Increased competition for business opportunities and a sluggish economy have created a complex situation for recruiting agencies. Only recently, candidates were the hot commodity. But now, it's business development that is the largest hurdle facing staffing agencies.
To continue business growth, staffing and recruitment agencies should turn to new staffing technologies for help. Noted software provider Bullhorn recently found high performing agencies are 64% more likely to use significant amounts of automation and win new business in spite of the economy. Plus, they are 75% more likely to have automated tools for nurturing clients.
As Eddy Lee, Bullhorn Director of Field Sales said, “AI and automation aren't going to replace salespeople, but salespeople that use AI and automation are going to replace those that don't.”
Keep reading to discover more expertise from Eddy Lee, Bullhorn's Senior National Account Manager Danny Miranda, and Ross Slogrove and Hannah Jones from Ringover. They'll cover the top six tips for improving your client experience and using staffing technology to optimize your recruiting agency's sales operations.
6 ways to optimize business development in recruiting and staffing
1. Streamline communication
Differentiating your agency is key in a competitive landscape. One of the best ways to do it is by creating close connections via communication. A phone system software like Ringover makes close contact easy thanks to a variety of benefits like:
- Omnichannel communications allow for the identification and prioritization of a client's preferred communication channel
- Call notes, call logs, and more ensure you can seamlessly pick up a conversation
- Gain a thorough understanding of client objectives and strategy thanks to features like call recording and call transcription
And don't forget, improving communication is a strategy which yields short- and long-term benefits. After all, listening and responding to client needs consistently increases the chances of the client returning for future projects.
2. Leverage AI to centralize and analyze information
“ AI and automation aren't going to replace salespeople, but salespeople that use AI and automation are going to replace those that don't. “
AI in business has many applications, including in the staffing and recruiting industry. And if you want to keep your agency competitive, it's important to incorporate the latest tools. For instance, Bullhorn has seen agencies using this technology have faster growth than those who have yet to adopt it.
Ringover's sales enablement tool Empower is a powerful solution which leverages conversation intelligence software to make the most out of each interaction. Not only are calls automatically transcribed and summarized, sentiment analysis breaks down the key topics and moments. Salespeople can easily search through conversations using specific keywords, and gain insights into the client's reactions during the call.
3. Improve employee training
As discussed in the previous point, Empower provides call summaries and transcriptions that are easy to review by both managers and team members. But in addition to those resources, Empower also provides a wide range of analytics like monologues, turns to speak, number of interruptions, and more.
This breadth of information available allows you to easily identify the best practices deployed by your top performing team members. Once you have those techniques defined, you can easily pass them on to your new employees and middle-tier performers
4. Create scalable processes
Each of the panel experts agree that technology is an extremely helpful tool to define, share, support, and execute processes. And building a strong sales machine doesn't happen by accident, but rather thanks to a set of processes and best practices.
Automation empowers recruiters to set up workflows like automated outreach or comprehensive candidate searches, freeing up their time for high-value tasks. Once the sales team has offloaded repetitive and time-consuming tasks on software like Bullhorn and Ringover, they'll have more time and energy to focus on client relationships, bringing a personal touch to their interactions, and searching out strategic insights.
One of the best ways to ensure the flexibility and scalability of your processes is via integrations. Bullhorn integrations allow you to create a tech stack that serves your business's specific needs, especially a Bullhorn-Ringover integration. Once you've connected Bullhorn and Ringover, you'll enjoy the benefits of being able to reach out to contacts from within the Bullhorn interface thanks to features like click-to-call. Plus, you and your teams will have less tedious and repetitive data entry to do because your WhatsApp messages, text messages, calls, and other communications will be automatically saved, and contact records will be automatically updated between the two software.
5. Drive business in new ways with technology
When it comes to acquiring clients, everyone fishes from the same ponds. So differentiating factors like efficiency and speed are necessary to ensure your business beats out the competitor.
An ATS like Bullhorn helps you to collect more information than you would otherwise and leverage it efficiently. In the end, you'll be able to decrease your cost of acquisition, while providing a stellar client and candidate experience. For example, you can use Bullhorn to automatically search through large numbers of candidate profiles, generate a summary of their strengths and experience, and send it out to prospects and existing clients to generate business. This classic sales technique is suddenly quick and easy thanks to Bullhorn technology.
6. Decrease time for recruiters to ramp up
One of the largest challenges facing staffing agencies is the lack of preparedness in their sales team, whether it simply be that sales agents are struggling to adjust to the new market conditions, or they are simply understaffed.
So, onboarding the sales team is a top concern, one which can easily be addressed with software Empower, Ringover, and Bullhorn. These tools provide access to a single source of information, and self-teach. Ringover in particular provides access to call recordings and call summaries which can illustrate whichever points needed to gain a deeper understanding of the job. Plus, once the new employee is ready to interface with clients, managers or team members can use call monitoring or call whisper to help them navigate tough situations on the fly. When it comes to Bullhorn, this can support new agents during more technical tasks. Rather than needing to construct their own Boolean search string, the salesperson can use Bullhorn's AI-powered service to effectively comb through candidates.
Conclusion
Overall, sales practices and methods will become more refined in 2024, with the advent of new tools and technologies that should allow sales teams to spend more time interacting with their customers by relieving them of exhausting administrative tasks.
The other important information to remember is the omnipresence of data. In 2024, data will be more than ever the source of all successful strategies.
By the way, if you are looking for insights for your 2024 sales strategy, why not check out this webinar with staffing and recruiting business development experts from Ringover and Bullhorn?
Access the webinar replay here!
