Sell, Sell, Sell

As this is my first post, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Karen Maloney, and I am a Marketing Manager at Bullhorn where my responsibilities include overseeing the production of our research and best practice papers. At the end of last year, Bullhorn conducted an industry survey to find out what was on the minds of staffing and recruiting professionals heading into 2009. 92% of participants indicated that they would be spending more time in sales and business development during the next year. That’s a huge shift in focus. In fact, nearly 60% of respondents said they were currently spending less than 30% of their time in sales. For those on a split desk, it meant re-balancing priorities to focus more time on clients rather than candidates. I can imagine the immediate impact it had on the structure of their daily activities and the key metrics that needed to be met.

For others it’s an even more dramatic shift. In a time when every organization is trying to do more with less, people are being asked to take responsibility in areas that they have limited experience in. Many recruiters now find themselves with the responsibility for landing new clients and driving job orders, when they had little or no involvement in those efforts before. Talk about intimidating. No matter which situation you find yourself in, many people are now looking for information on how to develop their selling skills and experience. To provide information on these topics, Bullhorn recently produced a new best practices paper “Five Steps to Drive Job Orders and Increase Sales.” This paper is meant to serve as a getting started guide for those ramping up in sales and provide best practices for those who are already very familiar with the challenges of landing new clients and job orders.

Getting a job order this year will take a lot more effort than last, and doubling or tripling the time spent on those efforts isn’t a feasible solution. Given the current reality – how are you working smarter to get those orders? If your new responsibilities in 2009 include sales, how is the adjustment going? What’s been the biggest challenge? What can you share with others that might be facing that same challenge?

This Bullhorn Blog post was written by Karen Maloney.