Weekly inspiration for the staffing industry.

Part 2: Ideas

In part one of this article, we addressed the issues that you should evaluate when finalizing your 2011 business plans. To recap, these issues include:

1. Continued economic uncertainty
2. Your competition getting more aggressive
3. Disintermediation of staffing by direct employer to contractor websites
4. Healthcare, SUI, worker's comp and other legislative and tax issues
5. Increasing worker dissatisfaction

Now it's time to create a plan for growth...and plan to win a greater share of the market--or even expand the market for staffing.

The Basic Strategies

At the most fundamental level, there are only two ways to increase your sales:

1. Get a bigger slice of the pie (increase market share)
2. Bake a new pie just for you (create new markets or expand services)

In planning for growth, most staffing firms focus exclusively on increasing market share. They plan to hire sales reps, increase call quotas, "blitz" the market by phone or in person, get service reps making more sales calls, and constantly pump up the sales team.

And this strategy works. But it's also one of the hardest to sustain because being more aggressive tends to burn out sales people, frustrate managers and alienate clients.

So what else can you do?

10 Ways to Get a Bigger Slice of the Pie

1. Be faster
   In staffing, the first company to refer the right candidate is most often the one that gets the placement. So if you want more sales, fill orders faster. In short, the best candidate database wins! Here's how to improve your fill speed:
   
   • Build your database in advance of job orders--recruit more now!
   • Improve your recruiting tools--make better use of your website, job aggregators, social media and your existing candidate database.
   • Invest in upgrading your staffing software to find better fit candidates faster.
   • Create talent hubs--online communities to attract specific types of people.
   • Develop same day talent pools, so you can fill last minute requests.


2. Increase client share
   Most employers use more than one staffing vendor. To increase sales, find ways to get a bigger percentage of each of your clients' staffing business. Here are a few tips:
   
   • Be proactive about helping your clients plan their hiring needs--so you will be the first to know when they need people.
   • Get service coordinators in the field to deepen relationships with your current contacts.
   • Learn about your clients--give your sales team specific questions to ask and use what you learn to make suggestions for using staffing more intelligently.
   • Create individual staffing plans for your clients.
   • Reduce your operating costs and share the savings with your clients.
   • Show your clients how to eliminate overcapacity and staffing inefficiencies.
   • Help clients to capitalize on opportunities faster.
   • Ask for referrals to broaden your contact network within each client.


3. Be smarter
   Can your sales reps sell the strategic value of staffing? Do they really understand how your services help employers to reduce costs and increase productivity?
   
   One of the best ways to increase sales is to educate clients--help them to better understand the real value of your service, so they will see more reason to use your services.
   
   But first, you may have to invest in training your staff on:
   
   • Staffing economics.
   • How to read P&L statements.
   • How staffing can make an impact on business performance.


4. Be everywhere
   In a 2010 study done by Inavero, 28% of employers could not name a single staffing firm beyond their current vendors. And no company was top of mind with more than 5% of employers. Despite the incredible volume of calls we make, prospects still don't know who we are!
   
   To win more business, you have to increase awareness of your firm. In addition to making more calls, you can use marketing to leverage your time and expand your reach. Some of the best tools for doing this include:
   
   • Mail and email--direct market (repeatedly) to your ideal clients.
   • PR--be in the news.
   • Community events--be where your clients are.
   • SEO--get found online.
   • Social media--be part of the conversation.
   
   
5. Beat the competition
   No doubt, you want to outhustle and outperform your competitors, but how much do you really know about them? To develop a winning strategy, you should:
   
   • Study each of your top competitors.
   • Identify their strengths and weaknesses.
   • Map every aspect of your service process.
   • Re-engineer your services to outperform competitors at every touch point.
   • Create new services that exploit your competitors' weaknesses.
   • Market your strengths--the ones that matter most to your clients.
   
   
6. Build and sell inventory
   As you look ahead to 2011, which companies are going to be hiring and what types of people will they need? Instead of waiting for job orders to pop up, bring talent to the companies that will need it.
   
   • Recruit more aggressively for people with skills that will be in demand.
   • Market talent to appropriate employers.
   • Reach out to employers and offer to be a talent scout for them.
   
   
7. Be a hero to HR
   Few areas were harder hit in the past two years than corporate HR departments. Understandably, they are defensive--and many see you as the enemy. Well, it's time to get on their side. They want to deliver more value to their firms. They want to be more strategic. They want to elevate their role. And you can help them!
   
   • Do more with your local SHRM chapter--get to know the key players.
   • Help HR to prove their value:
     
     • Educate them about the strategic value of staffing (provide tools and info they can share).
     • Share HR success stories.
   
   
8. Think long-term
   If you look back 5 or 10 years, which companies were the biggest users of staffing in your local market? Are those same companies the biggest users today? One effective long-term growth strategy is to develop relationships with small firms that will become high growth companies.
   
   • Target companies in high growth industries or those that have received venture funding.
   • Develop contacts inside these target clients.
   • Educate executives in these firms regarding staffing.
   • Share HR best practices.
   • Nurture relationships over the long term.
   
   
9. Targeted discounts
   At Haley Marketing, we are not big fans of discounting services. However, there can be strategic reasons to offer discounts as a means to break into accounts, improve customer loyalty, and increase the value of your average sale. Here are a few ideas:
   
   • First call discounts.
   • Volume / guaranteed purchase discounts.
   • Assignment extension rates.
   • Service bundling--giving a discount on a mix of services purchased at one time.
   
   
10. Market smarter
    What is the single biggest barrier to increasing sales? Most likely, it's your time--there are not enough hours in the day to keep in regular contact with every client and prospect.
    
    Rather than just pushing your sales team to "sell more," give them the tools they need to leverage their time, differentiate your services, and have more productive sales calls.
    
    Here are just a few ideas:
    
    • Prospect strategically:
      • Target your ideal clients first.
      • Go after the financial decision makers.
      • Give them a reason to meet (based on the economic value of your services to their firm).
      • Create a more aggressive plan for your "Dream 100"--systematically targeting top prospects with repeated contact based on a core message.
    
    
    • Integrate sales and marketing:
      • Use direct mail or email before you call.
      • Create compelling offers to bring prospects to you.
      • Make drop-bys more productive with memorable drop-offs.
      • Share articles and videos to teach people about the value of staffing.
      • Support your claims with data-driven collateral.
      • Conduct webinars to position your firm as an expert.
      • "Surround" your prospects--be everywhere they are.
    
    
    • Upgrade your website to attract more clients and candidates:
      • Optimize your website for search engines.
      • Start blogging to improve your site rankings.
      • Create landing pages with specific offers to attract sales leads.
      • Add a job board integrated with job aggregators to lower recruiting costs.
    
    
    • Nurture relationships:
      • Use email and social media to keep in touch.
      • Use greeting cards and personal letters to reinforce your message.
    
    
    • Use social media intelligently:
      • Build big contact networks.
        • LinkedIn connections
        • LinkedIn company followers
        • Facebook "Likes"
        • Twitter followers
      • Join the groups where your clients hang out.
      • Engage people with content and conversation.
        • Share great blog posts and other content.
        • Ask provocative questions.
        • Conduct meaningful market research.
        • Share insights.
    
    

Baking a New Pie That's Just for You

When it comes to increasing sales--and reducing margin pressure, you want to find (or create) opportunities that solve problems and address untapped or underserved markets. Here are eight ideas for accomplishing this goal:

1. Follow the money
   Right now, some companies are growing faster than others. Can you identify these companies in your market? If so, now is the time to get their attention, show them how you could help them to accelerate their growth, offer to work with them on their staffing strategies, and then become a strategic recruiting partner to source the people they will need in advance of their hiring needs.


2. Go where the business is
   This may shock you, but many staffing firms are not strategically targeting companies that excel during a recession and recovery. Why? Often, it's simply because their sales people aren't provided with a list of the best industries to target. So who's hiring now?
   
   Scott Wintrip at StaffingU shared a great blog post outlining the top 25 hottest jobs based on volume added in the past 60 days (as of December 2010).
   
   Here's the StaffingU Market Demand Report:
   http://staffingu.net/wordpress/2010/12/07/top-25-jobs-the-staffingu-market-demand-report/


3. Represent star talent
   As mentioned in part one of this article, worker dissatisfaction is a BIG issue. People are unhappy, and that gives you an opportunity. Just like Hollywood stars and professional athletes have agents to represent them, you can represent the superstars in the niche you serve. While this strategy won't work for low level positions, you can make it work by doing the following:
   • Focus on high skill niches--jobs where talent remains very hard to find.
   • Become an expert at sourcing A+ players.
   • Find better ways to serve the talent market.
   • Become their agent--represent their best interests by actively marketing their talents to appropriate employers.


4. Go national or go global
   Where do you sell your services? The majority of staffing firms only focus on their local market, but why stop there? Here are a few ways to expand geographically:
   • Pick a very specialized niche where you can become a top recruiter.
   • Identify skills or services that can be delivered remotely, and become a provider of people for that service.
   • Franchise your services.


5. Partner with consultants
   Want to avoid margin pressure? Don't sell staffing services! Instead, sell solutions to business problems. But what if you don't have the expertise or resources to deliver these solutions? Then partner with firms that do. Find companies that provide consulting services, and then work with them to build the teams they need to take on larger engagements. Here are a few examples of potential partners:
   • CPA, IT, HR or other management consulting firms
   • B2B call centers
   • Reverse offshoring--overseas firms looking to build operations in the U.S.


6. Partner with clients
   To expand your sales (and your services) find new ways to get closer to your clients--even those that don't need staffing right now. Here are three ideas:
   • Outplacement--be a resource for clients that are downsizing.
   • Cooperative recruiting--partner with clients to source talent. If you have clients that aren't willing to pay fees, partner with them to find people. You'll reduce your cost of recruiting, and you may be able to provide a variety of other services to these firms to help them with screening, assessment testing, background checks and reference checking.
   • Workforce planning--become a partner in planning. Help your clients do a better job forecasting their staffing needs, so you will be the first one to know about their upcoming hiring requirements.


7. Move up the value chain
   To break out of the commodity game in staffing, stop selling staffing. Instead, develop new services where you take greater responsibility for delivering results, such as:
   • Become a workforce solutions provider--get beyond staffing and recruiting to assist clients with planning, onboarding, leadership development, training, and retention issues.
   • RPO or HRO--develop the skills and resources to provide outsourcing services.
   • Project solutions--move beyond providing people to providing results.
   • HR consulting--sell your HR expertise with small to mid-sized firms that lack internal HR support.
   • Workforce development--if there are specific types of people in high demand in your market, don't recruit them, train them! By providing training services, you can create a new revenue stream and build a talent database.


8. Redefine your pricing
   In marketing, strategy is defined by "the four P's"--product, price, promotion and place. So far, this article has mostly looked at promotion and product. But price may be one of the most overlooked areas for differentiation.
   
   Rather than charging the traditional mark-up on payroll or percent of salary fee, you may be able to create new markets for staffing by simply changing your pricing model. With a few tweaks, you can make your service affordable to a wider audience. For example:
   • Extended payment terms--spread the cost of a placement fee over a longer time frame to make your services affordable to smaller clients.
   • Flat fee / fixed hourly fee--for long-term assignments, a fixed fee model might be more affordable to your clients while providing as much profit to you.
   • Sell inventory at a lower cost--your candidate database is a perishable asset--the older it gets, the fewer people will still be available. As you recruit talent for specific clients, offer the people you did not place with those clients to others at a lower rate.

Make the Most of Haley Marketing

At Haley Marketing, we truly believe that we are partners with the staffing industry--helping companies like yours to find new, more effective and more profitable ways to sell services. Our belief is that the more we help you, the better it will be for our firm in the long run.

As you may know, we offer a lot of ideas--all for free. So if you are not already taking advantage of any of the following, let us know. We'll be happy to share.

1. Steal our ideas
   • Attend our Lunch with Haley webinars.
   • Subscribe to our monthly newsletter, the Idea Club.
   • Read our Ask Haley emails and our blog.
   • Join our Ask Haley LinkedIn group.
   • Download our free marketing guide, website guide, and SEO guide (www.haleymarketing.com/freeresources).
   • Follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/haleymarketing).


2. Get FREE consulting
   • Call us. Ask for ideas. We are happy to share!
   • Ask what others are doing.
   • Work with us to create marketing you can test...we can work with almost any budget.


3. Get more value from your own marketing
   • Increase the value of your website.
     • Add a blog.
     • Optimize your site for search engines.
     • Promote top candidates.
     • Add Google Analytics so you can see how your site is performing.
     • Create and test offers.
     • Market your Staffing Resource Center and Candidate Resource Center. (This idea is just for Haley Marketing clients.)
     
     
   • Do more with email marketing.
     • Expand your email list.
     • Market top candidates regularly.
     • Leverage monthly content--email, blog, drop-offs.
     • Use the content to train your team.
     
     
     For more ideas, check out our HaleyMail service.
   
   
   • Use direct mail more effectively.
     • Integrate your mail with sales follow-up calls.
     • On follow-up calls, be sure to ask for permission to email.
     • Reinforce offers made in your mailings in follow-up calls and emails.
     • Create an email version of your direct mail to repeat your message.
     • Create follow-up articles and drop-offs that tie to the mailings.
     
     For more ideas, check out our Door Openers service.
   
   

And the Last Strategy for 2011

Call Haley Marketing!

If you're already working with us, challenge your Marketing Advisor to provide you with new ideas for 2011. We will be happy to review your business plans for 2011 and suggest new strategies.

If you're not working with us, ask us how we can help! We are more than happy to share ideas to help you market your business more effectively. We can show you ways to generate more sales leads, make your sales team become more productive, reduce recruiting costs, and nurture relationships to create more opportunities to sell staffing.

All it takes is a call.
1.888.696.2900.