Building Back Your BD Muscle
Superfast Recruitment
Helping Recruitment and Staffing Organisations Stand Out In Their Sector
Today let's talk Business Development (BD).
BD takes time; not easy for a recruiter to appreciate!
Recruiters can be quite impatient; be honest now; hold your hands up. I'm sure that many of you can relate to that.
Here is the thing.
When it comes to BD, people often forget that inputs don't always result in outputs as fast as we want, even though we try to convince ourselves that they will.
The Impact Of The Last Few Years on BD
Let's put some context around this and what's happened over the past few years regarding BD in the recruitment and search space.
Let me take you back to 2019. Everything was pretty normal before COVID arrived, and BD was something that people did as required, though not necessarily enthusiastically!
When things were not going as well as people wanted, and there weren't quite enough jobs on the board, some level of BD would happen.
This is particularly true for micro businesses and smaller SMEs. Some of the bigger organizations do have a BD system dialed in; I'm going to talk to you about a system you can implement as well.
When we look back in 2019, people did some BD, but it wasn't anything they did with any great gusto, with any systems in place, and then COVID-19 appeared.
Then suddenly, everyone had this experience of all those really good clients that they had stopped working with.
Candidates were being furloughed, made redundant, and laid off. All of those things were happening. I think it just brought BD up to a level of focus for people.
However, then what happened is the market started to shift.
As we all know, we moved toward the end of 2020, people discovered video interviewing, and companies started recruiting. There were talent shortages, and many recruiters didn't need to do a lot of BD.
People were coming to them because recruitment had paused, creating a backlog of vacancies.
Consequently, Recruiters didn't have to do much BD.
Of course, because they didn't have to do it, they didn't do it!!
Then suddenly, in 2023, we moved into a much tougher time for some people. Some businesses had overhired and were shedding staff, laying people off, and making redundancies, and for other people, the assumption that the movement in hiring was going to continue didn't hold true.
People suddenly thought, "OH, Crickey, I need to start being focused on BD again."
People forget that BD takes time to build and fill a pipeline. Depending on the sector, this process can take anywhere from 60 to 180 days or even longer.
Therefore, you must create a system that you implement consistently around it.
Going back to making half a dozen calls here, maybe half a dozen calls next week, and then stopping isn't going to work for you.
There are several famous sayings that remind us to do the work.
Rome wasn't built in a day.
Do you remember Colonel Sanders? He didn't get good at what he was doing until he was in his 60s. We all know about sowing and reaping, but the trouble is we forget that this is how life is and that it does take time to build momentum in anything.
Please do not throw Teddy out of the cot if things don't work immediately.
Instead, keep doing the work.
Build A Two-Part System
Instead, create a system and expect it to work—because it will if you give it the time and energy!
One of the most predictable methodologies for business success is creating a BD system.
It works like clockwork as long as you work it.
Now, it does take time to build.
You're going to get results as you build your system consistently.
Remember, initially, this is a volume game until you build momentum.
It might take you a hundred calls to get four or five appointments, but you accept that is how it is. It improves over time because, obviously, your skills get better.
Remember that this is what you need to factor in when you're thinking about BD.
I'm not going to get into too many of the tactical aspects of BD here. I'd just like to give you an overview of the system that you need to implement.
You need two types of systems, and people forget the first one, which is your current connections.
The second one is your cold outreach. If any company wants to grow, it must keep filling its pipeline with new people because people drop in, drop off, and drop out.
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Mine Your Current Connections
The first one is your current connections. I would imagine most people listening to this have a database of candidates and clients, which should be your first port of call.
You've already worked hard to get in connection with those people. Don't assume that "Oh, they won't be interested." Don't let that crazy brain of yours, that primitive brain, kick in and say, "Oh no, no, no, they won't be interested."
You just might be surprised because things change fast.
As a quick and easy start, ensure you are reaching out to all your tier-one connections.
Some people have 10,000 or 15,000 connections on LinkedIn. Are all of them relevant? Maybe not, but I suspect a remarkably high percentage are.
Reach out to those people; that is one area to start with your BD.
You've got a database because most people do not mine the gold around their feet because they get a bit lazy and think people won't be interested.
The other thing you can do with people like that, of course, is ask for referrals.
You can talk to the candidates that you place. Maybe they know somebody. Maybe they're working in a new organization.
Ask for referrals. Make it a more active process because the challenge with referrals is making them predictable.
Referrals are great, aren't they? I always like to say that they are the jam on the bread.
However, if you leave them to chance, you don't know when they'll appear, and you cannot rely on referrals unless you take a more active stance in asking for them from people you're working with.
If you do that consistently, you will be able to plot the data and you can see how that works for you. We've talked about current connections. That needs to be in your BD system.
Remember here I'm talking about multiple points of contact. I'm not just talking about emails.
Emails are great. They're brilliant for creating demand. They are a must-do marketing activity for anybody.
Remember: At the end of the day, picking up the phone and speaking to somebody will make a massive difference to your results.
Remember, we're not involved in a transactional sale here. This is an expensive item. This is a person. This is a human being. This is a team. This is a chief operating officer being placed somewhere. Think about the conversation that you're going to have with people you know, people on your database.
Remember, don't just rely on email. Help your email work by picking up the phone and speaking to people. The next thing is cold outreach.
Create New Connections
You have to continually fill the pond. If you don't reach out to new connections, you will never grow because you'll be losing people all the time, whether you like it or not. You cannot hold on to everybody forever.
There are Plenty of places to reachout and find people's contact details.
There are multiple connection scraping tools out there you can use. I'm not going to name any because, to be quite honest, they come and go. I think Apollo is one at the moment, but who knows? Snov.io is another very popular tool, but all you need to do is go online and Google contact scraping tools, and you will be able to find various tools that will get you the names, email addresses, and telephone numbers of people that you want to reach out and connect with.
A BD tool that is especially useful on LinkedIn is Sales Navigator. You can pull lists of ideal people in your market that you want to reach out to. This is something that you should be doing daily.
You're continually building a pond to fish into. Don't just do it when you think, "Oh, gosh, I've not got enough business." Do it now. Make sure that you do this as a regular thing.
You can even go to some of the freelancer sites and find some real ninjas who will create a list for you that you can then work on. Then it is all about consistency and daily activities.
What are you going to do daily?
How many people will you reach out to in your current database daily?
It doesn't take as long as you think.
Then, how many people are you going to reach out to on LinkedIn? How many messages are you going to send? How many phone calls are you going to make?
Map it out daily; do it consistently.
Let's start with this quarter. Obviously, I know we're halfway through a quarter, but just do it for 90 days. Measure your activities and see the difference that that will make for you.
Most people just do not build the volume; They give up. They just make 20 calls and 15 calls, but they don't consistently do this daily because momentum starts to build.
Then, once momentum starts to build, you will start to see results.
This is about building that muscle back up. Start somewhere.
Thanks
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Denise
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How We Can Help You This Year
As a Superfast Circle member, we help you build your marketing so that it aligns with your sales and BD. If you want to find out how, then email us or book a call here.
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