There’s no doubt that the focus for a lot of staffing and recruitment companies right now is job orders. Business leaders and sales teams are looking for tools and technology to help them reach more potential buyers, streamline sales processes, and convert more deals faster.
Automation is a powerful tool for sales teams to reach more contacts and convert more business. Some of the ways staffing companies use automation in their sales process include re-engaging inactive contacts, sending touchpoints to passive prospects and building ongoing communication with contacts in the pipeline.
Here are the top 5 automations to consider to help boost your sales efforts and close more deals.
#1 Re-Engage Your Dormant Clients
Do you have a lot of contacts you’ve done business with in the past but haven’t heard from recently? It’s likely you have a handful of contacts in your database who know who you are and what you can provide, but you just haven’t been top-of-mind for them recently.
Start this automation by running a report of all contacts who haven’t had a job order or placement with you in 6 months and send them a re-introductory email. Use this opportunity to re-introduce yourself and highlight anything that may have changed within your business since you’ve worked together. These contacts know the value you provide because they’ve decided to work with you in the past, so this automation is always an easy way to boost sales without investing in strategies for attracting new contacts.
#2 Stay in Front of Passive Prospects
There’s always a group of passive contacts that no matter how many times your salespeople call or email, they just don’t seem interested in buying. While your team focuses on those who are actively interested and top priority, use automation to stay in front of these contacts with educational content so you’re top-of-mind when they do have a need.
These drip emails typically focus on sharing educational content rather than being sales-forward and are sent once a month over the course of a year. Consider including recent blogs, eBooks and similar content in these touchpoints.
#3 Assist Your Sales Teams With Supplemental Touchpoints
Automation doesn’t have to replace your sales efforts entirely and is rarely successful when it does. Rather, you want to use automation to enhance your sales process and help make your teams more efficient. You can do this by creating a series to run in tandem with your sales efforts.
Before building, review your current sales process to find gaps and repetitive tasks. Are you salespeople missing follow-up calls? Is there room for additional emails? Once you’ve identified these gaps, build them into your automation. Examples of sales process automation touchpoints include:
- Internal reminders to call 7 days after adding a prospect.
- Post-meeting follow-up emails with additional information.
- 30-day touchpoints for prospects whose records haven’t been updated.
- Internal notifications to follow up after sending automated email.
#4 Check in on Working Talent
While not entirely focused on generating new business, using automation to help you stay in touch with current clients can help increase your retention rates and even provide referrals for new business.
Like your on-assignment touchpoints to working talent, you can create a similar flow for clients. Better yet, you can add surveys to these messages to gain valuable feedback on candidate performance and raise the flag as soon as possible if there are any issues. Consider the following touchpoints for a client on-assignment automation:
- First-day check-in – Did the candidate show up on time? How was their first day?
- One-week check-in – How has the first week been? Any feedback?
- 30-day check-in – It’s been one month with the candidate, is there anything we need to know?
- 6-month check-in – Is this a viable candidate to convert into long-term employment?
#5 Measure NPS or Get a Sense of Need
Similar to the way you would use automation to gauge NPS and satisfaction for candidates, you can send surveys to clients to get a sense of what is working and where they have needs. Prospects and clients want to have the chance to offer feedback, whether on working talent, what’s going on in the industry, or how your team is performing.
Automation gives you the chance to send out surveys either as a prospecting effort or when contacts reach certain milestones in the process. Collect feedback on what’s going on in the industry, your interview process, candidate performance, and more.
Improve Your Sales Process With Automation
Automation doesn’t need to replace your sales process, but it can enhance it. By using this tool to re-engage with past contacts, cover gaps in your sales process and stay in front of active clients, you can generate more interested contacts in your sales pipeline and convert them faster.
Interested in Haley’s NEW Sales Funnel product to supercharge your prospecting efforts through automation? In need of more sales automation ideas to help your sales team close deals faster? Learn more about Haley Marketing’s Sense and Bullhorn Automation services to start utilizing automation in your sales process.
