The Art of Following Up

Written by Guest Blogger - Steve Catt

In the staffing business, 80% of success is just following up and this is the area is which so many sales people and recruiters fall flat on their faces. It’s no wonder that most candidates or hiring managers hold so few allegiances to any particular recruiter or remember to call a specific sales person when they have an opening. 

We badger a candidate when we feel we can sell their skill set to a client, want a referral or to persuade them into going for an interview on a Friday afternoon at 4:00 pm across town. Then, after they’ve dutifully provided us with what we need from them, they don’t hear from us again for weeks or maybe months on end!

Sales people spend hours and hours on the phone “dialing for dollars” repeating a variation of the following; “Hi my name is so-and-so, and I want to place someone in your account so I can make money, do you want anybody? No, well thank you, you won’t hear from us again until I turn your account over to the new guy and he repeats the process”.

It’s no secret why so many clients and candidates treat us like a commodity; it’s because we treat them like a commodity. Staffing companies must personalize their approach for their clients and candidates – which doesn’t mean that we should just throw them on an e-mail list and send them a thinly veiled advertisement every week.

If we are going to foster relationships, get referrals and be perceived as valued partner, we need to regularly reach out to our stakeholders in a more personal manner.

A common objection to this is  “I speak to hundreds of people every week, I don’t have the time to touch everyone personally, let alone often” the secret is you don’t have to touch everyone, but those you DO reach out to, you need to reach out regularly and ensure your communication adds value.

This is where the art of following up comes into play. When you engage a candidate or potential client, determine that person fits into your core target demographic and add them to your “gold sheet”. The gold sheet is made up of the top 25-50 companies, candidates and managers that you want to work with and who will eventually make up your personal “Eco System”. These are people you must form a good relationship with to be successful.

This list should contain no more than fifty people (any more is unmanageable). Gold Sheet Members should take up 50-75% your effort and time. Remember the 80/20 rule? Track their interest and personal information in your CRM and reach out to these people with a phone call and email of interest every month and personal note every two months. This will equate to 2 ½ touches per month, not too much to be intrusive, but enough to be consistent. Set it up in your CRM so that you are doing no more than 10-15 touches per week - that way the task is not overwhelming and you can personalize each one.

An email of interest is a piece of content you have come across that you can forward to your gold sheet member that would be of interest to them. Twitter, TED.com videos and The Harvard Business Review are great sources of content. Accompany with a note like ”thought you might find this interesting” or “came across this and it made me think of you”.

Phone calls and personal handwritten notes don’t have to be anything more than something like “nothing urgent, I just wanted to let you know I thinking of you. Wishing you and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving, let me know if I can help you in anyway”.

After the fourth or fifth touch, you will begin to see a huge change in the way you are perceived. You will stand out because you actually reached out when you didn’t want anything – which makes it much easier to approach them when you do.  

It takes a little time and effort to organize, but it’s well worth the effort for those on the “gold sheet”. However, if you really want to stand out from the crowd, return every call you get, gold sheet member or not. Just think how you feel when someone doesn’t return your phone call. And remember, today’s junior account manager is tomorrow’s CEO!

Steve Catt is a successful entrepreneur and one of most highly regarded staffing professionals in Southern California. Steve's simple, logical approach to helping a client define the outcome they want from every job and then finding the best person to provide that outcome, in the clients environment, has made him the go to staffing partner for companies large and small for nearly twenty years. His latest project, The RiteVu, is revolutionizing the way companies identify, select and manage the contract labor.