Top Hiring Trend of 2009: Risk Aversion
As 2009 draws to a close, many of us are keeping our eyes on the road and hoping to find a stronger and more productive 2010, yet we can’t seem to help looking in the rear view mirror. As sales professionals, we want to be able to fully understand any downfall we had this past year and learn from our mistakes. Some of the loses we endured are unpreventable where others can teach us how to be leaner and meaner in the future. We also look back and analyze the past in order to better understand the future and any possible indicating trends we need to keep an eye on. That being said, we at Treeline have taken a look back and analyzed the hiring trends of 2009 and have identified one overwhelming behavior of all companies: risk aversion in hiring decisions.
In December of 2008, dozens of economists and employment organizations started making predictions on hiring trends in 2009. At that point we had already experienced a taste of what was to come with the economic recession, however, reports indicated that we would see bigger paychecks, flexible work arrangements and bigger budgets for employee branding. All sound promising and exciting, however none of them true. Instead, we have seen companies tighten the belt on budgetary expenditures and avoid unnecessary loses. That being said, companies who were able to hire did so gingerly and continue the same behavior.
Throughout 2009, we have seen many companies sit on open roles for weeks and months waiting to find the right candidate. They do not wait due to lack of candidates on the marketplace, they wait because they cannot afford to take the risk of hiring an “outside of the box” professional. It seems that companies have experience a fundamental shift in their hiring practices and have taken to the employment market with more of a consumer minded approach. Openings are analyzed, assessed and outlined before going to market and the requirements are iron clad and often times extremely narrow. Employers tend to look to fill their open roles with candidates who have identical skills sets and who have been successful in the same role at another company. They look for candidates who have proven track records of success within the same industry and, in some instances, can bring over a book of business. Let’s face it, nowadays the majority of products and services are commoditized and purchasers are looking for the best buys. What makes the employment market any different? Companies are investing in human capital, therefore they are going to go to the market with a “buyer beware” attitude. Thus, in order to mitigate the risk of a bad hire, they are looking for candidates who have proven success and great reviews. Many companies that traditionally have been “quick to pull the trigger” are also starting to implement background checks and other investigative reports in order to ensure a successful hire.
In conclusion, few companies in 2009 have settled for the “bodies in chairs” approach. They are selectively building up their dream teams and will allow that seat to sit empty for an indefinite amount of time. In 2010, we will see companies with more sales openings and a greater urgency to hire, but their selective search tactics will be a continuing trend. Therefore, in order to be a competitive player in this job market you need to be able to demonstrate your successes and the value that you would bring to your potential employer. It’s no longer about asking the company what they can do for you, it’s about showing the company what you can do for them.
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Next Generation Sales Will Benefit from Marketing’s Support
Treeline, being a sales recruiting firm known for building best in class sales organizations, is a leading indicator in today’s market and is quickly becoming a benchmark on the market. Therefore, we have a window to the new world and over the past 12 months we have indicated that traditional sales methodologies are quickly becoming obsolete. Thus, in order for your sales organization to be successful in today’s selling environment you need to adapt to the new landscape and change your selling techniques from the classic model.
One of the major changes in today’s market is that the line between sales and marketing is now more blurred than ever. The classic business model that companies have used for decades typically separates sales and marketing as two independent entities. The marketing team is usually tasked with understanding the company’s consumer and how/why they behave the way they do. From there they throw any leads over the wall to the sales team, who is then tasked with utilizing that information and evangelizing the company’s message to the market place, one cold call/email at a time. Not only does this model promote inefficiency, it also leads to the age old battle over recognized revenue. Not only does this dichotomy cause a divide in the corporate structure, it wastes a company’s efficiency and the ability to qualify and act on leads. The most effective sales organizations have already taken down the barrier between sales and marketing and the trend will soon sweep the nation.
First we must realize that in today’s market, brand and name recognition impacts the consumer market and increases the likelihood of a sale. It is also recognized that a solid reputation and credibility as an industry expert makes it significantly easier to close a sale. Therefore, despite the size of your company, you are at a huge advantage in the market if you have both. So what is the most effective way to build brand equity? The internet.
As we have already noted, consumers are more educated than ever due to the fact that there is a plethora of information at their fingertips. In an age where search technology is common place, consumers are taking to the web to research a potential purchase of a product or service. Therefore, your company needs to take to the internet and build an internet presence that acts as the first sales call. Why? Because after gathering information and data about your company on the internet, a consumer’s mind is typically made up as to whether they will inquire further about your services or move on to others. Thus, for your company to find true success, you need to further understand how to initially drive traffic to your company’s site. From there, you need to provide enough data to engage your prospect, which then leads your prospect to a landing page that is created to capture their contact information. The contact information captures the qualified lead and passes the leads to the sales team who is then tasked with tracking and identifying the KPI which should be consistently analyzed in order to create a more effective and efficient sales process.
In the new business model, all hands should be on deck with the same goal in mind: maximizing revenue. Thus, it’s the marketing team’s responsibility to drive leads and activity in a world that is so dependent on finding information via the web. They will be tasked with getting the company’s information on the internet and maximizing visibility as soon as possible. In today’s market, they too have KPI, metrics and benchmarks that they will be held to. They must understand how to build brand, maximize SEO and leverage the social networking tools to drive traffic and create brand equity.
The sales team will also have a hand in building the companies brand and reputation but the days of delivering that message one email/phone call at a time has become an inefficient and disruptive method. Therefore, the utilization of the marketing teams efforts will become extremely important, if not an all out necessity, to maximizing efficiency in the sales force. If we know that a prospect first takes to the web in search of education on a product or service, we then know how incredibly important it is to entice that prospect to the point of capturing their information. Obtaining that information acts as the first sales call, therefore you already know that they are an interested and engaged buyer, which thus enables the sales team to close deals more often and efficiently.
In a down economy, you need to adapt your selling techniques to the consumer’s behavior. Now, more than ever, it is not about the sales itself, but the selling process. Consumers have the ability to research companies more effectively than before, therefore it is no longer about coercing your customer to buy, but rather being an advocate for them in the buying process. Hence, if you are pushing your team to drive more activity in the traditional method of cold calling consumers who may or may not have heard of your product or services before, you are doing your team a massive disservice and encouraging them to dig themselves into a never ending trench. You will quickly find that an increase in this type of activity will not equate to an increase of revenue. Rather, it will condition your team with poor selling habits, leading to down revenues and poor morale.
This is precisely why sales and marketing must come together and break down the wall that has been built to divide the two. Marketing must be held accountable for creating brand equity and consumer awareness. They must be the ones to create qualified leads and therefore judged on the conversion rate of those leads. The sales team’s function will then be to create value as thought leaders and become advisors in a buying decision. Building partnerships between you and your consumer will lead to more success in your sales process and lead to a more satisfied customer base. Therein turn, you create a stronger reputation in the marketplace which then leads to the creation of a better brand equity. Thus, the sales process is no longer about a race to the finish, instead it is a cultivation of your companies ability to add value to the industry.
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On-line Social Networking: Do you really miss the drink tickets?
Social networking is nothing new – we learned how to do it in grade school. Remember when you made friends with that kid because he always brought PB&J sandwiches and you wanted an ‘in’ to trade with him…that was social networking.
When we first became professionals we often attempted to expand our resources and network by attending events. We walk around a hotel lobbies with cocktails in hand and introduce ourselves to everybody. Personally speaking, I find that networking events are not very effective for my business. I typically meet a lot of good people but there is nothing that comes from our encounters besides an exchange of business cards and courteous emails. If you want to find something to do with those business cards – go to www.jigsaw.com
Over the past few years social networking websites have swapped our drink tickets and awkward conversations with effective introductions and value added propositions with a few clicks of the mouse. Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and a myriad of other sites have proven very useful and effective for professionals trying to broaden their exposure.
There are so many functions to utilizing Social Networking sites – with a few strikes to your keyboard, you can broadcast an update about what you are currently doing at work, share a best practice, promote a great blog that you just read (ahem), or even join a group that will expose you to people who otherwise you would never share a room with. The possibilities go on and on.
I currently network with people halfway across the world and we are adding value to each other’s businesses. I would never have met these people otherwise.
My point in bringing all of this up is to ask you, my network, – what do you find is the most effective way to network on these sites?
What is a success story that you can share about a social networking site? Were you able to expand your business through a partnership initiated on-line? Did you find a new client across the country that you otherwise would never know? You may be doing something that someone else never thought of – sharing a best practice will lead to a growing network. Which is the name of the game, after all!
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Market Turnaround
Remember that company that you cold called last quarter and they laughed at you when you tried to qualify them? Call them back. Remember that prospect that you had in your pipeline for 6 months and brought the deal to final stages only to find out that their budget got yanked? Call them back. Remember that guy who you offered a blockbuster discount to get a deal before year’s end and he backed out because he was preparing for the worst in 2009? Call him back.
It has been a tough year – we started feeling the market slowing down a year ago…a full quarter before Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns showed the world exactly where this economy was heading. The market came to a standstill. Companies went into hiding, budgets were cut, layoffs occurred, employees put their heads down and hoped that their name would not be called to the chopping block next.
Some companies are still feeling the effect of the economic down turn. However, for many companies – the market is opening back up. Companies that have kept quiet for the past three quarters cannot sit still any longer. There are many companies that are no longer reacting to the market but are rather trying to define it. These companies are easy to identify – they are the companies that are making headlines in the news…for good reasons. For a lot of companies, including Treeline, the phones have started ringing again and business is brewing. For the first time in a while, my voicemails are being returned and companies are looking to grow again. We in the staffing industry consider ourselves ahead of the curve in terms of seeing the direction of the market. So, for those of you who are still in a holding pattern…hang in there.
Pick up the phone and call everyone. Let them know that the turnaround of this market is in their hands. If your prospect is not in the position to buy at the time, tell them “no sweat, give me a call when you are. It is not too far down the road.” I am not saying that it will happen tomorrow, in fact, I am saying that it is happening today. I am not being optimistic, I am being a realist – buy into the good news and start selling again. If you don’t somebody else will. Happy hunting…and call me back.
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Taking charge of your career in a pension-less world
It is not unusual to open the newspaper and read about another company whose employee pensions are in jeopardy. Over time, benefits like these have started to disappear – but so has the loyal employee who puts in 30 years of service with a single employer. From baby boomers to GenXers on down the line, we’re changing jobs more frequently than ever before. In fact, many of us will work for 8-10 companies or more in our lifetimes. So in a job market permeated by change and uncertainty, how can we find career security?
Fear not, career security still exists, although not in its traditional form. In today’s job market, security comes through experience and knowledge, not through any one corporation or organization. The knowledge you have accumulated since entering the workforce is what will propel you forward in your career. If, in your current situation, you are not learning new skill sets, increasing your income, or advancing your career, you may be losing precious time.
The first thing to realize is that regardless of the level of success you have achieved, job security is never guaranteed. Successful organizations protect their interests and those of their stockholders. They devise complex strategic plans that lay out specific goals and objectives that act as a roadmap for the future. They have a plan; so should you.
The key to designing your own career plan is to view yourself as a business – and you’ve just been appointed CEO. Before you begin to develop your own personalized blueprint for the future, you need to ask yourself some basic questions: am I growing intellectually? Am I meeting my revenue projections i.e. salary goals? What are my greatest assets and skill sets? Where do I add value?
Only you can accurately assess your professional development to this point. Though it may be daunting, a critical part of your new job description as chief executive officer is to take an honest look at yourself and inventory your professional strengths and weaknesses. This personal analysis will help you determine your future career viability.
The next step in achieving career security is to educate yourself about your industry. You can certainly do this yourself; the web is an undeniably convenient tool. Another option is to align yourself with a professional who can help you understand the latest market trends, identify key industry players, and pinpoint opportunities that will help grow your career.
A common misconception is that people initiate a job search only when they are dissatisfied with their current situations. But this isn’t always so. According to U.S. Labor Bureau statistics, 30-35% of the workforce is job hunting at any given time. On average, 20-25% of all U.S. workers change jobs each year. Even if you are relatively content in your present role, it may be an optimal time to make a change.
The best time to be looking for a job is when you’re at the top of your game. It is when you’re most productive and successful that you maximize your marketability. Coming from this position of strength, you can leverage your track record to negotiate the best salary or career opportunity. Alternatively, waiting until you are unhappy to explore new prospects can be time consuming (the average job search takes 3.8 months) and can result in hasty decisions that are fueled by emotion instead of logic. When emotions drive business decisions the likelihood of making poor choices increases.
Finally, know your professional worth. Interviewing with different companies can serve as an effective barometer for your career search. If you come to discover that your market value and potential is greater than it is in your current situation, you have greater impetus to make a change.
In today’s rapidly evolving job market, anything can happen. Achieving security – financial or otherwise – requires us to run our careers like we would a business. Chances are, at some point in your career, whether you realized it or not, marketing was part of your job description. Now, as CEO, you’re about to embark on the most important marketing mission of your professional life: promoting yourself. So take charge. Be empowered. Align yourself with resources that will help you remain educated. By doing so, you will significantly reduce the risks inherent to living in this pension-less world.
Dan Fantasia is the president and founder of Wakefield-based Treeline, Inc., one of the area’s fastest growing executive search firms. Treeline specializes in the recruitment of sales professionals for the medical, technology, business to business, and financial industries. For more information about Treeline, Inc. visit http://www.treeline-inc.com/.
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The new #1 quality to look for in a sales professional
As a sales manager looking to build a team, you always try to define the major characteristics that you need in a candidate to have them be successful with your team. Typically speaking, if someone were to ask you what the #1 quality you would look for in a sales professional you would most likely say one of the following: confident, positive, ambitious, hungry, smart, articulate, well educated, passionate, money motivated, a go-getter mentality, etc, etc…
I, on the other hand, believe that these are all essential and well needed characteristics for any career especially in this marketplace.
I believe that the #1 quality to look for in a sales professional is someone who can deal with change. I describe that as someone who has the ability to put the blinders on and power through what ever happens. In this marketplace it is essential to be able to cope with restructuring, new compensation plans, territories, teams, leaders, and possibly new business models.
As we come up on the 18th month of the “Great Recession,” all the previous characteristics that were desired are considered standard. Without the ability to deal with change you will become extinct and a victim of capitalism as we know it. I saw an advertisement in the Wall St. Journal last month. It was a full page picture of Charles Darwin with the phrase “Meet the New Boss.” This is truly a “survival of the fittest” economy.
The training or the sales classes you have put your team through are now old and obsolete. The typical numbers for success no longer apply. For example, if a year ago your metrics said that your sales representatives needed to make 100 dials to get 10 appointments to close 1 deal, then you should expect that now they have to double or triple the number of calls to find success. As you are talking to prospective members of your team, you should consider how well they can adapt to a market that is constantly changing. Consider what you are doing different now than you did a year ago. Can this person adapt to a constantly changing world? How will they adapt when you ask them to change their prospecting methods? Every sales professional still needs to be confident, articulate, ambitious, etc, but the real #1 characteristic you should be looking for is a candidates ability to change. This economy has paved a new landscape, therefore we need a new kind of sales professional.
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Unemployment is up to 8.5%, do you really need a search firm?
In today’s market, why would a company use an executive search firm to find qualified candidates? The country is in the middle of a recession, the unemployment rate is at 8.5% and budgets are paper thin – what kind of value could a search firm possibly offer? Truth be told, an executive search firm is not always going to be the best bet for a company’s search, it would be foolish to state otherwise. But, every company could find value in building a partnership with an executive search firm. Let’s explore some of the benefits to working with a search firms:
1. Recruiting Passive Talent is More Challenging
During a downturn, the passive candidates that employers want to hire typically retreat into the perceived security of their existing position within their current company rather than incur the risk of changing jobs. In order to gain access to this talent, organizations need to rely on agencies that have a strong database of relationships with Sales Professionals in their respective industries. Recruiters have been building relationships with this talent for several years, in some cases, and will be able to devote substantial time to understand their career goals, which often drives their ultimate employment decision.
2. Dealing with Volume.
In a market where driving revenue should be a Sales Manager’s #1 priority, many organizations are putting their Sales Managers in charge of the entire recruiting cycle. What they will soon find is an AD posted for less than a day will yield hundreds of candidates. Is this volume really such good news? In the era of the online job seeker – applying to a job is as easy as a point and click of your mouse, people are playing the numbers game with their job search applying to anything and everything. Hiring manager’s inboxes are flooded with a large volume of candidates, a very small fraction of which have one if any qualifications for the job. Working with an agency ensures that you are not spending countless days/weeks weeding through stacks of unqualified candidates.
3. Diversify your recruiting approach to ensure you are seeing the best of the best.
Why wouldn’t you work with a contingency based firm? You will only pay a fee to them if the candidate they find you is better and more qualified than those you find using other resources? Change nothing with your current recruiting plan. Instead, work with a firm in addition to what you are doing on your own.
4. Prepare for when the market recovers
Only a cynic would say that the market will not shortly begin to correct itself. When that happens, there will be a rush for talent. Companies that have maintained good relationships with talented agencies will have the upper hand to hire talent on the upswing of the market.
If you are a hiring manager reading this Blog we would love to know what your thoughts are when making a decision about resources you will use to hire. Sure, we are an Executive Search firm, so we may be biased…. What are your thoughts?
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Internetting
The current economic state has caused many people to search for some sort of solution that will right the ship and make life a little easier again. I am, personally, one of those people on that thorough search and I realized that the solution to our problem is right under our fingertips – the Internet and mobile broadband.
I have found, through my research, some articles on fiscal packages designed by the US and other global organizations that include significant government spending within the Telecom and Broadband Wireless Networks. India, China and the USA project that this funding will create nearly a million new jobs throughout the coming year.
I rely heavily on the communication methods of broadband Internet and my daily activity has increased year after year. It is at the point where there is rarely a moment where I am not in front of a computer or clicking away on some sort of mobile device that has access to the internet. I have a blackberry that is attached to my hip to ensure consistent correspondence with my clients and memberships to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Along with being able to get up to date information from my social networking sites, I also read Reuters, CNN-Money, and Bloomberg updates on an hourly basis so that I’m in the loop with the play-by-play report of our economy and mobile updates on some of the terrible stock picks that I made on e*trade.
The internet has become one of the starting points to my day and almost as regular as the morning shower, the cup of coffee or the rushed breakfast before work. The internet is also the start of the day for the millions of unemployed workers. Finding a new opportunity nowadays seems to always start with the internet. Need to find opportunities or research companies that are hiring? – Go to the internet. Need to connect with a network of people that will assist you in meeting the decision makers for the job you want? – Go to the internet. Need to get your resume in the hands of the hiring manager? – You get the idea. Candidates are constantly turning to the internet to find a new job and in many cases, start a new life. The same is true for companies…
More organizations are turning to internet to research what their competitors are doing or what new tools/technology they can use to get ahead in this marketplace. Our company is looking at how different applications will allow us to revolutionize our industry. We want to change the way that companies search for candidates and how candidates find jobs. We may be able to change an industry, but we’re not going to be able to change the world…or are we?! I can feel that something bigger is on the horizon, not only for our company but for the way we live our lives on a daily basis and I am betting the house that it will come from the internet.
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