Self Assessment – Customers

Based upon your score here, there is a definite need to engage with your existing customers or focus on winning some new ones. Either way, it is important that you create a plan for the next three to four weeks to engage with your clients and find more to work with. There are still a number of assessments to complete in this Bounce Back Pack – as you go through the next five sections, think about which areas will contribute most to you developing your customer base. In terms of timing, this is a good time to be looking to add more customers to your portfolio. With the amount of change and uncertainty over the last four months, many organisations will be reviewing their supply chain and reimagining their hiring strategies for 2020. Chin up and find some good customers to work with. The mission entitled I need more jobs could be exactly the right one for you to start with after you’ve completed the Bounce Back Pack.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Complete the rest of the Bounce Back Pack
• Draw up a lead generation strategy to help you find immediate business
• Set goals for client acquisition – what type of work do you want to win in which profile of client? Draw it up and create a sales plan around your definition of a target client
• Discuss with relevant colleagues about potential cross-selling opportunities
• If your market is genuinely suffering from economic depression, take stock and consider transferable markets you could work to generate billings
• Watch The Pillars – Cardio, Urgency and The Beast
• Once you’ve completed the Bounce Back Pack, start on the mission I need more jobs

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Not too bad. If you believe that you could benefit from more jobs to work on, the best place to start is with your existing customers. Customers are the easiest to sell to: You have trading history, terms in place and lines of communication are easier to open. How many of the organisations you work with work with other agencies? What would you consider your market share to be with those organisations? Perhaps the regular managers you talk to aren’t hiring imminently but there could be other managers you’ve yet to discover who will. Expanding the number of managers you engage with will increase your visibility of what is happening in your customers and help you become more proactive on their behalf. If on the other hand, your customers don’t have hiring plans for 2020, still stay close to them. Reactive hiring can catch organisations by surprise. People leave, those on furlough may elect to not return and sudden spikes in their own customer demands can create an immediate need.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Complete the rest of the Bounce Back Pack
• Revisit your customers and increase the number of managers you are engaging with. A minimum of three points of contact per organisation is recommended
• Create a communication plan for each customer – set a frequency of communication across the managers you’ve identified so that you’re talking to someone in that firm a minimum of once per fortnight
• Develop a newsletter style mailshot to send to your decision-makers each week. Keep your customers up to date with what is going on in the market. Become valuable for sharing good content. Consider sharing different content with HR and functional managers
• For those customers who will be hiring in July & August, explore their supply chain to develop business with other organisations. Selling to your clients’ suppliers, customers and partners is a warm sell
• Customers who plan to hire in 2020, who have growth plans are valuable so treat them as such. Lock them into high value service level agreements to work with you as their lead recruiter
• Watch The Pillars – Planning, Qualification and Cardio

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Great result. You’ve clearly got a good handle on your customer base and relationships with the right profile of decision-makers in the right businesses. As good as your score is it is important that you avoid becoming complacent. For every client you are working with that has told you they will hire in 2020, they could be a lead or prospect for multiple competitors. For those that you work with in competition with other agencies, what is your plan to increase the commitment you get from your customers? How can you elevate your status to that of partner rather than supplier? For every customer you have who gives you good feedback and talks with high levels of commitment, put together a Service Level Agreement. This marketplace will still have some vulnerability to it. Committed customers will be critical. It’s exactly the same for your customer – a fully committed recruitment partner will be critical in this uncertain market to help secure the right talent. When you can see that you’ve got a healthy customer base it can be easy to relax the sales activity. Now is the time to up your sales work – your market is buoyant and there is going to be more (potentially better?!) business out there. As a proven player in our market, you can win more clients whilst in the privileged position of being able to choose who you want to work with.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Complete the rest of the Bounce Back Pack.
• Review your customer base and put together case studies about the impact you’ve had on those clients. Build your case studies so that you can use them in your new business sales activity to demonstrate your capability.
• Put together a demand forecast for each of the clients you believe will be hiring in July and August. Talent pool now so that you can move quickly to progress new jobs into placements. Get your client involved and let them know what you are doing proactively to help them.
• Create a template for a Service Level Agreement to increase commitment from your customers to you and you to them. As other agencies bring people back from furlough you know they will be upping the sales activity. Build a fortress around your clients.
• Build an avatar (a replica or model) of your busiest customers. Put together a list of other businesses who look like that to create a sales plan for the next four weeks. If your customers are busy then these avatars are probably, as well.
• Watch The Pillars on Planning and Cardio. The time to put pedal to the metal is when things are looking most positive.
• Enroll on the mission – I need more client control. It will help you secure even more commitment and help you to build the fortress to keep your competitors out.

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