The elevator is faster, but the best salesperson in history said the stairs was the only way to success. Step by step.
Before COVID-19 we were at full employment and couldn’t find enough qualified candidates to fill the abundant job orders on the board. It was all about recruiting.
But in March the supply/demand equation that governs how where we in the Staffing Industry focus our efforts shifted abruptly. Unemployment is now about 20%, so candidates abound.
But the board that was once filled with orders now has too much white space.
That means it’s all hands on the sales deck.
Back when I first started selling staffing services I memorized fancy elevator pitches and value propositions. Naively, I thought spewing this information as soon as I sat down with a prospect would magically make someone give me a job order.
What I didn’t get then is that winning business is all about the prospect, not about us. And job orders won’t come unless there is a need and we are right there to prove we can deliver.
A few years into my career I heard about Joe Girard. Google Joe and you’ll see he was the winningest car salesman of his time. Joe averaged about 2.5 car sales per day, every day, for 15 years.
I assumed those were great results for the car sales business, but I was more intrigued by how Joe did what he did in a business notorious for making buyers cringe as soon as they set foot on the car lot.
I learned that Joe structured the sale of his cars in a way no one else did…to the tune of sending out about 13,000 cards to his prospective buyers every month. Yep, 13,000 touches a month went out into the lives of people Joe could potentially help – well in advance of any sale.
After a while, the world’s greatest “salesman” didn’t actually have to do a whole lot of selling!
The sale had happened long before the buyer needed him because they knew they had to see “that guy Joe” when they needed a new car and they got to the lot.
This seemed to make sense to me because I was always told sales is a numbers game. Was this all there was to it?
Structure. Numbers. Relevant messaging. Persistence. And timing.
These are the keys to making selling easy.
Because how we structure the sale is what sets the tone for everything to come later.
When we structure our sales process in a strategic way, we’re there when there’s a need. This doesn’t happen by chance. It’s deliberate.
So when does this “structuring the sale” even begin? When we’re in a first meeting with a prospect?
No. The structure begins before the prospect knows we exist.
It gets worked into the awareness we create of our personal and professional brand. It gets pre-sold at various points along the way. It’s not something (like that long involved elevator pitch and value proposition) that you unveil to a prospect to convince them to buy.
When we structure our sales process to be visible and relevant when a hiring manager needs us, we take the need to sell off the table.
So be like Joe and “sell” step by step. The job orders will come.
