It's about putting the pieces in the right place:
Lately, I have been inundated with marketing consultation requests for increasing sales from staffing agencies in large part because of the blog post I published more than a year ago titled, "How to Sell Staffing Services From The Top Down: Be Different."
The article talks about how to differentiate yourself through sales, marketing, and service... how to swim in the opposite direction of your increasingly aggresive competitors, resulting in a more engaged client, happier co-workers, and a stronger bottom line.
With every call or email consultation request I receive, I've been noticing a common thread of 3 big trends inhibiting their growth. Three things, that when addressed, will open doors they didn't even know were closed.
Increasing sales starts with tying sales, marketing, and your website together.
That blog article was written around the idea that it would attract visitors based on the keyword, "How to sell staffing services," and the many variations thereof, and initiate the buyer's journey with my agency. Some people find it directly. Others get to another keyword first found on our staffing industry services page (Selling staffing services), then click the link that takes them to that article.
In a way it's about inbound marketing. Really, it's more about the philosophy of inbound, and how it can be applied to more than just marketing, and it covers everything from sales to service as well.
Apparently, the message is resonating, because those who are calling me or submitting requests for me to call them (HERE) are sharing the same challenges as they push to break through.
So, what I'm going to share with you today are the three things that most of you seem to be missing, and I'm going to relate it to the system we developed at Orange Pegs that is responsible for bringing in that engaged traffic and the incredibly qualified leads who have been knocking on my door.
# 1: Better Leads
I've heard it so, so many times - cold calling simply isn't the answer any more. How many "mystery messages" do you think your prospective customers have heard over the last decade? How many recruiter calls do you think they receive daily? What are the quotas for your teams? 50? 100?
They're numb. They don't want to hear it. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it.
With inbound marketing, your leads find you. You write blog posts about pain you are experienced in solving, with answers they can weigh against their existing processes. For example, that post, "How to Sell Staffing Services from the Top Down," talks about all sorts of pain that businesses like yours go through every single day.
When you get to the bottom of that post, you're met with a call-to-action that takes you to an ebook abound inbound marketing for staffing services. It's free. All you have to do is provide your email address.
You should be doing this too. Your customers experience pain. You solve that pain. You have stories about that pain that they can relate to.
So, relate!
Get the Inbound Marketing Playbook for Staffing Services
Write a blog post. Build it around keywords and the pains that your perfect buyers actively seek solutions for. Make sure it's properly tagged with all of the meta-SEO stuff. (Learn more about SEO) Share it on social media. Get the traffic. Give them the content when they provide contact information.
These leads will know your brand when your sales reps call. They'll know why your services are important, and they will know the depth of your expertise relative to their needs, or at least they'll START to know.
For the article I referenced above, I used textbook inbound strategy from tooth to tail. I blogged around an SEO strategy, planted calls-to-action that led to content downloads, and triggered email nurturing campaigns for those who didn't request consultations.
(more about the inbound methodology HERE)
# 2: A functional website
Ask yourself this: Does my website generate measurable value for my agency? Does it attract and convert leads, and is it performing as best as it could be?
Marketing starts with a hypothesis, just like your website. We come up with the SEO strategy, and put together a site that has a reasonably solid chance of attracting visitors, keeping them engaged, and getting them to come back more than once.
But it's not going to be perfect. We have to accept that. Neither your website or your marketing plans will be home runs every time, but that's okay.
Inbound is reactive. You hypothesize, you execute, you learn, you adjust, and wash, rinse, and repeat, optimizing and improving every step of the way.
Growth driven design (or GDD) does the same thing, but it's 100% focused on your website.
Your website is a very important tool for growth, just like your inbound marketing and sales teams. It should also be working for you, generating leads, and getting better at attracting and coverting over time.
Growth driven design is a methodology that allows you to reboot or build your website from scratch using tools that allow us to launch quickly. We go into it accepting that it won't be perfect, but we're going to put our best foot forward, and it's going to look and perform better than your existing site. And it's going to be fully operational.
Then we go through a hierarchy of upgrades, focusing first on SEO and building your audience, then shifting to improving the value of the content. From there, we improve usability, conversion rates, stickiness, personalization, hosted assets (embedded features that get people coming back), and mechanisms to help visitors to bring more visitors.
Your website probably doesn't do all of those things, because it wasn't built with lead generation as a core focus.
The article published wasn't actually a smash hit overnight. It did well for generating traffic, but I wasn't getting the greatest leads until we applied some heat and scroll maps, identified where people WANTED to click, and made some tweaks and adjustments with text, calls-to-action, and images.
That's textbook GDD.
(more about GDD: Infographic comparing traditional and growth driven design)
# 3: A refined sales process
Sales processes everywhere are going through identity crisis', especially in staffing. Cold calling is the standard. Everybody does it.
Today your reps are also probably on social media, which I know a lot of agencies see as being different than cold calling, but it really depends on how it's being used, and I'm willing to bet that your teams are being quite cold about it.
It's hard, thankless, and it's not really working as well as it used to. The market is saturated with new and old companies, and recruiters that have branded themselves as businesses, which means there are a LOT of people rowing in the exact same direction as you. THEY are flooding LinkedIn as if it were the new magic bullet.
In addition, putting inbound leads in the hands of a cold-caller is like hiring airline pilot in the cockpit of an F15.
I think it's time to reinvent your sales process, especially if you plan on reinventing your marketing and website.
After all, the entire conversation started around sales. Remember, the keywords are "selling staffing services," and "how to sell staffing services." It's all about you wanting to increase sales for your staffing agency. So, in addition to generating a fresh, consistent flow of traffic and leads your way, let's change the way you connect, qualify, and close.
Textbook inbound sales turns the process into true consultations, even when making the first step, but we also know that in staffing, we can never totally let go of the cold stuff, so finding the perfect blend of the two is key.
(learn about our inbound sales enablement services)
CONCLUSION:
No matter how big or small, everybody calling me is looking to resolve a problem in their sales process, even though you're typically starting the conversation asking about inbound leads.
Want to learn more? Check out this Introductory Guide to Growth Planning:
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