Recruitment sales is a hard slog for most of us right now. It’s much harder than last year to win jobs, we’re missing the buzz of the sales floor working from home and those uplifting positive calls with clients are few and far between… when you can even get them on the phone!
But don’t worry – if you’re struggling to stay optimistic and productive right now, there are a few things you can do to get yourself back on track.
Stay in touch with your team
Before the pandemic, if you had a difficult sales call you could vent to your team mates for support. But now that you’re likely working from home, you don’t have your colleagues sitting next to you to lean on (and unfortunately, talking to the cat doesn’t cut it).
But remember your team is only a phone call away. Make a daily habit of calling your colleagues to talk about your challenges and successes and make it clear that you want them to do the same.
That way, you know you can vent to them when you’ve had a rough day and they can do the same. You never know, they might need the call just as much as you do.
Set some personal recruitment KPIs
It’s likely you still have company-assigned targets to hit, despite the impact the pandemic is having on your figures.
To stay motivated, put together some of your own personal KPIs that focus on elements of the sales process you can actually impact right now.
Building online relationships with new and existing clients is a slower burner when it comes to winning jobs, but it’s still progress and you’ll have more success there than cold calling prospects who have no hiring budget right now.
So to supplement your company-assigned KPIs, track things like impactful conversations and new relevant connections too. These additional targets will help you track progress in areas where you can have a positive impact when your placement KPIs are getting you down.
Practice your objection handling
Objection handling is one of the most useful skills you’ll have when doing BD in a job-short market. Naturally, when the market is tough, clients will hit you with tough objections that you need to learn how to approach skillfully.
It’s a good idea to speak to other recruiters to find out what objections they’re being hit with in this new market. You just want to approach objections in a way that you can still offer them support in order to stay valuable until they have jobs for you.
The most common objection you’ll hear in a job-short market is “We’re not hiring right now” – but this guide has everything you need to know to keep sales conversations going in that situation.
Create a healthy working-from-home strategy
It’s likely the good habits you started practicing at the start of lockdown to stay productive have slipped a bit by now. Don’t beat yourself up too much about this – we’re all struggling to maintain good habits in this ‘new normal’.
Try to start the day right and create a space where you can get into your ‘sales zone’. Just remember to take regular breaks as running yourself in to the ground isn’t going to help anyone. Something as simple as shutting down your computer at the end of the day will help you switch off sales mode and wind down so you’re refreshed for the next day.
In this difficult market, it’s natural to think you should be working all hours – but in the long run, you’ll just make the job harder.
And remember, this won’t last forever! You’ve been through the ringer recruiting through a pandemic but this has taught you a level of resilience that you will carry with you the rest of your career.
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