Am I persistent or am I A Pest?

Am I persistent or am I a pest? Ask my daughters or significant people in my life and they will tell you the latter, however, ask my client’s and they will tell you persistent.

How many stories have you already heard of people never giving up? Take J.K. Rowling for example, rejected by 12 publishers before a small publishing house picked it up. What if J.K. had given up? I bet those other publishers have never been able to let go of the fact they missed out on millions of dollars. Maybe your prospects who have rejected you will end up kicking themselves when their competitor uses your service and increases business. Persistence is the ability to keep going after rejection after rejection and after rejection, and the majority of people give up all too early.

One of the things I say to myself when I am prospecting is “if I don’t make this call, I bet my competition is”. Or what if you are thinking, the economy is bad no one wants what I am selling? Well the good news is that a lot of your competitors have thought that and given up.....what a great opportunity for you to home in on their clients!

As a recruiter with a focus on sales and marketing I have never been able to understand why companies retrench the sales and marketing departments in tough times. However, that seems to be the norm and my advice to you if you are in sales and have found yourself out of work, use your skills to find out what pain companies (or people) are feeling in hard times and find a solution. Who knows you could find yourself in your own profitable business.

In my case, I left a full time secure role in Executive Recruiting to start up a recruitment business with my business partner, Tanya, in a recession. You are probably thinking “That was dumb” and my reply is “No, we saw an opportunity because we had so much more value added services to provide and we knew if we persisted we would make it happen”.

So in selling, the decision is yours. You can be like the person who said that, "They were not going to try because no one is buying” or you can increase your activity and keep persisting because it’s all in the numbers. So are you going to sit around and wait until the market improves or are you going to hit the floor running and never give up until you have earned that bonus that you really want?

So how do I persist in sales? I am talking about qualified prospects that could become a client or in other words “Hot Lead”

• Research and establish if the prospect is actually a potential buyer
• Initial phone call and rejection (note in CRM)
• 4 weeks later I send an email with a relevant article or something newsworthy (completely ignored) and set a date for next contact in 4 weeks
• 4 weeks later I send something in the mail, most likely a hand written card, article I have found out of a newspaper relevant to prospect
• 4 weeks later I phone again
• Now I try and invite prospect to an event
• I follow up after event or invitation
• Now I have a familiar relationship with the prospect and the rest is history

Then, and let me stress this, your job becomes a customer service representative and you always keep in touch with your client on a regular basis.

Whenever I place a candidate, I send cards to both client and candidate and make notes in my CRM to remind me to keep in touch on a regular basis. I always respect my candidates and treat them like my clients, because one day they probably will be a client.

Ways to keep your client’s feeling important are:

• Emails
• Letters in mail
• Hand written cards
• Vouchers for music, coffee, movies etc
• Christmas cards and gifts (maybe a donation to a charity on behalf of client)
• Invites to breakfasts etc (take them along to a networking lunch or breakfast as your guest)
• Christmas parties
• Client thank you parties (all your clients come to an event at the office)
• Whisky tasting nights
• Movie nights

The list goes on!

Persistence pays off.

Debbie Carr can be contacted via True Colours Recruitment www.truecoloursrecruitment.com