Marketing and Sales Triggers

The Recruitment Marketing and Sales Podcast

Today’s post is all about marketing and sales triggers – and we’re going to cover what some of the motivations are that make either your clients start hiring or your candidates decide to move.

First of all, if you are considering launching a new recruiting product or service this year, then come along and attend our new masterclass. It’s taking place on February the 10th at 4 pm, GMT; you can register by clicking here.

This a condensed version of a class we ran last year for our clients because so many of them were and are in the process of launching new services, new products, improving their offer out to the market.

You might be aware that Sharon and I have launched multiple products both in and out of the recruiting sector, so we’ve gone through that process of really honing what works, what doesn’t work, what you can do and what most certainly you do not want to do. Come along, listen to some gems because it could save you a lot of pain and heartache. It could also potentially make you a lot of money too.

Let’s get into today’s topic of sales and marketing triggers.

What Are Sales and Marketing Triggers?

Let’s talk about sales triggers, and why you want to be thinking about them now, so you can incorporate them into your marketing plan.

If you’re familiar with the Superfast Recruitment blog, you might be familiar with the buying cycle and how important it is. Sales and marketing triggers move people through the buying cycle rapidly. Fundamentally, a trigger is an event that happens that motivates an individual to engage and to buy.

Who hasn’t looked at the deals on Amazon Prime Day? I know I’m talking a B2C context here, but it’s the same customer behaviour. Events like Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday cause us to think, “I wonder if that camera is going to be a little bit less expensive, I’ll wait to buy it.”

We’re primed and ready to buy, and that happens in all sorts of areas. Triggers can happen in our personal and business lives. Some of them are very practical, and some also trigger an emotional reaction. People that move through the buying cycle faster are much more likely to step out and say, “I have to do something about this.”

If you have a handle on some of the different events and trigger events that are likely to happen, it can make a massive difference to your planning and success.

You can plan your sales messages; you can plan your marketing messages and your sales and marketing collateral ahead of time. You don’t know if somebody’s going to leave an organisation, or if there’s going to be a management change, but there are lots of things that you can plan for. LinkedIn is your friend, in this case; you can find out many things that are going on, and you can prepare ahead of time, which makes a massive difference to your success.

The more you know about your market and your ideal client and candidate avatar, this will serve you well. Because the more you know about people, the more you can predict and plan.

I’m going to share with you five different trigger areas, you might be aware of these trigger areas already, but the question is, are you currently doing anything about it?

The first element is calendar events.

1. Calendar Events

These are things you can predict will happen each year at different levels depending on your market and sector.

For example, in the United States, some organisations will get to the end of their tax year, and they want some tax relief because nobody wants to pay more to the government than they need to, so funding or spending will happen around then.

Many people ignore that, and you’d be surprised the difference that can make. When it gets to the end of the tax year, businesses will be thinking about if they can afford that new headcount.

This is the time that businesses will be deciding to invest in your recruitment company. It may be that you’ve got a new recruiting product – something maybe you could sell to an organisation or an individual if they pay X amount upfront before the end of March.

People will often go into the new year and say, “This is it. This year, I’m going to get a new job,” or “This year I’m going to add a new department. We’ve been procrastinating about it for ages. This year we’re going to do something different.” Remember that new year equals a fresh start, and this applies to clients and candidates.

The other part of calendar events to consider is performance reviews. When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, it always just so happened in our organisation, reviews happened in December; it would connect with the new year’s start.

Candidates might have it in their head that this was the year they were going to move or going to get a promotion, and it didn’t happen. Additionally, if you know when performance reviews generally happen in your sector, you could be writing content around that, such as a report or an email campaign.

Another thing that aligns to these two is bonus payments, and again this will be sector-specific. It could be that people get their end of year bonus in March or at the end of December – you will know what works for your particular environment.

Let’s be honest about it; people will not leave a company if they know they’re shortly getting X thousand pounds of dividends or shares or bonus payments. Factor that into your marketing as well, because that will be a trigger. Somebody may be waiting until they get the bonus payment, or you may be in a conversation with them, and you can appreciate that this is going nowhere until that happens.

The other things that come around are the classic holiday blues. People come back from holiday, and they’ve had time to think and reflect; I know it’s been very much a year of staycations for many people in the UK here.

It could be they’ve had a mid-year review, and it didn’t go quite how they hoped, or they found out that that new department isn’t going to go ahead, and what they were expecting to happen isn’t going to pan out.

There are also sector events. I know that physical events aren’t happening at the moment, but there’s a lot of online events. Often around the time of these events, people make more buying decisions.

Many of these events have now gone online – is there something around timing that you need to be aware of in your sector, that might make a difference?

Finally, you may have some of your own calendar events. You can’t always know when somebody is going to move house or have a baby. However, if you are very close to your candidates, you will know when things like this are happening. That’s something to be aware of at a very granular level.

There are some other final events I mentioned, such as Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday. There are different times when there might be something going on, that you could then leverage.

We have a Black Friday deal where we bundle up additional offers for our clients. We get new clients joining the Superfast Circle, we offer additional training, some one-to-one time, and we do that at different points in the year.

So, start planning, start thinking about your marketing for next year around your calendar events.

2. C-Suite Changes

Next up to think about are management and leadership changes. I’m sure we’ve all heard that saying: a new brush sweeps clean.

The irony is not lost on me that Joe Biden this week was inaugurated as the President of the United States. Within 24 hours, he’d altered 17 executive orders that Donald Trump had put into place.

When a new manager or new management team comes into an organisation, they may decide to recruit differently. Think about what connections you’ve got, and don’t be frightened to email the CEO. When a management change comes about, this can be the ideal time to contact them with information about a particular service that you can help them with.

You need to be thinking about that as a trigger. Of course, we all live on Linkedin, don’t we?

There are lots of ways that you can find out what’s happening.

3. Expansion and Funding

The next one, and this aligns to number two, is expansion and funding.

The government has increased funding in lots of different areas recently, and this means recruitment. There’s the kick-start programmes, plus lots of other schemes going on.

In your sector, how does expansion happen? How does funding happen? What does that mean for your clients when they’re recruiting? What about some of these new products that you could potentially create and work with?

I know I keep talking about thinking, but take some thinking time so you can work this one through and how it might work for you.

4. Legislation

Number four, let’s talk about legislation. What is happening with legislation? I know it’s been an ongoing saga with IR35, but things are meant to be happening this year, hopefully around April the 8th.

A couple of years ago, we had GDPR, which was a similar situation.

What legislation is happening that might mean a shift in your market for you, your service, or your delivery? Whenever new legislation comes into effect, it seems to reverberate down; people leave, people move. There are lots of shifts going on, which is a great opportunity to place new candidates.

Think about any legislation triggers and again, if you are honed into your market, you will know some of the things that are happening.

5. The New Market Norm

We’re currently living in a socially-distanced environment. Who knew that we’d all need to buy face masks, plastic visors and hand sanitiser.

Again, with the new President in the US; when America makes certain decisions, this reverberates around the world. Who knows what’s going to happen with Joe Biden and his amazing new vice-president?

Just think about what has shifted, what has changed. It may be that your particular recruitment service could improve in a way that makes you even more successful if you add new elements to it, embellish it or make it even better than it currently is.

Think about that as a sales trigger; because if you know some of the challenges, what solution you can provide that your customers are looking for?

The final thing around sales triggers is something incredibly practical that people often miss – engagement.

6. Sales and Content Engagement

Engagement is critical to sales triggers. The way people engage with you, your brand, the people who open your emails and visit your website.

There are all sorts of different software that you can use to work out which companies are visiting your website, watching your videos, and you can use paid advertising to connect with these people.

These people are telling you what they are interested in.

Once people start to engage with your content, for me, that is very much a sign that they are moving through the buying cycle, and that they are ready to engage with you and your service.

If certain people pay you more attention, if people are watching your videos, if suddenly, somebody is liking and sharing your content, they probably like what you’re doing.

They might be interested in you and your offer. If you suddenly discover that they’ve been all over your website and your social media, they need to be considered.

They need to be considered with your marketing as well.

Because when we’re in a B2B environment, often, for your clients to decide to work with a recruitment company longer-term, they know that you’re going to need to find 100 people for them, over the next three to five years. These are high-level positions, but we need to be mindful of those sorts of triggers.

Think about what kind of content which will speak to these people.

You need to have all the right information at various points to hold their hand through the buying cycle. Do you have your communication points and pieces in front of these individuals?

Sales triggers are something that I think a lot of people have ignored in the last couple of years and something that could make a massive difference to you this year if you have them dialled in.

Next Steps?

Remember, before February click here to register for our new masterclass, on how to launch your new recruitment product or service; this masterclass is full of strategies that are working right now, for companies across the globe