Marketers who feel “unloved” or “worked” in the wrong way will totally get this blog, and likely forward to their leaders and recruiters. Recruitment Leaders and recruiters need to read this blog if they feel that they are not making money from marketing!
Recruitment Marketing and Sales are Disconnected
I recently had dinner with a recruitment leader (anonymous) and we were talking about her goals for the year…
Profit, Effectiveness, ROI, CRM Upgrade, Marketing…
Or rather she said:
I want to get more ROI from my colouring-in department!
In our Bullhorn RoI and Bullhorn Automation Buddy programs we often come across Recruitment Marketing departments who are disconnected from Sales – disconnected enough to warrant a (healthy) scepticism. This is often demonstrated by graphs showing community sizes rather than fees generated from marketing activities.
Why? We often find that this is due to a complete lack of understanding (by Sales) of what Marketing is there for. Marketing are often not expected to generate leads, and if they do, Sales sometimes don’t stop cold calling long enough to convert them, or feedback to Marketing on improving the lead criteria.
Who Cares About Your LinkedIn Followers and Website Clicks? Recruiters Want Candidates to Apply for Jobs, and Clients to Give Them Jobs
Marketing often struggles from a lack of perceived RoI. This can be down to vanity stats - web clicks, job application #s, blogs posted, LinkedIn follower #s - as opposed to sanity stats - viable leads, calls booked, jobs logged, placements etc...
Sanity stats are generated by marketing tasks delivered by a robust, targeted, connected blend of sales and marketing functions.
Sales and Marketing is all about being in the peripheral vision of your talent and clients – content, events, great job adverts…
Marketers should also actively drive lead generation – not simply be focused on brand and blogs - AKA "colouring in".
4 Things You Can Do to Get Your Marketing Department to Put Their Crayons Down (and Generate ROI)
Target your market. "Ready, aim, fire", is better than "Ready, fire, aim". Who do your recruiters need to speak to? Get these candidates and clients into your CRM and use automation to wake them up.
Budget (time and money) to generate leads.
Strategise the generation of warm calls - they are better than cold calls.
Adapt your strategy if it's not working. Marketers need to ask for feedback on their lead gen efforts / recruiters need to give honest feedback.
Marketing ROI is About Perception and Expectation
Recruitment marketers need to “get” Sales, generate leads, demonstrate value and get into the thick of growing a business.
Recruiters need to “get” that Marketing (with a big and small m) is intrinsically part of the sales process, not simply a pretty logo, website, LinkedIn Recruiter Licence sign off, etc…
And when Marketing generates super leads for you, convert them into sales please. Then tell Marketing how much money they have helped you take home that month, say thanks, and don’t be surprised if they log that somewhere and remind you of it regularly.
📍Final Thought: Create Sales and Marketing Recruitment Campaigns to Get Warm Leads and Real Opportunities
Want help building an automation and outreach strategy to keep your community of candidates and clients warm? Let’s talk.
I offer free consultations to help leaders / recruiters / automators unlock the power of their Bullhorn database and create opportunities .
BOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATION
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Bullhorn Power Series ~ Stop Missing Out on Sales: 5 Tips to Use Your ATS, Automation, and Analytics to Drive BD
For many of my clients, Recruitment is now officially in a BD-first market.For recruitment leaders, the challenge isn’t just finding new business; it’s finding the right business and winning it before the competition even wakes up. If your recruiters are still manually scouring the database or "spraying and praying" cold emails, and paying external systems like LinkedIn, Indeed, and job boards for leads, you are losing revenue to firms that have turned their Bullhorn stack into a high-precision sales machine.🔢The Maths of Modern Business DevelopmentRecent data from Bullhorn Grid shows a staggering divide between "traditional" recruitment firms and "automated" ones:The Speed Gap: High-growth firms are 3.5x more likely to use automation to beat competitors to the first CV send.The Admin Tax: The average recruiter loses 12+ hours a week to manual data entry. That’s two full days of lost selling time.The Gold Mine: 76% of placements come from people already in your database, yet most BD teams ignore their own "warm" data in favour of cold outreach.⁉️Are You Paying for a Recruitment Database or a Graveyard?Most ATS/CRM platforms are graveyard-like: full of data, but nothing is moving.But the true ROI from Bullhorn comes when you combine Bullhorn’s core power with Automation, AI, and Analytics. You empower your humans to turn that graveyard into a "Predictive Sales Engine."Instead of asking your team to "hit the phones harder," imagine a world where:Analytics tells you exactly which clients are worth your time (and which ones to fire).Automation nurtures prospects in the background while your recruiters are closing deals.The ATS surfaces the perfect candidate for a "spec call" before the client even posts the job.🚨Join Our Upcoming Webinar: The BD Power HourI see too many recruitment leaders struggling with "activity for the sake of activity." It’s time to move from "busy" to "profitable."I’m hosting a live webinar specifically for recruitment leaders who want to power up their Bullhorn tech stack for new business sales. I’ll be diving into the stats above and sharing at least 5 actionable tips across your Bullhorn ATS/CRM, Analytics, and Automation systems which you can implement immediately to:Identify high-probability prospects.Automate your processes to land more deals.Reduce your team's "admin tax" to free up hours of crucial sales time per week.Hold on tight - the webinar recording is in edit mode... check back tomorrow to watch it.Bullhorn ATS / Analytics / Automation / AI ROIWe are Bullhorn experts obsessed with how recruiters can increase sales, reduce costs, speed up sourcing, and improve productivity.We help you weaponise your people, data, time, and tech, so you can recruit and sell!Our Bullhorn Vision and Buddy service helps generate best-in-class processes, adoption, head space, and ROI.BOOK A FREE BULLHORN ROI CONSULTATION
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Vodcast: Death to Spreadsheets: Is Your Agency’s Future Hiding in a Tab?
In our latest vodcast, which could be renamed as "Keeping Up with the Joneses," I sat down with Carl Jones, founder of Konquest, to tackle a truth that many recruitment leaders are still trying to avoid: the era of "wit and whiteboard pens" is officially over.If you’re still running your recruitment agency’s most critical processes on disparate spreadsheets, you aren’t just being "old school" - you might be making your business completely uncompetitive in an AI-driven market. Here are the 3 big questions we posed that every leader needs to answer1️⃣Is Your Data "Siloed" or Scalable?Carl highlighted a terrifying reality: as you scale, spreadsheets become "damaging".They are slow, corruptible, and unauditable.But the real FOMO trigger?If your data isn't in a scalable, database format today, you will be "completely screwed" when trying to leverage the AI agents of tomorrow. ❓Ask yourself: Are you building a data asset you can interrogate, or are you just "hoping" your team knows what’s going on? 2️⃣Are You Leading by "Facts" or "Feelings"?We’ve all been there. We've made decisions based on gut instinct or ego. But in a shifting market with new legislative changes and complex compensation needs, "facts not feelings" is the only way to retain your best staff. ❓The Question: Can you answer why you’re making a strategic change with "unequivocal data," or is it just subjective guesswork? 3️⃣What Are the Most Profitable Agencies Doing Differently?💡This was the "money shot" of our conversation.Carl revealed that Konquest has identified a dozen different "signals" that separate the fastest-growing agencies from the rest. These are signals from how they incentivise managers to the specific nature of their commission thresholds. Most recruitment leaders are getting commission wrong simply because the data hasn't been available.❓Are you overpaying or underpaying your recruiters? Or is your management setup simply years behind the industry standard? 🚨Stop Scrambling and Start SystematisingThe goal isn't just to have "shiny buttons" on a CRM/ATS.It’s about creating an "objective reality" for your business. As Carl put it, we are entering a period where leaders will soon be "scrambling" to get their data out of spreadsheets. Don't be the recruitment leader left behind while your competitors (which includes your own clients) are already using their data as a high-value weapon. Want to see how you benchmark against the rest of the industry? Carl and the team at Konquest have launched a live, free Recruiter Commission Census. It provides a personalised report on those 12 secret signals so you can finally see if your agency is at risk or ahead of the curve. Ready to spend a speedy 17 minutes thinking about your recruitment data and how to get it powering your recruitment business?Watch the full 17 minute vodcast now. Bullhorn ATS / Analytics / Automation / AI RoIWe are Bullhorn experts set on helping ambitious recruitment businesses to increase speed and sales.We help you weaponise your people, data, time, and tech, so you can recruit and sell!Our Bullhorn Vision and Buddy service helps generate best-in-class processes, adoption, head space, and ROI.BOOK A FREE BULLHORN ROI CONSULTATION