6 Tips On How To Keep Your Pipeline Full When Starting A Recruitment Agency

Let’s face it. One potentially stressful and daunting aspect of starting a recruitment agency is making sure your pipeline stays full, that you are making the most from it, that you are constantly optimizing your chances for attracting more qualified prospects through the front door and that you are forging quality relationships. Regardless of which comes first in terms of priorities, every fellow recruitment agency is willing to operate changes or implement strategies and tactics that would guarantee success in the long run.Question is, what’s the actual applicability of these strategies and how does one decide upon a single, highly efficient one?

These days, the internet is full of information, some good some bad.

In our experience, keeping your sales pipeline full is essential for a business’s growth. So here are just a handful of time-tested and proven tactics that are worth giving a try if you are just starting out.

Establish the desired payoff early on

Think outcomes and consequences. No one can accurately predict what the future holds when you start a recruitment agency, but the recipe to success should nonetheless include your desired payoffs.

How do you know you’ve achieved a goal if you don’t set a target?

Each week set yourself an outcome, we call them MIO’s or Most Important Outcome. Will you reach out to 50 prospects or 5? Do you want to sit down with 12 prospects this month or 25? Once you know what good looks like you can set a plan in motion to achieve it.

Stay positive

Contrary to popular belief, the road to success isn't always smooth and easy.

You are probably familiar with the old adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day!”

Which is why staying positive, confident and finding joy in your daily work is important if you want to achieve your long-term goals.

Simply put, it makes you feel hopeful and promotes a forward-looking attitude, which in turn makes for a great opportunity for potential partners, clients and candidates to catch a glimpse of the actual person behind your brand.

People are naturally drawn towards positivity.

So don’t steer away from face-to-face meetings as they are a sure-fire way to keep your pipeline full.

Grow your client and candidate lists

When starting a recruitment agency there are multiple stakeholders to consider, attract and support. You don't just market to clients, you also market to candidates. Without candidates, you can’t serve clients and without clients, you can’t support our candidates.

So, if you aren’t using an intelligent mix of social media, talent platforms, local events, paid advertising, webinars and SEO optimized content, to keep both candidates and potential customers engaged, chances are you are missing out.

Assuming you know where your target market spends most of its time, there’s no better time to market them than right now.

And if we’re talking about online interaction, we’re also talking about relevant content, engagement and analytics.

So, there’s an immense opportunity behind opting for an integrated marketing and sales strategy that allows you to attract and convert your clients and candidates.

Consider using a pipeline management tool

There’s no business without sales. So never underestimate the importance of managing your pipeline if you are thinking of starting a recruitment agency.

Assuming you’re already on the lookout for a sales pipeline management tool, we have a recommendation to leverage your professional network of contacts and drive new business.

Firefish Software voted the best recruitment CRM provider in 2019 by its users, is an all in one sales and marketing tool that could potentially change your business forever.

Not only will you save precious time by having all the important information in one place, but also maximize the possibility of staying ahead of the game and make better decisions based on the relevant data available.

Stay in touch with your pipeline

Once you’ve attracted your customers and candidates in your pipeline, it’s important to stay in touch with them.

At the end of the day, they are your most reliable source of information when it comes to your business as they always provide real feedback.

And there are several ways you can do that, through email, phone calls or surveys.

So initiating conversations with them and listening is important for growing your sales pipeline, building long-term meaningful professional relationships as well as building a trustworthy brand in the process.

Persevere and be consistent

Recruitment is hard but with a consistent approach, it becomes easier. Moving forward despite less than optimal or maybe outright negative experiences surely isn’t a simple thing to do.

In the case of negative responses, the best decision is to not take things too personally, be resilient and revisit your content or reason to call to make sure it is truly valuable for your contacts. This way you can be assured that it’s the time that’s not right rather than your approach.

Whether it’s your offers being turned down or a bunch of potential customers who haven’t opened their emails from you in a while, it’s critical to stay motivated and on the right track.

Simply put, keeping your pipeline full doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will agree to buy your services right off the bat.

Remaining on good terms with those you interacted with and making sure the quality of your services is exceptional will mean the right prospects will convert to clients sooner or later.

Always be respectful and maintain a professional attitude towards those who aren’t ready or open to your services. If you continue to deliver consistent value without distracting from their priorities, when they are ready to work with you, you’ll be top of mind...

Now, keep an open mind and add your own experiences to this list. And if you can grow your audience and cultivate their interest so that you have a full pipeline of customers willing to buy right now, you’re on track to build a successful, sustainable recruitment business.

However, if you want to get access to some more essential bullet points regarding the do’s and don’ts of a recruitment start-up, we’d be excited to speak with you about how to take your sales and marketing efforts to the next level.

Human provides fine-tuned tactics that ensure service deliverability, add new routes to success and increase billings.

So, if you wish to nurture the knowledge you have already acquired or simply need some hands-on guidance and support for your recruitment start-up, feel free to contact us.

To date, we have developed a valuable set of tools and know-how to help our clients and partners stand out in the marketplace, serve their clients better and build a strong business.

This article first appeared on Human Associates blog at https://joinus.recruithuman.co.uk/2019/12/23/how-to-keep-your-pipeline-full-when-starting-a-recruitment-business/