Welcome to The Fordyce Letter:
…only without strategy!
There is a common mistake that I see repeated across the recruitment and staffing industry. From a development and training perspective over 80% of the recruiters I encounter are seeking to develop their sales skills: opening techniques, killer questions, Jedi-like influence skills, and robust closing skills. Each of these is a potentially valid training need. Each an area that I know I can help them to develop, although for some it is a case of putting the cart before the horse.
Let me explain further. Becoming a ‘great’ sales practitioner is clearly the goal of every sales person. Developing the techniques to win more clients is undoubtedly an important focus area for a self-sufficient recruiter. What benefit is there to develop such skills if you are pointing in the wrong direction? Developing the salesmanship of the individual alone is not going to generate more business.
Let’s face it, no matter how many times you may pick up your phone on a daily basis, there are always more skills that can be learned when it comes to cold calling. Phone skills are a staple part of every recruiter’s toolkit — without the skills to cold call, phone source, interview, sell, and close, you won’t make it as a recruiter.
Last week I went to pay some bills online. I looked at my account and realized there were charges listed that I had never made. I called the bank immediately. We shut down all of my accounts and opened new ones.
Thirty six years ago, I was an accountant. Happily or unhappily, as the case may be, putting lots of numbers into lots of big black books. Yes, they were big black books. Edison had invented the light bulb but Microsoft was some kind of fabric that kept small children and big dogs from making a mess on pillows . Being not too long out of a divorce I was focused on talking on the phone to discover what was going on with the rest of the world of newly divorced people — planning where and what time the “young and the restless” were going to solve the problems of the world that night. In a fit of pique, my boss walked by my office and uttered the now infamous words, “Why don’t you go find a job where you can do what you do best…talk on the phone.”
In a recent blog post by Jessica Lee, Senior Employment Manager at APCO Worldwide, a privately held, global public affairs and strategic strategic communications firm, she 
How many of us remember the days before Google, LinkedIn, and other social media sites… When sourcing was a primary function of recruiters, who relied on phone sourcing as the primary means of connecting with potential candidates. When recruiters resorted to purchasing phone directories of targeted companies and then figured out how to break through a phone system to reach the desired department, often resulting in many misconnections that somehow lea to the right person.
