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The Fordyce Letter

Straight Talk for the Recruiting Profession


Articles tagged 'coldcalling'

The Business of Recruiting

“The Phone Rang…” Recruiting the Candidate

by on Sep. 16, 2011


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This time the phone rang after hours. Lucky for me I was working late and answered the call. It was from one of my favorite students. She was having problems navigating this sluggish economy. She complained that she hardly ever wrote a ‘recruitable’ Job Order anymore and that her main problem was once she had a great JO, she was unable to recruit anyone for it. She was stuck!

We talked about recruiting for a while and it was obvious to me that she had a knowledge deficiency that was leading to an execution deficiency. Yes, she was indeed stuck. The bottom-line was that she had forgotten how to do the “recruiting” part of our business. And so, I began at the beginning…

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Cold Calling, Webinars

Webinar: The New Rules for Cold Calling in 2011

by on Jul. 14, 2011


WendyWeiss

According to a recent Expertise Marketing Research Report, “of 30 possible marketing tactics… [cold calling] rose to the top as the most effective.”

A Marketing Sherpa survey found 45%-53% of the executives interviewed stated a cold call helped vendors get on the shortlist for purchase.

Cold Calling is Proactive – Productive – Profitable… it gives you instant gratification… and when you know how to do it right it is the most powerful skill in your sales arsenal.

Join Wendy Weiss, The Queen of Cold Calling™, for this webinar and get:

  • IMMEDIATE RESULTS: Take what you see and hear in the webinar and put it to work for you on your very next dial. It’s like flipping the switch “on”… suddenly you are a master at business by phone.
  • 6 NEW RULES: Make your phone the most powerful, most productive, most profitable business tool you own.
  • #1 QUESTION: I’ll tell you the #1 question you must answer and show you how to answer it so your prospects want to hear more.
  • THE NEW REALITY: You can’t afford to let the misconceptions and myths about cold calling lead you to missteps that cause failure. I’ll show you what works and how to get results now.

Date: Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Time: 2:00 pm ET
Duration: 60 minutes
Cost: FREE

Click here to register for this upcoming webinar.

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For Managers, How-To

Is the “Wuss Factor” Hindering Your Sales Success?

by on May 3, 2011


BobCroston

I had the pleasure of meeting Ed Rendell when he was the mayor of Philadelphia. He was pointed and direct, quite different from the other politicians I have met over the years. So it came as little surprise when early this winter, Rendell, then Governor of Pennsylvania, called NFL officials “wimps” for canceling a game between the Eagles and Vikings due to snow.

When asked about the NFL’s decision the next day, Governor Rendell made his stance clear: “My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country. We’ve become a nation of wusses.”

This nation of wusses has extended into the field of sales. There’s no hiding that sales is difficult. Day in and day out you face rejection, you must constantly be filling the pipeline with new leads, you have quotas you must meet, and results are often inconsistent.

Yet too many sales people use these difficulties as excuses and let them hinder their own success – they wuss out.

How can you tell if the wuss factor is dragging you down? Look out for these five symptoms: 

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Cold Calling

Matching, Pacing, and Rhythm

by on Mar. 31, 2011


bank_teller

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.

I went to the bank ten business days later, and I still did not have a functioning ATM card. That meant that rather than simply go to an ATM for cash, I had to wait in a long, long line at the bank for a teller. Twenty minutes later, by the time I got to the head of the line, I was seriously annoyed. I expressed my annoyance to the teller. Her response? “Calm down, Ma’am.”

So my dear readers, do you think this response calmed me down?

Of course not. It had exactly the opposite effect. I went through the roof. “Don’t tell me to calm down,” I snarled. Where before I had simply been annoyed, now I was really angry.

So why am I sharing my banking woes?

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Cold Calling, The Business of Recruiting

“I Want Your Job…”

by on Mar. 16, 2011


Sandra McCartt

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.”

Now if you have ever been divorced or have spent much of your life putting numbers in little boxes, you know the mind set du jour of someone who is newly divorced and doesn’t like what they do for a living, either. I remember saying something like, “That’s a great idea, now if you will excuse me, I am on the phone.” I kissed my life as a bean counter goodbye (as soon as I got plans firmed up for the evening), picked up my purse, and headed to the nearest employment agency.

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Cold Calling, Weigh In!

Client or Source: Perspective From the Corporate Recruiters

by on Feb. 28, 2011


attraction

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 laments about some ‘shady’ business practices she has been seeing as of late from some third-party recruiting professionals:

“…how am I to respond and react to a headhunter/recruiting agency who I know has tried to recruit our company’s talent away who then reaches out to me to try to solicit our business?” 

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Cold Calling, How-To, Technology

Phone Sourcing Basics

by on Dec. 21, 2010


telephone

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.

Phone sourcing has become somewhat of a lost art form – which is interesting considering that we live in a world of connectivity yet have lost the personal touch of picking up the phone and calling, regardless if you are full cycle recruiter, a sourcer, or a researcher.

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Cold Calling, Relationships

What You Wish You Could Tell Candidates

by on Nov. 16, 2010


fordyce-default

I’m always hearing recruiters say they want to be more helpful to candidates.

I wonder. I wrote the following with the idea that it might help some express some of their challenges through a third-party voice.

I’m a phone sourcer. That means I am paid to find people who hold specific titles or who are doing specific job functions inside (usually) specific companies.

I’ve been doing this a long time.

There are a few things that spell disaster for you as a job seeker.

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Editor's Corner, Technology

What if there weren’t telephone numbers?

by on Sep. 2, 2010


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Over on TechCrunch late last week, the co-founder and CEO of voice-application startup SayNow, Nikhyl Singhal, wrote a very interesting post titled Phone Numbers Are Dead, They Just Don’t Know It Yet. The idea behind the post is that with the development of resources like Skype and Google Voice, telephone numbers are dying a slow death. With the growing mainstream acceptance of online communication tools, will we be facing a time in the not-so-distant future where telephone numbers will be obsolete? There is a very real possibility of this. Don’t believe it? Check out some of the main reasons Singhal cites to qualify this theory:

  1. No control. Anyone can dial your 10 digits, including your ex-girlfriend, a political campaign worker, or a solicitor.  Unlisted numbers, Caller ID and do-not-call lists all tried to solve this problem, but these solutions still don’t prevent unwanted calls.
  2. Phone numbers are tied to a device, not to you. Everyone has multiple numbers, yet your home line is shared, leaving callers guessing the best way to reach you.
  3. User experience is very limited. The phone was designed as a utility—dial a number, have a conversation. It’s remained this way since its inception.  It’s not optimized for other experiences, which is why voicemail and conference calls are tedious, and why checking flight status is worse than a root canal.
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Cold Calling

How to Effectively Cold Call

by on Aug. 16, 2010


50stelephony1

Evolution of Cold Calling & Recruiting

Cold calling came about as a way to find and close new clients. Given leads, a “real” salesperson needed to be able to call on prospective customers to sell a product or service. These prospective customers were not expecting the call. Hence, the term “cold call” ensued. For a powerful depiction of cold calling, watch the 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross.

During the early days of recruiting, technology was nonexistent. There were no faxes, computers, databases, Internet, social networking, applicant tracking systems (ATS), webcamming and mobile and cloud technology. The only tools were the Rolodex, file cabinet, telephone, physical transportation and advertising (newspaper, TV, radio).  Recruiters developed leads through incoming resumes from advertising, referrals and networking at job fairs, user groups, and other venues.  Many recruiters were already cold calling clients. When they could not find candidates through the usual methods, they easily turned to cold calling into companies to find candidates.

The Best Choice

Yesterday’s scenario was much different. There was good reason to cold call. Resumes were limited and mail could be slow. Networking and searching was cumbersome and often had to be done in person. Advertising was expensive and did not always result in the best matches possible. Being able to call into a company and pull out a targeted passive candidate saved time and money and often resulted in superior matches.

To be truly effective in today’s sophisticated market, one needs to be able to determine if cold calling is the best choice. Asking and answering the following five questions have helped me to determine whether or not to cold call.

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