Business Development For Recruitment

Are you wondering how to grow your business and get more clients? If the answer is yes, then you have clicked on the right post. Growing your recruitment business is no small task, and this post will help you create your go-to-market strategy.Business development is the lifeblood of most organizations, and it is no different for recruiting firms or agencies. Forbes defines business development as the process of creating long-lasting value for an organization from its clients, relationships, and markets. And we couldn't agree more because as a recruiter if you don't try and get new clients and build valuable relationships with them, you won't have any job orders to place and manage, as there will be no job orders. This article expounds on how recruiters can use business development to gain new business and more job orders. We'll also spill some actionable tactics for getting new clients. So let's dive right in!

Leveraging Business Development to Gain New Business and More Job Orders

As a recruiter, your business development efforts should involve various activities, such as identifying potential clients, engaging them, getting them to do business with you, taking their job orders, maintaining excellent relationships, and much more. Now let's face it; this is a complex function that needs a clear-cut roadmap and strategy to beat the competition. Don't you agree?We've created a comprehensive 3-step guide to help get you off on the right foot and guarantee that you stand out in this highly competitive and saturated market.

Step 1: Identify Your Buyer Persona(s) and Focus on Engaging Key Decision-Makers

Developing detailed buyer personas for your firm is the first step towards attracting and retaining the right clients. Simply put, buyer personas are semi-fictional characters that represent your ideal customers as defined by data and research. Knowing who they are is overly critical to identifying their pain points, building relationships, initiating follow-ups, etc. In the long run, the goal is to acquire and retain more clients through research-based insights. The big question is, how do you create your buyer personas? Here are some simple tips to help you gather the information you need to identify your ideal clients:

• Looking through your contacts database, how do your clients or leads view and interact with your business? Watch out for the trends and note them down.
• Use form fields to uncover critical persona information. For instance, if your personas vary with company size, ask each lead for insights about company size in the forms.
• What has your sales team got to say about the leads they've interacted with the most? What generalization can they make about the kind of clients you'd serve best?
• Engage your existing clients and prospects to determine what they like about your services.

Speaking of engagement, you should find and focus more on the key decision-makers - and aim at building multi-threaded relationships. That means looking for more than one contact point so that when one key stakeholder leaves or moves to another department, you won't need to start building relationships from scratch again. The best approach to building long-lasting relationships with crucial stakeholders is researching details about company events, such as:

• Hiring and firing trends, especially for new C-level positions
• Existing software or technologies in use
• Upcoming projects
• Significant financial events, e.g., mergers or acquisitions

Noting down these critical details can help inform you where the company's focus is, the challenges they're facing, and the solutions they need to operate efficiently. Knowing these pain points can help you source and present them with the best talents at the right time and as we all know, timing is everything!

Step 2: Identify Your Value Proposition and Pitch

The second step is all about identifying why a prospect or client would prefer your product or service over your competitors - and pitching it. A value proposition should communicate the benefits a client would receive by giving you part of their business, which in this case is helping them recruit and retain the best talent for the positions they are looking to fill. But how do you identify your value proposition and pitch it? Here are the four essential tips to help with that:

Keep it simple

The idea is to get prospects and clients to understand what you have to offer without mincing words. Most people think that blinding clients with extensive marketing jargon and science will leave them in awe and grappling for your services - but nothing could be further from the truth. Your value proposition needs to be straightforward, and you should also avoid rash hyperboles, e.g., "the best in the game."

Ask the right questions.

Below are some critical questions to seek answers for when looking to write a catchy value proposition:

• Does my firm have what it takes to solve a pressing need?
• Is it mandatory to address that need?
• Is this a top priority for my prospects?
• Do my prospects have a shortage of talents needed to address that need?

If the answers to these questions are YES, then you're on the right track. It means there's demand for your services, and you need to act immediately to provide reliable solutions to the prospects.

Exceed Expectations

Your value proposition shouldn't just address the fundamental questions and concerns. It would be best if you went out of your way to exceed clients' expectations, considering that you're in a very competitive market. As such, you should also seek answers to the following questions:

• What's one thing that's unique about your service and what does that mean for your prospect?
• What additional benefits does your service offer and how will that make your prospect's life easier?
• How effortless is it for clients to access and use your service?

Step 3: Create a Multichannel Engagement Strategy

Even after identifying your buyer personas, you want to talk to your clients and prospects to acquire firsthand information of what they want. That means calling their phones, engaging them via social media, texting, emailing, meeting them one-on-one, etc.The multichannel engagement strategy helps you develop accurate, firsthand feedback about interested them about the services you provide through open and click rates. It'll help you come up with ideas, phrases, and keywords that clients appreciate. Hence, they'll be more interested when they notice them in your value proposition.

Tactics to Attracting New Clients at Your Recruitment Agency

If you're a new agency, you must draft an unbeatable business development for recruitment strategy to attract more prospects and convert them into clients. Here are some actionable tactics and methods to help you realize that feat:

Email Campaigns

Email outreach is one of the most underrated campaigns that can prove an absolute goldmine when appropriately utilized. Creating personalized and industry-specific emails rather than generic ones is the first step towards attracting new clients to your recruitment agency. Also, note that the emails need to be extremely simple, precise, and informative to communicate your value to the prospects in the shortest time possible.

Social Media

Almost all prospective clients have social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Quora. Creating personalized ad campaigns to market your recruitment agency effectively exposes your services directly to the clients' or prospects' sight. Joining local job-sharing forums, especially LinkedIn or Facebook, is an excellent idea as many groups give countless opportunities to engage with prospects.

Cold Emails and Hiring Managers

Cold calling is another effective way to get in touch with prospects. The method still delivers more results than you'd imagine. Hiring managers are often on the market for recruitment experts who can help them attract and retain the best talent. And this requires them to read relevant emails for a better part of their workdays. Thus, you can connect with these companies by building a comprehensive database of their hiring managers and sending them targeted outreach through calls and emails. Just make sure to perfect your 30-second pitch!

Reviews, Referrals, and Follow-Ups

Nurturing professional relationships and connections is influential in enhancing your outcomes. Naturally, hiring managers will remember the firm that helped them get the best talent when they struggled with recruitment. Therefore, as you gain more clients, be sure to follow up on them, ask them to review your services, and keep them close so that you'll be the first agency they'll call in case they need help again. Ask them to refer your services to others looking for help in hiring the perfect candidate. Make sure that they write a 5-star review.

Optimize the Latest Tools and Technologies

Always stay updated with the latest industry practices, such as recruitment technologies, new channels, CRM techniques, etc. Technology sets you apart from the competition by allowing you to take a step back and reevaluate the broader picture through data. Talent intelligence platforms like Loxo are designed to help recruitment agencies achieve operational efficiency by automating the hiring and recruiting process through AI, machine learning, and complex automation.

Summing Up Business Development for Recruitment

There you go! Business development for recruitment is the best-proven technique of attracting and retaining clients for more job orders and operational efficiency. Remember, it all boils down to identifying your buyer personas, focusing on engaging key decision-makers, identifying your value proposition, and creating a multi-threaded engagement strategy. Suppose you top these up with tactics for getting more clients, such as optimizing the latest technologies, cold emailing, social media, and email campaigns. In that case, we guarantee your recruitment agency would be a beehive of activities all year round! Loxo is the No. AI-powered recruitment CRM and applicant tracking system with built-in AI-sourcing functionalities complete with personal contact information. If you'd love to see Loxo in action, sign up for a free demo!