Consider this: there have been 10 post-World War II recessions. Do we really expect that another is not on the horizon for our industry? If you fantasize that your market is “recession-resistant,†watch what happens when hundreds of other recruiters come flooding into it because theirs isn’t. As Winston Churchill said, “Nourish your hopes, but [...]
Artices Tagged ‘dailyplanning’
Certain Strategies for Uncertain Times
August 28th, 2008
Organization and self-discipline are key traits for any profession – none more so than sales. While stellar salespeople generally possess several important key attributes such as the drive to succeed, the ability to relate well to others, strong verbal skills, and persuasiveness, a sometimes-overlooked trait is strong organizational skills. Even the most hardworking salesperson has a [...]
Reader Steve Portman wrote, “I keep reading in The Fordyce Letter and hearing from my colleagues that business is rebounding. Our assignment flow is increasing every day but our revenues have remained basically the same. Deals get off the ground but seem to go nowhere. When I look into why the deals soured, I constantly [...]
Being successful in this business as well as being successful in life is all about taking responsibility; personal responsibility for our actions and the results created by those actions. Now, I don’t expect that statement to come as a revelation to anyone reading this article. Nevertheless, based on the excuses we hear and perhaps the excuses [...]
Mike Crosswell, during the late 1990s, was the owner of Blue Arrow; the UK’s largest privately owned staffing organization. I met Mike at that time because he was on the Board of Advisors of the same company who had relocated me from San Diego to Atlanta to become their VP of Corporate Development (Trainer). We had [...]
You have probably heard of the 80/20 rule, which says 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. With a well-trained researcher, you can focus on the 20% that produces results and virtually nothing else. A skilled researcher will allow performers to focus on “money activities” and closing deals and will free up [...]
Is your desk really ready for 2005? Take this assessment and find out. On a scale of 1 10, with 10 being the highest score, rank yourself on the following: 1. Have you discussed your upcoming year with a coach, mentor, friend, colleague, or consultant? In other [...]
Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to think about how you’re going to make 2005 your strongest year yet in terms of production and professional fulfillment. The Action Plan below is a part of a process that I use with recruiting firm owners in my coaching programs to assist them in gaining clarity [...]
“Ultreya!” Dan McCarthy, a close friend and no relation, introduced that word into my vocabulary. Here’s how. This past April, Dan set out on a walking pilgrimage from St. Jean Pied de Port, a small town at the foot of the Pyrenees in Southern France and the gateway to northwestern Spain. On the first day [...]
When I started in this business, I thought that recruiting meant calling prospective candidates and reading them a job description. As you would imagine, this approach really only attracted the unemployed or active candidate. The real talent, the passive candidate, was never going to be dislodged by such an approach. I never [...]
Given equal amounts of effort, the more skilled your staff, the higher your production. But what is the most cost-effective means of increasing skills and production? There are now a number of video and audio products available, some of which are excellent. [...]
As salespeople by nature, recruiting professionals and owners are wired toward action and offense mindedness. Most of us think in terms of targets such as revenue, number of deals closed and the size of our team. In sports terms you could say that we think of touchdowns, homeruns, baskets and goals. This offensive mindset is [...]
I’ll never forget the most miserable hour of my day when I first started in the business. It was ‘plan time.’ This dreaded hour was spent hand-writing names and numbers of those people I was going to call, and if I didn’t call them, then I’d have to spend an entire hour the [...]
I recently had a conversation with one of my coaching clients who is a working owner in a small firm about a frustration he was experiencing. He had recently put a lot of time and effort into a search assignment and the client had flaked on him and was no longer returning his calls. This [...]
Stop kidding yourself. If you don’t know your numbers, you’re working blind and the likelihood of reaching your full potential, as a staffing professional, is very much in doubt. For over thirty years, I have documented the fact that achievement oriented people know their numbers in most, if not all, aspects of their daily activity. [...]
Paratroopers take great pride in their jump boots. They spend many hours each year spit shining them to the traditional airborne gloss. On the day before JFK was elected President, I made my first parachute jump at Fort Benning, Georgia. Exiting the plane and jumping into thin air at twelve hundred feet was [...]
What’s the owner’s success formula? It’s very simple; Systems = Freedom. If you, as the owner of your firm, go on a 4-week vacation, what happens to your business? What happens to the quality and quantity of activity? Some authors have defined the strength of a small business as being directly proportionate to how much [...]
Chapter 18 The intended flow of this book is to move smoothly throughout the entire placement process from planning and organizing your desk through the completion of the search, and then into developing the initial client to a solid repeat account embodying exclusives. So far, I believe we have achieved this. Nevertheless, we don’t want [...]
He had many years of experience as the successful owner/manager of a fine firm, yet he had a problem. “It’s not that I hire the wrong people,” he said to me. “It’s that I keep the wrong people too long.” To coin a phrase, “He ain’t the only one!” Were a long-tenured owner/manager to add up [...]
For many small business owners, their businesses don’t support their lives; they consume their lives. From my point of view, a business should be more than just a glorified job; it should be a way to get more of what you really want out of your life. There are 2 ways to do that. One [...]
What are you hearing on the street? What’s the latest buzz about the economy? About hiring? There are many positives out there: contract recruiters are busy, more jobs are being created, companies are talking to recruiters, candidate research firms are selling projects, and the pace of hiring is accelerating and heating up. Are we poised for [...]
As the economy continues to improve, many owners of search firms are now beginning to add to their staffs. The development of a new consultant is complex and time-consuming, with factors of training and management playing large parts. Yet the best training and management will serve no purpose if the right candidate has [...]
The topic of “burnout” comes up frequently in my consulting work with recruiting and staffing firms. This is particularly true when the economy is in recession and the overall business environment is less than robust, although “burnout” can happen to anyone at anytime. Actually, it is rare that I hear about a staffing professional suffering [...]
It’s 9 A.M. and you have a planner in front of you with 30 important calls to make when the “urgent” call comes in from an unemployed candidate needing an update on the status of his resume. You then check your email (for the 10th time in the last 60 minutes) and see that you [...]
Gap Insurance OK, we know we’ve been through a tough three-year period, but we have survived. We have made some placements here and there. We have borrowed from our savings and retirement plans. We have “maxed” out our lines of credit. And we know that all of the economic signs are pointing to the beginnings of [...]
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