In my last two blog posts, I’ve presented classic recruiting closes for making more placements . . . and I’m back with yet five more!
This is the third and final installment in this series of blog posts. As with the previous two posts, not only will I present the closes, but I’ll also discuss how you can use them on your recruiting desk.
More closes, more placements
Below are another five closes for making more placements:
#1—Tie-Downs
There are three types of tie downs: The regular tie-down, the inverted tie-down, and the tie-down tag-on. The basic idea with a tie-down is that if someone is moving their head up and down in a positive way, it is difficult to stop that movement and change to a negative side-to-side movement.
The regular tie-down: You say, “Boy, he really does have the experience you’re looking for, doesn’t he!” “Doesn’t he” is the tie-down. “And he would be good for your company, wouldn’t he?” “Wouldn’t he” is the tie-down.
The inverted tie down: You lead with the tie-down. You say, “Doesn’t he have the experience you are looking for?” The tie-down comes at the beginning. You say, “Wouldn’t he be a great addition to your company?” Again, the tie-down comes at the beginning.
The tie-down tag-on: They say, “Boy he really does have the experience we’re looking for.” And you say, “Doesn’t he!” “Doesn’t he” is the tag-on. They say, “And he really would be a great addition to our company.” And you say, “Wouldn’t he!” “Wouldn’t he” is the tag-on.
#2—What If?
The “What If?” close brings non-overlapping situations together. Let’s say that you believe the offer is going to come in at $60,000 and you know that the candidate won’t take anything less than $61,000. Well, you have a $1,000 problem. In this situation, we want to focus on “psyticements” (psychological enticements) such as an expense account, a company car, immediate health benefits (good for candidates with families), early merit reviews, corner offices with windows, etc.
We’re looking for more ammunition before we fire our “offer cannon.” So for example, we go to our candidate and say, “I was thinking about this last night and what if we go for immediate health benefits (to cover your five kids) and an expense account. But let’s go in a little bit lower, at let’s say $60,000, to make this package more attractive for the company. Now in the long run, by adding those two items, you’ll be making more than the $61,000 you were after. What if we did that?”
If the candidate agrees, then we go back to the company and negotiate those two items. In most companies (especially larger companies), salaries are not too movable. Instead, they are “slotted.” The last thing a company wants to do is to give a new candidate a larger than normal salary. That’s because when it gets out to the other tenured employees, a number of them will quit. But “psyticements” are movable, and we as recruiters need to focus more on those and less on salaries. (Even though a percentage of the salary, or realistic first year’s earnings, is how most of us are paid and explains our fixation on that number. It’s a shame that we do that.)
#3—If I, Will You?
So you say to the hiring manager, “If I cut my fee to 25%, will you give me a decision after each of my candidates is interviewed within 24 hours?”
Or you say, “If I agree to 25%, will you agree to interview everyone I present without a resume since I will be recruiting candidates who are happy, well-appreciated, making good money, and currently working and normally will not have a resume?”
In other words, if you give something, you need to get something. It needs to be fair. It needs to be equitable.
#4—Reduce to the Ridiculous
This close is for money problems and is based on an amortization table.
Let’s take a fee problem. The fee the hiring manager wants to pay is 25%, and let’s say your candidate makes $60,000. So that is a $15,000 fee. At a normal fee of 30%, the fee is $18,000. So we have a $3,000 problem. This is what we say to the manager: “You know, Mr. Hiring Manager, the difference in our fee amounts is $3,000. But let’s think of that $3,000 in a little different way. If you take the $3,000 and amortize it over one “work” year, you get $1.44 per hour. Now, how long do your employees normally stay with you?”
The hiring manager says four years. So you continue, “Four years is pretty much the industry average. So, let’s take the $1.44 and divide it by 4 and you get 36¢. Is it worth it to you to not have a candidate of this caliber on board with your company for 36¢?” Hence the title of the close: “Reduce to the Ridiculous.”
#5—Take-Away
This is used when either side cannot make a decision. With this close, you’re going to “roll the dice” and be very assumptive. You’re not going to ask permission to take it away. You’re just going to do it. But here’s the beauty of this close: you’re either going to take it away, so the deal that was not going to go together anyway dies . . . OR you’re not going to be allowed to take it away and you will make a placement. Either way works for you.
You say to the hiring manager, “Listen, I understand your predicament. Usually in our business, if a match is going to happen, the hiring manager is going to say ‘Yes’ right away and for some reason you are not. So my sense is that this is not going to go together. But I tell you what. Why don’t we wait until 3 p.m.? If I don’t hear from you by 3 p.m. today, I’m going to call the candidate and tell him that it’s just not going to happen. And if you can make a positive decision by 3 p.m., get back to me and we will put the thing together.”
As I said before, you’ve created a win-win situation. You’ll either take it away by 3 p.m., which means it wasn’t going to go together anyway. Or you are not going to be able to take it away. They’re going to hire your candidate and you’re going to make a placement. But let’s not let this thing go off into space because it stops you from thinking, it stops you from working, and it causes you to be preoccupied “babying” these things.
So let’s put the hiring managers’ “feet to the fire.” They won’t necessarily love you when you do these take-away closes, but hopefully you didn’t get into this business to be loved. You got into this business to make serious money.
You get that through making placements—lots of them. And you get those placements by getting decisions. The take-away close is one way to get the decisions you need.
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Bob Marshall of TBMG International, founder of The Marshall Plan, has an extensive background in the recruiting industry as a recruiter, manager, vice president, president, consultant, and trainer. He can be reached at bob@themarshallplan.org or at 770.898.5550. Marshall’s website is www.themarshallplan.org.