Marketing Headhunter

Eat like an Athlete.

Lots of times when I deal with online marketing executives, I feel a little like a sports agent.  I mean, if you are reading this blog, then you are either a hiring manager or you are "the talent."  Being the talent is fun -- especially these days, when great internet marketers have so many options.

So as your agent, allow me to get preachy for minute.

Do you eat fast food french fries?  C'mon.  Who doesn't?  I'm a father of four kids and my wife is due with our fifth in June.  I steal my kids' fries like they are going outta style!  In fact, today, I swiped two chicken nuggets and ~20 fries from the massive grocery bag of Wendy's I bought the kids after church.

For some reason, when the food is for my kids, it's easy to lull myself into thinking that it doesn't effect me -- as if sneaking junk food from four small orders makes it better for me than if I had simply ordered my own.  So I grab a my "fry tax" as I pass the food into the back of the van where my progeny maul it like lions.  But I digress ...

Watch this video.  If you never eat another fast food french fry again, it will allow you to lose weight and think more clearly.  I could link to a bunch of research to prove my point, but we both know it's true.  But watch this anyway.  And eat like an athlete.  That way, when I send you out on an interview you'll look and feel better about yourself -- and you'll probably get an offer.  Ka-ching!

"Why did you leave your last job?"

I interview a ton of candidates, and my first call with them always includes the question "Why did you leave your last job?"  Come to think of it, I have never seen a candidate get hired without having to answer this question.  Not even once.

So get good at explaining why you left.  Your interviewer doesn’t want all the gory details about why things didn’t work out in your last job.  But the hiring company's due diligence requirements compel the interviewer to ask – and you should have a brief, logical, professional answer that reflects well on you and your former employer.  When in doubt, be hard on the issues and soft on the people.

Ideally, you should get something in writing from your former employer.  This brief letter should focus on the positives, even if you left for performance reasons.  You might have to negotiate such a statement, but a written statement is a "must" – especially since your former bosses might themselves quit at some point in the future, leaving you with no record of your accomplishments during your employment there.

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Mobile Marketing & "Me TV"

I just received my latest issue of Alan Rosenspan's free newsletter, and if you don't subscribe to it -- CLICK HERE NOW.  Here's an entry from it that really rocked my world.  Marketers take note:

"The Brand in Your Hand"

Marketing has become like VISA – except "it's everywhere you don’t want it to be."

As you may know, the use of SMS Text messaging has increased dramatically – and now represent 2.6% of all online spending in the U.S.

But the next generation of SMS Text messaging has arrived – and that’s banner ads on your cell phone.

Fareen Sultan, a marketing professor at Northeastern University, calls it "the brand in your hand."

The benefits are reaching people 18-34 who are virtually immune to most forms of regular advertising. They get their news online – so print won’t work. They Tivo the shows they want to see, skipping the commercials.

Most companies are approaching this new media cautiously – afraid of the backlash. However, companies that are using it report click-through rates of 3-6%.

But there’s another new technique that might be even more exciting...

Personalized TV

Wendy’s is testing versioning its TV commercial based on the weather in a specific market.

The fast food company developed two different TV commercials, with specific instructions to the stations on which one to play.

• If the temperature was above 60 degrees, the commercial advertised Wendy’s milkshakes
• If the temperature was below 60 degrees, the commercial advertised Wendy’s hot chili.

Now this isn’t groundbreaking. Back when I worked on Allerest, the allergy relief medicine, we used to do similar things on radio.

But the next step is really remarkable.

The technology is beginning to evolve where companies can deliver personalized TV commercials to specific households.

Certain zip codes might get specific messages while others get different ones.

For example, Scotts Lawn Service might only be interested in talking to people living in suburbs and not in crowded (and mostly lawn-less) cities.

And believe it or not, one company has developed technology that will recognize whether a man or a woman is watching a particular show.

This is based on measuring how the person uses the remote – and they claim 95% accuracy.

So an advertiser will be able to instantly exchange one commercial, targeted to men, for another commercial, which is targeted to women.

My question is this:  Can Google be far behind this trend given its YouTube and Adwords offerings?  What will relevant marketing job skills encompass in the next ten years?  What do you think?

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Does Cold Calling Work?

As my long-time blog readers know, before becoming a marketing recruiter I owned a B2B inside sales consultancy called "Reliable Growth."  Essentially, I taught companies like NCR and Aflac how to research, identify, and develop new business with a phone, an internet connection and a fax machine.

Telemarketing was the lynch-pin of my campaigns.

My campaigns always involved tightly choreographed, sequential steps and sought to establish permission-based relationships with highly targeted prospects over a 6-8 week time frame.  Each interaction was like a chess move.  You can see the gist of the method in this page from my old manual.  This small portion of my process is based on the un-improvable work of Jim Cecil -- the father of nurture marketing.

Needless to say, I know a thing or two about cold calling.  Indeed, I have made many thousands of ice-cold calls in my life -- and if the telephone were a slot-machine, I would be waaaay up in my winnings.

But there's rejection -- and lots of it.

After all, a cold call interrupts the prospect's day.  It's an intrusion, and most folks don't like to be intruded on.  The cold call loser focuses on this element and takes the rejection personally.  The cold call winner simply "moves through the target" (as they say in the Navy SEALS) by regarding cold calling as a numbers game.

Here are five basic truths about cold calling:

1. You cannot wait for the phone to ring.  In the words of the immortal Larry Bird: "Shoot to get hot, shoot to stay hot."
2. What gets measured gets done. "How was your day?"  Good question!  There's nothing as devastating to an opinion as a number.  Get yourself a contact database and track your outbound dials.  If you don't count your dials, your production will lag.
3. The best campaigns involve multiple steps, such as 1.) calling the prospect to verify that s/he is in fact the decision maker, 2.) asking them three closed-ended questions about their current  situation -- thereby disqualifying most prospects as potential new customers, 3.) getting the qualified prospects' permission to send them a HIGHLY PERSONALIZED sales letter, 4.) FAXING the letter, then snail-mailing it the same day, and then 5.) following up no more than 72 hours later to verify their receipt of the letter, answer any questions they may have, and mutually agree on the next steps in the relationship.  To position yourself as a potential resource for institutional buyers, you must be "unintrusively persistent" in your approach:  Our society is famously over-communicated, and B2B prospects are very good at tuning out marketing messages -- especially if they "already have a supplier of what you're selling."  You must have a reliable process in place to address this reality.
4. The most successful reps are "light on their feet" and can talk outside of the script.  Patter works better than droning.
5. The best reps know their product inside-and-out and can put their product "solution" into the context of how the prospect thinks, how they buy (logical vs. emotional), what they fear, what makes them mad, what are their top three daily frustrations, etc.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post:

Today on iMedia, Sean Cheyney, VP of Marketing for AccuQuote, has a nice piece called 5 Ways to Screw up a Cold Call.   His tips include ...

1. Make your own calls:  Using appointment setters can be dilutive to the brand and to the initiative.
2. Don't insult your prospect:  Patience is a virtue.  Listen to the prospect and don't try to shoehorn your product or service into every prospect's business on the very first call.  Or as my dad used to say, "Take things a step at a time: You can't get from first base to third by running across the pitcher's mound."
3. Be prepared and speak clearly: Practice what you're going to say and keep your message to 45 seconds or less.  While I might take issue with the 45 second time frame, I would say that your first call should have an "arc" with a beginning, a middle, and an end -- and the end should always be an open ended, "what's your opinion" type question.
4. Know your customer: The most common way to screw up a cold call is to not know anything about your prospect's business.  Amen.  This should actually be # 1 ...
5. It's a two-way conversation:  According to Mr. Cheyney, "If you talk at me, you'll annoy me. Talk with me and you have a shot."  Yup.

Sales reps get hung up on cold-calling (no pun intended), but an old sales manager at Aflac had it right when he told his reps "I don't care if your own mother refers you to a prospect:   If you have never spoken to the prospect before, then your first call is always a cold call."  Truer words have never been spoken.

So given the above, here's my question: "Is cold calling an effective part of your company's marketing mix?"  Why or why not??

Resume Tip: Watch Mispellangs

Remember those scenes in Andy Griffith where Barney Fife tries to draw his gun in a hurry and nearly shoots himself in the foot -- prompting Andy to ask for Barney's remaining bullets?

Candidates:  Please watch the spelling in your emails.  Not to bust your chops, but I use a Firefox Toolbar which highlights misspellings in emails and HTML documents, making typos stick out like a sore thumb.

So if you were a Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School but have three typos in your cover letter or resume, then you have just completely neutralized any hard-earned advantage you might have had going into the search.  >Blam!<  Measure twice, cut once.

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Poll: "What would YOU do?"

Something happened to me about a month ago.  Actually, it didn't happen to me. I kinda made it happen.  By not being disciplined.

Last spring I closed a search for VP of Marketing for a large retailer.  It was one of those projects where everything went right:  Good candidates, good interviews, and the search required just the right amount of time and effort on the part of the client for them to feel happy about paying my invoice.

Recently the client's President, who has since become a friend, calls me and says "Harry, I need a VP of Human Resources, and I want you to handle the search.  The VP of Marketing you found me is a rock star, and I know that HR is not your thing -- but you really understand our culture and our strategy ... etc."

To which I respond "I am flattered that you would ask, and I am thrilled to hear that my candidate is working out so well.  HR isn't my thing.  However [here's where the trouble starts] ... because it's you, I'm willing to handle the search provided that I am not your only resource.  I'd hate to see you pin your hopes on me."

So I take the search and proceed to strike out.  Major league.  And the client begins to feel neglected because he doesn't see any candidates.  Like, none.  It's not that I can't find people to submit.  It's that I know this client, and it takes a very smart, very resilient, results-oriented person to work for them.  I'm not seeing that anywhere.  And I certainly don't see any candidates whom I think would justify my search fee.

One day last week I called the client to give them an update on the search, and I sense their mounting frustration with me.  It seems that while they do have another recruiter on the search, she's failing too.  But regardless, I feel that my reputation has lost its luster with the client.  Right or wrong, in the client's mind, by not being part of his problem's solution, I have become part of the problem.  That sucks, because a pampered client is a loyal client -- and loyal clients drive referrals!

Which begs the question:  Would my relationship have been better served by adamantly declining the project on Day One?  Or did I do the right thing by at least trying to close the search?  After all, don't I have an obligation to help a friend?

Would YOU have taken this search?
	Yes
	No
pollcode.com free polls

Sales Training & Job Search Tip

Here is a juicy sales training and job search tip.  It's based on practice, not theory.  And it comes from hundreds of actual client and candidate discussions -- not from some book.

I've been incredibly busy of late, and my project turnover has been heavy.  Some deals I've closed.  Some I haven't.  Not sure what you expected to hear, but I don't close every search.  Not by a long shot.  The reasons are colorful, varied, and often beyond my control, and I have resisted the temptation to write about two of my recently cratered deals.  They would have made for scrumptiously rich blogging.  Sadly, they weren't good for much else.

What this means is that I am taking calls for new searches.  Many companies reach out to me, but I don't accept every project.  The projects I take have more to do with the sincerity of the client's interest than the size of the deal.  Put another way:  I'd rather do a solid Director-level search than a flimsy VP-level one.  Frankly, it's more fun to help people who want to be helped.

Primarily two types of potential clients call me:

• The first type is merely on a fishing expedition:  Perhaps they have a solid internal candidate and they just want to "see what else is out there" -- so they ring me up.  I'm pretty good at spotting (and avoiding) these deals.  No harm, no foul.
• The second type is thinking of adding a new VP of Ecommerce, and they want to pick my brain about how much to pay, what the job should look like, etc.  So it's not yet really a search.  I've always been good at gracefully navigating these discussions so that they don't turn into free consulting engagements for the caller.  But lately I have gotten even better.

The One | Two Punch

There are two questions that I ask every potential client, and they have proven to be highly effective at separating the wheat from the chaff.  Ready?  Here ya go ...

"Thanks for calling me, Mr. Prospect.  How did your hear about me? ... Great ... And how do you know that person? ... Great ... Well, before I give you some background on my executive search practice, let me ask you ...

1. What is your ideal outcome for this discussion? [Shut up and take notes.  Do not interrupt or it will cost you money.]
2. At the end of this discussion, how will you know if I am the best resource for you? [Shut up and take even more notes.  Again, interrupt at your great financial peril.]

My fellow recruiters, these questions work like a charm.

The first question forces the client to begin with the end in mind -- and to honestly address his motives out loud.  There's something very truth-affirming about the "out loud" part.  Very few people are brazen enough to start a call by telling you that they are not going to bullshit you and then bullshit you anyway.  More often, if you ask them what is their ideal outcome, they'll admit "Well, I'm on a fishing expedition ..."  Great.  That's fine.  That doesn't make you a bad person.  It just doesn't make you a good client.  Ask for simple honesty, and you'll be amazed at how often you get it.  Try it sometime.

The second question will force the caller to tell you -- and thereby realize for himself, possibly for the very first time -- what attributes are essential to him in an executive search consultant.  I mean, isn't that what you both want?  I'm not a mind reader.  Just tell me on what basis you will be making a decision, and I'll step you through the logic of why I'm your guy.  Or not.

Believe me, there's more value in referring a client to a more specialized recruiter than taking a search you aren't qualified to handle.  Would you want your dentist to handle your podiatry needs just because he needed the work?  Or would you prefer it if he simply referred you to a qualified practitioner?  Me too.

Job candidates, you might want to try these questions during your next interview.  I have seen candidates use variations of the second question with great success.  And to my fellow recruiters, I encourage you to try out these questions on your next call-in referral.  You'll be glad you did.

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For a good time, call Harry Joiner

I'm not gonna break any new ground with this post, but it's worth saying anyway:  My fellow recruiters, be sure to take good care of the people who refer candidates to you.  Anytime someone refers a candidate to me and I use that candidate to close a search, the referrer gets a nice Amazon gift certificate.

I'm not talking twenty bucks, either.

I have sent out thousands of dollars worth of (tax deductible) Amazon gift certificates this year, and it's the best marketing money I spend.  People are so appreciative!  Plus it's just plain nice manners.

People don't have to tell their friends about me.  But they do, and I want to show them my sincere appreciation -- partially because I'm nice, and partially because I'm smart.  Recruiting is a people business, and A-players know other A-players (and B-players know C-players).  Moreover, everyone knows that recruiters make 20-30% of a candidate's first year base salary, and referrers often resent it when we make twenty grand on a deal and don't show them any love whatsoever.  Can you blame them?

I've heard stories about recruiters who closed searches with referred candidates and not only didn't send a thank you note, but actually forgot who referred the candidate to them in the first place!  Believe me, that kind of ingratitude gets talked about in the marketplace.

You recruiters spend some real money on your referrers.  Show them a good time!  What goes around, comes around.