Most Die-hard Phone Jockeys will deny the following fact, but they’re wrong! If you have mastered the art of voicemail, then you’ve mastered the most important skills necessary to engage the full power of Email Marketing to improve your placements performance. Yes, there is a difference in medium, from spoken to written and in communicating with many as opposed to just one person at a time. But these differences can each be accomplished in small, easy steps, and when you approach it that way, the skills for mighty Email Marketing are truly just an extension of your basic voicemail skills.
In this week’s lesson, we’ll cover voicemail first, to lay our foundation, and then turn to Email Marketing. We’ll address the use of Email Marketing as a part of your sales cycle one-on-one, first. Then we’ll map out the power of Email Marketing to warm up your cold calls and, most important of all, to draw those you’re already serving closer to you. Our only goal is to increase your placements.
Voicemail: The Simple Basics
Preparing a great voicemail requires that you answer two questions:
- What is your core message?
- How do you express this message with force and compelling, appealing, attractive, fresh power?
Done right, the real power of voicemail is to build name and service recognition. To accomplish this, you must leave advertisement-grade messages. Be upbeat, be memorable, use modulation, DO NOT BE BORING, and look only to leave a positive and somewhat memorable message. It’s beyond our scope to discuss callbacks. I simply have to share, though, that callbacks are not the objective I recommend for voicemail. I exclusively recommend that voicemail can warm up your prospect and increase your likelihood of call acceptance when you call again.
From Voicemail To Email
The first step is to send an email following each voicemail. This doubling of your message is definitely worth the extra effort. And, you should let people know in your voicemail that an email is coming as well.
The immediate questions that arise are:
- Unique vs. Boilerplate Construction
- Time Investment
- Length of Message
While you really will have to use pre-prepared or Boilerplate forms, any time you need to customize them you can, easily and rapidly. Still, you surely must minimize your time investment and an important part of the answer is to write short emails for the vast majority of your emails.
On the other hand, when a serious communication in writing can move your deal forward, it truly IS worth the time and effort. The deal itself is your guide. If you find yourself writing long, time consuming emails as a part of deals that DO NOT close, then you’re on the wrong track. Done right, which typically means rarely, and always aiming for shorter versus longer, you might be amazed that this can be a great tool in your kit.
One last point: be sure to be logical and clear in your communication, but do NOT leave your message only at the intellectual level. You must speak to and trigger the emotions of your recipient.
Written vs. Spoken
While many recruiters avoid public speaking like the plague, most recruiters know that they’re very good at speaking one-on-one. Scratch a big biller though, and what you find underneath is a public speaker, too. Many of the best recruiters discover that speaking to many people at once is easy and fun, believe it or not! Imagine, if you can take your one-on-one sales skills onto the stage, you may very well make your greatest strategic leap toward becoming a true power broker in your industry. But perhaps we’ve placed the cart in front of horse here; whether you have the courage to speak in public or not, the power of Email Marketing is something you must consider.
What most recruiters don’t realize is that if you can speak, you can write. Actually both forms of communication are simply good, clear thinking expressed one way or another. As a professional salesperson, I promise you have the power of the written word in you, if you simply practice it.
Email Marketing is nothing more than an electronic means of getting your message across to many people, at virtually no dollar cost, all at once. The goal is to begin to build a relationship so that the individual you’re calling already “knows” you. Here, a word about Cold Calling comes into play.
The question is, can there be degrees of “cold” in a cold call? By all means! That’s what your Email Marketing is for. With its power working for you, when you reach out to your market, the person you’re calling will know who you are. No, they won’t know you well, but here we have a classic black and white switch at play. Knowing you at all, or even just having the feeling of knowing you, is the reward that makes Email Marketing so irresistible for a Diehard Phone Jockey.
Composition
The most important part of Email Marketing is of course the writing and composition. Your best messages are constructed around the transformations your prospects must execute. The formula I recommend has these six steps:
- Find a desired change, in the form of tangible, new outcomes that will compel your prospect.
- Work through the obstacles preventing those desired outcomes from occurring.
- Teach how to overcome those obstacles.
- Work with basics and fundamentals that prospects can remember and use instantly.
- Help them accomplish this change without you, all on their own.
- Teach them how to know when they have succeeded, and don’t forget to celebrate!
When composing your message, picture a single friend as your audience. Help him hit his goals and overcome his obstacles and slay his dragons. If you simply step back and look at the people you serve, you will find that you really do have a unique message to give them. And, you’ll find you have the ability to guide them that no other person in your niche can match.
You, Irreplaceable You!
As the expert in your field those who want the best results are absolutely going to want — no, NEED — to work with you. When people first trust you with representing them or their job openings, they unconsciously hope that you’re the BEST IN THE FIELD. This trust is yours to lose, whether you realize it or not. When you create a powerful Email Marketing practice, the outcome is that it draws the people with whom you’re already speaking to you in ways that no other medium can equal. It helps them CONFIRM that you ARE the best in the field!
Let’s picture a couple of examples. You’ve found a fantastic candidate who isn’t sure she’s ready to leave her current position yet. You write a powerful email article about the signs that it’s time to go, and the joys and pleasures of starting out in a new challenge. Honestly, you could write that article as if it were to your one targeted candidate alone. But, in sending it out to your entire email list (Blind-Carbon-Copying it, of course) your candidate will not have the same resistance to your message. In fact, people have the opposite reaction. They love it when they feel as if you are actually writing to them. There’s something magical about it.
Or, you’ve got a hiring manager you like, but he’s not been in good communication with you lately. You write an article about the delicacy of timing in the hiring mission. In it, you emphasize not only timely communications and decisions, but you also walk though the coolness curve that everyone goes through as communication ages into silence. Can you begin to see the tactical and strategic options this method grants you? The power is simply vast.
Getting Started
For you technical types, if you have the chops to do it yourself, let it rip. I have no counsel for you. Or, for those of you with awesome support from your firm, you might be amazed at how excited your support team will be once they realize you’re actually aggressively taking this opportunity on. They will help you and your star power in the office will absolutely rise. Besides, what could be more fun than showing all the naysayers how much money you’re making as a result?
But what if you’re essentially a 20th Century guy or gal just like me, and have no clue? Two words: HIRE OUT! Here’s why. First of all, you’re going to have to have some sort of website presence where people can sign up for your email newsletter. My own is a great example for you. Go check it out at: www.RecruitingPrinciples.com and of course, sign up to get your free copy of my main article, The Switch, and start receiving my free Recruiting Tactics & Strategy Newsletter!
Shameless advertisement complete, I could NEVER have generated that simple website on my own. If I didn’t have a partner who is fantastically gifted at these things, I’d have had to find a firm to do it for me. And that is ABSOLUTELY what I urge you to do. Finding the talented people out there – and they are there – may be one of the more challenging parts of your mission.
A word about timing is needed. You must commit to your rhythm. Once per month is fine. You might get way with once every six weeks, even. But there really is power in the rhythm. I can assure you that if you follow the methods outlined above, you will NOT wear out your readership. By any timing, though, any newsletter at all is vastly superior to none. So, if you don’t at first have a rhythm, it really is okay. I can tell you from my own experience that the power to close that your newsletter will give you is worth every ounce of energy you must invest.
Some examples of content you could create for your newsletter include (the first two are mentioned above):
- The signs that it’s time to go, and the joys and pleasures of starting out in a new challenge.
- The delicacy of timing in the hiring mission.
- A “man-behind-the-curtain” look at what you actually do as a recruiter to help your prospects understand the value you bring to the table.
- How candidates can determine how truly valuable they are in their field.
- “Drugs are bad; so are resumes.” – Why hiring managers shouldn’t rely on resumes and what their actual place is in the hiring process.
- “Hire well today; sleep great tonight.” – How hiring managers don’t realize their current problems originate in bad staff, and how to fix that situation.
- “There’s gold in them thar hills.” – Describe how your clients are thriving today as a result of what you’ve done for them.
But, in closing, what if you decide not to invest so heavily, or that you’re just not ready?
Readiness and Commitment
Wait…what about writing quality? What if you’re an ABYSMAL writer? Oh, it is YOU that I hope to persuade the most. The answer to poor writing quality is high thinking quality. Take your time. Never rush. Find a message in which you utterly believe. Work out the logic. Make each step as small as you can. Put the pieces into the easiest, simplest order possible, even if you have to force or even fake the order a little, that’s okay. Simply work on your message until it is as clear and clean and simple and direct as can be. And then, PUT IT OUT THERE!
Yes, there will be naysayers. You have to be ready for them. Here’s the answer that has saved my own writing career. Once I’ve completed a writing project, I know that I may not have expressed my message well. I may have made mistakes. It may be too long, or the style of writing may not sparkle the way I hope. But, I stand behind the message itself. You may not like the way I said it, and you may be right. But, you can only reject the substance of my message at your own loss. That confidence has carried me through all the attack and the opposition, and if you invest into your message, it will be your shield as it has been my own!
So again, you may not be ready, and if not, follow the sequence of the lessons in this Diehard Phone Jockey’s Guide to Social Media series:
- Surely you must have a LinkedIn profile and you must work on getting the strongest, rave reviews you can.
- Once you’re happy at LinkedIn, and ready, then build your blog.
- Once you’re happy there, and wish to embrace the kind of power that Email Marketing gives, it is the third step to take.
And if you’re ready to accept my counsel today, then I can promise you this. Following the methods outlined here, your closing power will rise. My own has, and I see the same thing happening for those I serve. Be confident; you do have a message. You do have a voice to discover, uncover, and share with the world. And, I’m telling you, your market is waiting. It really does want the truth. It wants wisdom. It wants to be guided to a better way. You have that knowledge. I say, go share it.
In the next article of the “Die-hard Phone Jockey” series, we’ll be discussing Facebook. Great recruiting goes beyond just business relationships. Successful recruiters know that great recruiting is all about powerful, personal relationships. Facebook is the number one social medium in the world today because it actually humanizes its users for each other in ways not previously possible at a distance. Your clients and candidates will bond with you at deeper levels than ever before, giving them the opportunity to know you, like you, and trust you like they would if you were a true business partner — not just a vendor.
Stay tuned for the next installment, coming next week…