In today’s competitive market, recruiters who incorporate a call step in their BD & headhunting activity are the ones experiencing exponential growth in their market share.
That’s because having meaningful conversations with potential clients and candidates over the phone yields significantly better results than solely relying on digital communication.
But an overreliance on channels like LinkedIn and email is still putting pressure on recruitment businesses.
Fortunately, several effective steps can be taken to motivate your team to pick up the phone which, when used alongside other channels, can drive better engagement, more meetings and higher revenue.
Why is there reluctance to pick up the phone?
Teams can be hesitant to pick up the phone for a variety of reasons.
Maybe they haven’t been trained properly on how to position your value and therefore lack confidence.
They could be flat-out afraid of rejection, they may not have a strong ‘reason’ to give that individual a call, or they could just have poor time management skills and not have ‘enough’ time or don’t see the value.
These are all issues that need to be addressed to ensure the culture at your organization is indeed a calling culture.
Advantages of using the phone
Having a team that prefers to pick up the phones is extremely beneficial for a number of reasons.
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Positively impacts revenue
From a top-line perspective, just shy of 66% of all the meetings booked across our customers are booked via the phone.
It is hands down the single most effective channel to reach someone. They are getting to an answer much faster by having a conversation right away rather than hiding behind a laptop so they are much more productive in terms of qualifying top-of-funnel opportunities.
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Easier to identify/ qualify leads
Your consultants and prospective clients/candidates are all busy people.
Calling can make it easier to identify/qualify leads and check up by phone rather than setting up lengthy sales pitch meetings.
Picking up the phone gives your team distinctive advantages in both driving conversions and gathering important feedback.
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Expands reach
By calling at a high velocity, you’re exposing your brand to the widest possible audience which includes potential opportunities that you may miss through other methods (email, SMS, LinkedIn touches, etc.).
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More personal
Having a conversation on the phone is personal. It puts your team in firsthand connection with a prospective candidate/client so that they can respond better to the needs of each individual and provide information that will move them along your pipeline.
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Positive culture
It’s not all about the people you’re calling, it’s also important for your team’s motivation and maintaining a positive and engaging company culture. Having a busy sales floor brings an energy that wasn’t there previously.
5 ways to get your team on the phone
As a leader, manager, partner, etc. it is your responsibility to motivate the team to lean on the phones first over any other method of communication.
With a well-developed culture around calling, your team is more likely to pick up the phones as it’s considered the ‘norm’. Here are five ways to get your team on the phone:
1. Set expectations
Without giving your team clear expectations, it’s like telling them to hit a target when they don’t know where to aim. Direction is everything and that’s the difference between highly successful vs. unsuccessful outbound teams. Start:
- Tracking your team’s quota and their individual conversion rate so they know how many calls they need to make per day to convert X amount of contacts to hit their intended target.
- Making sure your team has a solid understanding of the outcomes you drive, how you do it differently/better than other agencies and where you’ve done it before.
2. Develop a call strategy
Develop a target list you want them to call. It’s important this list is compiled of clients or candidates that all have a similar reason as to ‘why’ you are reaching out to them so the talk track is the same throughout the day. Combine this with:
- Understanding the best time to call your prospects. For me, I have the best luck getting hold of someone on Wednesdays and Thursdays as the beginning of the week is usually hectic for most.
- Creating a call script. Use it as a baseline. Have your team practice this out loud every day. When putting together a script, it’s best to break it down into a) reason you are calling b) why they should be interested (what’s in it for them) and c) an ideal outcome.
- Once you have a script in place, have the team use it. Make some calls and track the conversion rates. You will quickly see if you need to refine the script if you aren’t converting at the rate you’d like to. The best firms are always looking for marginal gains and ways to perfect the script.
3. Boost motivation and morale
The overall impact of having a team that’s hitting the phones consistently with a clear understanding of ‘why’ they are calling prospective clients/candidates is major. Major to the bottom line, major for team morale and major for your culture.
If outbound calling is ingrained in your culture as the best way to drive a meeting and you have the data to back it up, your team is going to be excited to hit the phones.
To set them up for success, have them focus on calling prospects that have a higher propensity to speak to them and start:
- Gamifying the outbound calls. Providing your team with a dashboard on team performance will not only boost the calling culture at your firm, but it will also hold individuals accountable. If someone is doing well, don’t reinvent the wheel. Go ask the top performers what they’re doing, how they are positioning themselves etc.
- Having your team work towards an end goal or a reward is key to getting them excited to hit the phones hard every day. This could be as simple as a gift for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. A team trip if they hit X target or highlighting the top performers of that given week (every week) so they know this is recognized by leadership.
4. Provide ongoing training and support
If you’re not constantly coaching, training and mentoring the team on how to get better on calls you’ll lose market share to those that are.
It’s also absolutely imperative that you lead by example and hit the phones with them a few times a week.
Role-playing a couple of times a week with your team is effective. It’s not about what you say, it’s ‘how’ you say it. Speaking with a compelling tone, with confidence and conviction. These skills are developed through hours of practice.
Record the calls so you can identify and then implement ways to improve. If you are always coming to your team with what they did wrong, they will shy away from the phones.
But providing constructive feedback to help them get better is key.
5. Monitor and analyze performance
Establishing OKR’s (Objectives and Key Results) on the front end along with a set amount of meetings they need to hit each week is important. I personally prefer these over KPIs as the team feels a part of a greater mission rather than simply hitting a number on a dashboard.
To track and optimize your team’s calling metrics, you should use a dialer that integrates with your ATS/CRM system to record and analyze the data. This will ensure all the notes from the call and the outcome are logged in your system of record.
A dialer is important as it will drive efficiencies across the team so they can spend less time on non-revenue generating tasks (looking up numbers, picking up a phone to manually dial, logging notes in your ATS/CRM, etc.) and more time driving top-line for the business.
Review your results to identify the gaps and the opportunities for improvement. Experiment with different scripts, techniques and talk tracks to measure their impact on your metrics. Additionally, as a leader, you should be proactive about calling out when someone is doing really well so they can share what’s working with the team.
Building a culture that places an emphasis on hitting the phones first before any other method of outreach is a huge advantage.
This isn’t an easy task, but it starts with leading by example and explaining the ‘why’ behind it using data. Giving the team visibility into everyone’s performance so it becomes competitive in a good way makes individuals accountable to continuously work to improve.
If all of these five steps are aligned, improvement of both your top and bottom line will be evident.
