundation of sales. But would you say a good first step for agencies is to go through those four steps and figure out how they can resonate those steps within their messaging.
00:25:11
Speaker
So rather than I can get you people, is it okay? Well, rather than just posting your jobs to Indeed and hoping people apply, we have some sales intelligence that scours our million people in our database and finds hard and soft skills that match to your jobs would be something that resonates, would it?
00:25:27
Speaker
Absolutely. And if you can preface that by saying, let me tell you why our clients love working with us. So now we're creating this credibility just by saying, hey, we have clients that love us.
00:25:38
Speaker
And then I'm going to reinforce that by giving you testimonials, by giving you case studies, by giving you data that backs it up, by giving you references if you want to talk to my clients who love us. All of those things reinforce what I just said.
00:25:52
Speaker
Well, he said it, Tom, at the top of the show, sales now is harder than it's ever been. And I think one of the hardest things for people is getting to the table. So I'm sure there are a ton of salespeople listening, thinking, know, how do I actually get the meeting?
00:26:07
Speaker
Could you break down what separates the ones who break through and get those meetings and who gets ignored?
Strategies for Effective Prospect Engagement
00:26:13
Speaker
So I work with a lot of sales teams and we listen to a lot of recorded calls.
00:26:18
Speaker
We look at the data as far as activities and k connects and appointments and all those things. And there's a couple of things. The first thing is you have to have enough at-bats to get hits.
00:26:31
Speaker
And the overwhelming majority, I'm talking 99% of salespeople do not do enough activity. And when I'm talking about activity, I am talking about true sales activity, phone calls, drop-ins, or networking events where you're talking to actual decision makers. But mostly when I'm talking to activities, I'm talking phone calls. so Everything else is what I call a sales support activity.
00:26:54
Speaker
If it can be done by somebody else or it can be done by a computer program, which nowadays it can be, that's not a sales activity. That's a sales support activity. I'm not saying it's not important. But it's not a sales activity.
00:27:07
Speaker
So they don't have enough sales activities. Most need to have at least 200 a week just to give themselves enough a chance. Because as Casey mentioned earlier, we're seeing about a 25 to one call to connect ratio.
00:27:18
Speaker
So if I'm calling 200 people, I'm talking to eight. If I'm calling 250 people, I'm talking to 10. And you go, okay, well, that's a really horrible ratio. And that's not a lot of people I'm talking to.
00:27:29
Speaker
It's not if it's a one-time event. Right? And for most salespeople, it is this one-time event where I make 200 calls. I talked to eight people. Those eight people said, nope, we're good.
00:27:41
Speaker
And then I forget about them for 90 days. And then 90 days later, I go cold call them again, right? Oh, Hey, I don't know if you remember when we talked 90 days ago. So the first thing is you got to have enough activities.
00:27:53
Speaker
The second thing is you got to be ready for the phone call when there is a live person that answers the phone. Most sales reps have no idea what they're going to say. I have literally had sales reps, some of them very tenured sales reps tell me, I hope it goes into voicemail.
00:28:07
Speaker
I've had more than one sales rep tell me that. And I know that there are many others that feel that way. And most of them, even if they're not hoping that it goes into voicemail, they get lulled into this voicemail routine, right? 24 out of 25 of them are voicemail. So when that one hits, what do I say?
00:28:23
Speaker
So you have to know what to say. And the ones that are able to take it from a live conversation to an appointment or to a next step, are able to engage that prospect. They're able to bring down those defenses.
00:28:38
Speaker
Because we know that when we make a call and they answer the phone, they're not going, oh good, another staffing sales rep. They're going, I wish I hadn't answered the phone. How quick can I get off the phone? Right? So we've got to bring down those defenses and we do that a variety of different ways. But if we can effectively engage them, build some credibility, build some rapport, bring those defenses down a little bit, then we have a chance to have a further conversation.
00:29:02
Speaker
And then it's, what do we do after that conversation to make sure that we are pulling them into our network, into our community? We never want to cold call them again.
00:29:14
Speaker
We've gone through all this trouble just to get them live once. What are we going to do about it? If we consistently do that over time, because if you think about eight to 10 live calls a week, it doesn't sound like much, but that's eight to 10 live decision makers. If you're calling the right people, if we think about that over the course of 52 weeks, we're talking about four or 500 decision makers that we talk to live. What are we doing with that over and over? How are we maximizing that?
00:29:41
Speaker
And if we keep doing that year in, year out, pretty soon we don't have to do a whole lot of cold calling anymore because now we know everybody in the market. And that's really what the goal is. The goal is not to have to cold call the rest of your life.
00:29:53
Speaker
The goal is to saturate the market to the point where everybody knows who you are and you know everybody. And yeah, you'll still have to do some cold calling because 30% of them turn over every year. But the majority of it then comes from this network that you've built up over the course of time.
00:30:08
Speaker
I remember when you were working with our sales team when I was in staffing and there was a document to help people understand how many activities do I need to do to hit my goal, right? So here's my gross margin dollar foot goal for the year. If this is the average number of contingent workers at a client, and this is the average bill rate and markup.
00:30:25
Speaker
And this is how many activities it takes to get an appointment and how many appointments it takes to close a deal, right? But it really gave people a good idea of, right, well, this is what I need to focus on. This is how many I need to do if I want to hit that goal.
00:30:37
Speaker
that something that you still do if people wanted to reach out to you? Absolutely. so that's the weekly sales planner with the sales goal worksheet. So we've put that into a web app and I've been working with developers for a while on that.
00:30:48
Speaker
It's going to go out to our consulting and training clients first to test it. We're getting pretty close to being able to roll out in beta and it's probably going to go out here in the next month or two. It's got some really cool functionality and then we'll expand it out to everybody.
00:31:03
Speaker
And you'll be able to compare yourself to not only your own performance over a period of time, but also to others that are in your company. So your peers, and then also the industry as a whole, and it'll be aggregated.
00:31:15
Speaker
It'll all be anonymous. So we're not sharing anybody's data with others, but we'll have your average ratio of calls to appointments is this, Your peers in your company is this, and your peers across the entire industry is this. And then you can also adjust it for different and types of positions. So a 100% hunter can then compare apples to apples with a full desk recruiter or something like that.
00:31:40
Speaker
I used to have every sales rep go through all of your modules before they went through our training first. But on the same topic of kind of getting to the table, as I did have another question at that, because it seems to be the hardest thing as we talk to salespeople is just getting that meeting right and getting seen i've always been a big believer of being unique and especially i feel like in sales where you have a smaller geographical area that you're going after and only 10 of those companies use more than 100 temps let's say every single touch matters then right for those 10 companies and what are you doing to make yourself different so
00:32:14
Speaker
Something we've had recent success with here is little hand baskets that we're giving out. It has a little hand like you see at Halloween sticking out of a trunk, but the chair I can get my right arm to show you simple VMS or right hand to show simple VMS with a handwritten note.
00:32:28
Speaker
Right now they're five out of six. We've had five demos out of six of them that had been dropped. And it's the same thing we hear from everybody. Wow, that's unique. I've never had anything sent to me like that. We just did kind of a blitz in Michigan where we have these little mini trash cans and It's a crumbled letter that goes inside of them. and And we pre-crumbled the letter so they can throw it away with the rest of the sales stuff, but they loved it.
00:32:48
Speaker
And it's different. Other people aren't coming in and doing that. Whether it gets you the meeting or not, who knows, but they will remember you or at least warms up that call when you do make it. What are some creative or unexpected ways to finally break through and get in front of people?
00:33:03
Speaker
Yeah, we're doing a lot of drip campaigns where it's a themed campaign and those are successful for just all the reasons that you said. goes beyond just kind of dropping off a candy jar or something like that. It's actually doing something that in a lot of cases might be kind of corny, funny, cheesy, whatever you want to call it.
00:33:22
Speaker
but it catches people's attention. So we've had a lot of success with those types of things. Contests have always worked. Throughout the year, you have different things. You can do fantasy football leagues. and There's different levels of there. You don't have to have a fantasy football league where you're doing a draft and all that stuff. There are ones that are more simplified, but you can have things that are fun for your clients and your prospects and keep things going. And that's a great way of being non-salesy, keeping in front of them.
00:33:49
Speaker
The other thing to do are educational things, having webinars, having executive breakfasts. And if you don't have somebody internal in your organization that can speak there, well, you can partner with others that are out there. There's always consultants to the industry. There's all sorts of different people that you could get to speak for free or for little cost.
00:34:09
Speaker
They'd be happy to get in front of the same people that you are. So it's just all about how do we add value or how do we engage them in a different way? <unk>s not always about just being salesy. You don't want to just constantly be going, hey, we can help you. And a lot of times it's just about staying in front of them.
00:34:28
Speaker
You talk about building sales equity by adding value through every activity, having a structured multi-touch process. Can you break down what that process looks like and why consistency matters so much?
00:34:39
Speaker
You know, we want to have a holistic approach to sales and we have our 10 week sales process. that a lot of people familiar with, I talk about it in my book, winning the staffing sales game. I've spoken about it on webinars and other podcasts, 10 weeks, multi-touch we're up to 15 touches. But in some cases we have clients that go way beyond that because after the 15 touches depending on if there was engagement or not and what type of engagement there was, it'll go into another workflow.
00:35:07
Speaker
We hit people with an actual letter. We hit people with a combination of emails and phone calls. We have LinkedIn follows and shares and k connects and those types of things. And then also some of my clients have incorporated texting into it. We've added the videos to it, like video intros and emails.
00:35:27
Speaker
In some cases, I've added second letter. or at least a second mailing, and it might just be a little handwritten note because that is an area where we just don't have much competition. So that's the piece for doing the prospecting.
00:35:41
Speaker
And then you also take a look at and you go okay, networking, social media, and other type of presence. How am I going to stay front of mind of people And then the last thing is looking at those big whale accounts and having separate, more strategic approaches with those types of companies because you land one of those and it makes your whole year. i mean, in some cases, you land one of those and it can change the whole shape of the staffing firm.
00:36:07
Speaker
So we want to have this multi-pronged approach that's a more holistic sales strategy. And that's the most effective way to go about it.
AI's Role in Staffing Sales
00:36:17
Speaker
Absolutely. yeah Before we wrap, but we have to mention AI. It's everywhere.
00:36:21
Speaker
From your perspective, what's real? What's hype and how should staffing sales professionals be using AI to generate leads, accelerate deals, and what else should they doing? I think right now where we are, there's a combination of technology capabilities and the willingness of our prospects to accept certain types of technologies.
00:36:41
Speaker
So right now you could go out and buy an AI software that will literally make cold calls for you. But in my experience and also seeing studies out there, prospects are not open to that much right now.
00:36:57
Speaker
Not to mention there are limitations with the voice AI. It still sounds like voice a i So that to me is not a viable product yet. And I don't know if it ever will be. I don't know if it will be accepting. It's kind of like, are we going to replace real live actors in movies with AI?
00:37:14
Speaker
Probably not, but maybe we will, right? There are certain things where people still want humans to interact. So we'll see how that goes. But for right now, that's not viable. What is viable are workflow automations that integrate AI AI helping you develop proposals, helping you do market research.
00:37:32
Speaker
If you use ChatGVT Deep Research, for example, we have gone and said, okay, in this market, do deep research on the top 100 employers and give me detailed information.
00:37:42
Speaker
And yeah, you can go get that from the book of lists in a lot of these markets, but that's only one source. We just did it the other day and AI looked into over 40 sources to put together.
00:37:53
Speaker
the information. So it's a much more comprehensive report. Doing things like going into an AI tool like ChatGPT or Gemini or something like that and saying, here's the 40 people I'm going to call with the companies.
00:38:06
Speaker
Give me a brief overview of what this company does, what this person does, and any open positions that are on their website that would be relevant to the staffing vertical I'm in. And then while you're dialing, you're looking at these bullet points instead of going and doing hours of research every day.
00:38:23
Speaker
So there's lots of things we can do with AI. Role playing is another thing that we can do right now. We actually created an AI agent that does role playing for the staffing industry, and it's actually going to be part of our web app Yeah, we did a little blitz up in Michigan, run these companies through Chat2PT and say, hey, search the internet, find job postings or anything that would show that these companies use temporary associates, right? So it would say, hey, XYZ agency said they're hiring for this company.
00:38:50
Speaker
So logically, they probably use a contingent workforce. And then when you have your list, you can run it through there say, hey, here's all the places I'm going to. Optimize a route for me and send me a Google Maps website. link and then it'll just plug it into my phone.
00:39:03
Speaker
It's just amazing the things that it'll do. I get an alert every day from ChatGPT on companies that likely do staffing and it's just going out and searching every day and then I'll get four or five different ones every single day.
00:39:15
Speaker
Tom, this has been an awesome
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:39:17
Speaker
conversation. i always look forward to your insights and learn something from you every time we talk. Before we wrap up here, for anyone who wants to learn more about you or talent resources and what you do for agencies, what's the best way contact you?
00:39:30
Speaker
Then go to talentresources.com. You can also check me out on LinkedIn as well. Make sure you check out Tom's resources that he provides to agencies and the different modules and things that he has.
00:39:40
Speaker
And check out his book, Winning the Staffing Sales Game as well. And for everyone else listening, if you liked what you heard today, please make sure to like, subscribe, share this episode. You can connect with us on LinkedIn or visit us at simplevms.com for more insights, tools, and resources to help your staffing agency grow.
00:39:59
Speaker
Thank you for joining us. We'll see you on the next episode of Staffing Made Simple. This has been an episode of Staffing Made Simple, powered by Simple VMS, the vendor-friendly VMS.