I want to share with you a principle which we come across time and time again in our million dollar recruitment training and our mastermind group sessions. This is around the concept of up and down months – The Feast or Famine as one of our clients call it.
The Problem of Unpredictability
See, you go through a phase and you’re going out to get clients. You get clients and you go into candidate-getting mode. You get the candidate and you’re back to, “Jeez, we need more clients!”
You’re up and down, up and down. We have a great phase, a down phase. You have a great year, then a poor year. The reason why we have these challenges with the good months, the bad months, is because you don’t have control over our lead flow, over our client, in-coming lead flow. We don’t have control over our candidate lead flow.
What happens is we put our focus into client mode, clients, clients, clients. Then we have our focus into candidate mode. That gives us this view where we’ve got an up and down graph, and we’re going through lots of pain, then a bit of pleasure, lots of pain and you can’t quite relax. Back of your head, you’re thinking, “When’s this next cycle going to come?”
The reason why that happens is we haven’t got that control. Why don’t we have that control? We see this, now, time and time again. Now, spoken to hundreds, if not thousands, of recruitment business owners, directors, and this, is the lack of a process, lack of a system.
Why Do You Need A System?
A system is a set of steps, a set of processes that work while you sleep, that work while you’re on holiday. So you know whether it be something that is systematized – we are very big on every part of your business, as much as possible should be systematized. When you’ve got systematization, then you’ve got a process that can be replicated and scaled.
Same with automation using an automated tool. It can be replicated and it can be scaled. You should have a process in place where every single week you got candidate flow happening, candidate engagement happening. Every single week your candidate incoming leads happening, candidates sending in CV’s, candidates applying for roles. A process that runs in the background
Exactly the same with clients. You should have process in place whereby every single week – if your client-base is in IT Services, it could be in Java development based on Wall Street. It could be something broader, it could be something more niched, but every single week, you should have a process in place bringing onboard client leads and these need to work in the background.
Now, I see it time and time again, we get clients or perspective clients come to us. “I need help! I need to get this business. We’re looking to do a million dollar year now for last five years. I was, did half a million year before last, but last year we went down to two hundred thousand!” And then they might go through a good phase. Then they go missing. It’s because they’ve got- They’ve gone through a feast phase!
Sure as you can be certain as a day is long, they come back. They come back in a few months, maybe six months and they’re back to square one because we haven’t got a process, a strategy.
A Process That’s Running While You Sleep
What you’re only thinking about is this- If you systematize the process of bringing on board candidates, systematize the process of bringing on board clients, they should both be running all the time. All the time! You shouldn’t be going through a client-getting phase and a candidate-getting phase. You should have these running all the time.
Now if you’re a one-man business, you should be focused on building an infrastructure, a team that works while you sleep. That doesn’t mean going out there and bring onboard a new consultant but you should have a process that works while you sleep.
For example, your client database is growing by a hundred, two hundred. Every single day that you’re engaging with those two hundred, the 5{80ed2ceb8b8e43e1df58520e86acb16df96de695ac839db5fcf8319ced9d95bc} are ready to move forward, are actually raising their hand and saying, “Yep! We’re looking to hire!” The 95{80ed2ceb8b8e43e1df58520e86acb16df96de695ac839db5fcf8319ced9d95bc} are not ready to move forward, you’re nurturing them automatically.
The Old Way vs. New Way of Recruitment
To move away from the up and down months, it really takes a little bit of bravery because moving away from the old way of recruitment, which is, “Right! We’re going to hit the phones. This year, New Year’s Eve, we’re going to make it happen. We’ve got all this energy in January and we go out there and we’re going to hit the phones.” Then bit by bit we start to lose a bit of passion, lose our swagger, and we revert back to, maybe if we’re lucky, a good month, a bad month, or maybe even a really bad period of time.
You need to systematize the business. You need to take control of your lead flow. You need to automate your lead flow. You need to systematize your candidate flow. You need to automate your candidate flow. These are two streams, should be happening all the time in your business.
We want to move away from the old way of thinking, “Right, I’ve got eight hours to work today. Time after work today, I’m going to hit the phone for four hours.” You’re just on a hamster wheel there and your direct results are directly related to how many hours you put and how many calls you make. You know it’s getting tougher and tougher and tougher with the calls. You want to have a systematized process that works while you sleep!
Think about systematizing your business. Take a pen and paper, and write down all the steps you go through to bring on board a candidate, all the steps you go through to bring on board a client. Can they be automated? Probably. Are they automated tools? Most definitely! That’s something we are passionate about! I’m bit of a geek around it.
Control Your Business
If you really want to move away from the up and down months, again it really takes a bit of bravery. Put a line in the sand and saying, “It’s going to change now. It’s going to change. I’m going to move away from being an up and down agency, taking that stress home with me. I’m going to move into creating this set of processes that can be replicated and can be scaled across my business. My job is to become a controller, a puppet master as such. I’m not to be doing the doing!”
You just need to be thinking with strategy. So think with the end in mind. If you want to be doing a million dollars, how many placements will that break down into? If you’ve got to get fifty placements, twenty thousand dollars of placement, what strategy makes that happen? If you need just five placements, a completely different strategy. Reverse-engineer the steps.
Go out there! Make it happen!
