A colleague recently sent some sales tips to me that was written by sales guru Jacques Werth. As I was reading the article, it became clear how simple sales can be if you have a system and tackle it with disciplined effort. The problem is most of us in business development, and staffing in particular, is that we have what many refer to as “my own system” or “our proprietary system”. The other problem I have seen is that while many of our industry colleagues put forth amazing effort, it may not be disciplined effort.

Here is a sampling of what Werth says the top producers are doing that 99% of the rest of the sales community is not doing:

1. They use the same system with every prospect. I enjoy the VITO (Very Important Top Officer) program by Tony Parinello. My first try with the system yielded a $4M annual contract. As you can imagine, I have used this system since that first try.

2. They only make appointments with prospects who are ready, willing and able to buy. This is probably the most simple but the most difficult to follow. Many staffing professionals think that any appointment is a good appointment. As Tony Parinello says, if you are selling to Seymour, they will waste your time always wanting to see more (more stats, more references, more lunches, more numbers) and you will not get the business.

3. They get conditional commitments to buy before they proceed. I see this a lot in direct hire. We send resumes to recruiters (who are not authorized to use an agency and who will not give you access to hiring managers) and you are spending your time on a non-existent requisition. I tell my clients that if you obtain agreement on the process, then you proceed to the next step. For example, I would suggest that you discuss resumes live rather than send them via email. I would say, I will send my top 2 candidates when we schedule a time to review them.

4. They determine what the prospects want to accomplish and whether they can satisfy their requirements. Why sell to a prospect who wants 90 day payment terms if you do not have the capability to fund the payroll for that long?

5. They are entirely open, honest and transparent about the negative aspects of their products and services. I recently consulted on a sale where the prospect was keeping only 1 out of every 5 temporary employees from a competing agency. The new staffing agency said, “I am going to be perfectly honest with you. As you go out to bid, you will find that I WILL NOT BE THE LOWEST COST PROVIDER. IN FACT, I MAY BE THE HIGHEST.” She concluded with the fact that if she could not double, at a minimum, their retention rate, she would not be worth the higher rate and would fire herself! I thought this was powerful.

In short, there is no need to recreate the wheel. If you work the hardest among your competition, have a system that is successful and repeatable, and you sell to the right audience with honesty and integrity, you will be a top producer. GOOD LUCK.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Best Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.