For 20 years now I’ve been a recruiter, trainer, coach, and mentor. In that time I have watched and listened to literally hundreds of recruiters try to explain to a potential customer why they should work with their firm over the dozens of others they get calls from every month. In all that time I’ve come to discover that we (recruiters) do an absolutely horrible job of differentiating ourselves from one another. Everyone wants to talk about the exact same things:

“I’ve been in business for X years.”

“We specialize exclusively in this area (almost always what the client says they need).”

“I’d be happy to offer (insert the name of your best customer here) as a reference.”

“We’re located here in (insert random city/ST) so we do a much better job of selling the community.”

And the piece-de-resistance, “I’m able to find candidates you won’t have access to without me.”

The words may come out differently from recruiter to recruiter, but the message is almost always the same.  This has to change. If you want to start to capture the market share and clients you desire, start with a whole new approach to what you “sell” your potential customers.

Understand the Transition

Companies that we work with are going to move through three distinct steps as they transition from being a Prospect Company to a true Client Company. The first stage in this process is VISIBILITY. You have to become visible to a potential customer. They have to know you exist. We accomplish this through our website, emails, and most importantly, phone calls. The second step is proving CREDIBILITY to a prospective customer. This is where most recruiters drop the ball: we don’t know how to effectively prove how credible we are to first-time buyers. Customers will become true clients only when we show them that working with us promotes PROFITABILITY. When you show them how you solve their problem and do it in such a way as to save them time, energy, money, and do all that in an easy-to-work-with fashion, you will have a true client.

The Fundamental Problem

Recruiters as an industry face an incredibly unique dilemma. For most other industries if you want to sell a customer a product you usually identify the problem that customer has, show them that you can supply a solution to the problem, and if they like your solution, they buy. We don’t have that luxury. Our entire industry was built around solving one problem – the need for companies to find people. So we can’t sell the “solution” to a problem. We have to sell “how we provide the solution.”  It is this “how” that clients use to determine which of the agencies they talk to have the most credibility!

Understanding What Clients Really Want

Whenever you present your agency to a client, you have one major mission — telling them “what’s in it for them.” Realize that clients are getting calls from multiple agencies, and to get their attention you have to sound different and more professional to capture their attention. Realize that clients care about basically six different areas and you need to address them in your pitch.

Clients care — that you have a process.

You need to be ready to explain the steps you will go through to ensure you will deliver quality candidates to your client and take them all the way through the recruiting cycle.

Clients care — about speed.

How fast can you put the candidates in front of a client?

Clients care — about accuracy.

Speed is important, but clients also want to see only quality candidates and that you are accurately matching the candidates you present to the skills they required.

Clients care — about accepted offers/show ups.

Clients are extremely aware of candidates finishing the process. They don’t care how many good candidates you present if none of those people accept the offers when they are extended or they don’t show up for the first day of an assignment.

Clients care — about longevity.

Once a candidate is hired through an agency, clients don’t want to have to think about refilling that position for at least three years on a direct hire and on the contract side they want people who stay the entire length of the contract.

Clients care — about finding new talent.

This is the most important feature you have to sell. You have access to people they don’t have access to through their normal recruiting efforts.

What Clients Want Is Only Half of the Answer.

Now that you know what your clients are looking for, how you share your information with them is the other half of the equation. To be truly successful, understand some fundamental sales realities. Start with understanding which styles of sales work best and then combine those styles with the correct information you know your clients are listening for.

Stay tuned next week for Part 2 as we discuss knowing what your customers buy by understanding what sales styles work best.

image source: cali.org

Dear Barb:

Thank you for accepting my invitation to connect on LinkedIn. Perhaps you’d be open to offering some suggestions as to the most effective ways to get decision makers (Director, VP and C-Suite executives) on the phone.  Once I speak with them in real time, I have no problems conducting sales presentations and closing them on using my recruiting services. After being in outside (medical device) sales for many years, I still struggle with getting past their administrative assistants, which is curious, since I never had any problems, previously.

Can you please help? Thank you for your time and kind attention.

Robin S. Newhall, CA 

Dear Robin:

The best way to get through to your decision maker is to have their name in advance. You can accomplish this either by researching social networks or websites which often list the names of your targets.

Another way to obtain names is to call a receptionist between the hours of 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. and ask for the correct spelling of the name of the person you need to contact.

For example: “Would you please give me the correct spelling of your MIS Director’s name?”

If you are asked why you need this information, give a simple answer. You are sending some information to them and want to make sure you have the correct spelling of their name and exact title. When you ask for the spelling vs. asking for the name itself, most receptionists will assume you have a name! This is a very effective way to obtain names.

When you call in and ask for the person by name rather than by title, your chances of being transferred greatly improve. If you are asked the reason for your call, there are several effective responses:

1. I’m calling for a referral
2. The reason for the call is personal
3. I have previously mailed information and was following–up, _________ is expecting my call
4. The reason for my call is to get some additional information
5. I’ve been networking with a number of professionals and was given _______’s name as someone who might be able to lead me in the right direction. I would greatly appreciate it if you would connect my call.

If you’re dealing with a receptionist, their job is to give out information. If the gatekeeper is a secretary, one of their functions is to screen what they deem to be unimportant or sales calls. They must see the benefit to their employer if they are expected to put your call through. Use these ideas and you will get through to your targets.

Barb Bruno, CPC, CTS

Would you like to Ask Barb a question? Email her at support@staffingandrecruiting.com. Each month in The Fordyce Letter print edition, Barbara Bruno answers questions from individuals in the Recruiting Profession. We will bring you some of these Q&A responses from Barb each week on FordyceLetter.com.

Editor’s note: Last week, we gave you part 1 of “The Phone Rang…” Robocruiter series, “The Total Account Executive.” This week we continue this short series from Bob Marshall with part 2.

For those of you who haven’t been exposed to Robocruiter before, buckle your seatbelts.  I am going to take you on a brief flight through some of his more memorable (to me) recruitment technique snippets.  In part 2 of our journey, we will look at:

• The 10 manifestations of failure due to lack of commitment;
• The 8 tenets managers should follow to ensure success in their offices; and
• The 6 reasons why we market.

Sprinkled within these major topics, I will discuss how Robocruiter qualifies his JOs and how he achieves a 100% matching to send out ratio.

The 10 manifestations of failure due to the lack of commitment

1. Poor quality Job Orders (JOs) and Recruit Data Sheets (RDSs) – This is when our client company or our candidate refuse to give us the information we need in order to be successful in our placement activities.
2. Lack of qualifying the interview process to find out when decisions will be made – This starts with knowing when the last day is that the HM can go with the position still open.  This is the ‘drop dead’ date.  We then need to know who interviews, when, time between interviews, when the hiring decision will be made and by whom.
3. Inability to close the placement – We are afraid to close the deal because we don’t have that many deals on our hot sheet.  It is professional to close the deal just like the doctor closes the operation.
4. Lack or failure to Market or Recruit consistently – This is a process, not a series of events.  We market every day and we recruit every day.  Just as the doctor markets for new patients, we market for new clients.
5. Failure to plan – Professionals plan.  Doctors plan.  Recruiters plan.  None of us ‘wing it’.
6. Failure to close on objections – Even with the best of intentions, novelistic things happen along the way.  Just as doctors have to be flexible when their surgeries don’t go perfectly, so too do we need to be flexible in handling objections as they arise.
7. Lack of urgency – We work where there is a sense of urgency.  Indeed, we are paid, most of the time, to circumvent the time factor.
8. Lack of discipline or intensity in completing the assignment – If we don’t make a commitment to our business, we won’t have the discipline to complete our assignments.  They are not always fun, but if they were easy our clients wouldn’t need us.  Our business is pretty straightforward, but it can be very intense.
9. Lack of keeping up to date in the specialty – Would you want to go to a doctor for surgery if he was doing surgery like they did it twenty years ago?  No you would not.  So why would a client use you if you were not up to date in your specialty, in your niche?
10. Blaming others for lack of production – This is the ‘grass is always greener’ syndrome.  We must take responsibility for our own actions.

The 8 tenets managers should follow to ensure success in their offices

1. Be committed to this business – You can’t expect commitment from your AEs if you don’t make that commitment yourself.  You teach best by becoming the best role model.
2. Be capable of working the basic/practical concepts daily – AEs most respect those managers who work a desk on a daily basis.
3. Provide defined, well-planned goals for your office – Well-defined goals guide the success of an office.  You have to know where you are going in order to get there.
4. Provide advanced training for your tenured people – While the ‘Classics’ never change, the tenured AEs want more—behavioral technique (like NLP) training; advanced negotiating technique training; advanced selling skills training; etc.
5. Provide a fair and rewarding compensation plan – As long as our comp plans are fair and equitable, we won’t lose our people.
6. Set up “minimum standards of employment” – Your weakest link is your minimum acceptable standard in your office.  If you expect everyone to bill $250K per year and one AE, who remains employed, bills $150K per year, then $150K is your minimum standard of employment, no matter what you say.
7. Set a positive, enthusiastic and committed environment – We are in a sales business and attitude is key for us.  Set the tone in your office and don’t let distractions destroy it.  If an AE is not feeling well or is upset and exhibiting negative emotions, send them home.  Negative people are vexations to our spirit.
8. Be open to talk to AEs about successes and failures – These can be personal as well as professional.  Regardless, be open to communication with your AEs.

The 6 reasons why we market

1. To develop new and better JOs and client companies – By recycling the companies in our niche, we can find better JOs and client companies and higher level JOs as our trust factor grows.
2. Keeps AEs excited about their industry – When we are consistently marketing, we will upgrade and carve a special place for ourselves within our niche.
3. To become experts in the industry worked – Everyone wants to work with an ‘expert’; just have a medical problem and see where you ultimately go—not to your GP, but to a specialist who is up-to-date on the current technology that they will use to treat your infirmity.
4. To get the JO before anybody else does – ‘The early bird gets the worm’—be eager and start early. The best JOs are usually the unpublished JOs.
5. To open up other avenues; develop new business – By picking up the phone and speaking into it, you never know what will come your way.  New business comes to those who market, in many different forms.
6. To help AEs avoid blanking months – Business begets business.  On a daily basis strive to secure new JOs and new Send Outs (SOs).  Those activities, especially the SOs, will lead to placements.

Stay tuned next week for more from Robocruiter…

“The Phone Rang…” by Bob Marshall is a series that defines what we, as recruiters, do for a living. This article series ran in The Fordyce Letter over the past year and we are proud to bring you the series online. To subscribe to the print edition of The Fordyce Letter, click here.

The Scripts That Work — 6-10

Welcome to the last installment of The Art of Marketing and Business Development series. Last week, we discussed the first five business development scripts that are working today:

1. Reference from an Internal Champion
2. C-level Approach
3. Vertical Market Approach — “Insight”
4. MPC/”A” Player Approach
5. Combination Approach

This article continues with highlighting the additional five marketing scripts, 6-1 0. Keep in mind: different selling situations will call for different scripts. As a recruiter, it is important to have as many options (clubs) in your recruiting bag as possible. Master them all, so you will be prepared for any selling situation and have the ability to pull them out when that shot is needed. Don’t forget, the goal is to achieve a large quantity of job orders coming in so you have the ability to continually ‘top grade’ the work you have on your desk. Until you get a large number of “A” search assignments (job orders), keep marketing every day. That’s right – every day.

Additional marketing scripts:

6. Job Posting Approach

Most recruiters are very familiar with searching and viewing the postings on the job aggregators (Indeed, Jobster, and Simplyhired) as well as the main job boards. These postings can be great sources for marketing opportunities if the appropriate approach is utilized. We don’t want to look like an ambulance-chasing attorney trying to make an extra buck. You have to be honest and upfront. It is most important to get the hiring manager’s name before the call. Calling into HR will do you little to no good. Get on LinkedIn or the company website and find out who the hiring manager is, then make the call as follows:

“Hi, Mr. Prospect, This is Jon Bartos from JSI. We haven’t talked before, but I need your help. Do you have a second? Great! We work with many of your competitors and focus exclusively on [name industry] Mobility Software. Here’s where I need your help: I had an email sent to me about a position your organization posted for a [position name] Mobile Software Systems Engineer. I recently concluded that same search for a competitor and have been working with a few “A” players that may be exactly what you are looking for now. If anything, it could certainly save you a significant amount of time in filling the position. Whom would I speak with at your organization to help you fill these openings?”

 If you get any resistance – you can try this:

“I was just trying to call to make your job easier. It’s proven that “A” players can be as much as 10x more effective than a “B” player. As you can imagine most of the “A” players are invisible to your job ads due to fact they are not actively looking; they are happy and knocking the cover off the ball with a competitor. The only real way to get hold of these impact players is through real relationships like I have with these individuals. Does it make sense to get a few of these “A” players in the mix and explore the possibilities?”

7. Flip Reference Check

Reference checks are an excellent way to get additional job orders and search assignments. By doing a very thorough and professional job conducting the reference check, you will have established enough rapport to ask for their help. Every reference check with a hiring manager should be flipped to see if there are opportunities to do business with their firm. At the end of the reference check, mention something like the following:

“Thank you for the time and the reference for [candidate’s name.] One quick question, since we work in the same industry as you do, who would I work with at your organization to help find great talent?”

You could also add in a few questions before this statement:

“How difficult is it for [organization] to find true “A”Players?”

“How are you finding your talent today?”

“How long does it take you to fill a position?”

“Really, what’s that costing your organization?”

“How are the current recruiting efforts working from your perspective?”

It is always good to find the pain in recruiting and maximize it – to open the door to the solutions you can provide.

8. Flip Recruiting Call and Strike a Deal

Recruiting calls are typically our biggest source of leads for job orders and search assignments. When talking to candidates daily about possible opportunities for them, it’s time to turn every one of those calls into marketing opportunities or at least a lead source for potential job openings. At the end of the call, the flip can be as easy as this:

“ I look forward to working with you on your job search and will do everything I can on your behalf to make sure you can be as successful as possible in finding the next step in your career. There is a favor you can do for me since we are working together. I have wanted to work with your organization for quite some time. Who would I need to talk to at your firm to initiate discussions on the possibility of helping them find the talent they need?”

 Or to strike a deal:

“ Let’s do each other a favor. I will look forward to helping you find another opportunity and do whatever I can do to help you be successful in your next career move. In return, can I ask that you help me with contacts at your existing organization to help them find the talent they are looking for?”

If it’s a hiring manager you are talking to, use the previous questions in flipping a reference check to gather further insight into the organization’s recruiting strategies and success.

9. Getting Exclusivity Approach

Being exclusive is imperative if you want to guarantee that if the candidates you bring the table match, you will make a placement. Getting exclusivity can be a challenge however, as there are many myths that hiring managers have about recruiting. Some hiring managers think that recruiters just have access to those limited people in their databases and that’s it. They think the more recruiters they have working on a search, the more candidates they will receive. The theory is correct, they will receive more resumes initially, however they will find themselves with very few after the first week or so. The reason being that when contingency recruiters find out they are not exclusive, the search turns into a race and every participant tries to throw stuff against the wall just to see if it will stick. The client will get a lot of volume (quantity) but very little quality. The perception of getting many candidates initially can be attractive, but most contingent recruiters will not place a priority on a non-exclusive search and will spend minimal time on it. Typically this results in only the low hanging fruit, which are individuals out of a job or desperately looking for a job. To combat this belief that many hiring managers have and to get exclusive searches, try this approach:

Explaining the Real Deal

“Mr Prospect, how many recruiters currently do you have working on your search(es)? … Three recruiting firms…Interesting… Can I share with you what happens in the mind of recruiters when they find out that they’re not working exclusive on a particular search? Recruiters are typically commission-based and tend to spend their time on the searches that will yield results the fastest. Once a recruiter finds out that they are not the only firm working on a search, it becomes a race. All firms involved rush through a search to find as many candidates that are close fits as possible and send them over as quickly as possible. These candidates are from internal databases as well as job board candidates. You will get an initial run of resumes, but then you will receive none. That’s because all the recruiters are not doing an “active” search on your positions to actually go after the “A” players who are gainfully employed and working for a competitor. They don’t have the time. It’s a race, remember. Unfortunately no quality control and close matching and selling happens due to time constraints. You, the client, end up being the quality control person and not the recruiting firms. That’s a lot of work. The end result is that you get to choose best player out of the poor to average talent you were given, choosing the best of the worst, so to speak.”

Sell the Alternate Solution

“My strong suggestion is to let our firm take this search exclusively. This will allow us to directly call in to the marketplace and go after the gainfully employed “A” players, who are over- achieving with your competitors. This will also put the quality control back into the search so you are not doing all the work and we can deliver 3-5 of the best players in the market place within about three weeks. The big advantage to you is that you get a chance to select the best individual out of the best players in your industry, instead of choosing the best of the potentially the worst. Make sense?”

10.  Question-Based Approach (Questions, What If I, Proof)

The Question-Based Approach is a method that uncovers realized and unrealized needs. One must first establish credibility and then ask questions to uncover the needs. It’s a fun approach and takes a detective-question-asking mentality to be successful at it. The process is to:

1. Ask questions
2. Uncover realized or unrealized needs
3. Quantify the need in dollars and cents as well as other costs; ”Maximize the Pain”
4. Provide an alternative solution
5. Offer “proof” and plan to move forward

For example:

“Hi, Mr. Prospect, My name is Jon Bartos with JSI. How are you today? Great. Mr. Prospect, we are one of the leading recruiting firms in the Mobility Computing space. We have helped these [name three organization]) in your industry build their teams with “A” players to help them achieve their goals. I don’t know if we can help your organization or not, but I would like to ask a couple of questions if you have a minute? Wonderful…”

Ask Questions

“Mr. Prospect… As you may know, Game Changers are individuals at organizations that can make a major positive difference in their organization to help them quickly attain their objectives. How do you find Game Changers at your organization? What methods are you using?”

Additional Questions

“How are your current methods working for you? How long does it take to locate the talent you are bringing to the table? How long does it take you to fill an open position in your area? How do you know for sure you have a Game Changer when you hire one? If you could change one thing about the process you are using, what would it be? What positions do you have now in which you could use a few Game Changers?“

Quantify the Need

“So it takes you about four months to fill a position? Who is doing  the job in the meantime? Really? How much is that costing the organization? What happens if you don’t fill the position – what would that mean to the organization? That’s a lot of time and a lot of money.”

Alternate Solution

“What if I could show you a way to reduce the time to fill each position as well as to reduce that $400,000 profit number that you are losing due to inefficient sourcing and hiring methods. Would that be justification for us to do business? Good.

“Here is what we have done for some of your competitors…. (Explain value proposition – why use you opposed to all alternatives.)

“I propose we work together this way, to solve your sourcing and hiring problems. (Explain the way to work together to solve their problems.)”

Offer Proof

“Don’t take my word for it, Mr. Prospect. We have worked with ABC organization for the last twelve months. We have brought their hiring time to fill from three months to just over six weeks – which saved the organization over $250,000 in hard costs, not including the soft costs. I would like to give you their number as a reference to call and to verify the results they have experienced.”

We are now well in to the second quarter of 2011 but there is still time to implement the three key principles (the Quantity/Quality/Starving Man Principle, the 7 Selling Situations Principle, and the Insight Principle) in to your marketing approach and to give these scripts a try based on what is applicable to your situation. Start now; you may be surprised at the positive results they yield.

But as most successful recruiters know, it’s really not about “how great your script is” or “how good you sound” on the phone. The key is making the calls!! Just pick an approach, pick up the phone and make the calls! Make 20 calls a day minimum – but make them every day. Most people who are unsuccessful in this business fail simply because they do not make the calls. They are unable to obtain enough assignments to even apply the quantity/quality principle. Don’t let this happen to you. The reality is that “quantity” solves all your quality job order problems. As a matter of fact, it will most likely solve all of your money problems, too!

The Scripts That Work — 1-5

Earlier this week, I shared with you three key principles to establishing a strong marketing foundation. Of course, it all starts with obtaining high quality searches.

After that though, you need to know how to have an appropriate conversation with potential new clients, and the best way to do this is by having a pre-written script to help you. Today, I bring you the first 5 of the top 10 marketing approaches that rock the recruiting world today. 

1. Reference from an Internal Champion

As discussed, the quickest way to bring in new assignments is with existing accounts. To get high and wide in those accounts, the first step is to ask your existing contact for a reference. It may sound like this:

“Joe, It’s Jon Bartos with JSI. How are you?… Good to hear. Joe I have a question for you. How have I done in providing your team with the talent you have been looking for over the last few years?” (You may have to remind your client of whom you placed with them.) “I’m glad you’re satisfied with how we are doing. Based on our success with your business unit, I would like to be able to help the other teams in your organization as well. Here is where I need your help. Who else in your organization is looking to hire talent in the next 3 to 6 months?…  Tim Brown… in Engineering is bringing on engineers? Great. As a favor, would you mind giving Tim a quick call or dropping him an email to let him know I will be reaching out to him to introduce myself. If you could share with him how your experience has been with my organization that would be fantastic and I certainly would owe you one.”

Once you have an internal reference, with or without a written or verbal testimonial, your marketing approach gets pretty simple.

“Hi Tim, this is Jon Bartos from JSI. I have worked with your organization, specifically with Joe in Marketing over the last few years. He suggested I might want to reach out to you to see if you need help finding talented engineers. I have helped Joe to successfully build his team and I would like to discuss the critical needs you are trying to fill on your team in the next 3 to 6 months…”

2. C-level Approach (“Rick Ball” Approach)

Selling to the C Suite (CEO, CIO, CFO, COO) can be intimidating to some. A great book to read about selling to this level is Selling to VITO by Anthony Parinello. In his book, Parinello talks about the language you need to use for the C Suite is different than that of a rank-and-file manager or director. The C Suite is interested in: increased revenue, decreased costs, increased profits, and their critical metric — increased shareholder value. Here is how the script goes:

Existing Client: “Hi, Mr. President, this is Jon Bartos with JSI. We haven’t spoken before, but my organization has helped your company save over $300 million last year. We did this by finding the best talent in the market place for your VP of Supply Chain position in Rick Ball. I wanted to reach out to you today to see if there are other places on your executive team or in your organization that you could use another superstar like Rick Ball.”

New Client: “Hi, Mr. President, this is Jon Bartos with JSI. We haven’t spoken before, but my organization has helped one of your largest competitors save over $300 million last year. This gave them the opportunity to reach a record profit year and achieve their best year in over 25 years. I don’t know if we can do the same for your organization, but I would love to share the details with you and thought it may be worth a five minute conversation.”

By knowing the successes and impact your placed candidates have had with their organizations, you can use that data to create additional business.

3. Vertical Market Approach – “Insight”

The vertical market approach is one that adds value based on your experience in the market place that you work in. This works well and applies if you have a specific market or a specific position that you focus on.

“Hi, Mr. Prospect, this is Jon Bartos from JSI. Have you heard of us before? We work with many of your competitors in the industry, focusing specifically on the Mobility Software Marketplace. We have helped organizations such as Syclo and Dexterra grow over 30% per year in revenue and increase profits by over 40% by finding the critical talent they needed to achieve their goals. We have done this because we are niche focused and are in touch with the “A” players in your market place on a daily basis. We have relationships with the individuals who are blind to job boards due to performing at high levels for your competitors and not looking for other positions. I don’t know if we could help your organization or not, but thought it may be worth a five minute conversation.”

4. MPC/”A” Player Approach

The MPC or “A” player approach has been used successfully for over 40 years. The simple reason — it works. The reason it works is because it’s a “Proof Statement” of your work. It’s proof that you know your market and know what you are doing – going to the market with a true “A” player. The marketing approach sounds like this:

Intro: “Hi, Mr. Prospect, this is Jon Bartos with JSI, we are a firm specializing in finding “A” players for the Mobile Computing Software market place. The reason for the call: I was doing a search for one of your competitors (name) and came across one of the top sales reps in your industry, and thought of you.”

Feature – This killer was the top sales professional at one of your top Mobility Software competitors – producing over $5 million in revenue per year.

Achievement – He has personally brought in their top four largest accounts they have today.

Benefit – Which means that his next employer will not only get a big producer, a true producer that only knocks down???, but also understands the value of what major accounts bring to an organization.

Close: Does it make sense for you and this individual to sit down to explore the possibilities? Does Monday or Tuesday work better for you next week?

5. Combination Approach

The combination approach is a combination of the Vertical Market Approach and the “A” player approach. This is probably the most effective approach in the market place. It shares with the prospective client not only your insight into the vertical market you are in, but also backs it up with a proof statement – the “A” player you have. There is something significant about actually having the ability to “SHOW” a client your capabilities.

“Hi, Mr. Prospect, this is Jon Bartos from JSI. Two reasons for the call. First, have you heard of us before? We work with many of your competitors in the industry focusing on the Mobility Software Marketplace. We have helped organizations such as Syclo and Dexterra grow over 30% per year in revenue and increase profits by over 40% by finding the critical talent they needed to achieve their goals. We have done this because we are in touch with the “A” players in your market place on a daily basis. Those are the individuals who are blind to job boards due to performing at high levels for your competitors and not looking for other positions.

Which leads to my second reason for the call…

 I was doing a search for one of your competitors (name) and came across one of the top sales reps in the mobility software market, and thought of you.”

Feature – this killer was the top sales professional at one of your top Mobility Software competitors – producing over 5 million in revenue per year.

Achievement – He has personally brought in their top four largest accounts they have today.

Benefit – Which means that his next employer will not only get a big producer, a true producer that only knocks down, but also understands the value of what major accounts bring to an organization.

Close: Does it make sense for you and this individual to sit down to explore the possibilities? Does Monday or Tuesday work better for you next week?

Implement the three key principles in to your marketing approach and give these scripts a try based on what is applicable to your situation. You may be surprised at the positive results they yield.

But as you, know it’s really not about how great your script is or how good you sound on the phone. The key is making the calls!! Just pick an approach, pick up the phone and make the calls! Make twenty a day minimum – but make them every day. Most people who are unsuccessful in obtaining enough assignments to see the quantity/quality principle work fail simply because they do not make the calls. Don’t let that happen to you. Start with closest to money marketing calls — existing customers first. The reality is that “Quantity” solves all your quality Job Order problems. As a matter of fact, it will most likely solve all of your money problems too!

Stay tuned for Part 3 next week, which will include the last five marketing scripts that are hot in today’s environment.

The Three Critical Business Development Principles

Finding the perfect candidate for an open search assignment is an exciting moment in any recruiter’s day and contributes significantly to the overall success of achieving their goals. More important than fulfillment, however, is the role that business development plays in the process. Effective marketing is the biggest factor in any recruiter’s success.

There are three key principles to establishing a strong marketing foundation. It all starts with obtaining high quality searches. The better the search you have to recruit on, the more placements you will make. Period. Most of us agree with this concept, however practicing it seems to have become a lost art. Time is money and you want to make sure you are spending your time on searches that will result in placements. Ask yourself about the searches you are currently working on – are you guaranteed a placement if you find the person you are looking for? Resources are too valuable today to be risked on uncertainty. A good search means that “if” you find the right candidate, your client will hire them — no maybes and no excuses.

1. The Quantity/Quality Principle (Starving Man Principle)

Quality is everything. How do you achieve it? It’s not just about getting Job Orders. It’s about continually improving them so you have great Job Orders. The better the Job Order you are working on, the better chance you will net revenue from your efforts. This is true for Contingency as well as Retained Search. The best way to increase the quality of your searches is to increase the quantity of Job Orders that you have. Here is how the principle works. A starving man will eat a moldy loaf of bread. Why? He’s starving; he will eat just about anything. However the more food he has to eat, the more particular he will become. The principle works the same with recruiters. The more Job Orders you have to work on, the more selective you can be about the ones you will chose to work on. If you have an abundance of only “C” Job Orders, chances are you will not see great results and you will have to start focusing on getting “B” Job Orders to improve your results. This is done by doing more marketing and doing volume — getting more Job Orders on the go. Once you have upgraded to “B” job orders, you will no longer want to take any more “B” job orders, and will want to start looking for the true “A” Job Orders, or real “Search Assignments.” A critical step in this evaluation process is utilizing the Job Order Matrix, a fantastic tool that will help you to qualify the Job Orders that you get.

Once you focus on quality and have continued to upgrade your Job Orders to “A” Search Assignments, continued marketing will allow you to then focus on the next level, getting money down and retained work. The quantity of Job Orders you achieve (volume) will resolve the quality of the Job Orders.

2. The Seven Selling Situations Principle (work the process)

When recruiters focus on marketing, it’s really exciting to get new business in. Managers like to see new LOGOS, increasing the recruiting footprint with more companies in different regions, giving the company larger potential. Yes, we all agree that “Volume” is the key to quality, however here is where I suggest caution. Diverse marketing efforts could be killing your productivity in your office and costing you thousands in revenue. Most million-dollar producers today don’t have twenty accounts they focus on and do business with. The average number is between three and seven. New business is critically important but we often overlook the easiest and quickest way to achieve more business. And that is developing additional business within existing accounts first.

The graph below illustrates seven different selling situations in business today. They are listed in descending order from the easiest to get to the hardest, with the percentage of success rate on the right hand side from top to bottom. If obtaining good search assignments is your objective, the place to start is with existing accounts first and with the existing contacts you have. Work the process by going down the chart to “new” contacts within existing accounts next. After contacts are exhausted go to the next level of business development to “C” level and keep moving down. This will ensure you are working as efficiently as possible in developing new business and increasing the amount of search assignments on which to work. Once again, by increasing the volume, it will help to solve quality problems by allowing you to continually ‘Topgrade’ each search as you get new ones in. The goal is to maintain a solid book of business that you can continually work on to upgrade the quality.

3. Insight Principle

In addition to developing volume in marketing to achieve a higher level of quality in search assignments and working the process to market the most effectively, it is equally important for a recruiter to include insight in all marketing efforts. Insight is knowledge of a person, market, company, or anything that adds value to the person you are talking to that is beyond the ordinary. The more insight you can share, the more value you bring to the other party. Combining a strong insight statement with each marketing approach will double your success rate. For example,

“Mr. Prospect, did you know that Gartner research stated that in 2011 the mobility software market is poised to explode due to mobile phones having the bandwidth to support mobile applications that only rugged mobile handheld computers could do previously? Are you ready to take advantage of this growth opportunity?”

The more insight you have when making business development calls, the more “value” you bring to your clients and the more effective and successful you will be. It’s all about Value – and insight immediately gives you that.

By implementing all three principles in to your marketing plan – only working on quality search assignments, achieving volume to insure the ability to create quality, and by providing insight to your clients — you will dramatically increase your success in achieving your goals and objectives.

Are you ready now to make it happen? Stay tuned later this week for Part 2 — “Scripts That Work”…

Most Die-hard Phone Jockeys will deny the following fact, but they’re wrong! If you have mastered the art of voicemail, then you’ve mastered the most important skills necessary to engage the full power of Email Marketing to improve your placements performance. Yes, there is a difference in medium, from spoken to written and in communicating with many as opposed to just one person at a time. But these differences can each be accomplished in small, easy steps, and when you approach it that way, the skills for mighty Email Marketing are truly just an extension of your basic voicemail skills.

In this week’s lesson, we’ll cover voicemail first, to lay our foundation, and then turn to Email Marketing. We’ll address the use of Email Marketing as a part of your sales cycle one-on-one, first. Then we’ll map out the power of Email Marketing to warm up your cold calls and, most important of all, to draw those you’re already serving closer to you. Our only goal is to increase your placements.

Voicemail: The Simple Basics

Preparing a great voicemail requires that you answer two questions:

1. What is your core message?
2. How do you express this message with force and compelling, appealing, attractive, fresh power?

Done right, the real power of voicemail is to build name and service recognition. To accomplish this, you must leave advertisement-grade messages. Be upbeat, be memorable, use modulation, DO NOT BE BORING, and look only to leave a positive and somewhat memorable message. It’s beyond our scope to discuss callbacks. I simply have to share, though, that callbacks are not the objective I recommend for voicemail. I exclusively recommend that voicemail can warm up your prospect and increase your likelihood of call acceptance when you call again.

From Voicemail To Email

The first step is to send an email following each voicemail. This doubling of your message is definitely worth the extra effort. And, you should let people know in your voicemail that an email is coming as well.

The immediate questions that arise are:

1. Unique vs. Boilerplate Construction
2. Time Investment
3. Length of Message

While you really will have to use pre-prepared or Boilerplate forms, any time you need to customize them you can, easily and rapidly. Still, you surely must minimize your time investment and an important part of the answer is to write short emails for the vast majority of your emails.

On the other hand, when a serious communication in writing can move your deal forward, it truly IS worth the time and effort. The deal itself is your guide. If you find yourself writing long, time consuming emails as a part of deals that DO NOT close, then you’re on the wrong track. Done right, which typically means rarely, and always aiming for shorter versus longer, you might be amazed that this can be a great tool in your kit.

One last point: be sure to be logical and clear in your communication, but do NOT leave your message only at the intellectual level. You must speak to and trigger the emotions of your recipient.

Written vs. Spoken

While many recruiters avoid public speaking like the plague, most recruiters know that they’re very good at speaking one-on-one. Scratch a big biller though, and what you find underneath is a public speaker, too. Many of the best recruiters discover that speaking to many people at once is easy and fun, believe it or not! Imagine, if you can take your one-on-one sales skills onto the stage, you may very well make your greatest strategic leap toward becoming a true power broker in your industry. But perhaps we’ve placed the cart in front of horse here; whether you have the courage to speak in public or not, the power of Email Marketing is something you must consider.

What most recruiters don’t realize is that if you can speak, you can write. Actually both forms of communication are simply good, clear thinking expressed one way or another. As a professional salesperson, I promise you have the power of the written word in you, if you simply practice it.

Email Marketing is nothing more than an electronic means of getting your message across to many people, at virtually no dollar cost, all at once. The goal is to begin to build a relationship so that the individual you’re calling already “knows” you. Here, a word about Cold Calling comes into play.

The question is, can there be degrees of “cold” in a cold call? By all means! That’s what your Email Marketing is for. With its power working for you, when you reach out to your market, the person you’re calling will know who you are. No, they won’t know you well, but here we have a classic black and white switch at play. Knowing you at all, or even just having the feeling of knowing you, is the reward that makes Email Marketing so irresistible for a Diehard Phone Jockey.

Composition

The most important part of Email Marketing is of course the writing and composition. Your best messages are constructed around the transformations your prospects must execute. The formula I recommend has these six steps:

1. Find a desired change, in the form of tangible, new outcomes that will compel your prospect.
2. Work through the obstacles preventing those desired outcomes from occurring.
3. Teach how to overcome those obstacles.
4. Work with basics and fundamentals that prospects can remember and use instantly.
5. Help them accomplish this change without you, all on their own.
6. Teach them how to know when they have succeeded, and don’t forget to celebrate!

When composing your message, picture a single friend as your audience. Help him hit his goals and overcome his obstacles and slay his dragons. If you simply step back and look at the people you serve, you will find that you really do have a unique message to give them. And, you’ll find you have the ability to guide them that no other person in your niche can match.

You, Irreplaceable You!

As the expert in your field those who want the best results are absolutely going to want — no, NEED — to work with you. When people first trust you with representing them or their job openings, they unconsciously hope that you’re the BEST IN THE FIELD. This trust is yours to lose, whether you realize it or not. When you create a powerful Email Marketing practice, the outcome is that it draws the people with whom you’re already speaking to you in ways that no other medium can equal. It helps them CONFIRM that you ARE the best in the field!

Let’s picture a couple of examples. You’ve found a fantastic candidate who isn’t sure she’s ready to leave her current position yet. You write a powerful email article about the signs that it’s time to go, and the joys and pleasures of starting out in a new challenge. Honestly, you could write that article as if it were to your one targeted candidate alone. But, in sending it out to your entire email list (Blind-Carbon-Copying it, of course) your candidate will not have the same resistance to your message. In fact, people have the opposite reaction. They love it when they feel as if you are actually writing to them. There’s something magical about it.

Or, you’ve got a hiring manager you like, but he’s not been in good communication with you lately. You write an article about the delicacy of timing in the hiring mission. In it, you emphasize not only timely communications and decisions, but you also walk though the coolness curve that everyone goes through as communication ages into silence. Can you begin to see the tactical and strategic options this method grants you? The power is simply vast.

Getting Started

For you technical types, if you have the chops to do it yourself, let it rip. I have no counsel for you. Or, for those of you with awesome support from your firm, you might be amazed at how excited your support team will be once they realize you’re actually aggressively taking this opportunity on. They will help you and your star power in the office will absolutely rise. Besides, what could be more fun than showing all the naysayers how much money you’re making as a result?

But what if you’re essentially a 20^th Century guy or gal just like me, and have no clue? Two words: HIRE OUT! Here’s why. First of all, you’re going to have to have some sort of website presence where people can sign up for your email newsletter. My own is a great example for you. Go check it out at: www.RecruitingPrinciples.com and of course, sign up to get your free copy of my main article, The Switch, and start receiving my free Recruiting Tactics & Strategy Newsletter!

Shameless advertisement complete, I could NEVER have generated that simple website on my own. If I didn’t have a partner who is fantastically gifted at these things, I’d have had to find a firm to do it for me. And that is ABSOLUTELY what I urge you to do. Finding the talented people out there – and they are there – may be one of the more challenging parts of your mission.

A word about timing is needed. You must commit to your rhythm. Once per month is fine. You might get way with once every six weeks, even. But there really is power in the rhythm. I can assure you that if you follow the methods outlined above, you will NOT wear out your readership. By any timing, though, any newsletter at all is vastly superior to none. So, if you don’t at first have a rhythm, it really is okay. I can tell you from my own experience that the power to close that your newsletter will give you is worth every ounce of energy you must invest.

Some examples of content you could create for your newsletter include (the first two are mentioned above):

1. The signs that it’s time to go, and the joys and pleasures of starting out in a new challenge.
2. The delicacy of timing in the hiring mission.
3. A “man-behind-the-curtain” look at what you actually do as a recruiter to help your prospects understand the value you bring to the table.
4. How candidates can determine how truly valuable they are in their field.
5. “Drugs are bad; so are resumes.” – Why hiring managers shouldn’t rely on resumes and what their actual place is in the hiring process.
6. “Hire well today; sleep great tonight.” – How hiring managers don’t realize their current problems originate in bad staff, and how to fix that situation.
7. “There’s gold in them thar hills.” – Describe how your clients are thriving today as a result of what you’ve done for them.

But, in closing, what if you decide not to invest so heavily, or that you’re just not ready?

Readiness and Commitment

Wait…what about writing quality? What if you’re an ABYSMAL writer? Oh, it is YOU that I hope to persuade the most. The answer to poor writing quality is high thinking quality. Take your time. Never rush. Find a message in which you utterly believe. Work out the logic. Make each step as small as you can. Put the pieces into the easiest, simplest order possible, even if you have to force or even fake the order a little, that’s okay. Simply work on your message until it is as clear and clean and simple and direct as can be. And then, PUT IT OUT THERE!

Yes, there will be naysayers. You have to be ready for them. Here’s the answer that has saved my own writing career. Once I’ve completed a writing project, I know that I may not have expressed my message well. I may have made mistakes. It may be too long, or the style of writing may not sparkle the way I hope. But, I stand behind the message itself. You may not like the way I said it, and you may be right. But, you can only reject the substance of my message at your own loss. That confidence has carried me through all the attack and the opposition, and if you invest into your message, it will be your shield as it has been my own!

So again, you may not be ready, and if not, follow the sequence of the lessons in this Diehard Phone Jockey’s Guide to Social Media series:

1. Surely you must have a LinkedIn profile and you must work on getting the strongest, rave reviews you can.
2. Once you’re happy at LinkedIn, and ready, then build your blog.
3. Once you’re happy there, and wish to embrace the kind of power that Email Marketing gives, it is the third step to take.

And if you’re ready to accept my counsel today, then I can promise you this. Following the methods outlined here, your closing power will rise. My own has, and I see the same thing happening for those I serve. Be confident; you do have a message. You do have a voice to discover, uncover, and share with the world. And, I’m telling you, your market is waiting. It really does want the truth. It wants wisdom. It wants to be guided to a better way. You have that knowledge. I say, go share it.

In the next article of the “Die-hard Phone Jockey” series, we’ll be discussing Facebook. Great recruiting goes beyond just business relationships. Successful recruiters know that great recruiting is all about powerful, personal relationships. Facebook is the number one social medium in the world today because it actually humanizes its users for each other in ways not previously possible at a distance. Your clients and candidates will bond with you at deeper levels than ever before, giving them the opportunity to know you, like you, and trust you like they would if you were a true business partner — not just a vendor.

Stay tuned for the next installment, coming next week…

A student of mine called the other day. He had spent all week conducting a concentrated marketing campaign and had written a few new Job Orders. He was now using my Job Order Matrix system (for more information about this technique see, TFL, July 2006, “The Job Order Matrix (with Kevin Franks),” pp. 1-4.), to qualify his JOs, but it was taking him what he thought was an inordinate amount of time. He asked if there was a shortcut in the JO qualification process. I asked if he had ever heard of the Qualifier Job Order approach and he had not. And so we began to talk about this Big Biller technique.

0-1 out of 15

If you recall in my presentation entitled, “Your Desk as a Manufacturing Plant,” when a top recruiter writes fifteen Job Orders, they will usually fall into three distinct categories:

• 0-1 will be of “Search Assignment” quality;
• 4-5 will be of the “Matching” type; and
• About 10, or 2/3rds, will be of the “Can’t Help” variety.

The Qualifier Job Order

In general, recruiters seem to naturally possess a “positive mental attitude.” Because of this PMA, they think that every Job Order they write is of Search Assignment quality—that it’s supremely ‘fillable’. While it may be necessary to have a positive outlook, we need to temper it with a strong dose of reality.

Let’s use the example of Ricky Recruiter’s new marketing campaign. Ricky makes marketing call after marketing call with no positive results. Then, out of the blue, one of his phone calls reaches a Hiring Manager who actually seems to like Ricky and is willing to talk with him—and, surprise of surprises, is actually looking to fill a critical need and is open to giving Ricky some JO information. At this point, Ricky is so elated that he keeps the poor HM on the phone way too long. It’s only human nature.

But keep this in mind. This HM was not expecting Ricky’s call. Combine that with the fact that most Americans are nice people and you start getting a sense of the beginning of Ricky’s downfall. Blindly moving forward, Ricky takes his time and fills out all of the empty blocks on his Job Order form. When he finally hangs up, he runs to his manager and says, “See, everything I write is a Search Assignment.” Or, Ricky might tell his manager the ‘Big Lie.’ It goes something like this: “You know, Mr. Manager, you keep telling me to make a lot of marketing calls—and I am fine with that. But every JO I write is a true Search Assignment. I have more Job Orders on my desk now than I can possibly fill. What I need to do is recruit.” And that’s what he will do—to the exclusion, I might add, of any further marketing activity. His downfall is now complete!

The Big Lie

Now, why does our industry fall into the ‘Big Lie’ trap? Because the assembled, unqualified Job Orders on your desk are, for the most part, garbage. You are working in areas where you are not going to be paid and then, at the end of the day, you can’t understand why you have no/low production. You criticize the industry or your manager or anybody but yourself. But what has really taken place is that you haven’t properly qualified your Job Orders so that you can be assured of subsequent successful placements. What you have done is wasted time.

Think of the rest of the scenario. Think of what happens when the HM finishes his long initial call with Ricky. He turns to his secretary and says, “You know, it never dawned on me while I was talking to this guy, but he’s a Recruiter. He took a lot of my time asking me questions on our company that he could have found the answers to by doing a little Internet research. And he actually wants me to pay him a fee to find someone for us. Can you imagine that? I mean, we can run ads; our personnel people can find that kind of person. I tell you what, the next time he calls, tell him we moved to Peru. Or better yet, I’m in a meeting and can’t be disturbed. I don’t want to talk to him anymore. He’s already wasted my time and I’m just not that interested.”

So, you see, you have two opposite points of view of the same situation. The Recruiter, who thinks he has a Search Assignment, is going to spend the next three weeks recruiting on it, while giving up his marketing campaign. And the HM has just given specific instructions to his secretary not to let this person in any more. Well, if that’s going to happen, let’s find out the first day before we have expended any more of our straight commission time on it.

The Qualifier JO

What you are going to do when writing a Job Order is get six pieces of information. After those six pieces of information are secured, you are going to look at your watch and say, “Gee, how time flies. I must leave for an appointment; however I need more information from you. Can I call you at 3pm this afternoon; or would 9am tomorrow be better? I’ll need about 20 minutes of your time.”

At this point you put the JO aside and continue making your marketing calls.

The Six Pieces of JO Information

1. Contact Information

Name of the company, address, name of the HM, title, secretary’s name, phone numbers—all of the regular pieces of ‘contact’ information.

2. Duties and Responsibilities

You need to know a day in the life, a week in the life, or a month in the life of the position. Or, what are the percentages of supervisory time, of technical time and of administrative (paper shuffling) time that equal 100% so that you can find the Candidates who match those percentages.

3. Salary and Fee

You’re going to need to know the low, medium and high salary range (we don’t discuss these amounts with our recruits—more on this next month when we talk about recruiting). Also, you’re going to need to discuss your service charge at this time and cover it in both dollars and percentages so that you can be sure that the HM understands what they will need to pay you.

4. The Hiring Process

Here is where you qualify for urgency. You are going to say, “When is the last day that you can keep this position open without something bad happening the next day if it is still open? In other words, what is your ‘drop dead’ date?”

You don’t ask the question, “When would you like this person on board?”  That question doesn’t define urgency. What you want to know is the last day. If they say to you, “Well, we’re not going to hire until we find the right person,” what you have just determined is that this is probably a “can’t help” situation. Because that means they can go indefinitely with the position open. Or if they say, “Well, it’s a new position. We just don’t have any time constraints on it.”—again, probably a “can’t help” JO. What you want to do is get a specific date to establish urgency.

You also want to ask about the length of their hiring process, who else interviews, how many interviews are required, and when the decision will be made. What you are doing here is nailing down the hiring process timeline so that you will be able to determine later if the process goes off plan. You are setting the parameters.

5. The Recruitment Column

You want to find out who they want, what three or four companies, or competitors, they respect and want someone from, or what industry they want people from. You can then go out and ‘Rifle Shot’ recruit—extract people precisely for this position in the least amount of time.

When you ask, “Who do you want for this position?” if they missed that you are a Recruiter going in, they are now going to know that you are a Headhunter because you are actually asking for a ‘head to hunt.’

Sometimes Recruiters say to me, “But Bob, if they knew who they wanted, they could go out and get that person themselves.” But what those Recruiters don’t understand is that there are a lot of reasons why HMs can’t, or won’t, recruit on their own. They can’t do it because they don’t have the talent to do it. They put themselves in jeopardy by trying to take someone from a competitor because they could start an employee poaching war. Or they risk starting a salary escalation war. A lot of HMs don’t take people from their competitors because they don’t want to be rejected. They run the risk of getting into an interview situation (where proprietary information is given) and then being rejected. Now that information can be taken back to the original competitor, with disastrous effects. So, there are just a few reasons why our client companies will use Recruiters and give that Recruiter the exact name of the person they want to fill the position.

6. The Personality of the HM

What schools did that person attend? What are their interests or hobbies? Let’s say that the HM’s major hobby is fishing for sharks. He actually dives into the water and catches the sharks with his bare hands. (and a sharp knife!) I guarantee you that if you find a Candidate, not even a technical match, who jumps in the water and kills sharks by stabbing them with a knife, you are going to get a hire. In your introduction, you might say, “Mr. HM, I know you wanted an EE, but I’ve uncovered an Industrial Engineer that you will be interested to know not only is terrific at what he does, but also has the same hobby as yours.” Bottom-line is that you are going to get a hire and it wasn’t even for the position for which you were searching. So, always keep in mind the personality matches. They are absolutely critical. Too often, we work and work making the best technical matches in the history of Western Civilization, but we never find out the chemistry or the personalities of the two parties and we put people together who mix like oil and water. (i.e., they don’t!) And when we don’t get the placement, we wonder why? Sometimes it’s because we weren’t aware of what was going on behind the scenes. We didn’t think past the technical match.

The Call Back

You now have the six critical pieces of information—your skeleton JO. Now set the times for your call back, say goodbye, and hang up the phone. Continue with your daily plan. At the agreed upon time (be exact here), call the HM back. If he answers your call, that is the first qualifier that this is a good JO. Please note that you have done nothing on this JO up to this point. You don’t want to waste your time on an unprofitable venture. The “Call Back,” and having the HM actually talking to you on the phone again, now allow you to determine more clearly if this is a fillable JO.

Now, there are three ways to call back:

1. Call back that afternoon, or the next day, to write the complete JO. You should allow only a short time to elapse before you call the HM back.
2. There are Recruiters who, when they call back, present a “File Search Candidate.” This will be a close match—not an ideal one—who they pulled from their files. The purpose here is not to get the person placed or even set up an interview. What they want to determine is how the HM reacts when a Candidate is presented. Again, to determine urgency and to determine the integrity behind the HM working with the Recruiter.
3. Some Recruiters are so current on the talent that they have previously recruited, that they can actually make presentations to the HM while they are taking the Qualifier JO. This is more unique, but it is a way to “test the waters” and find out how the HM reacts when Candidates are presented. This is very prevalent in the Sales specialty areas.

So there you have it—a quick way to start the JO qualification process. And another technique from the Big Billers.

Now that we know which JOs to work, let’s start doing a little recruiting. The next article in “The Phone Rang…” series will cover “Recruiting the Candidate.” Until then, good hunting…

“The Phone Rang…” by Bob Marshall is a series that defines what we, as recruiters, do for a living. This article series ran in The Fordyce Letter over the past year and we are proud to bring you the series online. To subscribe to the print edition of The Fordyce Letter, click here.