Building An Effective Staffing Firm Sales Process
We all know the importance of a well trained staff. We all know that sales teams are a driving engine of our businesses. We all know how we want our sales efforts conducted. We sure do seem to know a lot. Then, why are our sales teams not performing the way we want, not following our process, and not delivering the results we want.
Over the last 20 years we have worked with organizations to understand and document their sales process, understand what their teams are actually doing daily, present ongoing training and consistently review results.
Your Staffing Firm Sales Process
While most know what they want their staffing firm sales process to be, very few have taken the time to think through each step and document that sales process. Both thinking through the process and documenting it are equally important. Everyone get to your whiteboards and write out your sales process in detail. Be sure to include; who your target audience is, where do you get contact information on your target audience, how you want that contact to occur, and what you want the communication to be, all the way from cold calls, though meetings, req’s, submittals, interviews, and placements.
-Does your sales process include follow up?
-Does your sales process include referrals?
-Does your sales process include client technology roadmaps?
Go through the details as deep as you possibly can and document, document, document.
Due Diligence
So, you have detailed your ideal sales process now what? Most people jump to training, but have you identified what your team is currently doing? Staffing firm sales training fails when we assume that what we are putting out as a process is being followed. Do a similar exercise that you just built with your sales process with members of your sales time. You need to understand what they claim they are doing to best frame your training between their reality and your ideal.
Consistency in your sales process is above all your most important step.
Staffing Firm Sales Training is Forever
This part of the blog is the easiest and hardest to cover. The title says it all. Sales training is not a one and done conversation. Sales training must be reinforced on a regular basis. Depending on seniority of your team sales training should be conducted minimum two times a year and attempt to get deeper each time. Sales people fall back to their way of doing things as often as you let them.
Schedule your sales training for ongoing and separate new hires from longer term sales team in order to keep training at an appropriate level. If learning is forever then someone needs to be training forever.
Inspect What You Expect
Many Staffing Firms build reports to show activity, meetings, req’s, submittals, interviews, starts, duration and more. If you don’t have these reports then build them.
-If you do, then how often do you look at them?
-How often do you review them with sales?
-How often do you set goals with them about this date and then follow up to confirm how they did?
Inspect what you expect is a concept that means if you set a goal (expectation) then you must be able to review that expectation (inspection) through some kind of reporting and review process.
Most managers build the report and review reports sporadically and discuss with their team members next to never.
Sales Process = Sales Training = Sales Progress
About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.