7 Steps for Recruiters to Win Meetings With Dream Clients in 30 Days

Transcription

Mark Whitby [00:00:00]:
I had a good little business. I was making 6 figures. I was providing for my family, and I had a handful of key clients that were keeping me busy, plus referrals. And I stopped doing the things that made me successful in the first place, which was outbound emails, letters, cold calls, attending events. I got comfortable and maybe a little complacent and started coasting, and that’s Not a great place to be.

Kortney Harmon [00:00:29]:
Welcome to FDE+, where the conversation shaping the future of talent continues beyond our live event series. This special series brings our free virtual event sessions directly to you. So they’re featuring thought leaders, top trainers, experts that are really tackling issues that matter most across the recruiting, staffing, and talent acquisition industries. These sessions originally happen live with real conversation, practical insight, and open Q&A. Q&A, and now we’re bringing the best of them to the podcast. Listen in.

Mark Whitby [00:01:11]:
Kortney, thank you so much for having me. That’s an incredible event to be part of.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:15]:
I’m so excited. So for everyone joining, this is— we call it FDE Plus, so that we actually focus on an idea for every virtual conference that we do, and this is innovation. This is when we think about innovation, whether it’s AI, things that actually move the needle for revenue. I’m excited. So over today and tomorrow, we brought some of the sharpest minds in staffing and recruiting to help you do things maybe not the way that they’ve always been done, or building operations, or looking forward to future-facing businesses. And we’re going to talk about real-life stuff, strategies, practical frameworks. All the stuff, zero fluff. So I’m super excited that Mark is with us today.

Kortney Harmon [00:01:56]:
He’s our first speaker. I get to meet Mark in person for the first time in the fall. I’m super excited about that. He is going to be talking about winning clients that you actually want. He is the founder of therecruitmentcoach.com, one of the most recognized coaches in the recruiting industry, and he’s helped hundreds of recruiters and firms, firm owners build better business development habits, land their dream clients, and today he’s sharing 7 Steps to Win More Meetings with Your Dream Clients in 30 Days. So trust me, you’re gonna wanna listen into Mark. Mark, I am taking notes as well. So the floor is yours, sir.

Mark Whitby [00:02:31]:
All right. Thank you again for inviting me to be part of FDE Plus. I’m excited and people have started joining the chat. Michael Chambers, I’ve seen you 2 days in a row now. Uh, I did an event yesterday, Kortney, with the Pinnacle Society that was like last night, and Michael’s name popped up on there as well. So, oh my gosh, welcome. Howard and Scott. And, uh, if you’re just joining us, do say hello in the chat.

Mark Whitby [00:02:56]:
This isn’t gonna be a lecture. I want it to be as interactive as possible and, or at least as much as we can in a virtual environment, right? And so I’m gonna lean into the chat and to get the most value is stay engaged and participate actively cuz you’re gonna retain more information that way. So who here would like to book more meetings with high-value clients? If that’s you, then Say yes in the chat. This topic is so important to me personally and to all of us because we are in a sales business and new clients are the lifeblood of your desk and of your company. And I don’t know if this has ever happened to you. When you’re successful, it’s easy to fall into the trap of relying on repeat business and existing relationships. Has anyone here ever made that mistake before? Let me know in the chat if you can relate to that, because I made that mistake big time back in 2007. I had a good little business.

Mark Whitby [00:03:57]:
I was making 6 figures. I was providing for my family, and I had a handful of key clients that were keeping me busy, plus referrals. And I stopped doing the things that made me successful in the first place, which was Outbound emails, letters, cold calls, attending events. I got comfortable and maybe a little complacent and started coasting, and that’s not a great place to be. And my excuse was I was too busy for business development because I had to deliver to my existing customers, right? Well, you can guess what happened. Anyone here who was recruiting back in ’07, ’08, let me know. If that’s you, if you’re old enough. In any case, that was the Great Recession, right? So I lost 85% of my revenue overnight.

Mark Whitby [00:04:46]:
I had a mortgage to pay with 2 kids. Number 3 was on the way, and it was just incredibly painful and traumatic and terrifying. And I vowed I would never, ever, ever let something like that happen to me again. And so that’s kind of my mission is helping you guys. So these days, instead of having just 5 clients, I’ve got 50 clients that I work with on a, on an ongoing basis, and that number just keeps growing. More importantly, I’ve built a sales and marketing machine that never stops. And so that’s my mission is to help you guys build something like that in your business. Now, that’s a kind of 3 or 4 month project to fully build a machine.

Mark Whitby [00:05:30]:
So today we’re gonna take one piece of that build, which is account-based selling, otherwise known as the Dream 100 strategy. And specifically, we’re gonna talk about 7 steps to win more meetings with your dream clients in 30 days. So what is account-based selling? Let’s start there. Well, this is a term that has been used more in enterprise sales, and so Salesforce gave the definition that it’s a sales approach that prioritizes building relationships with high-value account holders, and it’s a more targeted approach to selling. So instead of fishing with a net, you’re using a spear. Now, as we’re gonna see, there’s nothing wrong with the net. We’re gonna use the net as well, but today we’re specifically gonna be fishing with a spear. Okay? Now, the theme of this whole virtual summit from Crelate is innovation.

Mark Whitby [00:06:29]:
So your job is this. You’re not just gonna listen to me passively here today, guys. Your job is to— I guarantee I’m gonna share some strategies and ideas and frameworks that you are not already doing in your business, okay? And that your competitors are absolutely not doing. Now, you’re not gonna be able to implement it all overnight. So what I want you to do is Pick the top 2 or 3 specific things that you can implement in the next 30 days. Okay? That is your mission. Find those 1, 2, or 3 real nuggets that you’re going to execute on. That’s way more valuable than trying to implement everything and getting overwhelmed and getting nowhere.

Mark Whitby [00:07:14]:
Okay? Now, most recruiters are blasting out cold outreach emails, LinkedIn messages, and hoping that something sticks. And the problem is it’s become incredibly noisy in the marketplace, right? So we are going to take a leaf out of James Khan’s book. His dad taught him, his dad was an immigrant from Pakistan. James Caan moved to the UK as a child and he’s become the most famous recruiter in the UK. So he’s worth hundreds of millions of pounds and dollars, probably close to a billion dollars. And he’s on our equivalent of— you guys have Shark Tank over here. There’s a show called Dragon’s Den. So everyone in the UK, even if they’re not in recruitment, know who he is because he’s on mainstream TV.

Mark Whitby [00:08:01]:
So his dad taught him, observe the masses and do the opposite. Okay? And that’s what we’re going to be doing. We’re going to be looking to cut through the noise with high-impact, non-scalable strategies. Now, when I say non-scalable, Of course you can scale anything, but I guess it would be more accurate to say strategies that are difficult to scale, okay? Because there’s more friction, they can’t be fully automated, and that’s why they work. Because it’s harder, takes more effort, takes more investment potentially. And so most recruiters are not going to do it, and that’s your opportunity, okay? If you’re going to do the things that most people Well, first of all, they probably don’t even know about 80% of these strategies. Most recruiters don’t know, but even if they did know, they would not implement it because it seems too difficult, like too much work. And you’re gonna do the opposite of what the masses are doing.

Mark Whitby [00:08:55]:
Instead of pressing the easy button, which is to send mass cold outreach— again, that has its place, but that’s not what we’re talking about today— we are gonna press the hard button and That’s where all of the real value lives. Okay? Now, a couple of concepts you need to know. CLV stands for customer lifetime value. Right now, to make sure you’re fully bought in, I want you to do a quick calculation. Grab the calculator on your phone. I want you to take what is your average fee value and multiply it by the average number of placements you would expect to make with one client During the course of your relationship. So just take 10 seconds and do that right now. So how much is an average fee worth? Let’s say $20,000.

Mark Whitby [00:09:43]:
How many deals would you do per customer? Let’s call it 5. As you can tell, I’m trying to keep the math easy here. That’s $100,000. So any, your average client is potentially worth $100,000. Now, I’m sure that’s an underestimate. It’s certainly possible that you might have relationships that are worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Okay? And that’s what we’re going for here is not just the average customer, we’re going for the high-value clients, right? The ones that instead of doing, say, 1 placement every 5 years, you’re doing 5 placements every year, right? That kind of thing. So over 5 years, you’re doing 25 placements or more.

Mark Whitby [00:10:22]:
So that’s kind of what— and upwards, right? So those multimillion-dollar accounts, that’s what we’re going after here. All right. Now that doesn’t mean they’re enterprise accounts necessarily. They could be small but fast-growing companies. They could, for example, be a private equity-backed business that’s scaling up. All right. So whatever your dream customer looks like, it’s important to know the value of your ideal dream client because then you need to calculate your customer acquisition costs. So how much do you spend to acquire a customer? Now, this is something most recruiters have no clue about because they don’t really have a budget for client acquisition, right? They’re not spending money on paid advertising, although that’s not a bad idea.

Mark Whitby [00:11:08]:
So it’s mainly their own time and effort, maybe the cost of traveling to a conference, maybe the cost of a website plus your LinkedIn account, and that’s pretty much it, right? But it is important to think about, because I’m going to suggest a lot more innovative strategies today than just the basics that every recruiter is already doing. It’s important for you to understand the value of an account. Like, how much would you be prepared to spend to win a client worth $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, $500,000? Would you spend a couple of thousand to win a client that’s worth a couple of hundred thousand? Hopefully you would. If your answer was no, you’re in the wrong place. And I really question your business savvy because that’s a simple ROI Calculation, right? You’re looking for a 10 times, or actually that’s 100 times ROI, like spending $2,000 to make $200,000. No, that’s 100 times ROI right there. Okay. So let’s zoom out for a second so you can see how this all fits together.

Mark Whitby [00:12:09]:
Now, the, I have developed a framework called the 6 Pillars of a 7-Figure Recruitment Business. And the 6 pillars are clients, candidates, team, operations, strategy, and marketing. Okay, obviously today’s topic fits within the client pillar. And so within clients, we have a 9-step roadmap that takes you from feast and famine to consistent clients. And again, we can’t cover the whole roadmap today. So the phases are phase 1 is market mastery, phase 2 is predictable pipeline, and phase 3 is retained recruiter. We’re gonna be working on phase 2, which is predictable pipeline. And specifically, we’re working in step number 6, which is personalized outreach at scale.

Mark Whitby [00:12:56]:
Now, within 6, that breaks down further. Okay? Because, and by the way, I, I think Kortney’s gonna share the slides with you. So I know I’m going fast because I want to deliver as much value as I can in a short amount of time here. So in terms of business development strategies, we’ve already talked about the SPEAR, right? The SPEAR is what we’re doing today is hyper-personalized outreach to your dream clients. So it’s a small number of high-value prospects. So it’s gonna be highly tailored. It’s gonna be deep research-based content, and the goal is to secure those key accounts. All right.

Mark Whitby [00:13:29]:
Now, if you’re fishing with a net, that’s higher volume. It’s still very targeted. Like you’re never gonna just spray and pray, right? It’s still targeted to your ICP, or we call it an ideal client avatar, but it means the same thing. So the exact type of clients that you specialize in helping, that you’re the best at serving. Okay. So those are broader market campaigns. They align with, they still align with your ICP, but they’re gonna be automated. They’re definitely gonna use multi-step kind of email and LinkedIn sequences.

Mark Whitby [00:14:01]:
But the goal here is scale and efficiency, right? So we’re gonna have those running too. And then seeds, that’s where you’re farming, right? So you have, Warm contacts and existing client relationships, and we’re gonna keep nurturing those so that when they’re ready to buy, you are the first person they think of. Okay? So those are all the different ways that we can generate business. But again, we’re, we’re focusing on spear hunting today. Okay? Hopefully if you guys are with me, then say yes in the comments. Are you with me? Yes or no? I know I’m going fast now. I’m not gonna play this video right now because we’re pressed for time. If we were Doing a couple-hour workshop in person, then I would take more time and I would share a couple of videos with you.

Mark Whitby [00:14:42]:
But the link to the video will be in the PDF, which Kortney’s going to share with you guys afterwards. So this is from a podcast called The Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett. If you guys are podcast fans and you like business podcasts, this is the number one business podcast in the world. They’ve got millions of subscribers on YouTube. But this one was particularly interesting to me because he shares this framework. So this is the medium and message quadrant, okay? Or matrix, you might call it. How does it work? Okay, so on the x-axis we have the message, and so it goes from apathy on the left-hand side to impact on the right-hand side. Now, apathy doesn’t mean you don’t care in this context.

Mark Whitby [00:15:32]:
It just means it’s low effort. You haven’t put a huge amount of thought and consideration into your messaging, and obviously that’s not gonna cut it. I mean, it doesn’t even cut it in the, in the, uh, high volume campaigns, to be honest. The messaging, if you have any hope of getting a response, it still needs to be very great messaging. However, to reach your dream clients, those high value clients, The message absolutely needs to be high impact. Okay? And then on the y-axis, you’ve got the medium. In other words, the channel of communication. So how are you transmitting that message? So that goes from a noisy channel to a high signal channel.

Mark Whitby [00:16:17]:
Okay? Now, I’m sure you all can appreciate where we’re going here. We want to be in that top right-hand quadrant of the matrix, right? We want to be high signal, high impact. That is where you’re going to get the attention of the CEO, the, the senior decision maker within your ideal target client. Okay? Now I’d like to get you guys to interact with me here, so I’m gonna just slow down for a second. I know I’m talking at a rapid clip. What I want you to think about is what current approaches to, to business development do you think that you’re currently doing that would qualify, that would fall into that top right-hand quadrant, high signal, high impact? So in other words, you’re sending the message in a channel that is not like super busy and noisy. And number 2, your message is one that the prospect really cares about. It’s gonna get their attention.

Mark Whitby [00:17:18]:
It’s going to stand out from all the other, you know, recruiters that are approaching them. So I’m just going to chill here for a second. I really want you guys to think about this. What do you currently do that you think might qualify for high signal, high impact? Let’s talk about it. What’ll be interesting is since you’re head of marketing at Crelate, that’s one of your, one of your roles, right? Then What do you do at Crelate that you think would qualify with high, medium, high message?

Kortney Harmon [00:17:49]:
Well, a podcast is one for us.

Mark Whitby [00:17:52]:
Oh, there you go. Exactly. So I served you a softball there. I know you’re a softball player. So Kortney’s got a great, uh, podcast, The Full Desk Experience. So that absolutely qualifies, right, as a high-impact message. So if you have a podcast and you invite Your dream client to be on your podcast, that is a high impact message that’s gonna cut through the noise. Okay, let’s see.

Mark Whitby [00:18:18]:
So Mim Johnson, uh, said MPC, maybe. So the MPC could qualify as a high impact message if you do it really, really well. Many recruiters don’t do it well. If you do it really well, it could qualify as high impact message, but the channel you send it through, if you’re just sending it as an automated email sequence, Then it might qualify on the message side, but it’s not gonna qualify on the medium side, right? So it’s gonna be the bottom right-hand quadrant. All right. Does that make sense? Michael Chambers, you’re onto the right idea. Direct mail company briefings. Boom.

Mark Whitby [00:18:53]:
Okay. So that qualifies high impact and high signal. So the message is a company briefing. And the— we’ll learn more about what that means later. And the signal is direct, or sorry, the medium is direct mail. And we’ll talk about why that’s high signal in just a second. So Sylvia says use topics that are current in their space, recent acquisitions, organization changes, dig in for pain points. Okay, great suggestion.

Mark Whitby [00:19:20]:
And Scott saying recent funding and expansion signals. Okay. So thanks for sharing. Thanks for playing with me, guys. Let’s do a deeper dive here. And really talk about those high signal channels. Actually, before I’ve, I’ve just given the answer away. Uh, whoops.

Mark Whitby [00:19:36]:
What I was gonna ask you guys is if you had to choose, now obviously they’re both important, but if you had to choose between the message and the medium, which one is more important in order to have a chance of reaching your dream clients? And as You can probably guess the answer is the medium is more important. Why? Because no matter how fantastic and carefully crafted and personalized your message is, if they don’t receive it and read it, then you’re just shouting into the wind, right? The message— if the message isn’t received, then it has zero impact no matter how good it is, right? So we’re going to spend the most time today on the medium. So high signal channels, what are some examples? So we’re all using email. Why? Because it’s easy, right? It’s the lowest bar to entry. It’s super easy. Well, there’s tools that allow you to find out people’s email addresses and there’s tools that allow you to send like email sequences automatically. So what’s happening is that Clients and candidates, but clients for our purposes today are bombarded with email, right? It’s extremely noisy channel. Now, better than that is cold calling.

Mark Whitby [00:20:59]:
Interestingly enough, clients, the feedback that we hear from all the recruiting firm owners that we work with on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is that fewer recruiters are picking up the phone these days, and therefore clients aren’t getting as many calls. Now, I know that It’s hard to get through, right? Just ’cause you call, it doesn’t mean they pick up and you get a live connected call, but it’s a less noisy channel than email ’cause it takes more effort and it takes courage, right? It takes guts to pick up the phone and call a stranger. And that’s why a lot of people don’t do it and why you have a chance to stand out. But the, by far the least, the most underutilized channel, it goes back to what Michael Chambers mentioned earlier, direct mail guys. So what’s old is new. And like, I want you to think about your, your, your own business, your own desk. How many emails do you get a day? Right? Probably 100, at least 100, 200 emails. How many letters do you get per day? Probably zero, right? And maybe in a, in a week you might get a handful.

Mark Whitby [00:22:05]:
You might get some from, like, you might get bills through the, through the mail, but you’re not getting anything interesting through the mail. So that is a channel we’re going to capitalize on. So let me run through the highest signal channels. So cold calling, we’ve mentioned direct mail. Here’s some that you probably are not doing and may not have considered. Personalized videos. I’m gonna explain all these, by the way, in a minute. This is just the high-level overview.

Mark Whitby [00:22:33]:
Personalized videos, personalized landing pages. What does that mean? Personalized URL. What the heck’s that? I’m a— I’m gonna reveal that very shortly. Personalized cartoons and strategic commenting. Okay, now strategic commenting, we’re not gonna talk about today. That’s simply if your target client is active on LinkedIn and they are posting, then you are going to reach out, connect with them, and comment on their posts and put thoughtful comments. on their post that’s going to get their attention. Okay, again, we don’t have time to cover that today.

Mark Whitby [00:23:12]:
I have written a playbook specifically about strategic commenting and how to do it effectively and like the, the dos and don’ts. If you want that playbook, just shoot me, uh, an email at [email protected] and my team will send that over to you. Okay, fantastic. So 30 days, remember that was the premise, is we want to Book appointments with your highest value clients in 30 days. So the way we’re gonna do this, there are 15 touches and how do they break down? So this is a multi-touch omnichannel campaign. Think of it as a campaign and not one like an isolated activity or task. Okay? So it’s all orchestrated and coordinated. And what we’re gonna do is it’s gonna involve 2 LinkedIn messages.

Mark Whitby [00:24:03]:
4 emails, 2 direct mail pieces, 1 text message, and 6 phone calls. Now you might say, Mark, could I do 4 phone calls and 3 emails and 3 text messages? And yes, you can. Okay. Of course, you need to use your own judgment, your own discretion, your own market knowledge, your own intelligence. You can’t— this is my recipe. But you might use a different recipe to bake your cake. Okay? And that’s fine. The reason I’m being prescriptive is because I used to give kind of general knowledge on how to do this, and people were not satisfied with that.

Mark Whitby [00:24:44]:
And they always said, but Mark, just tell me, how many times should I call? What order should I do this in? So I’m telling you, so if you want specific instructions, just follow this recipe. It will work. Okay? I’m just making clear, you don’t have to follow that. If you have a different idea, then that’s fine as well. Now, the 7 steps, remember that was the premise of this whole presentation was what are the 7 steps? So here they are. Step number 1 is deep research. Okay? Now, we don’t have time to go into depth on that today, but what I will say is that because we’re targeting a small number of your kind of dream clients, this isn’t going to hundreds of people. This is going to Like 10, 12, 20, 25, you know, 50, that kind of a number, a number that you can, you know, you’re going to attack consistently over a period of time.

Mark Whitby [00:25:40]:
Okay? You’re gonna be more creative, you’re gonna be more persistent, and that means you can afford to take the time to really research your prospects. Now, you of course can use AI to help you with the research. You can use ChatGPT, you can use Claude, you can use tools like clay.com, and there’s, there’s lots of other tools out there. Okay? But the point is you wanna know everything there is about that company and about the decision makers that you’re going after. Okay? So step 1 is the deep research. Step 2 is hyper-personalization. Okay? When they receive your message, they need to feel like this could only have been written for them. Okay? It wouldn’t apply to other businesses, so it can’t be a mass mailing.

Mark Whitby [00:26:28]:
Now, even if some elements of this are automated, the prospect, when they read your message, must feel like this was like sent to them and only them. Okay? Because it was. And so that’s the level of personalization that we’re going for here. Step 3, magnetic messaging. So what does it mean? Essentially, you need to, at your core, there, so there’s the personalization layer, but at the core you need just a killer elevator pitch. We call it your magnetic message, but essentially it’s who you help, what problems you solve, and what value or results you deliver, ideally with a, with proof. Okay? Like an, an example of a company that’s very similar to your prospect. And not just how many people you placed with them, but what was the commercial impact? For example, we worked with another cybersecurity software company like yours.

Mark Whitby [00:27:28]:
We helped them to scale up to $100 million. We built their entire go-to-market team, helped them scale to $100 million in annual recurring revenue. So that would all need to go be part of your magnetic message. Step 4, personalized landing pages. I’ll explain in detail what that means in just a second. But in essence, you’re going to build a webpage for every single of your, one of your dream prospects. You might— now I know you’re already freaking out going, Mark, that sounds like a lot of work, or like, that’s gonna take too long. Now there’s AI tools you can use to speed this up, but yes, the point is it’s much Harder than just sending someone an NPC email.

Mark Whitby [00:28:17]:
And that’s why it works. Okay, guys, so just stick with me. But this is, remember, we’re going for high impact and high signal. And that this is gonna cut through the noise, guys, as you send them a webpage just for them. Okay. Step 5, personalized URL. This takes it one step further. So not only is the webpage personalized, but the website address is personalized.

Mark Whitby [00:28:42]:
Okay, so it’s going to have their name in the URL, the website that you’re sending them to. Step 6 is a personalized video. Now, I’ve said Loom video doesn’t have to be using Loom, but Loom is a very easy option. If you’re not already using Loom, go and check it out. It’s a really great tool for quickly— it’s like a Chrome extension. You can easily create videos. We use it for both internal communication. So with my whole team for sending mess detailed instructions or feedback back and forth via Slack or whatever.

Mark Whitby [00:29:19]:
So internally we use Loom a lot, but externally you can create videos for clients and candidates and you just send them a link and they can go and watch the video that was created specifically for them. Okay? So personalized video. And then finally, and this is, Kind of fun but optional is gonna be some kind of direct mail. But in my case, the example I’m gonna show you is a personalized cartoon. Okay? Because I, they will have never received something like that before. So what does that look like when you lay it all out kind of step by step? So this is the entire Dream 100 campaign. 30 steps, 15 touches, 5 channels, and the goal is to land that your next key account. Okay.

Mark Whitby [00:30:05]:
Again, this is my recipe. I’m 100% confident that it works, but if you want to change around the order, the sequence, or the steps, you go for it. You have my permission. All right. So step number 1, I like to start with a LinkedIn connection request. I feel like that is the easiest, warmest way to enter a new relationship. Okay. Step 2 is Once they accept your connection request, we’re gonna immediately send them a personalized Loom video.

Mark Whitby [00:30:36]:
Okay? Step number 3, I’m gonna show you what type of cartoon in a, in a minute, Thania, so you’ll be able to picture exactly what I mean. Okay? Step number 3 is you are then gonna send them an email with a link to the same Loom video. Okay? Why are we doing that? Because they may not have opened or watched the video on LinkedIn. And so we’re gonna double up cuz this video is so important, like. It’s kind of one of the main ways that we’re gonna differentiate. Remember, like creating the video in itself doesn’t guarantee they’re gonna watch it, right? So we have to get, put it in front of them a number of different ways to make sure that they, that they see it. Okay. Now, by the way, the good thing about when you drop a Loom in LinkedIn to someone, if you’re already connected, this does not work in an InMail, guys, but if you are connected, which is why we start with a connection request.

Mark Whitby [00:31:26]:
Then the video will actually preview, like there’ll be a thumbnail in their direct message. And the benefit of that is, number one, it takes up more real estate in their inbox. And number two, it kind of arouses curiosity because like, oh, they’ve made a video for me. I wonder what that is. And by the way, in Loom, you’re gonna have their name. There’s gonna be a title. So it’s gonna say, if I was sending one to Kortney, it would say Kortney, And then some other kind of title like, uh, I have an idea I wanna run past you, or whatever the headline is. Now in LinkedIn, Kortney’s gonna see the title with her name and she’s gonna see the video thumbnail.

Mark Whitby [00:32:04]:
So that’s gonna make her curious to click on it and see what it is. Alternatively, you could just use the LinkedIn app and there is a video function where you can record a video on your phone via and, and send it via the LinkedIn app. So that’s certainly an option. Okay. But I like Loom. You can also, the other benefit of Loom is it tells you if someone’s watched it or not, so you know if they’ve actually seen it. Okay. I don’t think that’s the case with the LinkedIn native video feature.

Mark Whitby [00:32:34]:
So personalized video. So we’ve talked about step 3 is the email. Oh yeah, the email. When you include the link, it sometimes pulls the thumbnail in there as well. So that can be an added benefit in getting them to click the link. The next step, and by the way, the numbers aren’t the numbers in the steps. The number is like, what day are we on? So day 7, step 4, we’re gonna send a Moonpig card. Now you guys may have— Mike, oh, hey, good question.

Mark Whitby [00:33:01]:
Mike’s saying, what if they don’t accept the connection request? That’s fine because that’s the other reason that we’re using other channels, right? So it’s better if they accept the connection request because then they’re gonna start seeing your LinkedIn content, which we don’t have time to talk about today, but If you want help becoming a thought leader and building your brand on LinkedIn, we can certainly help you with that. But assuming that you are active on LinkedIn and you have a really well-designed profile, when you connect, they’re gonna start seeing your content. So that’s sort of advertising for you in the background and making it more likely they’re going to respond to your cold outreach. Okay? But if they don’t, then we’re still gonna hit them up on email. We’re gonna call them, we’re gonna text them, we’re gonna send them stuff in the mail. Okay. Hopefully that makes sense, Mike. Okay.

Mark Whitby [00:33:47]:
So you guys may have used, let me know if you use Moonpig. Uh, oh, Alex had another good tip, Exa for doing research. So Exa is something you can add if you use, um, Claude Cowork. If you know Claude Cowork, it has connectors, right? So those are apps that you can connect to that Claude can use. in the background. So Exa is an app that you can connect to through Claude Cowork, and it allows you to market map from within Claude. So, and research those target accounts. Good, good shout, Alex.

Mark Whitby [00:34:22]:
So Moonpig, maybe you guys use Moonpig to send cards to friends and family. So rather than you going to the shop, buying a card, handwriting the card, putting an envelope, going to the post office, buying a stamp, sticking the stamp, and putting it in the mail, Now that’s always nice. It’s a nice touch. We all love receiving cards, but there’s more friction involved. Moonpig allows you to order cards online and they print the card one at a time, like just for you, and they put it in the mail and they send it to whoever you want. So I use it for friends and family all the time, but you can also use it for prospecting. Okay. So what you can do, and I’m going to show you an example, is you can choose a card where you upload your own image.

Mark Whitby [00:35:06]:
What we’re going to do is use AI to create an image just for that prospect. Okay. Again, so that they won’t have seen anything like that before, and it really stands out and it’s delivered in the mail. So they’re definitely going to get it. Step number 5 is email and call. And by the way, from here on out, every step involves a phone call. All right. We’re going to talk why in a, in a few minutes.

Mark Whitby [00:35:30]:
So email and call. Step 6 is a text and a call. Step 7 is another email and a call. So, right, day 8, day 9, day 14, day 21, we’re either emailing or we’re texting and we’re following up with a phone call. Okay? So we’re making multiple attempts. There’s no way at this point the person will not know that you’re trying to get through to them. Okay? So like, you’re, they’re definitely gonna know you’re serious about having a conversation. And so this must be something important.

Mark Whitby [00:36:03]:
All right. So then we’re onto day 28. You can drop your next direct mail letter. And by the way, the messaging is similar throughout this entire campaign. Okay? So it’s gonna be the same core message in the video, in the email, in the LinkedIn follow-up messages, as well as your phone script, your voicemail script, the letter, the direct mail letter. They’re each gonna be worded a little differently for variety, but the core message is gonna be consistent throughout. Okay? And it’s based on the magnetic messaging and your hyper-personalization. Okay? Then we’re gonna make a couple more follow-up calls to follow up on that direct mail letter.

Mark Whitby [00:36:42]:
And by this stage, we’ve either got a meeting booked or like in rare cases not, but you have made a concerted effort to connect with this prospect. Okay, let’s drill down on a couple of these things and then we’re going to take questions. Okay? So if you guys have any more questions, I want to answer as many of those as possible. A few of you guys alluded to this earlier, just in terms of research. These are things that you should know about each of your target accounts. So there’s, they fall into 3 buckets, person, company, and hiring signals. So on the person, have they changed job recently? Have they recently been promoted? Are they active on LinkedIn? Okay. Regarding the company, we want to know about funding rounds.

Mark Whitby [00:37:27]:
Have they won a large contract? Have they won an award? Are they reporting earnings growth? Earnings is just a fancy word for profit. So are they, are their profits increasing? Uh, is there any kind of M&A activity? Either they’ve been acquired or they’ve acquired, made an acquisition, or any other company news. We should be on top of all of that. And then hiring signals, open jobs, open for how long? Headcount growth in the department that you specialize in? What’s the size of the HR and the talent acquisition team, or are they losing talent, and where are they losing talent to? Okay, these are all things that we want to know about our target accounts. So let’s talk about direct mail. This is Sarah Englade. She’s a client of ours. She also posts great stuff on LinkedIn.

Mark Whitby [00:38:10]:
If you don’t already follow Sarah, then definitely check her out on LinkedIn. She made $120,000 by sending a direct mail package to just 20 prospects. Remember, this is not a high-volume campaign. It’s highly targeted. Now, she sent it by FedEx. Why? Again, it was high signal. She wanted to make sure that it was received, that the recipient— that it got to the recipient. Okay, so she sent really high-quality, professional-looking stuff in the mail and with a personalized note, handwritten note in addition.

Mark Whitby [00:38:45]:
Now, she’s been featured in a number of magazines, including Forbes magazine, So what she did was for credibility, she sent them like reprints of the article about her in Forbes, as well as some other goodies. Okay. What the result was. So she got a number of searches from that, as well as a number of referrals and made $120,000 in placement fees from that one little campaign. Now, what was funny is that one of the C-suite execs that she sent this to thanked her for sending it. Now, how often does a prospect, a C-level prospect, actually thank you for your sales and marketing, right? So that’s a sign you’ve done a good job if that’s happening. Okay, this is Gary. Gary also, uh, you did— again, this is a tiny campaign, so he’s targeted 12 local firms.

Mark Whitby [00:39:34]:
He’s in the wealth management space. Okay, so he targeted 12 local wealth management firms that he had heard good things about, so they were Aligned with the type of company that he wanted to do business with. And this, the sequence was very simple. It was letter, call, letter, call, letter, call. So 3 letters, each followed by a phone call. And this makes sense right now. This is a different recipe. Remember these 2 last examples? I just wanna show you different ways of doing this.

Mark Whitby [00:40:05]:
Okay? So the result was a 33% response. Now, If you send cold email campaigns that are automated, the goal is 1%. Okay? Like an automated cold campaign, you’re lucky to get a 1% response rate. So where else would you get a 33% response rate? That is phenomenal in anyone’s book. I hope you guys are appreciating and understanding that. Okay? So booked 4 meetings, converted 2 into searches. So 50% conversion rate. And last time I asked him, he was in the process of closing the first placement there.

Mark Whitby [00:40:45]:
Now, then you asked about what do I mean by a personalized cartoon? So here’s an example on the screen. This was one I made for one of my clients, Susan Lindsay, to demonstrate the concept. And I actually sent it to her to, so she could see the full kind of process. So the image was created for me by Google Gemini. Now, you know, these models change all the time and they’re in a race to try and beat each other, right? So I wasn’t happy with ChatGPT’s image creation, so I went to Nano Banana, which is part of Google Gemini. Some people have told me ChatGPT has really caught up and now their images are just as good, if not better. In any case, this was made using Gemini. All I did was upload my headshot, Susan’s headshot, and I described in a couple of sentences what I wanted.

Mark Whitby [00:41:31]:
So show a graph of sales increasing as a result of me and Susan working together, that this is what it came up with. This was pretty much straight outta the gate, so I didn’t overthink it. I could have tweaked it and finessed it, but I was pretty happy with the result. Okay, so then I uploaded that to Moonpig as the image. On the inside of the card, it says, hi Susan, looks like you guys are crushing it right now. I have an idea to run past you. I think this could increase your billings by 200 to 300% in the next 12 months while working less. Check out a short video especially for you at www.recruitmentcoach.com/susan-lindsay.

Mark Whitby [00:42:12]:
That’s what I mean by a personalized URL. From Mark Whitby. PS, loved your LinkedIn post about why you never, uh, advertise senior roles. Susan is also definitely worth following on LinkedIn. She’s one of our clients who we’ve helped with her LinkedIn content, and she does a phenomenal job with that as well. You guys starting to get this? Like, we are really going all out to make sure that the client gets the message and that it stands out and is likely to facilitate a call. Okay, let’s talk a little more about personalized videos. So as I mentioned, Loom is my go-to tool for doing this.

Mark Whitby [00:42:52]:
Often if I’m inviting someone to be on my podcast, Hey, by the way, quick plug. If you don’t already, please check out The Resilient Recruiter. That’s my podcast. And if I’m reaching out to a podcast guest, then I will often create a Loom video for them to make sure that it’s, you know, for the same reason as we’re talking about today, right? Now, here’s what not to do is use AI to voice clone and create those videos at scale. You can do it. And so it’s tempting, right? AI’s getting so sophisticated now that Loom, and there’s other tools that do the same thing, right? But Loom allows you to insert. So if I made a video for Kortney, I could then replicate that same video and make one for Tayyab, one for Alex, one for Thania, one for Mike. Who else have we got here? One for Kurt, one for Scott, one for Michael, one for Mim.

Mark Whitby [00:43:46]:
And it would say your name in my voice and it sounds Exactly like my voice. Okay. But what’s the problem? There’s a lip sync problem, right? Because I’m saying the name Kortney, but the audio says Michael and it look, it looks weird. It looks off. So that’s why I don’t do it for your key accounts. The whole point of this is it’s genuinely personalized, not fake personalized, guys. All right. So even though it’s there and you can do it and it’s tempting, do not do it.

Mark Whitby [00:44:15]:
So here’s a different tool. So this is one of our clients, Kathy, who’s also a member of the Pinnacle Society. She uses what used to be called Hinterview. It’s now called Ryvr, R-Y-V-R. So that’s another platform. And one of the many things it does is allows you to create personalized videos for clients, for candidates, and it builds a landing page for you. I’ve covered up the text on the right-hand side was about her prospect. And by the way, Kortney, I need to check that you get the latest version of this, uh, slide deck.

Mark Whitby [00:44:45]:
Because I made a few edits to it at the last minute here, including this one. Obviously, I don’t want to divulge Kathy’s prospective client there, but what it would be on the right-hand side is the client’s logo and information about the client based on their deep research. Okay. As to why now, why it makes sense to have this conversation with a specialist headhunter in the senior living space. Okay, so, uh, hi Jim, Kathy Stewart here. So it says his name at the top, it has the company logo, it has information about the company that their— her team has researched. And then in the video itself, the video is specifically for Jim at this company, basically selling a meeting, why it would make sense to have a, a conversation. Here’s one with another client of ours, another Pinnacle member, Emily Audibert.

Mark Whitby [00:45:34]:
Emily billed $1.3 million last year, and in fact She’s— my podcast interview with her on The Resilient Recruiter comes out in a couple weeks. So, and she tells her whole story there. Another reason to subscribe to my podcast if you haven’t already. So Emily has created these personalized landing pages, and again, the URL will have the prospect’s name in it as well as the text on the page is about that company. I’m not gonna scroll down cuz it’s confidential, but I just wanted to show you. So if you scroll down, what you would see is There’s information all about her research on that prospect. It’s a personalized message specifically for them and why it would make sense to connect and have a meeting. So then it’s got a case study of another similar company that they’ve helped and the results that they got.

Mark Whitby [00:46:21]:
It’s got her logos of other companies she’s helped and so on. But the goal is to book a meeting. So it’s got a link to her calendar in there as well. The video— why video, guys? Why do you think video works? I want you to think about it. So the video works because, as opposed to a text message, right? First of all, it shows more effort. Second of all, it cuts through the noise because they’re, they may have had some, but they probably haven’t seen this very often. Okay? Because your competitors are just not doing it. It’s going to get more common, but right now it’s still a novelty.

Mark Whitby [00:46:54]:
Number 3, they get to hear your voice, guys. This is why cold calling Works because they hear your voice. You can influence people with your voice. They can connect, they can relate to you. It builds more rapport, right? And also they can see your body language. They get a flavor of your personality. So it’s personality plus credibility. If what you say sounds credible and the way you say it makes them feel like, hey, that’s someone I think I could work with, or at least I’d be open to talking to.

Mark Whitby [00:47:26]:
Then you’ve just scored so many more points than a text message where maybe you can demonstrate credibility, but you don’t really get across your personality. Okay? Now here’s how, guys, if you want to really level this up, I guarantee you I’m going to share this. I don’t know how many people are on this call. I think we had over 100 registered. Nobody’s going to do this even though it’s super easy. I don’t know why you’re not going to do it, but I know that nobody’s going to do it. So Ask yourself, maybe you’re gonna be the one person that actually follows this advice. Here’s how I get a 100% response rate instead of the URL.

Mark Whitby [00:48:04]:
So let’s say I wanted to send a video to Kortney. Then instead of www.recruitmentcoach.com/courtney-harmon, what I would do instead is I would register. I’d go into GoDaddy. or whatever your domain registrar of choice is, and I would register meetkortneyharmon.com. And then I would send Kortney an email and a card in the mail and a video on LinkedIn saying, Kortney, I’ve just recorded a video for you because I have an idea I want to run past you that I think could benefit both of us. Please go and visit www.meetcourtneyharmon.com. Okay, Kortney, what are the odds? Pretend we don’t know each other. Okay, pretend we’ve not— you’ve not been on my podcast, I’ve not been on yours, and you’ve never heard of me before, and I send you a message saying I’ve got an idea and check out courtneyharmon.com or meetkortneyharmon.com.

Mark Whitby [00:48:59]:
Would you go and visit it?

Kortney Harmon [00:49:02]:
Yeah, because I’d be curious. I would want to know what kind of sneakery you are doing over there.

Mark Whitby [00:49:07]:
Exactly, exactly. Now, thanks for, thanks for chipping in. So Every time I’ve done this, I’ve gotten a positive response, guys. And what I also do is say, by the way, if you want the domain, then I will transfer it to you at no cost as a gift just for considering my, uh, my, my message or my video. Okay? So you’re then giving them a gift, which is the domain, which then they’ve got for a year, and it’s up to them whether they renew it or not. Kortney, how are we doing for time? I feel like we’re up against the, uh, the wire here.

Kortney Harmon [00:49:42]:
You have 7 minutes. So, um, Keely’s not here yet, so with that being said, we can, we can play it around a little.

Mark Whitby [00:49:50]:
All right, I’ll wrap it up, uh, I’ll wrap it up shortly here, guys. So I’m not gonna— there’s not time to give a cold calling course, right? But, um, what I will say, who here still makes cold calls every day as part of their business development Let me know in the chat, yes or no. Are you cold calling? Here’s why the answer should be yes. So this is stat from Source Whale. Mike, good job. Mim, excellent. Chris, no. Okay, good.

Mark Whitby [00:50:20]:
Thanks for your honesty. That’s great. And, uh, Chris, your answer is the majority of recruiters. Okay. Which is why Mike and Mim, you guys, uh, have an advantage. Okay. And Kurt, you as well. So SourceWhale analyzed 52 million, million pieces of outreach sent across their platform, which includes touch points on email, LinkedIn, and phone.

Mark Whitby [00:50:43]:
You are 56% more likely to book a meeting when a call is integrated into your multichannel approach. And yet only 12.4% of recruiters include a call step in their business development campaign. I hope you can immediately see the opportunity. We did a cold calling course last year called Cold Calling Confidence. If you want the recording, then hit me up and I’ll let you know how you can get it. And we did a little competition where people booked 116 meetings via cold calling. We had like people who entered their stats and we had a league table here, but it worked, right? That was in 5 weeks. And there was about, I don’t know, 20 people in that cohort who actually participated in the competition, and they booked 116 meetings from cold calling.

Mark Whitby [00:51:30]:
Now we’re out of time for today. I would love you to keep in touch. Please do connect with me on LinkedIn if you haven’t already done so. I’m going to be putting together a playbook based on what we’ve shared today. So you’re going to get the slides from Crelate anyway, but I’m going to write a playbook that I’ll be happy to share with you. All you need to do is connect with me on LinkedIn. And if we’re already connected, then hit me up on LinkedIn. I will send you the playbook.

Mark Whitby [00:51:57]:
Kortney, have we got time for questions or are we—

Kortney Harmon [00:52:00]:
We absolutely have time for questions. Yes. So please feel free to write them in the chat. Uh, I feel like it’s Christmas. You had so many things here that they can take, so I love it. Thank you so much, Mark.

Mark Whitby [00:52:12]:
My pleasure. What I’d love to hear, if you don’t have questions, is what’s your number one takeaway? Please do Type it into the chat. What’s one specific thing that you are planning to implement having participated in this session here today? Guys, let’s make a commitment and create some self-accountability. Kortney, was there anything that you had a question or comment about?

Kortney Harmon [00:52:37]:
I need to do more videos. So just like you talked about the personalized videos, I did that back in a lot whenever we were doing the concept of COVID and it was like, how do you break through the inbox? And I did it a lot via LinkedIn. But with that being said, I love the personal URLs. That is not something that I’ve seen used either. And it looks like the chat is blowing up, so I will let you chime into those.

Mark Whitby [00:53:00]:
All right. Thanks. Great stuff. So current focus personalization, Scott, the strategic sequence of outreach modes. Sylvia, direct mail. Yes. Sending something post office or FedEx. Mike, the personalized URLs and landing pages.

Mark Whitby [00:53:13]:
And Chris, personalized videos. Definitely a great Differentiator. Now I wanna just handle one objection since we’ve got 1 minute left. And right, Greg’s saying there is not one single approach. The right answer is yes and, right? Not either or. That’s a great way of putting it. Okay, so Scott, you don’t wanna get their personal address cuz that would seem like you’re a stalker. What you want is their company address.

Mark Whitby [00:53:37]:
This really works better if they’re in office. Okay? Do not send stuff to people’s home. That’s gonna be weird. You’re sending letters to their office. So if they are working in office and look, if they’re an executive, chances are they are coming into the office, at least unless you work in like software or AI where they’re 100% virtual, then, um, in which case we need to come up with a different strategy for you. But yeah. And then regarding the personalized URLs or sending videos, a link to messages, the objection I sometimes get is, oh, I work in cybersecurity and People are trained not to open any links in an email. So here’s a tip from one of our clients, Scott.

Mark Whitby [00:54:18]:
Scott Easton. I don’t know if you’re listening, Scott, but Scott recruits within security. And what he does, you’re gonna laugh, this shouldn’t work, but it does, it does work, is he just adds a note in his email to say, I know you’re not supposed to open links in, uh, emails, but this one’s fine. Trust me. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that, and people are like, oh, okay, I’ll, I’ll click it then. So that’s all we’ve got time for today. Kortney, thank you so much for the invitation. I’ve, I’ve really enjoyed it.

Mark Whitby [00:54:47]:
I hope you guys have got some value.

Kortney Harmon [00:54:49]:
Mark, thank you so much. Uh, love all the practical, actionable content that you built here. So, uh, zero excuses moving forward. I’ve obviously already got my to-dos and what I need to do, so I’m super excited. If not, reach out. You can feel free to connect with Mark if you’re not already on therecruitmentcoach.com. This will be dropped on the podcast for those of you who are listening. Mark’s the real deal.

Kortney Harmon [00:55:11]:
Follow him, listen to his podcast. And Mark, if you send me that updated deck, I will make sure every listener here that’s registered will get that post this event, uh, by the end of the week.

Mark Whitby [00:55:22]:
Thank you, Kortney. Good luck with the rest of the event. It looks like phenomenal lineup.

Kortney Harmon [00:55:26]:
Awesome. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Mark Whitby [00:55:27]:
Take care. Bye now.

Kortney Harmon [00:55:28]:
All right.

Mark Whitby [00:55:30]:
Bye-bye.

Kortney Harmon [00:55:31]:
Thanks for listening to this special FDE+ virtual event. Do you want to be a part of the conversation next time? Our live sessions are free, open to the public, and packed with timely insights from some of the brightest voices in our industry. To follow the podcast, stay connected with Crelate so you don’t miss the next events. Until then, keep learning, keep evolving, and we’ll see you at the next one.