Are you an aspiring professional aiming to break into a career in agency recruitment, or are you an experienced recruitment consultant who wants to remain relevant to employers in an increasingly competitive market? Invest time in developing your sales skills!
Sales and Business Development have, somehow, become dirty words amongst some agency recruiters. This is wrong! Perhaps, there are too many young professionals entering the industry without fully understanding that recruitment is a sales job above anything else.
SALES IS EVERYWHERE!
The craft of sales permeates every aspect of our lives, from convincing your friends to choose the restaurant that you prefer, to promoting your ideas in a work meeting.
In agency recruitment, doing B2B and B2C sales well is the means by which a consultant achieves mutually-beneficial win-win-win outcomes for clients and candidates, whilst also hitting their revenue and income targets.
Like Gary Vaynerchuk says, B2B sales is easy! Figure out what the person on the other side of the table values, and deliver to that. The other side of sales is a little harder – I’m talking about the repetitiveness of the numbers game that goes into the process; cold-calling, speaking to gatekeepers, leaving voicemails, trying to talk to managers as they are “about to go into a meeting”. Well, yes, it’s not easy – but nothing worthwhile is. If it was easy, everyone would be doing in!
IF YOU ARE AN ASPIRING PROFESSIONAL LOOKING TO GET INTO AGENCY RECRUITMENT
Your first job in recruitment should be one where you have great mentorship (I can help you find that!) and requires you to do a lot of New Business Development. I mean, A LOT!
Sales is a numbers game where quantity eventually results in quality. Your initial year in recruitment is a build phase during which you become a subject matter expert in your sector and grow your client and candidate base.
This is also the time when you should be honing in on your phone sales skills and getting very good at hunting for leads and building your professional network. These are the skills that will serve you long-term and take your career to the next level.
ARE YOU AN EXPERIENCED RECRUITER WHO WANTS TO REMAIN HIGHLY EMPLOYABLE?
Over the last 5 years in rec-to-rec I’ve come across so many profiles of people who are great at candidate delivery and account management but don’t want to business-develop or bring new clients on. If you fall into this category, you can still add tremendous value in the right role, but these types of roles are much more rarely available and, usually, much easier for agencies to fill.
If you want to always remain a hot asset in the recruitment market, it is your ability to generate new sales revenue that will give you the edge. Sales and Business Development are simply the most sought-after skills in agency recruitment!
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the above article! Please e-mail me on dmitri@hamiltonprofessional.com.au and perhaps we can exchange some ideas!
