Once I had the honor of coaching a recruiter (I’ll call him David) who wanted to bill $1,000,000 in one year. He called Paul Hawkinson, then the editor of The Fordyce Letter, and Paul recommended he speak with me. Ultimately, David reached his goal during the year I spent with him as his personal trainer/coach. I focused David on the following 12 practices of every top producer.
1. They stay on the phone more often than not; usually double to triple the time of the average biller.
2. They make each call with higher quality; not because they are smarter, but because they get more practice by doing it more often.
3. They know they will be successful; they expect success. When they make a placement they instantly use that positive reinforcement to get back on the phone. They use that excitement to make more calls with a higher success rate. They get in the ZONE!
4. They define their marketplace. They identify 1,500 company contacts in their chosen specialty niche and call those contacts every quarter (25 attempts per workday). They want to selectively hand-pick the 4%, or 60, who they will develop as clients, and with whom they will place.
5. They always know their numbers and ratios.
6. They always market to get new blood, new business, and to hone their marketing skills.
7. They always treat this business as a process, and not as a series of individual events.
8. They always plan the previous day and have a MPC (Most Placeable Candidate) ready to market so that they can hit the ground running the next day.
9. They know when to turn down substandard job orders so as not to waste their time.
10. They have a lot on their hot sheet (at least 5 full deals); they are not dependent on any one deal at any given time.
11. They implement “The Theory of Threes.” This is taking three candidates to three companies and arranging three sendouts with each company, or a total of nine sendouts, thereby tripling their chances for success.
12. They are focused on the right activity. They are disciplined. They know that all deficiencies come down to one of two areas: either a knowledge deficiency or an execution deficiency. They know how to fix both. They strive for consistency. They know their actions become their habits.