David Searns | Co-CEO
Another week, another conference.
This week, I was at the Midwest Staffing Conference in Chicago.
Great event! Top-notch speakers – from motivational content to sales and recruiting best practices, and of course, multiple sessions on AI.
I believe AI is a mandated topic for every conference speaker in 2024!
For me, this is the second week in a row that I have been invited to give a talk entitled 10x Sales Acceleration: How to use marketing to reimagine your sales process.
But today's newsletter is not about that talk or the Midwest Staffing Conference.
It's about a marketing technique called OPS.
Other People's Stages
Right now, almost everyone I talk to is struggling to generate sales.
Despite having access to a phone, email, direct messaging, social media, and more, staffing buyers are harder than ever to reach.
And if you can reach them, it's harder to get them interested in speaking with you about their need for staffing services.
This is where OPS comes into play.
There are companies and organizations that already have access to your ideal customers. They are regularly communicating with these people. They are hosting events that bring all your customers into one room.
And when you get on their stage, you not only get access to your ideal customers, you get instant credibility!
How can you take advantage of OPS?
Step One: Figure Out Who Has the Stage
This could include:
- Professional associations
- CEO networking groups like Vistage, YPO, or Entrepreneurs' Organization
- SHRM chapters
- User groups
- Conference and event organizers
- Chambers of Commerce
- Consulting firms that provide thought leadership content
- Podcast hosts
- Consultants or individuals with big social following in your target industry
- Any company that sells to the same people you do and has a blog or newsletter
The idea is to find everyone who already has the eyes and ears of your target audience.
Step Two: Have Something To Say
To take advantage of OPS, you must be able to provide value to the audience. This is not about selling staffing services; it's about creating content that will captivate both your ideal customer and the individual or organization that "owns the stage."
At Haley Marketing, each year, we develop several "signature presentations" – these are educational workshops that we can present live on stage, as a webinar, or on a podcast.
Our signature presentations are based on the hot issues in the staffing industry—no surprise that our focus for 2024 is sales and new and better ways to sell staffing and recruiting services.
For example, our May Lunch with Haley webinar will be our 10x Sales Acceleration signature talk. If you, or your team, haven’t heard it yet, make sure to register here.
For your business, what are the hot topics for your ideal clients? This could be based on the industries you focus on, your local geographic market, or the specific roles of the decision-makers to whom you sell.
Once you know the critical issues, you can then craft presentation topics that offer solutions to those issues—and in the process, highlight how staffing and recruiting can be used as a tool to solve the problems.
Step Three: Promote Your Presentation
There's no magic here.
Pick up the phone. Reach out via email. Connect on LinkedIn.
This part of the process is about working hard to pitch your signature content to those in charge of planning events, podcasts, newsletters, and blogging content.
Step Four: Build a Conversion Path
Getting on stage is an awesome marketing tool. It puts you in front of your ideal clients and prospects. It builds credibility. It helps illustrate the value of your services.
But getting on stage is just the start!
To maximize the impact of your presentation you must have a clear conversion path to nurture those engaged audience members into prospects, and ultimately, clients. To this end, your presentation must conclude with a call to action.
Maybe you can offer additional content. A follow-up consultation. Or just access to your slides.
In on-stage presentations and webinars, we love to include a slide with a QR code containing the special offer.
For podcasts, we include an easy-to-remember URL.
For blogs and newsletters, we simply link to a landing page with the offer (just like the one below!).
Your conversion path should be a logical (and non-threatening) next step to getting someone in the audience – your ideal customer – to reach out to learn more.
Then once they do that, you can use other marketing (and sales) techniques to promote your services and turn content consumers into engaged prospects.
But we'll leave those techniques for another newsletter. |
