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Want to sell staffing to small business owners?

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Think marketing. Not sales.

If you want to close a million dollar account in the staffing industry, you’ll need great sales skill. You will most likely have to target multiple decision makers, develop internal champions, convey a convincing message that’s highly customized to the specific client, and negotiate wisely.

Big sales require big sales skills.

But what about small accounts?

What if you want to close 100 $10,000 accounts. Do you use the same approach?</p

Of course not. Selling smaller clients takes a different approach.

  1. You need to spend less time per account.With a big client, you can invest a lot of time in research, preparation, meetings and follow-up. For small accounts, that’s not cost or time effective. Instead, you find ways to leverage your sales time, so you can stay in touch with more people, more often without burning out sales reps.
  2. You need to educate.Big companies tend to be pretty sophisticated users of staffing. You don’t need to sell them on the reasons to use temp help. But smaller employers tend to have more preconceived notions about the quality of temps and the cost of staffing services. To sell them, you need to teach them when, why and how to use staffing. You need to prove that you can supply the caliber of people they need–and that your services deliver a big ROI.
  3. Use sales time wisely.With small accounts, you must be diligent about your sales and service time. Rather than investing heavily in traditional sales activities like cold calling, use integrated direct marketing to capture attention, accelerate the sales cycle, and increase your sale team’s face time with prospects. Integrated direct market is an approach that mixes multiple channels of direct marketing (e.g., mail, email, social messaging) with sales calls in a systematic process to get appointments.
  4. Be patient.Small companies don’t use staffing as often as large employers. Expect that most of the people you call on will not have an immediate staffing need. But don’t give up when they say “we’re not hiring.” Instead, have a plan to nurture relationships over the long-term using a combination of email, calls, drop bys, direct mail and social media. When nurturing, focus on education–teach people more about the value of staffing and how to manage their workforces more intelligently. Position yourself as a hiring expert for small business. That way when a need arises, you’ll be the company that’s top-of-mind.

Want more ideas to market staffing to small business?

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